Why measles is spreading again, how hackers are targeting freezers, and whether cats fart

Rachel Feltman: Happy Monday, listeners. For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. You’re listening to our weekly science news roundup.Unfortunately, we have to start this week off with some deeply troubling public health news. Last Monday a child in upstate New York’s Lewis County died after contracting measles. This marks the state’s first death associated with the disease in three decades.Jeffery Tompkins, who is the coroner and district attorney of Lewis County, told the New York Times that the seven-month old was unvaccinated. While infants in high-risk communities or who are about to travel internationally can receive a dose of the measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccine as early as six months of age, it’s not generally recommended before 12 months. Unfortunately, due to their still-developing immune systems and organs, babies and young children are the people most vulnerable to complications from measles. The virus can lead to pneumonia and brain inflammation, both of which can prove deadly. And even the ones who recover can experience something called “immune amnesia,” That’s where the body loses its ability to fight other infections previously encountered via immunization or illness.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Infants too young to receive the MMR vaccine rely on herd immunity, which means the adults and older kids around them have to have high enough vaccination rates to keep measles from spreading through the community. But measles vaccination coverage has been declining annually, and the most recently available data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that measles vaccination rates in U.S. kindergarteners have dropped below the threshold needed to prevent community spread.The child who died in Lewis County lived in an Amish community. And while the Amish don’t have a religious mandate against vaccination and also it’s worth noting they are not one homogenous group, their vaccination rates are largely on the low end. About 100 miles away in New York’s Montgomery County, three small Amish schools have been fighting to regain the religious vaccine exemptions that the state eliminated in response to a 2019 measles outbreak.The Associated Press reports that in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where Amish and Mennonite communities have been the epicenter of the country’s worst measles outbreak in decades, community leaders and scholars suspect that strict COVID mandates stirred up negative sentiments around vaccination. But according to the AP’s reporting, it does seem that many members of the community simply see vaccines as unnecessary or too difficult to access. Some Pennsylvania health care workers are going door-to-door to reach those families.Back in New York, an executive order signed by New York governor Kathy Hochul last month, says that vaccines can now be administered by emergency medical technicians, midwives and pharmacists to try to improve access. Vaccine administrators are also no longer required to receive consent from people aged 19 and older to report these vaccinations to the state immunization information system. The order was originally set to expire after November 4 but has now been extended to December 4.In less devastating but admittedly still troubling news, hackers have once again cranked up the heat on freezers in European supermarkets. As we reported in our October 19 news roundup, hundreds of French supermarkets were targeted by a cyberattack aimed at spoiling their wares just last month. That was the first known attack of its kind, but experts warned it would not be the last. And sure enough, a second wave struck shops in Sweden, Ireland, Estonia, Finland, the Netherlands, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Germany, Belgium and Romania on the night of November 1. Of course, supermarket food isn’t the only thing that requires refrigeration. The national blood service of France, which prepares and distributes blood, plasma and platelets for hospitals around the country, has said three of the cold storage sites it contracts with were hit by the same attack or a similarly timed one. Fortunately, alarms alerted workers to the temperature fluctuation in time for them to intervene. Meanwhile, Pentagon officials now suspect that a string of freezer issues seen on U.S. military bases back in August may have actually been the result of a similar hack.These attacks exploit the fact that many commercial freezers are connected to the Internet to enable remote troubleshooting and temperature monitoring. Theoretically, anything that accesses the Internet, including your own smart fridge, is opening a door that a hacker can get in through. In this case, they took advantage of heating elements that serve to periodically clear built-up frost on a freezer’s evaporator coil. Instead of briefly turning on as designed for their normal defrost cycle, these hacked heating elements brought freezer temperatures as high as 122 degrees Fahrenheit and kept them baking overnight.One cybersecurity expert told Scientific American that it’s totally possible to protect these sorts of Internet connections from hackers. You just need proper firewalls and to keep your equipment updated. But as we explained in our September 2 episode focused on cyberattacks against the U.S. water supply, the problem is that many businesses and municipalities lack the time, money or information necessary to take those basic precautions.We’ve covered some tough news items today, so we’ll end with a fun little animal story as a treat. And not just any sort of fun animal story: This one is a fun animal fart story. So, it's twice as fun.If you’ve spent literally any time at all with a dog, you should know that our canine companions can fart. In fact they can really let ’em rip. But have you ever heard a pussycat pass gas? Do felines flatulate? Can a cat crop dust? Do tabbies get the toots? Does a kitten ever cut the cheese?Scientific American breaking news reporter Jackie Flynn Mogensen recently embarked on a journalistic investigation to find out. Here she is with the full litter box scoop.Jackie Flynn Mogensen: Hi Rachel! Yes, cats do fart!I became interested in how cats could fart because I actually heard my cat fart the other day. It was a few weeks back. He climbs into his litter box, he scuffles around a bit and then there's this, like, squeaky fart that sounds just like a human fart. My boyfriend was in the other room,and I was like, “It couldn’t have been him.” And I was like, “Did my cat just fart?” And so this sent me on this quest for answers about “Do cats fart?” Thankfully, my editor actually approved this idea, and I was able to talk to some experts to kinda get to the bottom of “Why does it seem like cats don’t fart as much as dogs?”I grew up with cats my whole life. I’d never heard one fart before. I’d never smelled a cat fart, but I’ve also lived with dogs who are farting all the time, it seems like. And so it got me real interested in this question of what’s going on in their bodies or with our nose that we aren’t picking up these farts.So what’s going on in cats’ bodies when they are farting? There are all these things that play a role in cats’ flatulence: diet, environment, health issues, medications. From what the experts I talked to said, is—there are two, kind of, primary sources for gas that comes out of a cat's anus, so that’s the definition of a fart, gas that comes out of the anus.In cats and dogs and us, the two, kind of, primary sources are swallowed air and gas produced by bacterial fermentation. So when we’re talking about swallowed air, one thing that experts told me is that cats might be farting less because they are swallowing less air. They’re just smaller, and they don’t eat with the same fervor, as one expert put it, as dogs do. Cats are, kind of, these grazers typically.And then the other thing that could be going on with swallowed air is breed. So one thing I heard from multiple people: Cats and dogs with flat faces, also known as brachycephalic breeds, Persian cats, Himalayan cats or French bulldogs, for instance, they have trouble breathing through their nose, and so they tend to take in a lot more air than other breeds. So that’s one of the factors that may influence how much a cat is farting based on how much air they’re swallowing.The other factor is bacterial fermentation. Basically, food that gets to our colon that isn’t digested, that ends up in the colon, is broken down by bacteria. For carbohydrates, fibers, that can create gases like carbon dioxide and hydrogen, and the breakdown of proteins can create gases that contain sulfur, and those are the gases that stink and give farts their bad odor.What this means for cat owners is maybe it’s worth paying a little bit closer attention to your cat’s flatulence. You know, one thing I heard over and over again is if your cat is farting a lot, that could be a sign of health problems. And it really made me think, “Hmm,” like this is such a silly topic. It’s kind of funny. I was giggling a lot as I was interviewing these researchers. It’s funny now even telling it to you. But if we treat it as this taboo topic that people don’t wanna talk about, we’re missing out on this opportunity to talk about our pets’ health, and I think that’s really important. And it’s not something we should shy away from.If you wanna read more about this, you can find my story at ScientificAmerican.comFeltman: That’s all for this week’s science news roundup. Tune in on Wednesday to find out why this year's El Niño is shaping up to be one for the record books.Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Sushmita Pathak, Allison Rodgers and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Alex Sugiura. Marielle Issa and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news.For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, this is Rachel Feltman. Have a great week!