Any sneeze, cough or respiratory symptoms reported from China are quarantined. Not only because of the uncertainty generated by its lack of transparency, but also because four years ago everything started like this. Atypical pneumonia is behind a large number of cases, this time in children. Therefore, the World Health Organization (WHO) asks China to clarify the situation.

What are the current events?

Since mid-October, northern China has reported an increase in flu-like illnesses compared to the same period in the previous three years. On November 21, the situation worsened and the situation reached the media.. In addition, the ProMED system reports on outbreaks of undiagnosed pneumonia in children in northern China.

According to the WHO, its origin is not clear. And explanations are requested as to whether these are cases related to the general increase in respiratory infections previously reported by the Chinese authorities or whether they are independent episodes.. As stated in a statement, the international organization has officially requested detailed information from China about this increase in respiratory diseases and the outbreaks of childhood pneumonia..

Why are there doubts about the origin of respiratory infections?

The experts remain cautious, but appeal to the fact that on this occasion “exhaustive monitoring is being carried out by the scientific community”, as explained by Sonia Zúñiga, virologist at the National Center for Biotechnology (CNB-CSIC) and reported by Science Media Center España. (SMC).

“Any news that comes from China and is related to an increase in pneumonia cases will be subject to detailed scrutiny,” Quique Bassat, pediatrician and epidemiologist at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), tells SMC.. “It may be that China is experiencing an epidemiological situation similar to the one we experienced last fall-winter in our environment.. In any case, we would have to monitor it closely to ensure that this is the case.”.

Children and their parents wait in the outpatient area of the children's hospital in Beijing. JADE GAO AFP

Furthermore, in the same sense, Salvador Peiró, epidemiologist and researcher in the Health Services and Pharmacoepidemiology Research Area of the Foundation for the Promotion of Health and Biomedical Research of the Valencian Community (FISABIO), as stated by SMC, states that “The information available at this time is too insufficient to assess the global risk – if any, which is unlikely – of the current pneumonia outbreaks in China and the actions of the WHO (request information and recommend general measures for infection control respiratory) seems appropriate in this context”.

What are the possible causes of the increase in pneumonia cases?

Most experts argue that the late lifting of China's restrictions, the famous lock protected by zero Covid policies, also isolated the population from seasonal immunization of other viruses, such as flu or RSV (respiratory syncytial virus). ).

“China was the country that was the latest to withdraw its very strict Covid-19 control measures, measures that notably reduced the circulation of respiratory pathogens (not just SARS-CoV-2) for a long period. It was expected that this fall they would have a rebound in respiratory infections of all kinds (including covid-19), as has happened in most countries (although earlier than in China, predictably because they anticipated the withdrawal of measures regarding mainland China)”, explains Peiró.

Zúñiga agrees with him, pointing out that “it is not surprising that, when facing the first winter without them, all respiratory infections caused by both viruses and bacteria generally increase.. And it is not strange that a significant number of these cases occur in children, whose prior immunity will be much lower than in other segments of the population.”.

Why are there suspicions about atypical pneumonia and its non-bacterial origin?

“Similar circumstances have been seen in our environment and they have had no impact on healthcare.”. Despite this, until confirmation by other means (such as serological), it is too early to have a definitive evaluation of the risk that it may pose,” warns Adrian Hugo Aginagalde, specialist in Preventive Medicine and Public Health, coordinator of SMC. the Public Health Section of the Academy of Medical Sciences of Bilbao and head of service of the Epidemiological Surveillance and Health Information Unit of Gipuzkoa.

“Outbreaks of atypical pneumonia in minors are not uncommon in our environment,” recalls Aginagalde.. “And in a context of increasing cases of RSV, the situation described seems to respond to previously observed patterns. Furthermore, the improvement of syndromic surveillance (monitoring of pneumonia cases) allows these increases in cases to be detected early.”.

Unlike viral respiratory infections, as the Basque pediatrician explains, “cases due to mycoplasma [bacteria that cause respiratory infections] are more difficult to confirm.”. “They are milder, but empirical antibiotic treatment (without microbiological confirmation) makes it difficult to determine the pathogen later, given that its growth in sputum samples is inhibited by its action.”.

As they present as mild pneumonia “they do not require hospitalization, they are treated like those acquired in the community whose diagnosis is clinical and with the support of x-ray, without requiring microbiological confirmation. In short, it is a plausible hypothesis whose confirmation has some difficulties,” emphasizes Aguinagalde..

