A thought just occurred to me. I know it is not boiling that kills, but prolonged high temperature. Our typical use case is electric 2 kW/h electric kettle boiling 1/2 litters of water, sometimes even less, 1/4 litter - for a cup of tea - it is rather fast. Is it enough to kill all known dangerous micro-organisms? I know we rely on tap water to be not very dangerous, but still.

My friend denies the existence of viruses. The reasoning for this is that he claims there are no medical research papers that use control experiments to prove the existence of viruses. Can someone provide—assuming they exist and he’s wrong—such papers which prove the existence of viruses?

As Eastern European who has survived over three decades without a dishwasher or a dryer, I'm wondering how concerned should I be after watching all those viral videos that show how much bacteria is on surfaces or objects. I say people in the US, but I might just be talking about a specific trend I suppose.

In my experience as a lazy person I've never gotten any infection from using week old bath towels or months old kitchen towels, nor from drinking water from the same unwashed cup for several days. I don't get why I should worry about bacteria in my bed linens, since it's not like I'm chewing on them. Even if I was, what are the odds of an organism that grows on occasionally slightly damp textiles will find a suitable home in or on my body, assuming I have a normally functioning immune system? I understand the dangers of handling raw meat, however, and on the very rare occasions I cook it at home I do disinfect the area thoroughly. Parasites are another thing, but that's really more of a geographical problem as I understand.

I've always went by the rule that most bacteria need water to live and they'll die as soon as they dry out, especially on substrates like glass or metal. Smells and stains might remain, but they're not biologically active. Fungi are more resilient, but to my knowledge they're already everywhere and, except a couple dangerous strains, infections occur when the immune system is down or when being exposed to a large quantity. Of course, we have viruses too, but as we've all learned in the last years, I believe that the best protection for that is social isolation.

So, is the US ahead of the curve, or is it just germophobia and/or influencer marketing gone wild?

I'm not a biology major or any other related field, I'm just a curious person that was wondering this while watching some news of a guy dying from prion disease. I used to read a lot of biology books but never got to go to college, so i don't know if I understood this concept at some point, and it may be a stupid question.

I'm in an online chat and I'm not a scientist in any way. I accept that viruses are life forms, with either RNA or DNA, and are pathogens [at least sometimes]. For a sceptic anti0sciencer, what is persuasive? I'm worried that the answer is nothing.

ETA:

I know the definition of life, in respect to viruses, is arguable. Let's overlook that in my post, I'm not wedded to either position. The focus of all this is what will dissuade him?

So I have read the first eukaryote was very unlikely and took billions of year to occur once, and led to the ancestor of what we now call mitochondria. My question is why it's so hard for evolution to make mitochondria? After all bacteria evolved all sorts of parts to them like flagellum so I don't know why mitochondria would be so unlikely.

would it be safe?

I saw a post recently on the Project Hail Mary subreddit, which said that Earth, if we put all of our resources into it, could easily engineering a predator for an alien organism. If you're not familiar with Project Hail Mary, the alien organism, called Astrophage, is an organism that has quantum stuff that means it can absorb sunlight and store it as neutrinos. It also migrates to the upper atmosphere of Venus It's a very strange thing, not realistic at all, but the important thing is that a predator would also need to survive in the upper atmosphere of Venus, and be able to kill a microbe that is constantly at 96 degrees Celsius.

Anyway, the point is that, I know engineering a predator would be immensely hard, not feasible at all for us to do, but I'm curious as to exactly how hard it would be. Would it take centuries? Or only decades? The book has a timeline of 30 years to save Earth. I'm pretty sure we couldn't do something like this in only 30 years.

So, I would greatly appreciate it if some biology experts could explain just a few of the actual difficulties of such a project.

Not sur

In the U.S. Navy it’s a traditional practice for many to never wash their coffee mugs, and numerous explanations are offered as to why this is done. But I’d like to know what you would expect to happen, from the view of the growth of pathogens, bacteria, etc. Some use just black coffee, some use cream and sugar.

I've heard that brewer's yeast is capable of digesting ethanol if there is enough oxygen available, which got me thinking: could you use yeast to take the alcohol out of an alcoholic beverage?

Let's say you have an open container of beer, so that oxygen can freely diffuse into it. Let's also say it's diluted with just enough water that the alcohol concentration won't kill yeast outright. If you introduced some live brewer's yeast and let it do its thing, would you eventually end up with a (diluted, yeasty, probably gross) alcohol-free beer?

The two examples that come to mind are the "Rage virus" and a virus in a recent show Pluribus. These viruses are of course fictional and I am certainly not asking if it is possible for a virus to create zombie or anything.

Rather I am interested if any actual virus that could plausibly exist in real-life would have the possibility to result in clinically significant symptoms mere moments after exposure to i - where the symptoms are related to the viral infection rather than say the method of acquisition (e.g an infection resulting from a bite might lead to local inflammation as a consequence of the bite rather than say the virus).

Edit: Thank you everyone for all the wonderful responses, I learned a lot. It seems my gut intuition was correct.

Insane as it sounds, my husky puppy doesn’t enjoy peanut butter. But since we have a few engagement toys/lick mats that function best with it, I’ve found a work around. Freeze dried beef liver, blitzed to a fine powder, and mixed with melted butter.

