James' World 2

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As flowers bloom and temperatures climb, many are eager to get back outside. But while the Sun may be shining, there is a dark side that can make the great outdoors not so great.

Gangs of germs are lurking in the woods, in the soil, in the water, and in your food, ready to rain on your summer parade.

I’m a professor of microbiology at the Indiana University School of Medicine, where I study and teach about infectious disease. Here are some things to keep in mind to help you and your loved ones stay free of illness while enjoying summer activities.

Germs in the backyard

There’s nothing like the smell of a good barbecue and fresh goodies from your own garden. To make sure people leave your party with only good memories, be aware of germs commonly linked to food poisoning, which can result in diarrhea, cramps, nausea, vomiting, and fever.

Meats, including fish and poultry, often house harmful bacteria such as Salmonella, E. coli, or Listeria. Raw meat can contaminate anything it touches, so be sure to wash your hands and disinfect surfaces and utensils. To avoid cross contamination, do not keep uncooked meat near prepared foods. Meat products must be cooked to proper temperatures to ensure harmful germs are destroyed before consuming.

In addition to bacteria, a parasite called Toxoplasma gondii can cause acute food poisoning. Toxoplasma parasites are shed as microscopic oocysts in the feces of infected cats. Oocysts persist in the environment for a year or more, and other animals, including people, can inadvertently ingest them.

Upon infection, Toxoplasma forms tissue cysts in the flesh of food animals – another reason to cook your meats thoroughly. Pregnant people need to take special care in avoiding Toxoplasma, since the parasite can cross the placenta and cause miscarriage or birth defects.

To avoid getting toxoplasmosis from oocysts, people should wear gloves while gardening, wash fruits and vegetables, and make sure the sandbox is free of cat poop and covered when not in use.

Germs in the water

Recreational water facilities, such as pools, water parks, and fountains, are a great way to beat the summer heat. The smell of chlorine is a good sign that the water is being treated to kill many types of germs.

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Taking precautions against outdoor pathogens can keep you from getting sidelined over the summer. galitskaya/iStock via Getty Images Plus

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Being in this heightened state can lead to sleep problems, issues with blood pressure, and just an overall sense of anxiousness. According to a survey more than half of Americans say that money negatively impacts their mental health. Economic factors are playing a large part in overall mental deterioration, and despite the current administration’s efforts, there still is very little relief from financial strain. 

When an emergency occurs, many Americans turn to traditional banking and financial solutions like credit cards to borrow money that don’t always have their best interest in mind. Many lending products come with hidden “junk fees” and an annual percentage rate (APR) that is misleading for consumers and doesn’t truly reveal the costs to those in need. Most individuals and households carry a credit card balance month to month and are unable to make payments. Credit card interest margins rise daily, and consumers are cash-poor, but credit-rich.

Earlier this year, President Biden took another initiative against junk fees—specifically credit cards. Under the new rule, most credit card late fees will be capped at $8. The Administration estimates credit card companies are generating five times more on late fees than it costs to recoup the late payment. Biden said, “They’re padding their profit margins and charging hard-working Americans. This action will collectively save families $10 billion in credit card late fees every year.” On average, credit card companies were charging $32, making it more difficult and stressful for hardworking Americans to save and not be cash-strapped. It goes way beyond late fees, however, which is why it’s surprising that the entire issue is not being addressed and will not solve the overlying problem. 

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The single-celled organism Lacrymaria olor uses one of the most curious hunting techniques of all. Its oval-shaped body measures around 40 micrometers and has a small protrusion at the end. When it detects food, it stretches this “neck” out to around 30 times its own body length within seconds in order to grab prey that is far away, an action that makes it look like the Loch Ness monster. But how L. olor manages to do this without enormous tensile forces tearing its cell membrane has so far been a complete mystery. Experts suspect that the organism must store the extra length of this feeding apparatus somewhere to be able to retrieve it so quickly.

Now, Eliott Flaum and Manu Prakash of Stanford University seem to have solved the mystery. As they report in the journal Science, the cell membrane and internal structure of the single-celled organism are folded like origami and can be easily pulled apart and folded together again. This means that the forces on the membrane and the energy costs are very low, write the two researchers. L. olor stretches its neck around 20,000 times over the course of its life without incident.

The tiny single-celled organism’s unusual hunting technique brings with it a whole series of potential problems. Normally, it takes a lot of energy to deform a cell membrane so drastically—and at the speed with which L. olor stretches its neck, the organism would not be able to produce enough new membrane material. And while the neck has to be extremely flexible to allow for the rapid movement, it also has to be stiff and stable at the same time so that it doesn’t simply snap over at the first opportunity. L. olor solves all of these problems by folding the membrane of its neck into several layers.

