A rough transition to a new asthma inhaler

Millions of people with asthma and other lung diseases will have to switch inhalers by the end of the year. And for many, the transition will not be smooth.

A rough transition to a new asthma inhaler
Millions of people with asthma and other lung diseases will have to switch inhalers by the end of the year. And for many, the transition will not be smooth. The change is to comply with the 1987 treaty to protect the earth’s ozone layer. It bans most uses of chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, which are used as propellants in many inhalers. For one thing, the old inhalers (picture above, top) cost one-third the price of a CFC-free inhaler, which uses propellants called HFAs, for hydrofluoroalkanes. People with asthma use an average of three or four inhalers a year, but some patients use one a month. HFA inhalers must be pumped four times to prime them—a number that was not so critical with the more forgiving CFC inhalers. HFA inhalers also have a weaker spray. They also require a slower inhale. HFA inhalers need to be washed with warm water and air dried once a week. The medication is stickier and will clog the hole, reducing the amount of medication the spray delivers.

Not surprisingly, the taste is in the mouth
There’s a secret ingredient in every food, and it’s called the mouth. What goes on in there—chewing and mixing the food with saliva so that it releases aroma compounds—goes a long way in determining flavour. Being able to recreate mouth conditions in the laboratory is useful for food-product researchers. Now Gaelle Arvisenet and colleagues at Ecole Nationale D’Ingenieurs Des Techniques Des Industries Agricoles Et Alimentaires, a national school for agricultural and food industry engineering in Nantes, France, have come up with an artificial mouth that can take on harder foods. Like other artificial mouths, it mixes in artificial saliva in proportions that match real mouths, and uses inert helium to withdraw volatile compounds for measurement. What sets it apart are the steel chompers, which are nothing like human teeth but do a fine job of masticating food samples (which are rotated to mimic the action of the tongue and jaw). The researchers, who describe the device in The Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, say that in tests on apples, their mouth produced a particle mix quite similar to that produced in human mouths. With further fine tuning, the device should be useful in measuring how flavours change with chewing.

It must have been the moonglow
A rainbow yes, but is there such a thing as a moonbow? Yes, there is a moonbow, also called a lunar rainbow, and the arc can be so pale as to look almost white. If the moon is bright enough, it can also show bands of colour like a daytime solar rainbow. Like a rainbow, a moonbow is seen when you stand with the source of light (in this case, a bright moon, usually at or near its fullest phase) behind you so that its light (in this case, reflected sunlight) shines into water droplets that are suspended in the air in front of you. The droplets, which can be raindrops, a rising mist or spray from a waterfall, act as individual prisms, scattering the light and separating it into its constituent colours. When viewed at a certain angle, such scattered light forms a circle of coloured light bands. In an outdoor landscape, you observe the top half. And because it is reflected light, it is much paler than the sun’s rainbow. Other requisites for a moonbow include clear air and a dark, clear sky. (NYT)

Air pollution impedes bees’ ability to find flowers
Air pollution interferes with the ability of bees and other insects to follow the scent of flowers to their source, undermining the essential process of pollination, a study by three University of Virginia researchers suggests. Scientists are seeking to determine why honeybees and bumblebees are dying off in the United States and in other countries, and the new study indicates that emissions from power plants and automobiles may play a part in the insects’ demise. Scientists already knew that scent-bearing hydrocarbon molecules released by flowers can be destroyed when they come into contact with ozone and other pollutants. Environmental sciences professor Jose Fuentes at the University of Virginia and his team used a mathematical model to determine how flowers’ scents travel with the wind and how quickly they come into contact with pollutants. They described their results in the March issue of the journal Atmospheric Environment. In the prevailing conditions before the 1800s, the researchers calculated a flower’s scent could travel between 3,280 ft and 4,000 ft, Fuentes said, but today, that scent might travel 650-1,000 ft in highly polluted areas. This phenomenon triggers a cycle, the authors noted, in which the pollinators have trouble finding sufficient food, and as a result their populations decline. That, in turn, translates into decreased pollination and keeps flowering plants, including many fruits and vegetables, from proliferating. (LAT-WP)