Editorials: Panama’s decision and the Democrats Abroad primary

March 4, 2024

One vacant podium at the first debate, for the guy fleeing a prison sentence to the Nicaraguan Embassy. Color that guy and his probable eventual stand-in irrelevant. Photo by the Tribunal Electoral.

Firm on principles, skeptical about passions: vote wisely and keep an open mind

It is predicted that a week from today, the March rains begin but there will be a delay before the rainy season begins in earnest in May or June. Depending on what it is, we will have a better idea of what to plant and when,

If THAT is an inexact science, consider the upcoming elections. The leader in the polls for a long time was Ricardo Martinelli, whose supporters told us that “he stole, but he got things done.”

Consider what that says about Panamanian political culture, but then he ran into the legal culture segment of that, and before the argument got to “but” judges called a full stop and set the wheels in motion for him to either be in prison or holed up in the Nicaraguan Embassy come Election Day. There is little indication that the former president’s former support will shift to his journeyman political operative stand-in. Mulino may not be as ridiculous a substitute as the non-entity Mimito Arias was in 2014, but the general rule is that personality cults aren’t transferable.

It would leave us with an eight-sided choice with at the moment four or five serious contenders. The president predicts that a quarter of the vote can win the presidency this year. It’s a reasonable expectation and a good reason to draft a new constitution.

There are unflattering things to say about each of the presidential candidate and organized troll squads are saying them. So many of the negative messages are so scurrilous. There are the overblown appeals to ideological hatreds of political, religious, racial or gender stereotypes. There all all the guilt by association arguments. There are presumptions that water never passes under bridges and people never learn from mistakes. There are simplistic economic dogmas.

We are coming toward the end of a period of horrendous economic mismanagement. The nation is deeply in debt and having more than the usual trouble paying its bills on time. The reckoning is upon us for an immensely destructive 27-year-long mining scam crime wave.

Scratch the vote buyers off the list of acceptable possibilities. Scratch off anyone who as ever ever had, either personally or in their families, an ownership or management stake in the companies of that mining boondoggle. That applies to both the Petaquilla gold mine at the start and the First Quantum copper mine of now. Scratch off those who faced public health crises and chose to let people die rather than own up to discomforting truths. Scratch off those who stole from us. Scatch off those who preach hatred.

Be understanding, but hesitant to hand out free passes, for lesser faults. If they talk foolishness about crime, or economics, or education, those are common enough maladies that shouldn’t go unchallenged. We won’t be electing an all-knowing sage or a saint. Better, however, if we elect someone willing to listen to criticism once in office.

After the election we are likely to have a president against whom most eligible Panamanians voted and a fragmented collection of politicians down the ballot. They – AND WE AS A SOCIETY – will then have to work out some agreements to move in any positive direction.

The failed crime boss says he was framed. As expected.

Panama Dems: Vote now in the Democrats Abroad Primary

Unless Mother Nature calls time on him, Joe Biden will be the Democratic nominee in this November’s US presidential election. Donald Trump, although he shows increasing signs of dementia and has many legal troubles, seems to be headed toward that contest as the Republican nominee.

There is more, however, to an election year than the race to the wire in the most important contest. For one thing, don’t let anybody browbeat you about how casting a protest vote in the Democratic primary means a vote for the Republican in the fall. History has repeatedly shown that to be untrue.

With a foreign head of state using US-supplied arms to commit genocide and drag much of the Middle East into an ever wider war, the Michigan primary, with its double-digit vote for “uncommitted,” was taken as a sign of the state’s large Arab-American population protesting against US participation in Netanyahu’s war. A lot of damage has been done and it puts Michigan Democrats in a precarious situation. But look deeper into those results and it’s even worse.

Young voters are deeply disenchanted over this war. African-American voters, not only the Muslims among them in the state where Malcolm X was raised, are also annoyed by US support for a racist massacre of a civilian population, in which many thousands of children have already been killed.

Biden needs to change course to lead Democrats to victory in November, and protest votes in the primaries are one time-honored way to tell him so. Democrats living abroad are in particularly good position to see the US reputation in the world’s eyes, not only as to events in the countries and regions where we live.

