Carbon atoms combined to make graphene sheets are a promising future technology.

I’m always wary of popular science articles about my field of research: nanotechnology. For some reason (probably related to yet-to-be-invented nanorobots), the word nanotechnology strikes fear into the hearts of many. I felt I had reason to be optimistic, though, when a friend sent me a blog post about nanotechnology from the New York Times. The author, Diane Ackerman, consulted none other than Carl Sagan for her first book; I hoped she might be reporting on nanotechnology with the same perspective and insight.

Unfortunately, that did not turn out to be the case. I really enjoy Ackerman’s style (I have a fondness for literature in general and Walt Whitman specifically.) She could have used his poetry in explaining a nanoscience concept in a way that appeals to lovers of literature or science. Instead, she resorts to fear-mongering and misrepresentation of the fundamental science of these new technologies.

The first discovery she describes, called “GraphExeter,” is essentially two sheets of carbon atoms (called graphene) with a layer of salt (called ferric chloride) molecules in between. It’s an exciting development because the ferric chloride layer decrease the sheet resistance of the graphene, potentially allowing it to be incorporated into devices, particularly touch screens. Because this interstitial layer doesn’t significantly alter the flexibility of graphene, GraphExeter could potentially be applied to items like clothing. Ackerman takes this concept and runs with it, worrying about neuron function and airport security devices. She essentially implies that graphene is going to electocute us all. Though the consequences of the applications of GraphExeter to clothing cannot yet be fully comprehended, abstaining from doing because it might inconvenience the TSA seems like a poor policy.

The other nanomaterial mentioned in the article is perhaps a source of more controversy: silver nanoparticles as an antibacterial agent. Colloidal silver, nano-sized or slightly bigger, has long been used to kill microbes. Because of increased antibiotic resistance, silver nanoparticles are becoming an increasingly popular way to prevent the spread of infection. Though concerns about the toxicity of small particles are real, Ackerman frets that this technology will harm the environment, a claim which has been investigated by the EPA. They have since developed a framework for studying and responding to claims of environmental toxicity from silver nanoparticles.

In highlighting these new technologies, this article reveals the need for a regulatory structure for products containing nanomaterials. With luck, robust safety regulations wil lead to a wide public benefits from nanotechnology and science journalists who can write about these inventions without fear. Until then, it’s critical that we focus our concerns on science fact, instead of science fiction.

I discussed the Fletcher Lab Art Show with Viviana Risca, a member of the Fletcher Lab. In the Fletcher lab’s original lab space, the only windows happened to be in the microscopy rooms and had to be covered.  As Professor Daniel Fletcher puts it, “We had quite a bit of wall space in our ‘urban cave’ but nothing much to look at.” Along with the original group of students and postdocs, he started the Lab Gallery, as it was originally called, as a way to stimulate artistic creativity, have fun, and invite others in the biophysics and bioengineering communities to get to know the Fletcher Lab a little better.

Since the first year in 2004, the show has gotten bigger every year, bringing in submissions that cover the gamut from science-inspired art to pure flights of fancy. The show often reveals the surprising links between scientific and artistic pursuits. Friedrich Nietzche described this connection quite aptly when he said, “Science and Art have that in common that every day things seem to them new and attractive.”

For more information on this event, please contact Viviana Risca.

Viviana Risca

Every week, Piper will highlight an event or an organization on or near campus that is of interest to the Berkeley Science Review audience.

WE CARE Solar's suitcase system. Image courtesy wecaresolar.org

The narrative usually goes something like this: a naïve scientist invents a clever piece of technology designed to improve the quality of life in the developing world, only to be shocked and horrified when it is not wholly embraced by the people it was designed to help.

“As engineers and scientists, it is easy to fixate on the technology,” writes Economist blogger S.C. “[Technology] is no substitute for the human element.”

“Like most things that sound too good to be true, it’s not that easy” Brad Plumer of the Washington Post reminds us, referring to a clean cookstove project in India.