What is “walking” pneumonia caused by the bacteria 'mycoplasma' like?

In this sense, Miguel Jiménez Monteagudo, pediatrician at Sescam, explains to this medium that “walking” pneumonia caused by the mycoplasma bacteria “has a clinical picture of a lot of irritating cough, little fever and is very similar to flu pneumonia.. Typical bacterial pneumonias are with high fever and a lot of patient involvement.. The x-ray shows a lot of involvement of both lungs.. “It would be very similar to Covid pneumonia.”.

There are two types of pneumonia: “typical or bacterial, which for example is what causes pneumococcus,” Jiménez distinguishes.. “The treatment of bacteria is through the prescription of antibiotics from the penicillin family.. And in the atypical case, which is that of viruses, antibiotics are of no use.”. In addition, he points out that against “mycoplasma, macrolides such as clarithromycin are given.”.

With all this, the Sescam pediatrician maintains that “the pneumonia that has appeared in China does not coincide with any known, at least, according to the data that we have received at the moment”.

It all started with the discovery in the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) of a gene (period) that encodes a protein (PER) that accumulates during the night and is degraded during the day.

It continued with the discovery of a second clock gene, timeless, and culminated with the complete description of the molecular mechanisms that control the circadian rhythms that allow the adaptation of living beings to their environment.

This is the so-called internal clock with which plants and animals – including humans – synchronize their biological rhythm with the rotation of the Earth.. The scientists who unraveled this circadian machinery Michael Rosbash, Jeffrey Hall and Michael Young received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2017.

The environment in which human beings operate is undergoing profound transformations due to climate change.. Rosbash, who has just visited Spain within the framework of the global Nobel Prize Inspiration Initiative and with the help of the AstraZeneca Foundation, commented in an interview with Diario Médico that it is very possible that these changes exert some influence. However, he points out, “circadian rhythms are quite invariable or insensitive to temperature; they are constituted in a different way.”

Hence, “paradoxically, they could be the physiological piece least affected by climate change”. The oscillations between lightness and darkness do influence the internal clock, but it must be taken into account that light “is not going to change too much due to climate change.”

The geneticist details the three findings that were most surprising to him in his research on circadian mechanisms. “First of all, I was surprised that the genes and genetic foundations of the fruit fly are so well conserved in mammals, including humans”. Another unexpected discovery was “how large a proportion of gene expression is under circadian control.”

Finally, he was shocked by the number of tissues it covers. “At first we thought it might be restricted to a very small fraction of cells and tissues in animals, but it is widespread”. In summary, these are very generalized mechanisms from a genetic and functional point of view that are also conserved throughout evolution.

Far beyond the brain and sleep

When talking about the scope of circadian mechanisms, sleep and the brain are often cited as examples, but their physiological and anatomical scope is much greater, to the point that it can be said to be global.

All Olympic records have been made in the late afternoon, because that is when maximum physiological performance can occur

Michael Rosbash

“It includes many aspects of physiology, such as daily hormonal fluctuations of all kinds,” says Rosbash.. The Nobel Prize provides definitive proof of this ubiquitous influence: “All the Olympic records have been made in the late afternoon, because that is when maximum physiological performance can take place.”. In short, practically everything you can imagine is under that physiological control, without forgetting the libido.

The same can be said of the tissues: liver, kidney, muscle, spleen, skin, pancreas, lung…. “The little timekeeper is in absolutely all tissues,” summarizes the Nobel Prize in Medicine.

Circadian mechanisms and human health

Once the molecular mechanisms that allow humans to adapt to the Earth's rotation that mark the light cycles that, in turn, determine the periods of sleep and wakefulness and other physiological functions have been revealed, it is worth asking how the disease affects human health. operation of all that machinery. Rosbash acknowledges that, at the moment, it remains largely uncharted territory, although he is convinced that there must be a relationship.

Everything seems to indicate that those who have certain problems related to their circadian clock are destined to get sick, but it is still not known for sure to what extent.. “There are surely people who have mutations that make their clocks go too fast or too slow,” says the geneticist.. Now, do these individuals have a shorter lifespan or suffer from cancer more frequently? “I don't know,” he replies.. “It is known that there is a relationship with aspects such as cancer, but it is not very direct and its true impact is unknown.”

