Smoking bans reduce heart attack risk
BALTIMORE, Oct. 16 (UPI) -- Smoking bans are effective and even relatively brief exposures to secondhand smoke may lead to a heart attack, U.S. researchers say.
A report by a committee of the Institute of Medicine confirms there is sufficient evidence that breathing secondhand smoke boosts non-smokers' risk for heart problems.
"It's clear that smoking bans work," Lynn Goldman of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore said in a statement. "Bans reduce the risks of heart attack in non-smokers as well as smokers."
The committee conducted a comprehensive review of published and unpublished data and testimony on the relationship between secondhand smoke and short-term and long-term heart problems.
The studies calculated that reductions in the incidence of heart attacks range from 6 percent to 47 percent. Given the variations in how the studies were conducted and what they measured, the committee says it could not determine more precisely how great the effect is.
Data on particulate matter in smoke from other pollution sources suggest that a relatively brief exposure to such substances can initiate a heart attack and particulate matter is a major component of secondhand smoke, the researchers say.
Collider cooled to deep space temps
GENEVA, Switzerland, Oct. 16 (UPI) -- Europe's Large Hadron Collider has been chilled to temperatures colder than deep space for its restart next month, scientists said.
The collider, or LHC, is the world's largest particle accelerator and is kept in a tunnel 17-miles long and 570-feet wide beneath the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva.
Just days after beginning operation last year, the LHC was shut down for repairs when a ton of liquid helium leaked from a magnet into the collider's tunnel.
The helium cools giant magnets to minus 456 degrees Fahrenheit, enabling the magnets to bend proton beams that scientists hope will provide data on how the universe was formed, the BBC reported Friday.
When the collider is restarted, the beams should smash into each other, creating new particles that provide insight into the formation of the universe right after the so-called Big bang, said James Gillies, a spokesman for the European Organization for Nuclear Research, based in Geneva.
"It's a bit like firing knitting needles from across the Atlantic and getting them to collide half way," Gillies told the BBC.
New poisonous jellyfish found in Black Sea
SOFIA, Bulgaria, Oct. 16 (UPI) -- The warming waters of the Black Sea have attracted a poisonous species of jellyfish that is spreading along Turkey's coast, scientists said.
The new species has been drawn to the waters because the temperature of the Black Sea is becoming more like the Mediterranean, which, in turn, is becoming more like a tropical sea, said Snezhana Momcheva, a SESAME project coordinator in Bulgaria. SESAME is a European Union-funded study of ecosystems in the Mediterranean and Black Seas.
SESAME scientists are watching to see if the new jellyfish species spreads to Bulgaria's Black Sea coast, the Sofia news agency reported Friday.
Momcheva and her team also are watching a new tropical fish species that has migrated to the Mediterranean. That species of fish becomes toxic when it reaches a length of 3 inches, she said.
Shaggy microbes aid immune system
NEW YORK, Oct. 16 (UPI) -- Shaggy microbes found in mice could help determine how intestinal bacteria protect against harmful pathogens, a scientist in New York said.
The long-haired microbes help mice keep their immune systems in balance, said Dr. Dan Littman of the Langone Medical Center.
"These bacteria are the most astounding things I've ever seen," said Littman, who is collaborating with scientists in Japan.
The shaggy bacteria, called segmented filamentous bacterium, act like watchdogs at key locations within the small intestine, triggering an alarm when something seems amiss in the local microbial community, Littman said.
The bacterium appear to trigger specialized TH17 helper cells, which tell epithelial cells to increase their output of specialized molecules, which fight harmful pathogens, such as virulent forms of E. coli, Littman said.
"So you can immediately see some practical application of this, if one can mimic the presence of these commensal bacteria to strengthen resistance to pathogenic microbes," Littman said in a release Thursday.
