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La Vaccine, 1827 (courtesy of the National Library of Medicine)

In light of President Obama’s declaration of “national emergency” imposed by the outbreak of the H1N1 virus, Surprising Science is setting this week aside to discuss the history and science of vaccines and their importance in battling viruses and diseases, including swine flu.

More than two millennia ago in China or India, someone noticed that people who suffered and recovered from certain diseases never became reinfected. In a leap of logic, the person who noticed the connection tried to prevent the disease by inoculating themselves (or perhaps someone else) with a bit of infected matter.

That idea, now called vaccination, bumbled along through history until 1796. That’s when an English physician named Edward Jenner noticed that milkmaids rarely got smallpox, though they often had blisters from cowpox, which they caught from their cows. Jenner thought that the cowpox might prevent the women from getting smallpox. To test his idea, he took some material from the cowpox blister of a milkmaid and inoculated 8-year-old James Phipps. Six weeks later, Jenner injected young Phipps with fluid from a smallpox sore; Phipps didn’t contract smallpox.

Over the next decades, smallpox vaccination spread, and it was a common practice by the end of the 19th century. Around that time, two more vaccines were developed—by Louis Pasteur—against anthrax and rabies. The 20th century would see the development of vaccines for more than a dozen other diseases, including polio, measles and tetanus.

Long after Jenner’s first discovery, biologists would discover how vaccines work to prime our immune systems to fight off infections:

Though the original smallpox vaccine used a related virus, cowpox, most vaccines use a weakened or dead form of whatever disease they’re meant to prevent. Some of these vaccines will also include a substance called an adjuvant that boosts the effectiveness of the vaccine. (Scientists figured out the workings of alum, one type of adjuvant, last year.)

When the vaccine is injected, a person’s immune system recognizes it as a foreign substance. Immune cells called macrophages digest most of the foreign material, but they keep a portion to help the immune system remember it. These identifying molecules are called antigens, and macrophages present these antigens to white blood cells called lymphocytes (which come in two types: T cells and B cells) in the lymph nodes. A mild immune response occurs, and even after the vaccine material is destroyed, the immune system is primed for a future attack.

The next time that a microbe with those antigens enters the body, the lymphocytes are ready to quickly recognize the microbe as foreign. When that happens, B cells make antibodies that attack the invading microbe and mark it for destruction by macrophages. If the microbe does enter cells, T cells attack those infected cells and destroy them before the disease can multiply and spread. The microbe is defeated before it can get a foothold in the body, before the person gets sick.

Tomorrow–Vaccine Week, Day 2: Success Stories

ASTER image of Morenci open-pit copper mine in southeast Arizona (credit: NASA)

Splatter of colors
Seen high up from outer space
Pretty like a rainbow
–Natalie, age 8, Illinois

Mining doesn’t generally result in a prettier landscape, but it seems when you view the landscape through NASA’s ASTER instrument on the satellite Terra, beauty easily emerges. The image above is the Morenci open-pit copper mine in southeast Arizona. The mine is the largest producer of copper in North America. (The author of the poem is a Girl Scout; NASA partnered with some scouts last year and challenged them to write poems based on the agency’s images.) NASA highlights this and other images from its vast library in the NASA Images blog, which was begun earlier this year.

Check out the entire collection of Pictures of the Week on our Facebook fan page.

• According to New Scientist, physicists Tie Jun Cui and Qiang Cheng of the Southeast University in China have succeeded in creating the first black hole, built to absorb and trap solar energy. Based on a theory from Professors Evgenii Narimanov and Alexander Kildishev of Purdue University, the Chinese scientists used strips of “meta-materials” (previously used to create Potter-esque “invisibility cloaks”) to recreate the structure of a black hole. “When the incident electromagnetic wave hits the device, the wave will be trapped and guided in the shell region towards the core of the black hole, and will then be absorbed by the core,” says Cui. “The wave will not come out from the black hole.” According to Narimanov, should the creation work, it would allow for the collection of solar energy in areas with little exposure to light.
• Ever wonder what it’s like inside a black hole? Scientists at UC-Boulder created this animation to theorize what the experience would look like:

• In air and space news, one lucky robot is predicted to sail on Titan, one of Saturn’s moons. The idea to cruise in space was inspired by the discovery that Titan resembles Earth in many habits, particularly weather-wise. Titan experiences rain, wind, and has many lakes, however, liquid methane and ethane take the place of water. Ellen Stofan, a geologist with Proxemy Research in Maryland, explains that the lake-lander will fulfill one of the three-probe plan to explore this interesting moon. A “balloon-mounted vehicle and an orbiter” will complete the mission, enabling NASA to fully view and discover every region of Titan.
• From the BBC comes news of a “veggie spider” or Bagheera kiplingi, the only arachnid to feast only on plants. Avoiding ants and waiting patiently to snag a piece of its’ favored acacia plants – known as Beltian bodies, the spider really has to work for its’ vegetarian meals. Found in Central American and Mexico, this spider is perhaps the only one not feared by the people.
• Due to excessive animal poaching (104 per day!), African elephants will be extinct in little over 15 years, according to the International Fund for Animal Welfare. Despite the international ban on ivory sales, the illicit trade continues.

