Wednesday
ld,U.
7 for Olytn
Wednesday, July 19,2000,
science
Page 3
TECHNOLOGY
THE BATTALION
f*ets are dttcr^y snUcrcrS/ Up
The truth about cats and dogs (and ticks and pollen and ragweed...)
Stuart Hutson
The Battalion
It is that sniffing, scratching, wa-
iring-eyes time of year. People are not
ie only ones affected by the on-
ilaught of allergens waiting at the
oorstep. Midsummer is the worst
ime of year for pets who suffer from
ie pains of allergies.
"Any animal can get allergies, not
st humans, and especially dogs and
:ats," said Dr. Christine Rees, a pro-
'essor of veterinary medicine at Texas
&M's small animal clinic. "I have a
fiend that just examined a polar bear
in Georgia for allergies."
Midsummer provides an over-
ibundance of fleas, ticks, grass and
eed irritants.
Rees said pet allergies can be di-
ided into four categories: flea and
idon Evans will compete r tick allergies, inhaled allergies, food
rs at the U.S. Olympic Trial: allergies, and contact allergies.
Evans echoed Ramzy
lents about having Nelson:
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W’fa'l an A tick allergies
Rees said allergic reactions to the
bites of fleas, ticks and other insects
are the most common complications
seen by veterinarians.
"The animals are allergic to a toxin
found in the saliva of the adult fleas
and ticks," she said. "This basically
causes a histamine reaction in the
skin."
A histamine is a chemical re
leased by a cell when the cell comes
in contact with a specific triggering
I chemical, such as a flea's toxin. His-
■ I famine reactions are meant to protect
against specific poisons that animals
ll Uwlv/( encounter, but in the case of allergic
reactions, histamines are over-re-
leased and cause severe inflamma
tion and irritation.
"Young or immature fleas don't
have this toxin, so they don't cause the
allergic reaction," Rees said. "So,
when you buy a flea and tick killer,
make sure that it specifically kills
adults."
See 7 on 71
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She also suggested using preven
tive measures such as flea dips and in
door/outdoor pesticides to rid both
the home and the yard of the pests.
Rees said this year is worse than
most because of the wet weather dur
ing the early spring months.
"Wet weather makes it easy for [in
sects] to propagate," she said. "It pro
vides ample moisture for nesting
places and egg laying and so on."
■ TythdUA allergies
While inhaled allergens account
for most allergies among humans,
they are the second most prevalent al
lergies for dogs and the third most
prevalent allergies for cats.
These allergies may be caused by
anything, including dust, pollen,
grasses or weeds, that irritate nasal
passages and skin.
"The important thing with these is
that they are correctly diagnosed,"
Rees said. "To do this, we first perform
a skin test for 65 different irritants, just
like a doctor would on a human, and
then we do a subdermal test for de
layed reactions where we inject an
amount under the skin and then wait
about 20 minutes to see if it has any
negative effects."
She said that a veterinarian would
then prescribe an antihistamine pill or
allergy shot depending on the
strength and type of reaction to an al
lergen. Though the prescription is of
ten very effective, Rees said pet own
ers can take other steps to help reduce
inhaled allergies.
"Besides vacuuming and other
wise cleaning, you could use a hepi-
filter to help out the air quality," she
said. "You can also wipe the animal's
feet every time it comes in from out
doors. It turns out that if a dog walks
through something it is allergic to, it
will keep getting exposure to whatev
er sticks to its feet and enhance the re
action."
allergies
While not associated with sea
sonal changes, food allergies are the
second most common allergy
among cats and the third most com
mon among dogs.
"A food allergy is when an animal
develops a bad reaction to a specific
protein, carbohydrate or fatty
acid within a food," Rees said.
"Sometimes this happens
when an animal has been eat
ing the food for years. We are
not really sure why it happens."
The allergy usually mani
fests itself through a skin rash or
irritation.
"The key here is also to diagnose as
quickly as possible and then eliminate
whatever is causing the al
lergy, but this can be tricky
because I have seen an- v.
imals become allergic ,
to as many as five dif- ^ . ,
ferent food ingredients at
the same time," Rees said. "An
other difficulty is the timing.
Sometimes an animal will have a
reaction within six hours. Sometimes
it takes two to three days."