Pile it on, folks. Surely the scientists and engineers behind the projects had no clue that there might be cultural barriers to technology adoption in the developing world? Surely those same scientists have never been out in the field in places like Haiti, Nigeria, and India to gather first-hand information about the needs and customs of the end users of their inventions?

Of course, such characterizations could not be further from the truth. Many scientists, especially those working on technologies for the developing world, take on challenges precisely because of their desire to address human-level complexity. The fact that difficulties arise on occasion comes as neither a surprise nor a disappointment to them. It’s just part of the job.

A number of groups at Berkeley are working on addressing the human element of deploying technology in the developing world. For example, Lina Nilsson recently wrote a feature article for the Berkeley Science Review that describes of the work of Berkeley-based nonprofits WE CARE Solar and NextDrop in Africa and India, respectively. Or, last October, BSR blogger Liz Boatman highlighted an ongoing cookstove project in Haiti.

What we learn from reading these articles is that the process of deploying technologies in the developing world is just that: a process. It starts with a technological innovation, like a low-cost solar power system, but it does not end there. There is also a hypothesis (“Our system can generate cheap, clean electricity in Nigeria”), an experiment that yields data (“Our prototype failed after eight weeks in the field due to poor electrical workmanship on the installation”), and finally an analysis that uses the results of the field test to improve the technology. The process iterates until a sustainable solution is attained. For example, the low-cost solar system has evolved into a successful solar ‘suitcase’ product that comes pre-wired to avoid mishaps during installation.

It is worth noting that at no point during the process do overconfident scientists step out of the lab for the first time thinking that they have found the ultimate solution, only to be put in their place by the complex realities of the situation. That myth makes for a convenient storyline for journalists, but the truth is that when it comes to designing technologies for social development, the scientists who are involved know that the real world is the lab. As the explosion of cellular telephones in Africa demonstrates, the right technology in the right place can make all the difference in the world.

First of all, thank you to everyone who came out to the seminar and release party last week. We’re really excited about the spring issue (and hope you are too!) and fired up to get started on the next installment for fall 2012.  So, seasoned and aspiring science-writers and bloggers alike, please contact us and let us know what you’d like to see in Issue 23!

The guidelines for story pitches, as well as our article styles and formats, can be found below. There are several ways to get involved as a writer for the BSR:

1. Choose your own story and send us a pitch - many of our best stories are thought-up by our authors.
2. Pitch a story from our idea list - feel free to take them whichever direction you want.
3. Write for our blog - no pitch needed, just email sciencereviewblog@gmail.com
4. Suggest a story for somebody else to write - no pressure, we’re happy to just hear your ideas.

All proposed topics must have a Berkeley connection — please also check our archive of previous issues to make sure we haven’t published a similar story already in the past several years.

The deadline for pitches and idea submissions is Friday, May 25th. Please email them to sciencereview@gmail.com.

For more information, check out our website: http://sciencereview.berkeley.edu

We look forward to hearing your ideas and working with you to produce another great BSR!

Best,

The Issue 23 Editorial Team

******************************

Pitches

If you would like to write for the Berkeley Science Review, the first step is to send us a short query letter (a pitch). The pitch should be about one page long and should sell your article. Tell us why your story is interesting and timely, the Berkeley angle, and whom you plan on interviewing. Be specific about what you plan to do and let your personality come through in your writing style. We like to see queries that are well thought-out and compelling, but if you have a more vague idea you can send that in as well. Please be sure to submit pitches by the deadline for the current issue.We will let you know within a few weeks of submission whether your story has been selected for the next issue. If your story is selected, you’ll be assigned an editor who will discuss possible directions for the piece, recommend resources, and generally act as a helpful guide and vigilant proofreader. You, along with your editor, will work on re-writes and drafts of the article. If you have a piece already written that you’d like to submit, send it in and an editor will contact you.

Article Styles and Formats

Submissions should be accessible to the intelligent and motivated non-expert. When writing your article, consider whether your readers will find it comprehensible, informative, and fun to read.