There have been changes over the decades, but Democrats Abroad has its roots in the mainly antiwar Democrats of the Vietnam War era. We may not have even had delegates then, but what Democrats living overseas reported to their fellow party members in the USA did register into US political discourse of those times.

A vote for “uncommitted,” or a vote for Marianne Williamson, tells Joe Biden to cut his political damages and cut of Bibi Netanyahu. No matter if some Republican pro-Israel lobby calls those of us who vote those ways racist. In fact, in defiance of AIPAC.

Maybe you have a different point of view and want to fully support President Biden and everything he has done. If you are a Democrat living in Panama, the Democrats Abroad Global Presidential Primary is YOUR chance to express that opinion.

Then there are the nuts and bolts of preparing for November, for all factions of Panama’s Democrats. To vote via the Democrats Abroad website, you get put through hoops about being registered to vote and ordering your ballots in the state where you vote, so that your absentee choice will count in November.

You also join Democrats Abroad when registering and voting on the global website. That’s reasonably important post-November, as our country chapter here in Panama is fairly moribund. There is only one in-person primary voting place, in Alto Boquete, which makes it hard for the majority of black Democrats, who live in the Panama City – Colon metro area, to vote that way. Secret purge trials, overt support for identity theft guys and operatives from major international fraud organizations, the embrace of toxic bullying corporate cultures, non-support of organized labor either here or in the USA, a withdrawal from outreach into the America community, libel on the country chapter’s Facebook page – the current leadership in Panama is destructive, opaque and barely active. You must be a member of the global organization to do much about that sad state of affairs at the time for such things in early 2025.

Go to the Democrats Abroad Global Presidential Primary page and then order your primary ballot form here. The instruction and procedures could use a bit of simplification, but if you have questions or problems, you may want to take them up with the unofficial but more participatory Democrats here, the Panama Democrats Club on Facebook.

And do have the political sense to distinguish between primary and general elections. Democrats who care to advance the cause know to take out our differences in the primaries and come together behind the ticket in the fall.

Bertrand Russell photo by Howard Coster (1935) that belongs to the British National Portrait Gallery.

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.

Bertrand Russell

Bear in mind…

I stopped being a quiet peacekeeper and started being a loud peacemaker. My anger was good.

Glennon Doyle

War is a profession by which a man cannot live honorably; an employment by which the soldier, if he would reap any profit, is obliged to be false, rapacious, and cruel.

Niccolo Machiavelli

One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done.

Marie Curie

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STRI, Corales blanqueados

March 4, 2024

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Un evento masivo de blanqueamiento de corales en las islas Guna Yala de Panamá, en la costa este del Caribe, señala un problema importante con el aumento de temperaturas oceánicas y sus efectos a largo plazo. “Parecía que había nevado bajo el agua”, dice el gerente de Asuntos Científicos y Operaciones de STRI, Juan Maté, quien visitó los arrecifes de coral de Guna Yala y vio un blanqueamiento masivo. Foto por Arcadio Castillo.

¿Por qué de repente hay tantos corales blanqueados
a lo largo de la costa caribeña de Panamá?

por STRI

El bleach o lejía es un método popular para blanquear la ropa y otros materiales. Pero cuando los biólogos marinos advierten de los peligros del blanqueamiento de los corales (coral bleaching), la lejía no tiene nada que ver. El aumento de la temperatura del agua hace que los corales expulsen las diminutas y coloridas algas que viven dentro de los pólipos de coral, exponiendo sus esqueletos blancos.

Más recientemente, un evento masivo de blanqueamiento de corales en el archipiélago de Guna Yala, a lo largo de la costa caribeña oriental de Panamá, indica que algo está sucediendo en el océano.

“Nunca había visto un blanqueamiento tan masivo en el Caribe de Panamá”, dijo Juan Maté, Gerente de Asuntos Científicos y Operaciones y Asesor Marino y Costero del Instituto Smithsonian de Investigaciones Tropicales (STRI) en Panamá. Maté estaba de visita en el archipiélago en noviembre pasado con un grupo de estudiantes cuando se encontró con corales blancos desde la isla El Porvenir hasta una pequeña cadena de islas alrededor de Punta San Blas y hasta Cayos Limones. La extensión del blanqueamiento probablemente alcanzó el sector oriental de Guna Yala, según los lugareños.

