4 ms·

Wherever You Go, Your Personal Cloud of Microbes Follows

39 points by pmcpinto 11y ago

pervycreeper 11y ago
>"There are a lot of reasons why we might want to know if some nefarious character's been in a certain room in the last few hours," Meadow says. "Maybe there's a way to use microbes for that." We have just witnessed the birth of a pseudoscience.
- DiabloD3 11y ago
  I swear I read a scifi novel from the 70s or 80s that had this as a plot, I just can't think which one.
  - swasheck 11y ago
    michael crichton wrote Prey which is about something similar to this (i don't want to say too much so as to not introduce a spoiler). that wasnt from the 70s or 80s, though.
  - ratfacemcgee 11y ago
    maybe an episode of The Twilight Zone? "Submitted for your approval, a world where pseudoscience has taken over..."
- swasheck 11y ago
  did you see their remarkable sample size? n = 11 interesting first step, but not nearly enough data to begin postulating potential applications.
- jessaustin 11y ago
  The best kind of pseudoscience: one that will send innocents to prison and worse when forensic hucksters use it in testimony before criminal courts.
lobo_tuerto 11y ago
I'm going to go out on a limb here, but could this be connected to what some people call the _aura_? Or the reason why you might dislike or like someone when you are around him/her?
- delinka 11y ago
  It's been suggested by at least one study[1] that we prefer our potential mates' odors if their own immune system is different enough from our own. One might indeed be translating 'odor' into 'aura' subconsciously. I suspect OP my explain how that odor is transmitted from the immune system to the outer world. Further elaboration and maybe disagreement at [4] 1 - Wedekind,C., Seebeck, T., Bettens, F. & Paepke, A. J.MHC-dependent mate preferences in humans. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 260,245 - 2491995. | ISI [2] | ChemPort [3] | 2 - http://links.isiglobalnet2.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?&GWVersion=2&SrcAuth=Nature&SrcApp=Nature&DestLinkType=FullRecord&KeyUT=A1995RJ57600002&DestApp=WOS_CPL http://links.isiglobalnet2.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?&GWVersio... 3 - http://chemport.cas.org/cgi-bin/sdcgi?APP=ftslink&action=reflink&origin=npg&version=1.0&coi=1:STN:280:ByqA2Mjjs1c%3D&pissn=9999-9999&pyear=2001&md5=8ef761887eeb6ef29e9dd933802f6568 http://chemport.cas.org/cgi-bin/sdcgi?APP=ftslink&action=ref... 4 - http://www.nature.com/news/2001/010307/full/news010308-10.html#B2 http://www.nature.com/news/2001/010307/full/news010308-10.ht...
- jerf 11y ago
  "Aura" is an ill-defined term on its own; you've got everything from people claiming to see literally-visible colors emanating from a person to vague senses of something. (No judgment implied here, this is just the definition of the word I'm discussing.) As for why you might dislike people when you are around them, it seems like we, err, don't really have much of a mystery there? I mean, I know what you mean, but there's a lot of well-established human body language and we often pick up on it without realizing it consciously. I don't think we need to hypothesize "something something bacterial footprint" when we've got that already.
- claysmithr 11y ago
  I thought the aura is the light captured around the human body with kirlian photography
agentgt 11y ago
This sort of reminds me of the Silo series of books by Hugh Howey. If you have not read the books and like scifi ... obligatory spoiler alert... One of the themes in the book is the impending terrorist doom that could unfold by using nanotechnology to target certain demographics (ie genocide). I think nanobots reading human DNA would be fairly hard but nanobots recognizing biomemes might not be. That is using biomemes might be easier than DNA fingerprinting for nanobots. I could be completely wrong on my assumptions not to mention I have no background in bio or nano tech.

39 points by pmcpinto 11y ago

>"There are a lot of reasons why we might want to know if some nefarious character's been in a certain room in the last few hours," Meadow says. "Maybe there's a way to use microbes for that." We have just witnessed the birth of a pseudoscience.

DiabloD3 11y ago
I swear I read a scifi novel from the 70s or 80s that had this as a plot, I just can't think which one.
- swasheck 11y ago
  michael crichton wrote Prey which is about something similar to this (i don't want to say too much so as to not introduce a spoiler). that wasnt from the 70s or 80s, though.
- ratfacemcgee 11y ago
  maybe an episode of The Twilight Zone? "Submitted for your approval, a world where pseudoscience has taken over..."
swasheck 11y ago
did you see their remarkable sample size? n = 11 interesting first step, but not nearly enough data to begin postulating potential applications.
jessaustin 11y ago
The best kind of pseudoscience: one that will send innocents to prison and worse when forensic hucksters use it in testimony before criminal courts.

lobo_tuerto 11y ago

I'm going to go out on a limb here, but could this be connected to what some people call the _aura_? Or the reason why you might dislike or like someone when you are around him/her?

delinka 11y ago
It's been suggested by at least one study[1] that we prefer our potential mates' odors if their own immune system is different enough from our own. One might indeed be translating 'odor' into 'aura' subconsciously. I suspect OP my explain how that odor is transmitted from the immune system to the outer world. Further elaboration and maybe disagreement at [4] 1 - Wedekind,C., Seebeck, T., Bettens, F. & Paepke, A. J.MHC-dependent mate preferences in humans. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 260,245 - 2491995. | ISI [2] | ChemPort [3] | 2 - http://links.isiglobalnet2.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?&GWVersion=2&SrcAuth=Nature&SrcApp=Nature&DestLinkType=FullRecord&KeyUT=A1995RJ57600002&DestApp=WOS_CPL http://links.isiglobalnet2.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?&GWVersio... 3 - http://chemport.cas.org/cgi-bin/sdcgi?APP=ftslink&action=reflink&origin=npg&version=1.0&coi=1:STN:280:ByqA2Mjjs1c%3D&pissn=9999-9999&pyear=2001&md5=8ef761887eeb6ef29e9dd933802f6568 http://chemport.cas.org/cgi-bin/sdcgi?APP=ftslink&action=ref... 4 - http://www.nature.com/news/2001/010307/full/news010308-10.html#B2 http://www.nature.com/news/2001/010307/full/news010308-10.ht...
jerf 11y ago
"Aura" is an ill-defined term on its own; you've got everything from people claiming to see literally-visible colors emanating from a person to vague senses of something. (No judgment implied here, this is just the definition of the word I'm discussing.) As for why you might dislike people when you are around them, it seems like we, err, don't really have much of a mystery there? I mean, I know what you mean, but there's a lot of well-established human body language and we often pick up on it without realizing it consciously. I don't think we need to hypothesize "something something bacterial footprint" when we've got that already.
claysmithr 11y ago
I thought the aura is the light captured around the human body with kirlian photography

agentgt 11y ago

This sort of reminds me of the Silo series of books by Hugh Howey. If you have not read the books and like scifi ... obligatory spoiler alert... One of the themes in the book is the impending terrorist doom that could unfold by using nanotechnology to target certain demographics (ie genocide). I think nanobots reading human DNA would be fairly hard but nanobots recognizing biomemes might not be. That is using biomemes might be easier than DNA fingerprinting for nanobots. I could be completely wrong on my assumptions not to mention I have no background in bio or nano tech.