•Features
Features cover progress in a field or other broader aspect of science at Berkeley beyond the scope of a single finding or organization. Features should be 4-6 double-spaced pages in 12 point font, not including images  (2000-4000 words).

•Current briefs 
Briefs should be no more than two double-spaced pages in 12 point font with 1-2 images (550-750 words), and cover a recent exciting scientific advance at Berkeley or some other aspect of science policy or education associated with the university.

•Labscopes
Labscopes consist of a short (150-200 words) paragraph of text accompanying and explaining a particularly striking image, which is the main focus of the piece.  Writing a labscope is a great way for an author with limited time to commit to get involved.

•Faculty profiles
Interview your favorite Berkeley professor and write up the transcript. Interviews should be prefaced by a one or two paragraph profile of the faculty member and his or her research.

•Book reviews
These may be about a book written by a Cal faculty or student in the last two years. We prefer that you do not review textbooks or collections of edited papers. Length should be about two double spaced, 12-point font pages with no images (800 words).

If you have a great idea that doesn’t fall into one of these categories, feel free to get in touch with us as well.  We’re always looking for new, innovative writers and content.

•What we don’t want submitted
Essays about the trials, tribulations, and joys of graduate student life. Gossip about your advisor or labmates. Poetry.

Outside of high school English classes, most people don’t give much thought to pronouns, prepositions, articles, auxiliary verbs, and other “function words” (e.g., I, to, of, am, the). They seem to be no more than fillers for the more important content words–the who, what, where, and why of language. But it turns out that these invisible words have psychological significance. In his new book, The Secret Life of Pronouns, psychologist James Pennebaker describes findings from his research on the relationship between natural language use, personality, and social life. Much of this research is conducted using a computerized linguistic analysis program that calculates the percentage of words in a given text that fall into a range of grammatical, emotional, and topical categories.

On the book’s website, Pennebaker features six simple linguistic exercises that have the potential to reveal aspects of your personality and your compatibility with others. I tried out a few of them…

1. The Water Bottle Test (you can take it here). The way people describe a simple object–in this case, a water bottle–can reveal something about how they see the world and how they think. Without giving too much away, I will say that my results were mostly in the average ranges, meaning that they couldn’t tell me much about how I’m different from other people. But one piece of feedback in particular was right on: ”I’m going out on a limb here, but I don’t think engineering is a good profession for you.” I can’t argue with that.

The linguistic tool used for analyzing these descriptions is called “meaning extraction.” The researchers first had hundreds of people describe the water bottle, then determined the most commonly used words, and finally factor analyzed the words to find clusters of words that tended to be found together. These clusters provide the basis for each of the personality dimensions that are assessed. Though the connection to personality (and career aptitude) is based partially on research evidence, it does involve some extrapolation, hence the warning to take the results with a grain of salt.

2. The “I” Exam (you can take it here). Spoiler Alert: Don’t read this section yet if you want to take the quiz yourself first. In this quiz I was asked to guess who uses the word “I” more often – men or women, Bush or Obama, truth tellers or liars, etc. Many of the answers will surprise you (I’m familiar with this research and I still got a few of these wrong). For example, you might expect powerful people in leadership roles to say “I” more often than others, since “I” seems to be a word that signifies agency and control. It turns out, however, that the use of “I” is associated with a lower power role. If this seems strange, look back to emails you’ve exchanged with a higher power person, such as a professor or supervisor, compared to someone you instructed or supervised. Who used more first person pronouns (this includes me, my, and mine)? Pennbaker gives the following example:

Dear Dr. Pennebaker:
I was part of your Introductory Psychology class last semester. I have enjoyed your lectures and I’ve learned so much. I received an email from you about doing some research with you. Would there be a time for me to come by and talk about this?
Pam
____

Dear Pam - 
This would be great. This week isn’t good because of a trip. How about next Tuesday between 9 and 10:30? It will be good to see you.
Jamie Pennebaker

In addition to signifying low power, first-person pronouns are associated with self-consciousness (they suggest that attention is focused on the self), insecurity, and depression. An analysis of poetry, for example, showed that well-known poets who went on to commit suicide tended to use more first-person pronouns in their poems.

