If volume and weight are both calculated as 1 unit, when a cube is made 1 x 1 x 1 when accounting for its length, width, and height, and 1 when accounting for its weight, the entire cube is in equal proportion; a concept referred to as a “unit cube” called as such because each of its dimensions (e.g. height, width, length etc.) are 1 unit in length. This changes however when doubling the cube in size and weight. When doubling the cube to 2 x 2 x 2 when accounting for its length, width, and height, the weight does not move in lockstep, because it becomes 8x (2 x 2 = 4 x 2 = 8). This fundamental mathematical principle referred to as the Square Cube Law, explains why as animals become bigger on land, life becomes exceedingly difficult because of the need to maintain and support the large weight associated with such large stature. As animals become more massive, the effect of gravity places an increasing role in their lives. The shape and form of the body is forced to change. Bones become more massive to scaffold their large bodies. This is why the largest animals on the planet are found within the Earth’s oceans as being within water is a way to circumvent this outcome and helps explain why as animals become larger upon land, life becomes exceedingly difficult because of the need to maintain an appropriate structure and weight associated with such large sizes. This principle also explains why the concept of a giant (e.g. mythology etc.) is physically problematic as if a human being were scaled up proportionally to twice their normal height, their volume and weight would increase 8x, whilst the strength of their bones and muscles would not scale at this same rate. The result would be a life form whose own mass would overwhelm its skeletal structure, making movement, balance, and even basic survival virtually impossible without some form of environmental and/or structural intervention and compensation
Tag: body
The Importance of Gastrointestinal Microbes for Weight Loss
There are 100,000,000,000,000 (100 trillion) microbes within the gastrointestinal system and scientists have learned that by transplanting microbes from one animal to another, weight gain and weight loss can be turned on and off at will. Scientists now understand that the greater diversity a person has in terms of the types of microbial life which live within their body, the less likely they are to gain weight or maintain a higher than ideal body weight, with the exact opposite effect occurring in those who have lower than average values in reference to the number of microbes living within the body. Diets rich in fiber are typically associated with higher values of microbes, so increasing fiber intake, can significantly reduce overall body weight and promote the existence and health of many different kinds of microbes. Increasing fiber content for only a few days, has a measurable and marked effect upon microbrial gastrointestinal health
The Reason it is Impossible to Store, Purchase, and/or Sell Live Tuna
It is virtually impossible to store, purchase, and/or sell tuna fish live as tuna die shortly after capture. This is due to the fact that tuna breathe using ram-gill ventilation, which means that they must constantly stay in motion to have water pass over their gills and feed their body with oxygen. Motion is required continuously, exerted during both hours spent awake and time spent asleep. As the tuna is in motion, water flows into its mouth and over its gills and gill filaments, diffusing oxygen into the tunas bloodstream while simultaneously releasing carbon dioxide. This function is performed equally well at both slow and high rates of speed as long as consistent motion is achieved
The Argument Against Stem Cell Research and Why This Will No Longer be a Problem in the Future
The reason stem cell research is controversial for some is because it is viewed as damaging and harvesting from one life to help another. This argument may be obsolete in the future as scientists are now discovering ways to create stem cells from cells within the body (e.g. skin cells etc.). The traditional method to create a stem cell was to take a skin cell, remove the deoxyribonucleic acid from its nucleus, placing it into an egg which does not have deoxyribonucleic acid but is capable of changing deoxyribonucleic acid, turning it into a stem cell which has the patients genome ascribed unto it. The new method involves placing 4 genes into the nucleus of the skin cell and allowing time to pass, as the genes reorganize the deoxyribonucleic acid so that it begins to appear as stem cell deoxyribonucleic acid, which changes the skin cell and causes it to shrink, losing its outside, converting it into an embryonic stem cell with the only difference between this method and traditional embryonic stem cell creation method being that this technique contains the deoxyribonucleic acid of the patient it is being inserted into. The 4 genes inserted into the cell create 4 proteins which exist naturally