Challenges of genetics

Something similar happens with genetic research, which has advanced spectacularly but still has many pending challenges.. It is known that the tentacles of genetics are very long because it affects all areas of life.

“Human genetics has experienced a revolution in the last 10 years that has impacted all areas,” highlights Rosbash.. Aberrant clock genes have been proven to cause health problems, but “the extent to which they are impaired is not known, and in some cases it remains a mystery how a particular mutation is connected to a particular disease.”

The astronomer Rafael Bachiller reveals to us in this series the most spectacular phenomena of the Cosmos. Topics of pulsating research, astronomical adventures and scientific news about the Universe analyzed in depth.

The unorthodox astronomer Abraham Loeb has been stating that some small spheres that he collected in the Pacific Ocean could be the remains of an extraterrestrial ship.. A new study now concludes that these spherules may be coal ash produced in terrestrial factories.

Galileo Project

Harvard University professor Abraham Loeb made headlines around the world in 2017 when he hypothesized that the Oumuamua asteroid could be an extraterrestrial spacecraft.

Recreation of the interstellar object Oumuamuar ESO/M. Kornnmesse

Previously, on January 8, 2014, the US Department of Defense. observed a bright fireball that flew over the South Pacific Ocean, near New Guinea. Studying its trajectory and speed, Professor Loeb and his collaborators concluded in 2019 (after the Oumuamua episode) that this fireball had also arrived from beyond the solar system, that is, it also had an interstellar origin and that it was possible possibility that it was also an extraterrestrial ship. The meteorite was named IM1 (Interstellar Meteorite -1).

In 2021, Loeb prepared a project, called Galileo, aimed at locating objects that could come from extraterrestrial technological equipment.. In June 2023, within the framework of this project, he organized an expedition to track down possible remains of the IM1 fireball that could have been deposited at the bottom of the Pacific.. The Galileo project is funded with more than €1.5 million thanks to private donations from various foundations and individuals, including cryptocurrency magnate Charles Hoskinson.

Spherules

As a result of the expedition, Loeb quickly announced that he had located fifty metal spherules that could only have originated from an exoplanet (outside the solar system) or be the remains of an extraterrestrial spacecraft.. Loeb thus presented ideas similar to those he had already advanced for the debated Oumuamua object.. The results were made public in a pre-publication (before being subjected to peer review) which can be consulted here.

One of the spherules collected by the Galileo A Project. Loeb

The spherules found by Loeb are less than a millimeter in size. Before the Galileo project expedition, dredging other areas of the ocean floor, many particles of this style had already been collected. Many of them had been recognized as being of meteoritic origin and had been classified as “cosmic spherules”: they are small fragments of meteors that penetrate the atmosphere and acquire their peculiar spherical shape when burned by friction with atmospheric gases.

But Loeb claimed that the chemical composition of his spherules (in particular, the small presence of nickel and the high abundance of beryllium, lanthanum and uranium) was not consistent with that of other meteorites and, therefore, he concluded that it must come from further afield. Of the solar system.

The scientific community was always skeptical of Loeb's claims: that the chemical composition of his spherules was not typical of interplanetary meteorites did not guarantee that their origin was interstellar and, much less, that their origin was an extraterrestrial spacecraft.

Pollutants

A new study carried out by physicist Patricio A. Gallardo from the University of Chicago now comes to add fuel to the fire of the debate. In his work, Gallardo has compared in detail the composition of the spherules (whose technical code is CNEOS 2014-01-08) with samples of various contaminants of terrestrial origin and has concluded that “their meteoritic origin is in question.”

Abundance histograms | RNAAS/PA. Gallant

The attached figure shows (green lines) the concentrations of beryllium, lanthanum, uranium and nickel of some of the spherules together with the frequency histograms of such abundances in coal ash (obtained from a very extensive database called COALQUAL). We see how the abundances of such elements in the spherules fit within the expectations for coal ash.

In summary, Gallardo recognizes that, as anticipated by Loeb, the spherules have high concentrations of beryllium, lanthanum and uranium.. But these abundances, along with the low presence of nickel, are typical of the ash produced by burning coal.. The simplest hypothesis to explain the origin of the spherules would be that they were produced in terrestrial industrial facilities, such as power plants or steam engines.