To illustrate, here is the first stanza of Mad Girl’s Lovesong, a poem by Sylvia Plath, who committed suicide at age 31:

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

And here is the first stanza of The Ache of Marriage, a poem by Denise Levetov, who did not commit suicide:

The ache of marriage:
thigh and tongue, beloved,
are heavy with it,
it throbs in the teeth.

Most people do not do very well on the “I” quiz because in everyday life we pay little attention to people’s use of first-person pronouns. But they are clearly far from meaningless, and it’s possible that they still influence our social judgments without our explicit awareness.

3: The N’SYNC Assessment (you can take it here). This test allows you to compare two people’s IMs, emails, or other writing samples to determine compatibility. Pennebaker’s research suggests that similar language styles can predict romantic success. In a speed dating context, the extent to which potential pairs used pronouns, prepositions, and other seemingly trivial words in similar ways predicted the likelihood that the pair would decide to go out on a date. This match also predicted the likehood that an early-stage dating couple would still be dating three months later. These results are presumably due to engagement and interest, not just general similarity. Language patterns (like nonverbal behaviors) tend to shift to align with the speech patterns of our conversation partners, especially if we like them. I won’t disclose the exact results of my own compatibility test, but they did seem fairly accurate. Keep in mind though that this test is still in an experimental stage, so don’t be disheartened if you and your loved one are given a lower than average compatibility score.

If you take any of these tests yourself, let us know what you think in the comments section!

References:

Ireland, M., & Pennebaker, J. (2010). Language style matching in writing: Synchrony in essays, correspondence, and poetry. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99 (3), 549-571 DOI: 10.1037/a0020386

Pennebaker, J., & Ireland, M. (2011). Using literature to understand authors: The case for computerized text analysis Scientific Study of Literature, 1(1), 34-48 DOI: 10.1075/ssol.1.1.04pen

For now, E-rater only grades essays that are also read by a human grader. Though the grades given by humans and E-rater have been remarkably similar, Les Perelman, an MIT professor, has his reservations about the software. After a month of testing, he has determined that E-rater favors long paragraphs and sentences, connecting words like “moreover,” and words with many syllables. Most troubling is that the E-rater can’t determine the truth or intellectual coherence of statements in the essay, used to hilarious effect in an example essay  by Perelman.

Learning about these loopholes made me curious to find out how the E-rater algorithm works. ETS is fairly transparent about the research behind its computer program. Much of their research has been published in peer-reviewed journals, and the full bibliography is available on the ETS website. The heart of the ETS algorithm is “natural language processing” (NLS), the details of which can be found here.

Other scientists are conducting research to try to close some of the obvious loopholes of the E-rater. Some of the most interesting have to do with coherence — the logical flow from on sentence to another — and topicality — the relationship of key words and phrases to the essay prompt. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania incorporated what’s known as centering theory into the E-rater algorithm in order to grade coherence. In this implementation, an essay is broken into phrases, and then the logical connection between adjacent phrases is scored. By including this information for scoring with the E-rater, the computer-generated scores more closely matched those of human graders.

It’s interesting research on human language, to be sure, and possibly a useful tool for some teachers. A replacement for a person? Probably not anytime soon.

Camarones, Ecuador is three hours from Quito in the Manabi province and is home to approximately 70 families, most of which are below the poverty line. The mission of CCC is to provide education opportunities for adults and children in the community. Their upcoming event seeks to raise funds to build a community center that will provide a location for town meetings, health services, environmental education programs, and activities for adults and children. Land for the community center has been donated by a family in Camarones.

