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Hernando Today

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By Ronda Messick Bumgardner

Media General News Service

Published: May 27, 2008

Q. Why does a person have to be 60 or older to get the vaccine for shingles? I have a 70-year-old relative who has the most miserable case of shingles that you can imagine. I don't ever want to experience this myself (I am under 60), and it is my wish to save as many people as possible from the pain, blisters and possible scarring that come with this apparently preventable disease. - V.

A. In 2006, the FDA approved the shingles vaccine for people 60 and older after a clinical trial showed that it prevented shingles in about half the people studied, and prevented a complication called postherpetic neuralgia in 67 percent of the study participants.

According to information from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "A person's risk for getting shingles begins to rise around age 50. However, shingles vaccine (Zostavax) is only recommended for persons age 60 and older because the safety and effects of the vaccine were only studied in this group, which accounts for about half of all cases of shingles occurring each year in the United States. Future research will determine if the recommended age for vaccination should be lowered."

Shingles is caused by the virus that causes chickenpox, varicella zoster, which remains dormant in the body after the chickenpox is gone. The virus can become active again in older people or people with health problems, and cause shingles.

The Web site WebMD explains more about shingles. "Shingles causes a rash with blisters that usually lasts for two to four weeks," it says. "The pain associated with the blisters can be quite intense. Once this initial phase is over, nerve pain called postherpetic neuralgia can set in. This pain lasts anywhere from 30 days to months or even years. It can be so severe in some people that it disrupts their lives."

Q. The loud storms we've had recently made me wonder, what causes thunder? - B.M.S.

A. Thunder follows lightning, so it will help to understand how both of them occur.

According to The Weather Book by Jack Williams, "Lightning occurs when electricity travels between areas of opposite electrical charge within a cloud, between clouds, or from a cloud to the ground."

This bolt of electricity heats the air around it to extremely high temperatures - as much as 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit - "three times hotter than the surface of the sun," according to Scientific American's Web site. The hot air expands, and then cools and contracts. This violent motion of the air, happening almost instantly, creates the sound waves that we hear as thunder.

Sometimes there is quite a lag time between when you see the lightning and hear the thunder. This is because light and sound travel at different speeds. Light travels at more than 186,000 miles per second, so you see the flash as soon as it happens. Sound takes about five seconds to travel a mile. So it can take several seconds for the sound of thunder to reach you.

You can use this knowledge to estimate how far away the lightning is. Start counting the seconds when you see a flash - if you hear the thunder in about five seconds, it is about a mile away; if you hear it in about 10 seconds, it is about two miles away, and so on.

But don't let such calculations give you a false sense of safety. Lightning kills an average of 62 people a year in the United States, according to the National Weather Service. It can strike as far as 10 miles away from where it is raining. That's about as far away as you can hear thunder.

Q. What weather phenomenon does the Fujita scale measure? - E.T.

A. The Fujita scale measures tornado intensity based on the damage the storm inflicts on man-made structures and vegetation.

The scale was developed in 1971 by Ted Fujita of the University of Chicago, with help from Allen Pearson, the head of the National Severe Storms Forecast Center.

Where a storm rates on the scale is determined by meteorologists after a ground or aerial survey is conducted using radar, eyewitness accounts, ground patterns and imagery for data.

The scale ranges from F0, a lesser tornado with winds up to 70 mph, to an F5, a tornado with winds greater than 200 mph. Any storm above an F5 would be dubbed an "inconceivable tornado." An F6 category was created for hypothetical or research purposes only.

The National Weather Service introduced the Enhanced Fujita Scale on Feb. 1, 2007, with the same basic structure as the regular Fujita scale, but with upgraded definitions and standardization of the components that made up the old scale. The United States now uses this upgraded system.

Q. Based on recent personal experience, I believe that my cell-phone company uses dishonest business practices. To whom should such activities be reported - the FCC, the state or federal government, or the Better Business Bureau? - G.

A. Complaints about cell-phone fraud can be handled by state attorneys general, according to Consumers Union, the nonprofit organization that publishes Consumer Reports.

"Based on consumer complaints, state attorneys general have filed lawsuits against wireless companies, resulting in refunds to consumers and agreements by some companies to reform certain practices," Consumers Union says. It has more tips on "How to Complain about Your Wireless Service" online at www.consumersunion.org/campaigns//learn_more/00103....

Q. I've heard about the cats at Ernest Hemingway's home. Can you tell me how many live there? - J.N.J.

A. About 60 cats roam the Ernest Hemingway House and Museum in Key West, Fla. And about half of those are polydactyl, which means that they have more than the usual number of toes. That information comes from the museum, which has a page of its Web site dedicated to the cats, at www.hemingway home.com/HTML/our_cats.htm.

Most cats have five toes on their front paws (including a dew claw) and four toes on their back paws. Polydactyl cats can have six, seven or even more toes. The extra toes are usually, but not always, on the front paws. They are caused by a dominant, mutant gene.

The cats at the Hemingway museum are said to be descendants of Snowball, a six-toed cat given to Hemingway by a ship's captain in the mid-1930s. The cats are so well known that polydactyl cats living far away from Key West are often called Hemingway cats.

However, some people question the legend. CNN quotes Hemingway scholar James Nagel as saying: "The truth is Hemingway didn't have cats when he lived in that house. Hemingway liked cats, but Pauline, to whom he was married, wanted peacocks. So they got peacocks for the yard.... The time when he had so many cats was when he lived in San Francisco de Paula, Cuba."

SAM is no Hemingway scholar but finds it hard to believe that a confirmed cat-lover such as Hemingway wouldn't have had at least a few of his beloved felines with him in Key West.

Send your questions to Straight Answers, P.O. Box 3159, Winston-Salem, NC 27102. Or send e-mail to answers@wsjournal.com. Questions of general interest will be answered in this column.

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