The membrane’s fold lines have a complicated curved geometry that enable it to unfold into a cylinder. Beneath the folded membrane lies a network of spirally wound tubes that are folded together with the membrane and in turn help in the orderly folding and unfolding. The principle is similar to so-called Yoshimura origami, in which a cylinder consists of a grid of folded rhombuses and can be stretched out and folded up. One question still remains unanswered, however: When micrometer-sized objects move toward each other in the water, a repulsive force is created, so the protruding neck should cause the prey to drift away. Why that doesn’t happen is unclear—not all of the mysteries surrounding L. olor have been solved yet.

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Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) will be issuing a mass pardon for more than 175,000 marijuana convictions on Monday.

The pardons will be one of the country’s biggest acts of clemency involving the drug that’s now widely used recreationally.

ll be one of the country’s biggest acts of clemency involving the drug that’s now widely used recreationally.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Moore said it will be a step to heal decades of social and economic injustice that disproportionately harmed people of color.

“I’m ecstatic that we have a real opportunity with what I’m signing to right a lot of historical wrongs,” he said. “If you want to be able to create inclusive economic growth, it means you have to start removing these barriers that continue to disproportionately sit on communities of color.”

The Post noted that nine other states and multiple cities have pardoned hundreds of thousands of previous marijuana convictions in recent years but Moore’s actions impact communities of color significantly because Maryland has one of the country’s worst records for disproportionately incarcerating Black people.

The Post also noted that the pardons fall on the same week as Juneteenth celebrations across the country, which symbolizes the end of slavery. Moore is the only Black governor of a U.S. state.

The pardons rival only Massachusetts, where Gov. Maura Healey (D) issued a blanket pardon in March that is expected to impact hundreds of thousands of people, the outlet reported.

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Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) speaks following a meeting on the federal response to the Key Bridge Collapse at the Capitol on April 9, 2024.

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Have a great day!.

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At the far end of the periodic table is a realm where nothing is quite as it should be. The elements here, starting at atomic number 104 (rutherfordium), have never been found in nature. In fact, they’d emphatically prefer not to exist. Their nuclei, bursting with protons and neutrons, tear themselves apart via fission or radioactive decay within instants of their creation.

These are the superheavy elements: after rutherfordium come dubnium, seaborgium, bohrium, and other oddities, all the way up to the heaviest element ever created, oganesson, element 118. Humans have only ever made vanishingly small amounts of these elements. As of 2020, 18 years after the first successful creation of oganesson in a laboratory, scientists had reported making a total of five atoms of it. Even if they could make much more, it would never be the kind of stuff you could hold in your hand—oganesson is so radioactive that it would be less matter, more heat.

Using ultrafast, atom-at-a-time methods, researchers are starting to explore this unmapped region of the periodic table and finding it as fantastical as any medieval cartographer’s imaginings. Here at the uncharted coastline of chemistry, atoms have a host of weird properties, from pumpkin-shaped nuclei to electrons bound so tightly to the nucleus they’re subject to the rules of relativity, not unlike objects orbiting a black hole.

Their properties may reveal more about the primordial elements created in massive astrophysical phenomena such as supernovae and neutron star mergers. But more than that, studying this strange matter may help scientists understand the more typical matter that occurs naturally all around us. As researchers get better at pinning these atoms down and measuring them, they’re pushing the boundaries of the way we organize matter in the first place.

“The periodic table is something fundamental,” says Witold Nazarewicz, a theoretical nuclear physicist and chief scientist at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams at Michigan State University. “What are the limits of this concept? What are the limits of atomic physics? Where is the end of chemistry?”

Affixed to the wall in a concrete-block corridor known as Cave 1 in Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), just steps from one of the few instruments in the world that can create superheavy atoms, is a poster-size printout of a table that organizes elements by nuclide, meaning based on the number of protons and neutrons in the nucleus. This graph shows all the known information about the nuclear structure and decay of the elements, as well as of their isotopes—variations on elements with the same number of protons in the nucleus but different numbers of neutrons.

It’s a living document. There’s a typo in the title, and there are tears along the poster’s edges where duct tape holds it to the wall. It’s been marked up with notations in Sharpie, added after the poster was printed in 2006. These notations are the atomic physics version of seafarers penciling in new islands as they sail, but in this case, the islands are isotopes of elements so heavy they can be seen only in particle accelerators like the one here. In a field where it can take a week to make just one atom of what you want, a record of progress is essential.