The bowling fundraiser is hosted by Joanna Hsu, a graduate student in the department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, and Rick Hendrikson, a graduate student in Bioengineering. Joanna discussed her involvement with CCC, “Most of my friends don’t start non-profits after graduating with their PhDs, but this is what my good friend Emily [Kalnicky] did. While volunteering in rural Ecuador, she saw a need not being met and founded Camarones Community Coalition (CCC) to work with the local community on sustainable development projects. Organizing this fundraiser was a unique opportunity for me to partner with CCC to raise money for a community center that will serve as a meeting place, educational center, and location for health services.”

For the bowling fundraiser, shoes, bowling, beer, and soda are included for two hours (3-5 pm) and 100% of your donation goes toward the community center.

RSVP here. Suggested donation for this event is $20 for students, $25 for non-students. If you cannot attend, but would like to contribute, please click here. Camarones Community Coalition is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit public charity.

Every week, Piper will highlight an event or an organization on or near campus that is of interest to the Berkeley Science Review audience. 

Maggie Koerth-Baker and your humble author.

On Wednesday, May 2, Maggie Koerth-Baker, science editor of BoingBoing.net and author of Before the Lights Go Out: Conquering the Energy Crisis Before It Conquers Us, gave a talk on U.S. electrical grid for the Berkeley Science Review‘s Spring 2012 Seminar. Throughout her talk, Maggie used examples from history to provide insights as to the grid’s likely future. Maggie is an anthropologist and journalist by training, and her background informed the approach that she took to understanding the energy industry. The talk seemed to be optimistic and realistic in its approaches, but most importantly focused on the true reality of handling the global energy crisis: the effectiveness of an electrical grid is driven not by power sources but by distribution systems.

The origin of these systems can be traced to Edison’s earliest grids in New York, where teams of engineers perfected the technologies necessary to safely and reliably deliver electricity to consumers. That wasn’t where Maggie started her story, though. Instead, she began by talking about Appleton, Wisconsin. In 1882, Appleton became home to the world’s second electrical grid when H.J. Rogers bought the rights to Edison’s technology (though none of the technical expertise) and proceeded to electrify the town. Though the town generated more renewable electricity than it needed from Rogers’s mill’s water wheel, this didn’t mean that an effective grid existed. Among other things, the voltage and current in the grid varied enormously throughout the day, one effect of which was to rapidly burn out every (at the time very expensive) light bulb in H.J. Rogers’s house.

Despite Appleton’s struggles, early local electrical grids expanded and met, eventually forming the national electric grid. But the challenge of providing steady power to the grid remains. Today, grid operators stationed in enormous control centers communicate with power plant operators and major consumers of electricity (e.g. factories), giving updates on the state of the grid and instructions to increase or reduce their generation/consumption. If the balance between electricity supply and demand cannot be maintained, the results can be rolling blackouts (if there is too little power) or shunting extra power to massive banks of resistors that bleed off extra power as heat (if there is too much power).

The current system relies on the predictability of commercial and residential electricity consumptions and the capacity of power plant operators to react quickly to moderate output. The problem is that many renewable energy sources, like wind or solar power, cannot modulate their output with the same agility. What’s more, as individuals increasingly become generators of electricity (e.g. owners of home solar arrays), overall demand becomes less predictable.

Despite these challenges, Maggie was optimistic about the future of the electrical grid. She believes that solutions lie in improving the electrical distribution system. One key will be integrating large batteries into the grid, allowing power to be stored and redistributed as necessary. Another will be deploying smart meters (and smart appliances) in households across the country. Smart meters both enable the smooth integration of individual power generation and allow grid operators to control local power consumption. For example, appliances that only need occasional power (like refrigerators or central heating systems) could be shut off for a minute or two at the behest of grid operators to modulate the demand for power in the grid.

Maggie pointed out that for every major shift in the technology of our electrical backbone, there has been a trail of the bodies of corporations that attempted to commercialize it and failed. For innovators, the scale of the electricity grid is daunting, and only when economic realities necessitate it do large power companies really start to change their ways. Nonetheless, a big change is underway right now and, win or lose, the process is going to be fascinating.

