Fumes from car exhausts may have contributed to 651 death in the UAE in 2008, say researchers investigating the relation between death and air pollutants. The interesting question is, how did they come up with the number?

Our top news story this week looks at how a research team used a computer model to simulate human exposure to pollutants outdoors, indoors, in drinking water, and coastal water, all across the UAE’s seven emirates. Among their conclusions, they also found that second-hand smoke and other forms of indoor air pollution lead to 153 deaths in the UAE that same year.  Get more details here.

On another front, physicists have come up with a protocol to give quantum cryptography a much needed boost. Currently, the mechanisms used to securely transmit information via quantum effects is limited to about 100km.  Read this to see how these researchers have employed some of the mindboggling characteristics of the quantum world to amplify cryptographic signals.

Finally, thinking of going on a treasure hunt? Apparently, it’s not the most environmentally friendly activity, since the process of recovering gold from rock relies on hazardous chemicals. But fear not, a new study lays out a greener method for gold hunting that relies on a cheap and environmentally-friendly carbohydrate derived from starch. Check it out here.

Beyond the hood

The phrase “to catch a cold” is often deemed as one of the most frustratingly inaccurate expressions by those with the least bit of interest in medicine or basic biology. (You don’t catch a cold, you catch a virus!! What does catching a cold even mean??)

As it turns out, our mothers may have had a point, of sorts: being cold can give us a cold. Or rather, being cold can make it more likely for a virus we’ve already caught to survive the initial onslaught of our immune response.

It’s been a long considered hypothesis, but now researchers seem to have come up with the evidence. They grew human airway cells in the lab under both cold and warm conditions. These cell were then infected with the typical rhinoviruses that lead to a cold. As it turned out, warmer cells were more likely to commit cell suicide when infected, an initial immune response aimed at limiting an infection’s spread.

The researchers also found that when mice were infected with a rhinovirus, warmer ones produced a wave of antiviral immune signals. When cold, their immune response was smaller, with the infection persisting. Read more about it here.