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Quarternative

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Few outdoor accessories are more important than the grill you choose for you summertime cookouts. It was already time to retire your old grill when that rust hole appeared and a family of mice moved in three years ago, so don’t put it off any longer. If you’ve already weighed the benefits of an electric grill, but you haven’t been able to shake the siren’s call of the classic charcoal grill, you’re in the right place. Considering this, my argument for why charcoal still can be a great choice, and how to choose a good grill.

Charcoal gives food that classic summertime flavor you associate with the activity of grilling. Any morsel cooked over charcoal’s radiant heat is blessed with a smoky flavor unmatched by any other outdoor cooking device (barring a smoker, but that’s a different world altogether). With the right mindset, it also can be a lot of fun, from the moment you pack the chimney to when you close down the vents—and those glowing embers will always inspire s’mores.

I feel like a big time grill master whenever I cook with charcoal, probably because it takes a bit of work and know-how to successfully get one going versus a propane gas grill that lights with a click, or an electric grill that activates with a flip of the switch. But it’s also something a beginner can handle. (They say that each time you get those charcoal briquettes glowing, your ego grows three sizes.)

Is a charcoal grill right for you?

When considering which type of grill to buy, think about your priorities. Do you need it to be portable? What size do you think is best? Do you just want something that lights the first time, or are you okay with some trial and error? Consider charcoal’s advantages: 

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Credit: ronstik / Shutterstock.com

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University presidents and administrators can learn a lot from the student demonstrations that closed out this academic year.

Some lessons could be simply expedient. Most acutely: don’t get the chair of your philosophy department (in this case, me) arrested. That’s especially true when a video of her, looking like a model of respectability while being hauled off, might in the space of two days get 22 million views and become a serious public relations headache.

Another pragmatic lesson might be to clear encampments peacefully but quickly, since tents seriously interfere with commencement. More ambitiously, a president might try to negotiate with the demonstrators while simultaneously appeasing the governing board so as not to get fired.

Such lessons in expediency boil down to keeping their job while facing wrath from all sides, including Congress. To make matters worse, doing all this involves negotiating millennia of religious strife that overflows to this day, while somehow maintaining their reputation against charges of antisemitism or “complicity in genocide.”

As that arrested philosophy department chair, I’d like to propose a more visionary lesson: If university presidents want to be on the right side of history, they should study how democracy works and the role that universities play in aiding democratic processes. They should see their job as foremost to educate their students to become engaged members of society—with the side benefit of furthering the democratic process itself. They should avoid doing anything that slows down or reverses democracy.

Other lessons for aspiring visionary leaders: When appropriate, engage with the demonstrators. Treat them like budding civic actors, not enemies. If protests are peaceful, let them proceed. Consider going to REI and getting a tent to camp out with the students. Listen to those involved. If the discourse and chants strike you and your board or alumni as offensive, bring in some experts on constructive dialogue. Arrange for some deliberative forums.

But whatever you do, do not do what my university did on the morning of April 25, 2024. Do not bring in outside police forces armed with pepper spray, rubber bullets, and Tasers to violently and brutally dismantle a peaceful protest, all in a matter of minutes. Do not arrest bystanders like me and other professors and students who were calling for the police to stop and refusing to step away. Please don’t do any of that.

As a professor of political philosophy who has researched and written extensively on political deliberation and public life, the main lesson I’d like to impart is that this past season of protests is part of a larger political and democratic process. Such a season is not aberrant. Protests have a long and venerated history, and they are central to a well-functioning democracy. My book Fear of Breakdown: Politics and Psychoanalysis identifies protesting as one of several democratic practices central to even the most minimally functioning democracy. Protesting is a process of naming and framing issues, setting the agenda for more deliberative bodies to take up.

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Hmmmmm… Oldie but goodie!

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We get it — there are a million and one legitimate reasons not to have sex tonight, tomorrow, or the day after that. But there are plenty of couples out there who are doing the deed five, six, seven, or more times a week. We recently asked married HuffPost readers who have sex every night (barring things like sickness, business trips, or other extenuating circumstances, of course) how it has improved their lives and relationships. Below are 13 good reasons to get it on with your spouse on a near daily basis.

1. It provides some much-needed couple time.
“My husband and I have sex every night because it’s a moment in the day that is just about the two of us. We are parents to a toddler, so when we lay him down for bed each night, we can then spend the rest of the night expressing how we feel about each other physically. Having sex allows us to be passionate, to show affection, and we enjoy pleasing each other.” – Christie M. of Arkansas; married 3 years

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