These allergies, however, may
sometimes have odd results.
"A guy once brought in a dog
whose head was tremendously
swollen like a balloon because
the guy had fed the dog
eggs," she said.
Contact allergies
A contact allergy oc
curs when an anima
has skin contact with a
chemical that induces a
rash or other negative
reaction.
These chemicals
may range from poison
ivy to household cleaners.
"People should always be
careful when using cleaners
around animals," Rees said. "One of
the most common irritants is the pow
dered carpet deodorizers that dogs
and cats get all over themselves."
[q^ken to visit the veterinarian
"You should pay a visit to the vet
erinarian any time you see your dog
or cat licking, biting, or scratching
themselves to the point of hair loss or
irritation," Rees said. "It may be an al
lergy, or it may be something
more serious. The only
way to help out either
one is for the animal to
be seen by a trained
specialist."
A&M physicist search for invisible matter
Patrice Pages
The Battalion
Texas A&M physicists are trying to
show that a big part of the universe may
I be taken up by WIMPs.
Since the 1930s, physicists have be
lieved that the stars, planets and oth
er miscellaneous items they see
taking up the night sky make up
only 10 percent of the uni
verse's matter.
The stars would not move
the way they do if the visible
matter were the only matter
in the universe. Something
else exerts a gravitational
force on these stars; cosmol-
ogists call it "dark matter."
For many years, cosmolo-
gists thought dark matter was
i simply objects not radiating light,
such as planets, small stars and
black holes. However, the measured
• number of these objects is not large
enough to account for all dark matter.
Cosmologists have therefore theo-
Irized that previously undiscovered
I particles compose the remaining
amount of matter. Such particles would
be very heavy, but would still interact
very weakly with surrounding matter.
These particles are dubbed Weak Inter
acting Massive Particles, or WIMPs.
"WIMPs are something you know
must exist but it is so hard to get hold of
them," said Maria Isaac, a physicist at the
University of Califomia-Berkeley.
James White, a Texas A&M physi
cist, said that in the Milky Way — or
any spiral-shaped galaxy — WIMPs
are expected to surround the galaxy
in a sphere.
"The galaxy was initially spher
ical," White said. "Particles mak
ing ordinary matter, as well as
WIMPs, were all distributed
randomly in this sphere.
Then ordinary matter start
ed to condense by
i swirling to the center of
i the sphere, making a spi-
| ral-shaped disk — the vis
ible part of our galaxy.
WIMPs instead are clumps
of matter that could not
condense and stayed in the
initial sphere."
White is setting up an experi
ment to detect WIMPs passing through
the Earth. The core of his experiment is a
tank of liquid argon. If a WIMP goes
through the tank, it creates an electrical
signal.
During the 1990s, many experi
ments were set up to detect these mys
terious WIMPs, but only two experi
ments have showed results.
The first experiment, called the Dark
Matter experiment (DAMA), claimed
to have detected WIMPs. The second,
the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search
(CDMS), did not see a single WIMP.
"The big issue of these experiments
is that the rate [of WIMPs] is so low that
you are worried about the background
(interference)," said Dan Akerib, a pro
fessor of physics at Case Western Re
serve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and
a researcher with CDMS.
The background is interference
that can create false positives caused by
cosmic rays from space or natural ra
dioactivity from radioactive materials
surrounding the experiment.
In an attempt to reduce back
ground, most of the experiments take
place deep underground where cos
mic rays cannot reach.
The CDMS has been working 30
feet underground. However, starting
fall of 2001, the experiment will
move to a deeper site 2,000 feet un
derground.
White will perform extensive studies
of the different sources of background af
fecting the planned site of his experiment
in a salt mine in Carlsbad, N. M.
"This fall, I am going to put a pro
totype down there and measure the
background rate. I think our back
ground will be much lower than in
the DAMA experiment, but only
when I measure the background rate
with the prototype can I tell how
sensitive it will be," White said.
He said his detector will try to mea
sure the change in the number of
WIMPs passing through the earth dur
ing different times of the year.
"The least we can do is what the
DAMA experiment already achieved,"
White said. "If they are seeing some
thing, we should see the same thing
with a different apparatus. And if noth
ing else, we can verify the results."
White hopes to run his experi
ment soon in order to get new results
on this very hot topic.