— Compiled by Audrey Reinhardt

A quick smattering of science and gadget news on this Wednesday:

This Dyson fan has a new fan

• Perhaps this is the wrong time of year to be talking about air conditioning, but when an invention this cool comes around, it’s nigh impossible to ignore. Courtesy of Core77 comes news of a bladeless fan from Dyson. The company designed a fan that looks a giant magnifying glass, without the glass at all. Using what Dyson calls a “annular aperture,” air is drawn in and then channeled out at a quick, breezy speed. The 10″ version can be yours for a retail price of $299. So start putting it on your holiday wish lists now so your friends and family can save.
• In climate change news, we’ve read much about methane-producing cows and sperm whales had been assigned similar blame for contributing to global warming. According to Discovery News, however, the whales actually help fight combat climate change by emitting high levels of iron into the upper levels of the ocean water, which in turn fosters plankton growth. Plankton, like most land-based plant life, helps with the capture of carbon dioxide. A team from Flinders University in Australia says that “Sperm whales in the Southern Ocean should rank as carbon neutral at least. The animals may even be capturing a net 5 million metric tons of carbon from the atmosphere per year.”
• The BBC reports that scientists have discovered a giant spider in southern Africa and Madagascar that is about the size of the human hand. Nephila Komaci can spin webs of up to one meter in diameter. If Tolkien predicted the existence of these giant spiders, does that mean talking trees are next?

And just in case you missed it, a few recent stories from Smithsonian:

• As featured in the November issue, the Asian Longhorned Beetle has shown up in Worcester, Mass., of all places, where government forestry agents are doing what they can to limit the spread of these invasive species. Also be sure to check out our photo essay of other dangerous beetles that live in the United States.
• Also in that issue — our monthly Wild Things feature which this month highlights geckos, the Raptorex previously written about in Dinosaur Tracking, and asexual reproduction among ants
• Lastly, blog editor Laura Helmuth contributed her list of the “10 Places Where Life Shouldn’t Exist…but Does.”

Look to Orion tomorrow morning to see the meteor shower (illustration courtesy stardate.org)

Right now, the Earth is traveling through a trail left behind by Halley’s comet, which last passed through our neighborhood in 1986 (it will return in 2061). These little bits of debris produce a yearly meteor shower, the Orionids, named so because they appear to originate in the constellation Orion.

The best time to see this little light show—around 15 to 20 green and yellow meteors each hour during peak in the Northern Hemisphere—is tomorrow morning before dawn when the crescent moon is below the horizon and its light cannot overpower the streaky meteors. Observers in the Southern Hemisphere will get an even better show, according to meteorshowersonline.com.

The discovery of the Orionid meteor shower should be credited to E. C. Herrick (Connecticut, USA). In 1839, he made the ambiguous statement that activity seemed to be present during October 8 to 15. A similar statement was made in 1840, when he commented that the “precise date of the greatest meteoric frequency in October is still less definitely known, but it will in all probability be found to occur between the 8th and 25th of the month.”

The first precise observation of this shower was made by A. S. Herschel on 1864 October 18, when fourteen meteors were found to radiate from the constellation of Orion. Herschel confirmed that a shower originated from Orion on 1865 October 20. Thereafter, interest in this stream increased very rapidly—with the Orionids becoming one of best observed annual showers.

StarDate Online recommends going to a city or state park, away from the lights, and lying down to get the best view of the sky. “If you can see all of the stars in the Little Dipper, you have good dark-adapted vision.” And if it’s cloudy where you live, you can’t get to a dark enough spot or you oversleep, don’t worry–you’ve got a few more chances to view a meteor shower in the coming months:

Leonids
Parent comet: 55P/Tempel-Tuttle
Dates: November 17 (night) and 18 (morning)

Geminids
Parent: 3200 Phaeton
Dates: December 13 and 14

Quatrantids
Parent comet: 2003 EH1
Dates: January 3 and 4