within an egg. These proteins trigger the skin cell deoxyribonucleic acid to arrange itself identically to how it would within an embryonic stem cell. Scientists refer to this type of cell as “induced pluripotent stem cells”, commonly abbreviated as “IPS cells”. Ideally, scientists want induced pluripotent stem cells to function identically to natural embryonic stem cells, avoiding the creation of unwanted cells which can lead to cancer. Researchers have discovered that some laboratory created stem cells fail to carry out the task provided and worse yet, some cause cancer to develop. Scientists are currently pursuing 2 paths to alleviate this problem, the first being the attempt to develop induced pluripotent stem cells which function identically to natural embryonic stem cells and the second being to create a system to recognize which induced pluripotent stem cells will fail in an effort to exclude these cells from being inserted into the human body
The Reason Alcoholic Hangovers are Unpleasant
A hangover at its most basic premise is caused when the body does not have enough water to run its citric acid cycle (also referred to as “CAC”, “tricarboxylic acid cycle”, “TCA cycle”, and/or “Krebs cycle”). This is exactly the process which occurs when a person dies of thirst. Although hangovers are typically not dangerous, this is part of the reason why they feel so uncomfortable
A Revolutionary Breakthrough in Oncology Treatment
Cancer kills 9,000,000 (9 million) people each year and despite having searched for centuries, a cure has yet to be discovered by scientists. At the center of the immune system is the T cell, a type of leukocyte which respond against bacterial and viral infections alike in an effort to keep their host healthy and alive. T cells determine between threatening and non-threatening foreign and non-foreign bodies within a host by leveraging a molecule upon the surface of all cells referred to as the “T cell receptor”. Jim Allison was the first person to successfully isolate and purify the molecule which recognizes this lock and key model for infectious disease, auto-immune disease, and other innocuous substances within the body be they foreign or internally created. In 1987, French scientist Pierre Golstein and his team discovered a new protein upon the surface of T cells which he named “CTLA-4”. To study CTLA-4 in laboratory rats, Allison had to build and design a rat antibody, a Y shaped protein which would trigger a reaction by CTLA-4. Cancers are mutations and should in theory be visible to the immune system, which is why the scientific community has struggled with the paradox of why tumors go undetected by the immune system for decades. There is no discernible reason as to why the immune system can recognize and resist influenza or any other foreign or domestic body but not cancer. Allison theorized that tumors have evolved an ability to fool the immune system, engaging CTLA-4 which turns on the T cells response to halt its search and destroy measures. Allison hypothesized that if he inserted a Y shaped antibody to block the gap in between the tumor and T cells, the tumor would no longer have its ability to hide, a trait which has been evolved by tumor cells over hundreds of millions of years. This would allow the T cell to infiltrate, attack from within the tumor, shrink, and ultimately kill the growth. Allison spent the next decade trying to turn this revolutionary breakthrough discovery into a medication which could be provided to cancer patients. Allison found Alan Korman, a scientist creating medications for auto-immune disease which provided him with the expert he required to turn this idea into a reality. Korman was tasked with taking the CTLA-4 antibody which Allison and partner Max Krummell developed for laboratory rats, and turn it into a medication which could safely work within human beings with this medication subsequently being named “Ipilimumab” (pronounced “ipi-lim-ooh-mab”). Korman ended up collaborating with a friend from graduate school, Nils Lonberg to accomplish this task. Ipilimumab consists of an intramuscular injection into the leg and a 90 minute intravenous medication drip in comparison to chemotherapy and radiation therapy which take months of treatment to complete and have devastating effects upon overall health as both bad and good tissue are destroyed in an effort to eradicate all tumor cells. Allison’s work with laboratory rats demonstrated that with the help of this newly developed antibody, T cells gained the ability enter into tumors and expand their size in an effort to destroy them from the inside out. This means that the fact that tumors grow initially upon administration is a positive marker and indicative of the medication working as it demonstrates successful infiltration of the tumor cells themselves. Patients often report feeling better after a few treatment sessions, sometimes even a single session, despite computer tomography scans demonstrating that their tumors