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38
January/February 2018^ DISCOVER^45TOP: BROOKHAVEN NATIONAL LABORATORY. BOTTOM: KUNAL PATIL/HINDUSTAN TIMES/GETTY IMAGES
When Probiotics
Really Do Work
❯
PROBIOTICS SEEM LIKE a good idea: Use products
that contain beneficial bacteria to fortify our immune
systems. But most studies, especially larger ones, had
not shown they actually do much good.
But now there’s some proof. In a clinical trial in rural India
involving more than 4,500 newborns, a U.S.-led team and a
team from the Asian Institute of Public Health gave half the
babies a specially formulated probiotic concoction, while the
remainder got a placebo. The team found the treated infants
had a significantly lower risk of developing sepsis, a life-
threatening infection that kills 600,000 newborns globally
each year. Only 5.4 percent of babies given the concoction
got sepsis, compared with 9 percent who received a placebo,
according to the study published in August in Nature.
What made this study different is, rather than using
off-the-shelf probiotics that can’t gain a foothold in the
gut, researchers tested over 280 probiotic strains to find the
right one. Their product contained a form of Lactobacillus
plantarum, bacteria that can colonize cells in the intestines,
preventing the bad bugs from doing the same. “Hopefully,
we’ll figure out how the bacteria modulate newborns’
immune system,” says Pinaki Panigrahi, an epidemiologist
who led the team. “Because if we can give this to them early
enough, it should protect against disease.” LINDA MARSAThe Fastest Fluid
❯
PROTONS AND NEUTRONS are
familiar as tiny solids, but particle
accelerators can melt them into
what’s called a quark-gluon plasma, or
QGP. Studies of the superhot material,
first done about a decade ago, have
revealed QGP is the hottest, least viscous
known liquid and is capable of forming
the smallest drop of liquid ever seen. And
now, it’s also the fastest known spinning
liquid, as reported in August by the STAR
collaboration in Nature.
In a single second, the authors (an
international collaboration working with
Brookhaven National Laboratory’s STAR
detector) saw the QGP goop rotate a
mind-boggling sextillion times — a billion
trillions. Getting even small pieces of new
information from these experiments is
always a challenge, so an experimental
measurement of an entirely new feature
like rotation speed is huge.
QGP production is sometimes referred to
as “tiny big bangs” because shortly after
the Big Bang, the universe consisted of
QGP. These experiments help us understand
the fundamental properties of our universe
and its origins, and lead the way toward
testing emerging theories. SYLVIA MORROWIndian newborns who received a specially concocted probiotic dose
were less likely to develop sepsis, a life-threatening infection.