“Parecía que había nevado bajo el agua”, explicó Maté.

Los eventos de blanqueamiento masivo de corales han ocurrido antes durante los años de El Niño. Sin embargo, El Niño de este año ha sido especialmente duro. “Esta es una de las pocas veces que un evento tan masivo ha ocurrido simultáneamente en el Caribe y el Pacífico”, señala Maté.

Maté es parte de un grupo de investigación que tiene la base de datos más antigua sobre corales en el Pacífico de Panamá, iniciada en la década de 1970 con el ex investigador de STRI, Peter Glynn. Glynn documentó el primer blanqueamiento masivo de corales en el Pacífico Oriental Tropical panameño, durante el evento de El Niño de 1982 y 1983. La ecóloga marina y profesora de la Universidad de Cornell, Drew Harvell, que acompañó a Glynn durante la excursión de buceo en la que vieron el blanqueamiento por primera vez, escribió sobre este descubrimiento en su libro A Sea of Glass: “Aquí estaba yo, una flamante investigadora de arrecifes de coral, con el científico de arrecifes de coral más respetado y experimentado de nuestro tiempo, ¿y él no sabía por qué su arrecife estaba desprovisto de todos los pigmentos? En ese momento, ninguno de nosotros era consciente de la importancia de nuestro descubrimiento”.

¿Por qué los corales reaccionan así?

Clasificados biológicamente como animales, los corales atrapan pequeños organismos para alimentarse con los tentáculos de sus pólipos. Pero los corales de aguas poco profundas también obtienen muchos nutrientes de las microalgas zooxantelas amarillas y marrones, que habitan en el coral y le dan color. Todos los corales constructores de arrecifes tienen una relación simbiótica con estas algas: las microalgas utilizan la luz solar para realizar la fotosíntesis y producen nutrientes como oxígeno y energía en forma de glucosa. El coral se alimenta de estos nutrientes para hacer crecer su esqueleto, fertiliza las algas con sus desechos y les proporciona un lugar seguro para vivir. Por lo tanto, ambos se benefician de esta relación.

Pero cuando el coral se estresa, reacciona expulsando las microalgas de la estructura. Algunos corales se vuelven completamente blancos, otros quedan parcialmente incoloros, cuando el blanqueamiento ocurre más gradualmente.

Esto no significa que un coral haya muerto; un coral blanqueado aún puede recuperarse, si las algas regresan. Pero esto tiene que suceder rápido. Si las condiciones estresantes persisten, sus posibilidades de recuperación disminuyen. “Pueden tardar entre uno y tres meses en morir, dependiendo de la especie y de su nivel de tolerancia”, explica Maté.

Sin embargo, los corales se han adaptado tanto a su simbiosis con las zooxantelas, que dependen de ellas para hasta 95% de su ingesta nutricional; sin las zooxantelas, el coral debe capturar alimento para compensar.

En el Pacífico, donde los corales han pasado por varios eventos de blanqueamiento, la especie dominante Pocillopora se ha adaptado a otro tipo de algas que son más tolerantes. “Esos corales pueden verse bien, como si nada malo estuviera pasando”, establece Maté.

En 2004 se reportó el último evento masivo de blanqueamiento de corales, en áreas del Caribe de Panamá, incluyendo Guna Yala, el cual resultó en la muerte de corales. Pero los arrecifes pueden sobrevivir siempre y cuando quede suficiente material para regenerarse. Mientras tanto, las condiciones deben mejorar para que los corales tengan la oportunidad de recuperarse y crecer nuevamente.

¿Qué se puede hacer?

Otros factores amenazan la supervivencia de los corales, además del aumento de la temperatura de las aguas oceánicas.

El aumento del nivel del mar afecta la cantidad de luz solar que reciben y fotosintetizan las microalgas, lo que obliga a los corales a crecer más rápido y cambiar sus formas para capturar más luz solar. Y a medida que las aguas llegan más tierra adentro, arrastran sedimentos que hacen que el agua sea más turbia, lo que también afecta la penetración de luz solar. Tormentas más grandes y violentas, y más ciudades y agricultura cerca de la costa también conducen a más sedimentos en el agua.