Villagers of Papua New Guinea

Well, folks, it has happened again. A dairy cow from California was recently diagnosed with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), also known as “mad cow disease.” The cow was already at a rendering plant when the diagnosis was made and, apparently, was never headed toward our food supply. The last confirmed BSE infection in US beef was in 2006, and in total, only four cows have ever tested positive in our country’s entire beef industry. Meanwhile, in just a handful of decades, over a hundred people in the UK have gone “mad” and ultimately died from consuming BSE-tainted beef. In addition, over four million head of cattle have been culled in the UK in an effort to eradicate the problem.

The history of spongiform encephalopathy, however, begins long before the relatively recent BSE crisis — and its victims have included everything from human cannibals to farmed mink. Yet, rarely does science news cover spongiform encephalopathy beyond the context of the grilled burger patty. Burgers are indeed delicious (I prefer mine with BBQ sauce and cheddar cheese), but trust me, the history of spongiform encephalopathy as a disease is way more interesting than this one dairy cow might lead you to believe.

Circa 1920, two German doctors, Hans Gerhard Creutzfeldt and Alfons Maria Jakob, each individually identified the symptoms of spongiform encephalopathy in humans. Hence, the pathology was named Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in their honor. The patients that the doctors studied, however, did not develop their diseases as a result of eating tainted beef. Rather, these patients “spontaneously” developed the condition as the result of a rare (and natural!) genetic anomale.

Hans Gerhard Creutzfeldt

Of course, Hans and Alfons didn’t know this in the early 1900s. From their perspective, they had simply identified a neurodegenerative disease that caused healthy people to begin losing control of their locomotive, speech, and other processing abilities. These afflicted individuals simply went “mad” — then died in a manner of months to a few years. As their condition deteriorated, these individuals developed large brain lesions, or holes, which gave the disease its “spongey” description.

Later, in the 1950s, a few brave Australians set out to explore the Eastern highlands of Papua New Guinea. They found all sorts of neat things like new animals and picturesque jungles — and a cannibalistic tribe, the Fore, whose population seemed to be suffering from an incurable, unidentifiable neurodegenerative disease. Western doctors and scientists quickly became fascinated with the epidemic, which the Fore had named “Kuru.” They even built a local hospital in Papua New Guinea to treat and study the sufferers of Kuru, the majority of whom were women and children.

Years into their research on Kuru, however, the doctors had failed to identify the disease-causing agent or the disease’s mode of transmission. Meanwhile, the Fore continued to get sick. Identifying patterns in the victims was difficult because the Fore people had so many things in common, like genetics, location, and diet. In fact, it took an anthropologist to make the connection with cannibalism. In pre-modern Fore society, when a family member died, his body was consumed by his kin in a ritualistic ceremony. Social status was the determining factor in who receives which body parts, with the lowest-status individuals receiving the least-desired pieces, such as the brain. Incidentally, these individuals were also women and children, which explained why the incidence of Kuru was so much higher in this portion of the Fore population. Today, the Fore have long since given up their cannibalistic practices, and Kuru has entirely subsided in the region, with the last sufferer dying in 2005.

The Fore research was an important step in our understanding of possible lateral transmission of spongiform encephalopathy in the human species by consumption of diseased brain tissues. Even more significant was the fact that these tissues had been cooked when they were consumed. This indicated that the disease was an entirely new type of infectious vector from bacteria or viruses, a fact that even now makes BSE so scary.

The first case of BSE in cows was documented in the UK in the 1980s. Shortly thereafter, fearing the worst, the US federal government imposed strict import restrictions on UK beef. Then, in 1990, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) established a new mandate that all cows exhibiting central nervous system issues must be diverted from the food supply. In addition, to remain alert for BSE in US cattle, they required that a random fraction of all non-ambulatory (or “downer”) cows must be tested for BSE. It was not until 2004, however, that the USDA finally banned all non-ambulatory cows from our food supply (even now, other sick, non-ambulatory livestock can still be legally processed for human consumption). Today, these sick cows are sent to rendering plants, like the one to which the recent BSE-infected dairy cow was sent. It was at the rendering plant that the random BSE testing detected the disease in this sick dairy cow, a fact that the USDA is proudly advertising.