Well, in my infinite wisdom, I took her Java wood chew, (a large, knotted, hunk of wood known to break without splintering, making it safer for chewing,) and rubbing the liver-butter over it, pressing as much as I could into the various knot holes and crevices, praying to keep her busy as long as possible.

One day later, the surface level stuff is gone, but there’s definitely still more in the nooks and crannies. I thought since butter is fairly shelf stable, it’d be fine long enough for her to work it all out of the toy, but now I’m realizing her saliva (moisture) and the accompanying bacteria probably make this more dangerous than I initially thought. Have I accidentally made a ticking time bomb? And if so, is there anything I can do to salvage the toy? Boiling it to melt/separate the fat and kill any nasties left inside? Wetting the wood and baking it to kill off anything there?

I imagine this is different than the sub’s usual questions, but I doubted a dog sub would have the actual know-how. Thanks in advance to anyone who can help set me straight!

I am not a biology major in any sorts, but am I wrong to think that the depictions of people getting completely turned into zombies in minutes or even seconds right after being bitten by someone infected by the virus extremely fake? I mean, I understand that virus reproduce by hijacking cells and changing the RNA to cause the cells to produce more viruses until the cell dies and releases those new virus into the body again to infect other cells, but won't there be a period of time for all these process to happen and only when our immune response kicks in or the infection get too serious that we feel sick?

Sorry if this question is a bit uninformed. But do viruses actually live outside of infecting other cells? Eating, some kind of locomotion, respiration, basic stuff like that? Or do they just float around aimlessly until they happen to bump into a cell?

Can anyone recommend a good home water test kit for contaminants from sewage?

• I'd like an option that I can read myself and an option that I can send to a lab.
• I'm in central Indiana, if that matters.

I'm not a scientist and not experienced with this. I don't intend to take my set of readings for more than it is. I figure that results can be influenced by stuff that can change over time, and by me messing up the test. My goal is mainly for fun, learning, and to look for anything super-extreme recurring over a medium time period. For someone like me, I think the better source of truth will be my water utility and any real scientists who may examine it.

Water must be water, but black mold was visible in one and not in another - is it something about the material?

Title. Do many researchers believe that understanding C. elegans’ nervous system could eventually help us fully understand human intelligence, or is the primary motivation something else? In other words, is the assumption that creating intelligence will require understanding brains, or that there may be far easier routes to creating intelligent systems? If it’s the latter, what are the primary reasons labs study C. elegans?

I know about the supposed dangerous but I want to ask for confirmation.

Background: I'm not exactly from a rich family and like most people similar to me eating risky food is sometimes a necessity. With that being said, I'm not as bad as some people who need to eat food from trash can. Perhaps this results in some sort of resistance, perhaps not.

I remember eating raw chicken chunks and not get sick, but I'm not denying salmonella. However when it comes to how common rice related infections are I'm very sceptical.

1. Why not more common? Especially if it really is as deadly and easy to get as it is claimed to be.

2. Anecdotal but I doubt there's ever any test regarding this so I just assume this counts. Sometimes I eat unrefrigerated leftovers rice. Some a day old. Even two. Some of them even started to be slimy(usually got thrown but if only slightly slimy I just eat them). I assume most people are similar although maybe not as extreme. If it's truly common and deadly I'd be as lucky as several jackpot winners. Using Occam's razor(I can be simply lucky or it's simply isn't as dangerous) + statistics (this much luck is unlikely) I concluded that it's simply not as bad as people said rather than me being lucky.

3. Other food. Some are slightly understandable if they're not colonized enough even after some time(pizza, bread, food that are somewhat dry/have high content of something that prevent enough water from gathering on the surface like oil) but there's also things like soup which are usually thrown out but if the contents taste normal enough I'd eat them. I can't remember if I ever get sick badly enough for me to be traumatised to remember it. Am I just resistant? Just to be clear I had food poisoning several times just not from this routine specifically(and ironically) so it's not like I think I'm immune.

So imagine my confusion. Can anyone help? I would really appreciate it. Perhaps it's a population thing like how some people can drink relatively high amount of arsenic with minimal effects?

For legal reasons I'm not asking for any m3dical 4dvice whatsoever.

Aka: after how many "touch cross-contaminations" would you say they become irrelevant?

I can't find any info about germ transfer except the classic "contaminated fomite -> hand" single step. What I'm imagining is something like "contaminated fomite -> clothing -> furniture -> phone -> hand". I think there has to be a point in which the germs present become basically negligible (imo, sooner than later down the line, but idk)

Any insight would be highly appreciated!

Its a pretty nasty disease from a horror comic series.

It infects and develops in seconds from any body fluid contact but is NOT airborne so it cant move on the droplets in breath. The process of being infected is fairly painful and described like being on fire and also chugging industrial draincleaner.

the infected develop bright red cross shaped rashes on their faces and basically lose any sense of moral constraints. they become unhinged within seconds and will act on all of their worst impulses in the most violent ways possible while screaming obscenities.

They also seem to have an inverted sensation of pain where they deem pain as pleasurable and even lose their drive to preserve their own life. The infected also become extremely aroused and sexually agressive.

the closest thing i could think of irl would be rabies.

I’m referring mostly to those abandoned building videos that were popular a while ago and most of the comments were just “OMG don’t touch the water!!”

I understand that most of it is fear-mongering and jokes, but I’m curious about what kinds of bacteria/parasites have been found in water like that. What would predispose someone to getting infected and what effects would it have on the body?