Si hay muerte de coral, el esqueleto puede convertirse en el hogar de nuevos organismos, como las macroalgas, que crecen más rápido y pueden ocupar mucho espacio, formando un dosel que da sombra al coral y dificulta la fotosíntesis de las microalgas y la regeneración del coral. Algunos animales que suelen controlar el crecimiento de las macroalgas, como el pez loro y el pez cirujano, se están viendo afectados por la sobrepesca, el turismo excesivo y más. Otro herbívoro importante que controla el crecimiento de algas en los arrecifes de coral es el erizo de mar negro de espinas largas, que experimentó una mortalidad masiva en 1983 y aún no se ha recuperado a sus números anteriores a la mortalidad.

Una nueva investigación realizada por científicos de STRI que trabajan en Bocas del Toro explora si la falta de oxígeno en el agua caliente puede ser otro factor importante.

Pero en este momento, se cree que la principal causa del blanqueamiento de los corales y su posterior muerte es el calentamiento de los océanos causado por El Niño. Y a medida que el cambio climático global empeora, estos fenómenos se vuelven más agresivos y menos reversibles.

Los científicos de STRI en el Programa de Resiliencia del Arrecife Rohr recolectan corales en tres sitios en el Archipiélago de Las Perlas y tres sitios en el Parque Nacional Coiba, para estudiar cómo factores como el afloramiento afectan la forma en que los corales resisten los efectos del cambio climático. Foto por Ana Endara – STRI.

En el Pacífico Oriental Tropical panameño, donde los efectos de El Niño son más generalizados y visibles, los científicos marinos de STRI estudian los corales como parte del Rohr Reef Resilience Program, tratando de comprender cómo los corales se adaptan a condiciones cada vez más estresantes.

Al recolectar muestras del Archipiélago de Las Perlas, donde los corales están expuestos a la surgencia (un fenómeno en el que los vientos alisios alejan las aguas superficiales más cálidas y hacen que las aguas más frías y ricas en nutrientes del fondo asciendan), y en el Parque Nacional Coiba, donde no hay surgencia, pueden analizar qué factores influyen en la resiliencia y adaptabilidad de los corales a condiciones extremas.

Los datos que recopilan sobre cómo los corales pueden resistir los efectos del cambio climático pueden permitir desarrollar soluciones para hacer que otros corales y arrecifes de coral sean más resilientes, protegiendo uno de los ecosistemas más biodiversos del mundo antes de que sea demasiado tarde.

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Gush Shalom, An appeal to world labor about the Gaza War

March 3, 2024

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An appeal to labor unions – and anyone
who cares about what happens in Gaza

by Gush Shalom, the Israeli Peace Movement

The United States has a long-standing policy of providing Israel with massive amounts of military aid (which incidentally provides enormous profits to the American armament industries). This was greatly expanded and intensified since the outbreak of the current war in Gaza.

The constant flow of munitions from the United States – and to a lesser degree, from other Western countries – is completely indispensable for Israel to sustain its war. Israel’s own armament industry could in no way provide for a massive bombing campaign, in which Israel in a few months threw far more bombs on a very narrow and overcrowded strip of land than what the US itself did over years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Supplying arms to Israel has been traditionally justified as “helping Israel defend itself” and anyone objecting to it was castigated as “wanting Israelis to be exposed to danger”‘. However, the war which Israel launched – ostensibly as a response to the deadly Hamas attack on Israeli communities and military outposts on October 7, 2023 – was soon revealed to have not the slightest resemblance to any kind of “self defense,” and it was never meant to be such.

Rather, it is a completely unrestrained rampage, an orgy of killing and wanton destruction. Under a constant barrage of enormous one-ton bombs – of which a constant supply is provided to Israel by the boatload – schools, universities, mosques (and some churches), libraries, public buildings of any kind and most of the private houses in the Gaza Strip were destroyed or greatly damaged. The city of Gaza was left in ruins, as were many smaller towns and villages. Thirty thousand Palestinians were killed, including more than ten thousand children, and the death toll continues to rise. A million and half people were driven out of their homes, to live in horrifying conditions under the open sky.