Of all the sick, non-ambulatory cows that get diverted from our food supply to render mills each year, however, only 40,000 are tested for BSE. This may sound like a large number, but the full US beef industry slaughters over 9,000,000 cattle per year. That means that just 0.44% of US cattle ever get tested for BSE. Most cattle, however, are slaughtered between birth and five years of age, while BSE can take years to show symptoms. By our current system, young, asymptomatic BSE-infected cows could still be entering our food supply and no one would ever know the difference. (At least, not for years.)

At this point, there are a few questions that you’re probably rolling around in your brain. Like, first of all, how did so many cows develop BSE if the genetic mutation for it is so incredibly rare? Not only that, what about all the sheep, goats, cats, mink, deer, and elk — how come the same disease has been diagnosed in so many of these animals, many of which are entirely herbivorous? And how have so many people gotten sick from cooked beef burgers and steak?

Two relatively simple facts can answer all of these great questions.

Brain tissue from a BSE-infected cow, where the white bubbles are the "spongey" appearance of prion plaques

To begin with, spongiform encephalopathy is a neurological disease arising from prion plaques that form in the brain. Prions are proteins for all practical purposes, except for one odd feature: they are misfolded. They arise when genetic mutations in protein-coding regions of DNA cause them to fold into a distorted shape that the body cannot reprocess. These distorted prions then have the potential to convert healthy proteins into misfolded configurations. Over time, “plaques” of prions can build up in brain tissue, and our bodies are helpless against them. Healthy gray matter slowly becomes displaced, causing the brain tissue to take on a “holey” or “spongey” appearance. In this process, neural abnormalities become increasingly apparent, and eventually, the body is no longer able to process coherent thoughts or motor commands. This is why BSE cows develop wobbly legs and lose their ability to walk. Similar events occur in humans afflicted with the disease.

Unlike bacteria-contaminated foods, prion-contaminated meat cannot be made safe for consumption simply by cooking it. This is why the USDA has imposed further processing restrictions on cows prepared as food. Before cows can be processed into their many edible components, their brains and spinal cords must be removed, which should, in theory, prevent the consumption of tainted beef.

This leads us to fact number two.

We can only protect our food supply by preventing the prions from entering it. In the past, humans acquired prion diseases from cow meat because it was frequently contaminated with brain and spinal cord matter. This is also how BSE became so prevalent in cows and then in other stock animals in the first place: cows were fed ground up pieces of sick sheep brain and spinal cord tissues. Spongiform encephalopathy has even been documented in household cats, who likely received their infected meals from the processed food supply of sick stock animals. BSE kept spreading until we realized what the source was and decided to pass laws forbidding the processing and feeding of dead animals to our stock food supply.

I suppose our story has a few morals to it. One, if you’re going to practice cannibalism, make sure you steer clear of the gray matter. Two, when you mess with the natural order and do things like feed pieces of cows to other cows, nature retaliates and it isn’t pretty. Three, our federal government really does have the uninformed public’s best interest at heart, which is why this is year 2012 and they are finally considering eliminating all non-ambulatory stock animals from our food supply (like “barn-raised” chickens that grow so fast the bone tissue of their legs can’t support them).

How about a few more noteworthy tidbits? You know that I can’t finish a BSR post without them. Chronic wasting disease in deer and elk is also a prion disease and remains the only example of longitudinal prion disease transmission via unknown means. Salmonella contamination of chicken eggs and meats is also a problem perpetuated by unhealthy livestock farming practices here in the US. In fact, in most of Europe, salmonella-contaminated chicken delicacies don’t even exist, because several decades ago their governments bothered to undertake aggressive eradication campaigns to make their food supplies safer for the public.

(By the way, are you hungry yet?)