"This detector has the potential to
compete with the most sensitive experi
ments in the world. So I would like to
make a large version of this [experiment]
running in time before new discoveries
are made, in particular by the new ver
sion of the CDMS detector," he said.
SCI
F.Y.I.
Here's the
idea. You write
in with ques
tions about
how, when or
why things
work or hap
pen — and I
find the an
swers. Questions can be anything
from "How does a car battery
work?" to "Why is the sky blue? (or
around here, red)."
To start things off, we will begin
with a question asked by almost
every freshman who has had the
misfortune of crossing the wrong
street.
Question: What is that weird
steam coming from manholes like
the one near the Northside parking
garage? And why does it smell so
bad?
— Stuart Hutson, senior journal
ism major
Answer: Well, I'm glad I asked
that.
In the past, students have con
cocted a myriad of theories, ranging
from a gaggle of underground pot
smokers to sewer gas.
According to Chuck Sippial, vice
president of administrations and
former director of the physical
plant, the steam is actually evapo
rating ground water.
The central physical plant
pumps hot steam all the way over to
another facility on West Campus via
a system of underground pipes. Sip
pial said this steam is sometimes as
hot as 650 degrees Fahrenheit when
it first leaves the plant.
Ground water that collects
around these pipes gets heated up
and evaporates out through the
grates and manholes that we see all
over campus.
This is why the steam is usually
more prevalent after it rains.
Hong Bin Zhan, an A&M pro
fessor of hydrogeology, said the un
usual smell is most probably due to
a small amount of sulfur in the
ground water.
"The water here has about 8.8
milligrams of sulfate in every liter of
water," Zhan said. "It is not a dan
gerous amount, but it is probably
enough to cause the smell."
Sulfur is most commonly associ
ated with the smell of rotten eggs,
which I hope you will agree is more
like the smell of the steam than that
of pot smoke, not that you would
know what that smelled like any
way...
Got the idea?
Good.
Question: So, how do I ask a
question?
Answer: Just email your ques
tion to scifyi@hotmail.com along
with your name, classification (se
nior, junior, sophomore or fresh
man) and major.
It's that simple.
king e
ilth issues
IS
lO
does ^
Scientists find sleeping improves brain functioning
(AP) — Getting a good night's sleep after
trying to master a tough new task might just re
inforce what you have learned.
European researchers say dreaming might
be the brain's way of replaying experiences and
lessons so that they are fixed in the memory for
use later on.
The scientists used advanced imaging tech
nology and found that the same regions of the
brain that are buzzing while we learn a new
task are also active while we dream. This
heightened activity was observed during the
brief but active stage known as rapid-eye
movement, or REM, sleep.
The study was published in the August is
sue of Nature Neuroscience and was led by
Pierre Maquet of the University of Liege in Bel
gium.
Animal studies had shown similar results.
Rats that ran new routes through mazes
showed increased activity in the same portions
of their brains when they slept afterward. But
the human brain is more complex.
"It is wonderful to see such results demon
strated in humans for the first time," said
David Silbersweig, co-director of the function
al neuroimaging research laboratory at the
New York-Comell Medical Center.
Humans spend one-third of their lives
asleep, but sleep's purpose is poorly under
stood. Among other things, scientists believe
Humans spend one-third
of their lives asleep, but
sleep's purpose is poorly
understood.
dreaming may help sort out emotions, impres
sions and other ideas.
In the study, 18 volunteers ages 18 to 25
spent several hours learning how to quickly
recognize symbols as they flashed on a com
puter screen and press the same symbol on a
keyboard.
During the test, the activity in several re
gions of their brains was monitored by PET
scans, which reveal how the brain is function
ing by watching its use of glucose and oxygen,
the fuels of brain cells.
Groups of volunteers were tested in sever
al ways. Those who took the computer test for
several hours, slept and retook the test when
they woke up scored the highest, with even
faster reaction times after they slept.
PET scans showed that during REM sleep
their brain activity and blood flow were simi
lar to when they were taking the test.
Researchers said the volunteers might have
been practicing the test in a REM dream and
storing what they learned.
However, Maquet's team could not
identify the precise cellular mechanisms in
volved. Nor are all memories consolidated only
during REM sleep, the researchers said.