The International Court in the Hague, the highest tribunal set up to deal with violations of International Law, met to hear South Africa’s charge that Israel’s acts in the Gaza Strip may culminate in actual genocide – the most terrible of all crimes. Sixteen out of eighteen judges – prominent jurists of various countries and backgrounds – were united in taking very seriously the danger of genocide in the Gaza Strip. Specifically, The Interantional Court found it plausible that Israel’s acts could amount to genocide and issued six provisional measures: ordering Israel to take all steps within its power to prevent genocidal acts, including preventing and punishing incitement to genocide, ensuring aid and services reach Palestinians under siege in Gaza, and preserving evidence of crimes committed in Gaza.

The response of Israeli civil and military leaders was to make preparations for an all-out assault on the city of Rafah – the very place to which Israel had driven, in earlier stages of the war, a million and half Gazans displaced from their homes. Israeli leaders persist in making preparations for such an assault on Rafah, even though Israel’s own allies warn that this may lead to a terrible carnage and an untold humanitarian disaster. Yet President Biden’s making such dire predictions has not made him stop the constant supply of arms and munitions to Israel.

It was under these terrible circumstances that the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU) issued an urgent appeal calling on “trade unions in relevant industries” to refuse to build weapons destined for Israel as well as refusing to transport such weapons. Some unions in various countries did respond to that call. For example, five Belgian transport unions issued a joint statement saying they were refusing to load or unload arms shipments heading to the war zone, and the Barcelona dock workers’ union announced that it “would not permit activity, in our port, of ships containing war materiel,” and called for a ceasefire in Gaza.

We Israeli citizens and activists in political organizations who are shocked and horrified by the acts of the Israeli government and armed forces and who want to see a future of brotherhood between Israelis and Palestinians, regard the above acts by Belgian and Catalan trade unions as an appropriate and praiseworthy response to the terrible carnage in Gaza. We call on all other trade unions worldwide to emulate that example, refuse to build weapons intended for Israel and to load or unload such weapons.

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Art In The Park 2024

March 3, 2024

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An artsy afternoon when the sun was too fierce

by Eric Jackson

Did I pick the wrong time to make my way into Penonome? I set out about noon, waited a little while in the shade to catch a bus at the usual stop, got an Anton bus and got off at the entrada, went into the Van y Ven to grab me a cold bottle of red Powerade, then went out to the bus stop on the highway to continue my way into Peonome. Several full buses — Penonome buses — passed me by. I was standing in the sun in front of the bus stop so as to be prominently see to hail a bus.

Then another Anton bus unloaded a crowd, and another. These folks hugged the shade under the caseta. They included a couple of mothers with young children, a predominantly female crowd of 17, with some young men.

Finally a Penonome bus pulled up in front of me, and there was this rush of young men, one so surly as to try to push me aside. I put out my arm, got on the bus and went to the back. The only ones who got on other than me were the aggressive young men. I think all of the other 17 people, and many in the full busses that passed me by, were headed to another cultural event in Penonome that day, the Sombrero Pintao Festival. In any case, it was a display of a certain aspect of Panamanian culture that’s not beautiful.

Got off at the bank stop, made my way down the town’s main drag, and it had the look of a slow business Saturday.

Come to the park and it was not crowded. The band was not one of the main attractions, but here was a local tipico band, not your renowned professionals but some men keeping the local culture alive, somewhere near the geographical center of Panama. The city had neglected to take down the signs and lanterns from the earlier Chinese New Year party, but that’s also part of the local culture.

Nice art, hungry artists making few sales, not enough customers. I hope that business picked up.

Some sculpture, mostly painting.

Keeping the popular musical traditions popular…

An insolent cubist dismembers the deity to whom rabiblanco families take their children on pilgrimages to the United States to worship.

¡Panamá linda! But artists who do excellent work making few sales at the moment.

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STRI: Un experimento de compostaje

March 3, 2024

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Un estudio de 17 años revela el vital intercambio de nutrientes en los bosques tropicales infértil. Francisco Valdez apoyó el estudio moviendo la hojarasca de un lado al otro del bosque durante más de una década. Foto por Emma Sayer, Universidad de Ulm.

