Fun Facts (a.k.a. my only ammo for the finals)

Yo peeps!
I decided, that the only way for me to pass the finals will be to gather some fun facts about stuff I find interesting and put them into the actual topics. I hope this works out, otherwise I'm screwed :) Nevertheless I think it'll be way more interesting than reciting taxological system or all possible reactions of a certain element.
You may not find them interesting, but I'll share some of them with you anyways. These are not all of them, of course, but I just cba to recall and write down all of them.

• The eldest, largest and heavist living organism is Pando, a single tree that spreads as underground rootlings, occasionally growing into full-grown tree again, thus creating what appears to be a forest made of identical trees. It's 80 000 - 1 000 000 years old, weights about 6600 tonnes and covers like 43 hectars.
• Pafish (well, that's the czech transcription anyway, they don't have similar category in english system as far as I'm informed) have like 10 times larger brain-to-body ratio than regular fish. This is caused by very low density of neurons in their brains and allows them to function consuming less energy.
• Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria are divided into these two categories according to their reactiong to Gram's coloring using crystal violet (trisphenylmethane).
• The way branches grow out of pines, that are not circles, those are actually very tight spirals. I don't think I need to tell you about the Fibonacci sequence relating to nature in general :)
• You can cut apart some worms and some polypoda and they will regenerate back into working condition, thus reproducing. It's like with cells and protoza, only with large animals. I think it's cool!
• Human (and other) liver can regenerate too! Up from 75% mass loss (you cut away 75% of the liver) it regenerates into working, 100% condition.
• A veliger (larva of some molluscs) looks like rastafarian head atop an octopus-like tentacle bottom...and it floats in the water! I'd snatch you a picture, but then again, do you deserve it?
• The largest snail (way, in a way, the sea one) can be as big as 60cms, like a hare.
• Well, axolotls... Those are one big fun fact ;)
• Birds are gimped! They have no alveoli.
• Did you know this? The phases of mitosis (interphase, prophase, metaphase, anaphase, telophase) can be abbreviated as IPMAT, which can be easily remembered as "I Passed My Awful Tests" :D Only after finding this out I could remember it correctly.
• Protozoa have a neural system! A series of tubes that supposedly function somewhat like nerves.

So much for biology. I cba to do chemistry now, I gotta go study czech literature.

Peace,
out.
Adam

Head's Zones

Hey chaps! How's been life? It's quite hectic over here. Some pretty freaky stuff happened too! But that's not why I'm writing this post.

Browsing through my biology finals topics, medical dictionary and an atlas of human body (all three of these are truly beautiful books!) I came across a term "Head's zones".
These are zones on the human body - skin, to be precise - that are inervated from the same spinal chord segments as particular inner organs. One example of Head's zone would be inner side of left hand ranging from elbow all the way to the pinky, which corresponds to heart.
The result of this intervined innervation is slight connection between impulses from/into these two parts of one's body. That is the reason, why people with angina pectoris/upcoming heart attack feel the pain shooting into their left hand.
I also think, that it is the underlying explanation of acupuncure/massage therapies. While massage would - quite obviously - relax the directly massaged muscles, it's sometimes also said to be helping certain organs. Same goes for acupuncture. I think it's possible that stimulation of sensoric, afferent nerve-paths from the skin can stimulate action in sympatic/parasympatic neural pathways and thus improving/affecting one's insides.

Anyway, that's just a short random piece of knowledge I thought I'd share with you :)

Stay tuned for the occasional bursts,
peace,
out.
Adam

Slime molds

Just a side note: I encourage you all to take a look into what slime molds are and can do. These funky single-cellular, tens-of-centimeters long and multinuclear protists are something a sick 50's horror would feature. They show signs of intelligence, despite their lack of any organs they can coordinate their movement and inner processes, they can schedule all their nuclei to divide at the same time (across these huge bodies!) and they are pretty hard to kill - cutting, shooting or stabbing won't really do.

Start here, continue here and follow wherever you like. Post comments with more info on these living foams!

Peace,
out.
Adam

BBC News: Tumour growth block hopes raised

I would like to tell you about this article I found today on BBC News network. It's only one of approximately zillion other articles, but it's my decision to link most of the interesting health/medicine-related articles I find on the web here.

Follow this link to its original location.