Ms. Martin-Ventura's Chemistry Class

Can one neuron release more than one neurotransmitter?--Marvin Shrewsbury, Wailuku, Hawaii

[The following is an exact transcript of this podcast.] 

A tangle of tubes and polyurethane pouches binds a naked man and woman--he, paunchy and unperturbed, she, slim and similarly unself-conscious. This setup is not some esoteric sex game; it’s “Smell Blind Date,” an installation created by artist James Auger on display this past spring in New York City as part of the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition Design and the Elastic Mind. The PVC tubes--which run between the subjects’ chests, with outlets extending to pouches attached to their noses, armpits and genitals--allow the man and woman to inhale each other’s body odor through a wall that divides them. In theory, they are on a truly blind date, each undistracted by the other’s looks, assessing the other’s potential as a mating partner by his or her smell alone.

The human sense of smell is often seen as insignificant, dismissed as a distant also-ran to our keen eyesight or sensitive hearing. But this sense is keener and more influential on our species than many people realize. In particular, as Auger’s fanciful art project illustrates, smell facilitates a variety of human social interactions, both casual and intimate. Indeed, people who lose their sense of smell often gain a new appreciation for its importance [see “When the Nose Doesn’t Know,” by Eleonore von Bothmer; Scientific American Mind, October/November 2006].

Solar energy is touted by some as the solution to the world's energy woes. But the process of making the various components requires fossil fuels, both for power and for the components themselves, some of which are based on petroleum. [More]

Dear EarthTalk: I’ve read that plastic bottles are not always safe to reuse over and over as harmful chemicals can leach out into the contents. I’m wondering if the same issues plague Tupperware and other similar plastic food storage containers. -- Sylvie, Dawson City, Yukon, Canada

TOMSK, RUSSIA--After a half century of neglect, a search for better drugs and diagnostics to treat tuberculosis (TB) is underway. But progress is slow, and the breakthroughs that will help reduce the global burden of TB remain years away.

The modern diagnostics lab under construction in this Siberian capital is a good example. It will shorten the time it takes to identify a case of multidrug resistant (MDR) tuberculosis from two to three months to two or three weeks by using liquid media instead of solid media to grow individuals' samples of M. tuberculosis and test them for resistance to first-line treatments. MDR-TB accounts for a shockingly high 15 percent of cases here, and its misdiagnosis almost always leads to treatment failure.

MELNIKOVO, RUSSIA--To properly treat tuberculosis (TB), you must take up to four antibiotics every day for six months under careful supervision. If you are one of the 17 stricken individuals in this small farming community, you can get that care either at the clinic–hospital in the town center or one of the newly opened satellite clinics in outlying neighborhoods.

But none of those were accessible to 85-year-old Lubov Potaskaeva, who lives in a rundown apartment complex for agricultural laborers far from town. The Kyrgyzstani native has no idea how she caught the disease. She only knows that when she was screened for TB as part of her application to enter the area's retirement home--she wanted in because she was always short of breath and could no longer climb the stairs to her second-floor apartment--her test came back positive.

Arsenic, a deadly poison, kills by blocking the ability of cells to produce and consume energy. Yet, some red and green slime mats in briny hot springs in Mono Lake, Calif., use the potent compound rather than water to carry energy during photosynthesis (the process used by bacteria and plants that converts sunlight into food) new research in Science reveals. [More]

More bad news for the world's oceans: Dead zones--areas of bottom waters too oxygen depleted to support most ocean life--are spreading, dotting nearly the entire east and south coasts of the U.S. as well as several west coast river outlets.

According to a new study in Science, the rest of the world fares no better--there are now 405 identified dead zones worldwide, up from 49 in the 1960s--and the world's largest dead zone remains the Baltic Sea, whose bottom waters now lack oxygen year-round.

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Laundry detergents and air fresheners have long promised to keep your house and clothes smelling sunshine fresh and rain shower clean. But what they haven't said is what exactly you're sniffing when you snuggle up in your just-washed sheets. After hearing from people who said strong scents made them sick, University of Washington researcher Anne Steinemann scratched the surface and found almost a hundred chemicals that weren't listed on the labels. According to her report in the journal Environmental Impact Assessment Review, plug-in air fresheners, scented sprays, dryer sheets and detergents all contained a mixture of volatile organic compounds. [More]