Hojas descompuestas: el alimento de los bosques tropicales

por STRI

El zumbido de los sopladores de hojas siempre llega a perturbarnos en los momentos menos oportunos. La tarea de despejar patios, aceras y calzadas de la persistente hojarasca es una práctica común en áreas suburbanas. Aunque para algunos puedan resultar poco atractivas visualmente, las hojas caídas desempeñan un papel esencial en el crecimiento natural de los árboles. En este contexto, un equipo de investigadores del Instituto Smithsonian de Investigaciones Tropicales (STRI) e instituciones aliadas dedicaron 17 años a mover la hojarasca en un bosque de Panamá para entender mejor su rol. Sus hallazgos se publicaron en la revista Journal of Ecology.

La entonces estudiante de la Universidad de Cambridge, Laura Sutcliffe, tomando medidas de la palmera que camina (Socratea exorrhiza). Foto por Emma Sayer, Universidad de Ulm.

El equipo del Gigante Litter Manipulation Project (GLiMP) decidió abordar esta pregunta trabajando durante casi dos décadas en un bosque tropical de Panamá. A lo largo de 17 años, se dedicaron a retirar las hojas caídas de ciertas áreas del bosque, mientras que en otras zonas aumentaron la cantidad de hojarasca. En otras palabras, algunos árboles recibieron menos hojarasca y otros recibieron más hojarasca de lo habitual durante ese periodo de tiempo.

El experimento era algo que el co-autor Edmund Tanner (Universidad de Cambridge y STRI) llevaba mucho tiempo queriendo hacer, desde que realizó ensayos de fertilización forestal en Jamaica en los años ochenta. El reto era encontrar un lugar adecuado y una organización que apoyara un experimento a largo plazo. A diferencia de los estudios de fertilización, que pueden persistir con sólo una visita anual, el esfuerzo sostenido es esencial para los experimentos de manipulación de hojarasca; en cuanto se deja de retirar la hojarasca, el expmento muere lentamente.

“El mayor reto ha sido mantener el experimento en marcha durante suficiente tiempo para medir los cambios en el crecimiento de los árboles”, dijo la autora principal, Emma Sayer, del Instituto Smithsonian de Investigaciones Tropicales (STRI), la Universidad de Ulm y la Universidad de Lancaster.

En las áreas donde se eliminó la hojarasca, se observó un deterioro en el crecimiento de los árboles a lo largo del tiempo, acompañado de una disminución gradual en la producción de hojarasca. Mientras que en las zonas donde se agregó hojarasca, los árboles presentaron solo un aumento temporal en su crecimiento al inicio del experimento; posteriormente, el exceso de hojarasca solo resultó en más hojas caídas anualmente.

En términos generales, los resultados del experimento revelaron que la caída y descomposición de las hojas en el suelo contribuye a enriquecer el sustrato con nutrientes, impulsando así el crecimiento de árboles en bosques tropicales infértiles.

Es posible que los árboles con menos hojarasca hayan encontrado formas de adaptarse a la reducción de nutrientes con el paso del tiempo. Por ejemplo, cambiaron sus hongos micorrícicos asociados, lo que puede haberles dado acceso a más nutrientes del suelo. Otra forma en que podrían haber respondido fue prolongando la duración de sus hojas existentes o produciendo menos hojas y raíces nuevas.

“El tamaño de las parcelas y la larga duración del experimento lo hacen único, y esto nos ha permitido validar una teoría que llevaba casi 40 años sin comprobarse”, afirmó Sayer. “El apoyo de STRI al experimento ha sido fundamental para lograrlo”.

Los árboles de las zonas del bosque en las que se eliminó la hojarasca no crecieron tan bien con el tiempo. Foto por Emma Sayer, Universidad de Ulm.

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To fend off hackers, organized trolls and other online vandalism, our website comments feature is switched off. Instead, come to our Facebook page to join in the discussion.

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Fawzi & Franck, Low level blasts and traumatic brain injuries

March 1, 2024

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A shell shocked soldier in France in World War I. National_Museum_of_Health_and_Medicine photo.

A World War I soldier in France, suffering from a type of traumatic brain injury then commonly referred to as “shell shock.” US National Museum of Health and Medicine photo.