A heterodox scientist

Professor Loeb gained notoriety with his daring hypotheses about the Oumuamua asteroid that was discovered in 2017 and which, due to its peculiar trajectory and very elongated shape, was believed to be of interstellar origin.. In August 2019, Comet Borisov with similar characteristics was discovered and to this was added the study of IM1 that had been observed in 2014.

His interpretations in terms of extraterrestrial ships have made Loeb a peculiar character, his media profile is gradually devouring his prestigious research profile as a Harvard professor.. Their publications are aired too quickly, before being subjected to the standard peer review system that guarantees the quality of works in the international scientific field.

Of course Loeb's ideas are very stimulating and in no case are they subject to any type of censorship.. But, like all scientific results, Avi Loeb's, before being accepted, must also go through the verification filters of the scientific method.

Patricio Gallardo's article, which has been published in Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society, can be consulted here.

Rafael Bachiller is director of the National Astronomical Observatory (National Geographic Institute) and academic of the Royal Academy of Doctors of Spain.

An ultra-high energy cosmic ray has hit the Earth. It has a million times more energy than the most powerful accelerator ever created by man. Astronomers have observed its trajectory but have not found any object in our galaxy or outside it that could explain its origin.. The discovery by the Osaka Metropolitan University, which has just published Science, seems like the beginning of a science fiction film to which researchers, for the moment, have only managed to give it an apocalyptic title: Amaterasu, the sun goddess of Japanese mythology.

Cosmic rays are charged particles of energy that cross the universe at speeds close to that of light.. Those with low energies are produced by the sun, but those with such high energies are exceptionally rare, so astronomers suggest that they can only come from outside our galaxy, since it would require more energetic environments, such as the surroundings of black holes. giants at the centers of distant galaxies.

“It is known that they originate in very violent phenomena, such as the explosion of a supernova, the collision of two stars, or when a black hole engulfs a cloud of gas, but much is still unknown about their nature and properties,” explains the astronomer and director of the National Astronomical Observatory, Rafael Bachiller.

When we talk about high energy we talk about more than 10 to the power of 18 electron volts or, what is the same, an exaelectron volt (EeV), which is approximately a million times more than what the CERN Large Collider in Geneva can achieve.. Amaterasu had an energy of 244 EeV.

Since it is ionizing radiation, it means that they have enough energy to tear electrons from atoms and ionize them. If they reach satellites, or on Earth, electronic or computer equipment can damage them or cause errors.. But if it reaches a living being, it can damage biological tissue, causing a mutation in the DNA.

Professor Toshihiro Fujii, from the Graduate School of Science and the Nambu Yoichiro Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics at Osaka Metropolitan University, and an international team of scientists, have been detecting these rays since 2008 through the Telescope Array experiment.. A detector consisting of 507 stations covering an area of 700 square kilometers in Utah, United States. On May 27, 2021, they detected Amaterasu.

“When I discovered it I thought it must have been a mistake, since it showed a level of energy unprecedented in decades,” says Professor Fujii.. Such an energy level is comparable to that of the most energetic cosmic ray ever observed in history, baptized by scientists with the not at all reassuring name Oh-My-God, which hit the Earth in 1991 with an energy of 320 EeV.

On August 7, 1912, physicist Victor Hess flew a balloon to 5,300 meters, and discovered that at that height there was three times more ionizing radiation than on Earth, so the radiation had to come from outer space.. More than a century later, we still do not know with certainty how they are produced or the sources that originate them.. Amaterasu, at the moment, is as mysterious as the Japanese goddess herself, but there is hope that its detection will pave the way for scientists.

“No promising astronomical object has been identified that matches the direction from which it arrived, which fuels the existence of as yet unknown astronomical phenomena, and physical origins beyond the standard model,” reflects Professor Fujii.

“As they are made up of charged particles, the rays that reach us on Earth have been changing direction following the capricious lines of the magnetic fields that permeate the interstellar medium.. Therefore, to find out their origin, instead of locating cosmic rays directly, we can try to observe some of the effects they cause,” explains Bachiller.

When a single energetic cosmic ray hits the Earth, it typically interacts high in the Earth's atmosphere, undergoing a particle physics reaction with an air atom, breaking the atom apart.. The fragments of the atom that emerge usually have enough energy to, in turn, shatter additional atoms, and so on, forming a shower of energetic subatomic particles.