are growing larger, which under normal circumstances would make a patient feel worse. Some patients even noted increased improvement after having stopped the Ipilimumab treatment, with no further therapy required. On March 25, 2011, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration released approval for Ipilimumab. Ipilimumab and its successors have treated nearly 1,000,000 (1 million) patients worldwide with many of these patients achieving permanent remission which is essentially the definition of having been cured of cancer. Although these medications do not work in every single case, they have definitively demonstrated to be a miracle medication for hundreds of thousands of people thus far. After completing this revolutionary discovery, Allison was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2018 for his series of discoveries related to T cells and their ability to halt cancer in its progression in perpetuity
The Importance of Facial Symmetry and Beauty Within South Korean Culture
Facial structure is incredibly important in South Korea and professionals are available who specialize physiognomy, the practice of reading facial features the same way palm readers read the lines of the palm to determine ones supposed fortune (e.g. the forehead supposedly represents luck, up to the age of 30, as well as a person’s parents luck and the nose represents oneself in their entirety and can also be indicative of wealth). The facial reading process is a pseudoscience similar to phrenology of the 19th century. The practice of facial queue reading is actually quite commonplace with top employers like Samsung, LG, and Kia using facial reading experts to help decide who the company should hire for various positions. The body is also accounted for in this reading, but on a much smaller scale. Facial readers claim to be able to predict and decode a persons fortune, career, and wealth, not only for the person being examined, but also of their parents. This process is referred to in Korean as “gwansang”
The Danger of Air Pollution Gaining Access to the Brain
The reason pollution has a metallic taste and scent and that it burns the eyes when exposed to it is because the particles of air pollution are tiny enough that they can travel through nerve cells, and gain direct entry to the brain, where the olfactory bulbar meets the frontal cortex, as there is no blood-brain barrier at this point. The body protects itself through the blood-brain barrier, which means that particles within the bloodstream, cannot get directly into the brain. This system has a slight flaw however as the nose acts as a direct conduit for incredibly tiny particles to bypass this security mechanism
Ancient Egyptian Afterlife Beliefs of the Underworld
The ancient Egyptians believed that if a body was properly preserved, the soul would recognize it later on in the underworld allowing for reunification. It was believed that when a king died, they would be united with the sun and became merged into one being, the sun god. On the day that a king passed, it was believed that said king would have to journey into the underworld and pass 12 gates, 1 for each hour of the night. It took purity, magical knowledge, and strength to pass from one level to the next. During the first dynasty pharaohs took with them weapons and treasure as well as food, wine, and beer, and perhaps most surprising, sacrificed servants. Archeologists believe that servants were killed so that they could serve the pharaoh in the afterlife. The servants were buried near the pharaoh so that they would be close by when needed. The pharaoh Djer (pronounced “jer”) was the last pharaoh to practice human sacrifice. Djer had 300 subsidiary burials, many of whom were sacrificed intentionally, but some who are believed to have been family and close friends who had already passed and had their bodies relocated to the site at which Djer was buried
Weight Loss During Periods of Starvation or Fasting
1 in 210 obese men and 1 in 124 obese women will lose weight following restrictive caloric diets. That is a failure rate of 99.5% for men and 99.2% for women. These values are even lower for those suffering from morbid obesity. Studies have demonstrated that 4 days of continuous fasting does not drop basal metabolic rates, rather it increases metabolic rate by approximately 12%. This mechanism is purposely designed by evolution because a metabolism which slows down greatly due to gaps in finding food, would cause lethargy and eventually death to the organism. Animals are programmed to increase metabolic rates during periods of starvation as a way to ensure the body continues to forage and hunt for food. Whilst fasted, the human body first burns glycogen found within the liver, then moves to body fat and muscle, and then finally more essential parts of the body like tissues and organs when all other non-essential resources have been exhausted. Fasting increases weight loss by 6x in comparison to caloric restriction