In 1964, a professor of entomology at Cornell University, Thomas Eisner, published an article in Science, in which he wrote: “Surely, a mint plant derives no benefit from an ability to stimulate cats!” He was addressing the remarkable response of cats to the odor of the catnip plant, Nepata cateria. They can’t seem to get enough of the odor of the essential oil of this plant and act as if they are on some kind of drug. What kind of evolutionary advantage would that have for the catnip plant or for the cat? An experiment was called for.
Eisner exposed the essential oil of the plant (obtained by steaming parts of the plant as you would broccoli or cauliflower and then extracting the plant’s oil from the condensed water) to many kinds of insects including those that do us great harm, mosquitoes and ticks for example. The odor of the oil repelled them to a greater extent than commonly commercial insect repellents, including in more recent experiments, DEET.
Now a half century later Eisner has passed away but his inquiry is making waves. DuPont, one of the most powerful chemical corporations in the world, has, in recent years issued patents claiming superior technology for the steam distillation of this plant and a chemical process slightly altering the chemical structure of the essential molecule in the oil, Nepata lactone. DuPont is also offering commercial quantities of the altered oil to be used in formulating a competitive insect repellent to those now for sale. The word seems to be out: Johnny’s Seed , one of the largest suppliers of seeds in the United States was sold out of catnip seed early in this growing season and one can even find catnip touted as an ingredient, however small in proportion, in insect repellents for sale in supermarkets. It’s a strange business, however, in the relations between plants and insects. An insect that plagues plants, the aphid, uses the identical chemical responsible for the repellent properties of the catnip essential oil as a signaling molecule for male-female attraction, a sex pheromone.
On page 428 of the July 27, 2012 issue of Science, appears the following sentence: “A host of recent studies show that growing up in poverty can shape the wiring and even the physical dimensions of a young child’s brain, with negative effects on language, learning and attention.” These insights arise from relatively recent technologies in brain scanning, allowing scientists to actually observe working parts of the brain. These findings show that poverty with its often-limited cognitive stimulation (not reading to the child for just one example or surrounded by dull surroundings and experiences) results in actually smaller brain volumes of the parts of the brain responsible for memory (the hippocampus) and reasoning (the prefrontal cortex).
Cleanliness is next to godliness, says the old saying and how many of us have grown up admonished to get to the soap dish. Science is increasingly showing how excessive cleanliness is bad for us – the hygiene hypothesis. Many experiments support this hypothesis that many microbes (germs) in our gut are good for us.
Here’s an experiment done by Richard Blumberg at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Mice were raised in absolutely sterile environments – no germs. These mice, compared to their brethren mice raised in environments teaming with germs, developed colitis and asthma to a far larger extent. When these “clean” adult mice were moved to the “dirtier” environment of the other mice, their immune problems did not diminish. But if pregnant germ free mice were moved into the germ filled cages, their pups were much healthier at all ages.
The researchers were also able to identify the biochemical mechanisms controlled by the presence or absence of the microbes. This is another in a long line of evidence supporting the hygiene hypothesis, including the fact that children growing up on farms are far less plagued by asthma. I wonder if Howard Hughes would have avoided all of those germ covered door knobs, and other sources of which he feared infection by bugs, if he had been privy to these modern results?
Jones, Oklahoma, is reported in the July 4, 2014 issue of Science, on page 13, to have 2692 residents, one bar, three restaurants and nine churches and has suffered from 2547 small earthquakes since 2008. The earthquakes, according to work by Katie Keranen of Cornell University (which is supported by other geologists around the country) are arising from the large volumes of water pumped back into the ground after the water is used for breaking open rock pores necessary to release the natural gas product of hydraulic fracturing or fracking. Such human caused earthquakes, seen across large parts of the southwest, are growing more powerful and geologists are afraid that a highly destructive large magnitude earthquake could unexpectedly follow. For example, through June 15 of this year, the State of Oklahoma has seen 190 earthquakes of magnitude 3 or greater, a level of shaking approaching the threshold of destructive force.
