Turning up the heat

I'm on vacation now, and the project reached a... well, not much of a conclusion really. I had to make a presentation right at the end about what I'd done over the last 4 months. And the gist of my presentation was, "It didn't work". You probably saw that coming, what with the cells dying and all

But hey, that's what life in science is about. A successful scientist is one who'd make King Bruce of Scotland look like a quitter of the first order. Nothing you learn in school really prepares you for life in the lab. Come to think of it, nothing you learn in school prepares you for life itself. But that's a topic to be discussed another day.

A couple of days back I was reading this article in The Hindu. And a lot of what it says makes sense. Any bug has to strike a balance between the way it spreads, and how virulent it is. An extremely virulent virus would kill its host before he/she could come into contact with another potential host. Dead host means the virus ain't going anywhere, and consequently the virus is wiped out.

But in a city where you have a few hundred thousand people per square km., it's not difficult to find another host. Especially when we make things easier by squeezing into buses and trains. That's why cities need, absolutely must have, efficient sewerage, water supply and food supply. (Right now, there's an outbreak of cholera in parts of Hyderabad, where I'm currently at. And that just makes the dangers of poor sanitation extremely clear.)

I remember reading about a study where they looked at typhoid outbreaks in South America. They found that the disease was less deadly in countries that had proper sanitation. Apparently this was because good sewerage systems made it difficult for the disease to spread. So it had to hang around in one host longer, to improve its odds of finding another host. And as I said, a bug in a dead host is eventually a dead bug. There was a selection pressure for less virulent bugs, and so less deadly strains evolved. (Score one for the Darwinians!)

The take away? Usual summer advice. Keep yourself hydrated, but try to stick to boiled water. And watch out for cut watermelon sitting in roadside stalls!