Low-level blasts from heavy weapons can cause traumatic brain injury:
two engineers explain the physics of invisible cell death

by Alice Lux Fawzi, University of Wisconsin-Madison and Christian Franck, University of Wisconsin-Madison

When the force of a blast shoots a round out of a large-caliber rifle, howitzer or M1 Abrams tank gun, the teams of people operating these weapons are exposed to low-level blasts that can cause traumatic brain injuries.

Low-level blasts do not cause visible trauma, such as bleeding from ruptured eardrums, and they don’t cause injury through violent head motion, such as a concussion. Yet, these blasts can cause physical changes in the brain that lead to a host of neuropsychiatric symptoms.

The link between the force of a blast and the resulting changes in the brain is not completely understood. So our team of engineers and scientists in the PANTHER program, funded by the Department of Defense, is using physics to elucidate how blasts cause traumatic brain injury.

What is a blast?

When a weapon like a rifle is fired, the round is initially in its barrel. Pulling the trigger engages a primer that produces a flame, igniting the propellant. This chemical reaction releases stored energy and creates high-pressure, rapidly expanding gas. This is the blast.

The rate and magnitude of gas expansion are often so extreme that they create a shock wave, where high-pressure air molecules travel outward faster than the speed of sound. This invisible pulse of high pressure carries a tremendous amount of energy. It’s the same force that can propel a 24-pound warhead out of the muzzle of a howitzer to hit a target 19 miles (30.6 kilometers) away.

This cross-section shows: 1. bullet; 2. case; 3. gunpowder; 4. rim; and 5. primer. Glrx/Quadrell via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

Linking blast to brain injury

As blast pressure enters the brain, it is initially compressive, meaning it squeezes the tissue equally from all sides. Because brain tissue is largely composed of water molecules, which are difficult to compress, this type of pressure tends to cause little known harm to cells.

An initially compressive wave, or positive pressure wave, that squeezes brain tissue changes when it bounces off the inside of the skull. It is reflected as a tensile wave, or negative pressure wave, which tends to pull brain tissue apart. With low enough pressures, micron-sized bubbles can form in a process called cavitation. These bubbles can grow 10 to 50 times their initial size over the course of less than a tenth of a millisecond, rapidly stretching the adjacent brain tissue.

Experiments from our lab have shown that the deformation caused by cavitation bubbles happens so rapidly – like the speed of a bullet – that cells tend to get torn apart. The extreme speed of stretching and squeezing causes nearby brain cells to die immediately. Afterward, we see only fragments where healthy cells used to be.

This diagram depicts how blast pressure from a gun can result in brain trauma. Alice Lux Fawzi and Manik Bansal, CC BY-NC-ND

Cell death is the physical root cause of brain injury. In the lab, when the cells that make up brain tissue are deformed at a magnitude and rate beyond what they can withstand, they die – either immediately, as in the case of blast-induced cavitation, or slowly over six to 24 hours, as in most brain injuries from blunt impacts such as concussions.

In low-level blast exposure, the cavitation bubbles are very small, and the trauma is contained to the small area around them. However, repeated exposure to blasts can lead to an accumulation of these microtraumas, eventually reaching a volume large enough to cause significant and irreversible neurological symptoms.

Although evidence is mounting, it has yet to be fully proven that cavitation directly causes blast-induced traumatic brain injury. The hypothesis fits with post-mortem analyses of the brains of service members with a history of blast exposure. It also fits with the physics that link blast exposure to injury from tissue deformation.

Understanding the connection between blasts and cellular damage in the brain will help researchers develop better ways to protect against repetitive blast-induced traumatic brain injury.

Alice Lux Fawzi, PANTHER Engineering Project Manager and Associate Director of the Center for Traumatic Brain Injury, University of Wisconsin-Madison and Christian Franck, Bjorn Borgen Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Director of the Center for Traumatic Brain Injury, University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Wisconsin-Madison

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Low-level blasts from heavy weapons can cause traumatic brain injury:two engineers explain the physics of invisible cell death

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What is a blast?

This cross-section shows: 1. bullet; 2. case; 3. gunpowder; 4. rim; and 5. primer. Glrx/Quadrell via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

Linking blast to brain injury

This diagram depicts how blast pressure from a gun can result in brain trauma. Alice Lux Fawzi and Manik Bansal, CC BY-NC-ND

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