Adhoc Science Flashcards
There is 20 times more oxygen locked up inside iron ore deep in the earth (25 miles deep) than there is in our atmosphere.
Octopus.
Has 3 hearts but no bones.
Changes body texture with tiny muscles. Makes it look like a bunch of warts to blend in with surroundings. Also changes colors to blend in.
600 million years of distance from us in evolution.
Closest common ancestor shared with humans was a Flatworm nearly a half billion years ago.
Evolved on its own. Developed eyes etc. On its own path separate from the animal kingdom.
Octopus.
Has three hearts but no bones.
Changes texture with tiny muscles and colors to blend with surroundings.
Closest common ancestor shared with humans is a Flatworm nearly a half billion years ago.
Analogy human life with a match.
Most people do not know what life is. Religions give the false hopes that they are going to step out of this life only to begin another eternal life of heaven and everlasting bliss. This is all superstition. There are zero facts of this. It is all wishful thinking.
So why do people flock to religions and believe in this fantasy?
Sigmund Freud explains, “Why are people so blind and stupid? Because they demand illusions! They constantly give what is unreal precedence over what is real.”
It’s the same mindset the 911 hijackers had. They all were convinced they would wake up in paradise with 19 virgins each.
Our existence, our life is nothing more than a chemical reaction. It is similar to a fire.
Before we are born, we simply do not exist. We are created via a biological chemical reaction.
A fire from a match is also created via chemical reaction. Before the match is struck, there is no fire. The fire doesn’t exist.
When the match is struck, suddenly there is a chemical reaction and there is fire.
The fire can be tiny on a match or it can become a giant California fire causing tens of thousands to flee their burning homes like in 2020.
Back with the tiny match fire, we blow the match out and the fire disappears. Where did it go?
Did it go to fire heaven? NO. It simply does not exist anymore. And it NEVER will exist again.
Will it come back later as a future fire? NO. Each fire is unique just like each person is unique. With all the billions of people alive and the 100 billion people who lived in the past, each person is unique. No two people are the same. Not even identical twins that come from the same sperm and the very same egg.
So there you have it. You didn’t exist. You live and die, then you do not exist ever again.
“Religion started when a con man met a fool.” Voltaire.
Climate change.
Humanity is now spewing more than 110 tons of global warming pollution every day. The extra heat being trapped is equivalent to dropping 500,000 Hiroshima class atomic bombs on earth everyday.
The past five years have been the hottest in weather recorded history.
By the year 2050, much of the East coast will have moved in a few miles. That will take trillions of dollars in real estate off the board.
Ref: Time sept. 23, 2019.
Science has proven itself to be correct in almost all cases at least thousands of them.
The common element in modern science, regardless of the specific field or a particular method being used, is the critical scrutiny of the claims. It is this progress of tough, sustain scrutiny that works to ensure that faulty claims are rejected.
A scientific claim is never excepted as true until it is going through a lengthy process of examination by fellow scientist. This process begins when scientist discussed her data and preliminary conclusions. Then the claim is shopped around at conferences and workshops. This may result in the collection of additional data or revision of the pulmonary interpretation. Then the scientist writes up the results and sends the preliminary write up up to his colleagues.
Until this point, scientific feedback is typically fairly friendly. But the next step is different: once the paper is ready, it is submitted to a scientific journal, where things get a whole lot tougher.
Editors deliberately send scientific papers to people who are not friends or colleagues of the authors, and the job of the reviewer is to find errors or other inadequacies. We call this process peer review because reviewers are scientific peers, that is they are experts in the same field but they act in the role of a superior who has both the right and obligation to find fault.
It is only after the reviewers and the editor are satisfied that any problems have been fixed, that the paper was excepted for publication and enters the body of science.
A key aspect of scientific judgment is that it is done collectively. It’s a cliché that two heads are better than one; in modern science, no claim gets excepted until it has been vetted by dozens if not hundreds of heads.
Ref: Time Nov. 18, 2019
DNA. hundreds of criminal charges have been overturned by DNA evidence. 70% of DNA overturned cases were “eyewitness“ testimony. Source: The mind explained on Netflix.
humans’ use of fire to cook food prompted our transition as a species into being big-bodied, and even bigger-brained. As Carmody discovered in her PhD, cooking both animal and plant food CHANGES the ___CHEMICAL ___ structure and makes nutrients available to the body that were inaccessible when it was raw. The same is true of cooking’s effect on the nutrients available to the microbiota. Not only that, but heat destroys some of plants’ natural defensive chemicals that might otherwise kill beneficial microbes in the gut.
Ref: 10% human p. 198.
Leaky gut: What is it, and what does it mean for you?
POSTED SEPTEMBER 22, 2017, 6:30 AM , UPDATED OCTOBER 22, 2019, 3:45 PM
Marcelo Campos, MDMarcelo Campos, MD
Contributor
Before the medical community had better understanding of the mechanisms that cause disease, doctors believed certain ailments could originate from imbalances in the stomach. This was called hypochondriasis. (In Ancient Greek, hypochondrium refers to the upper part of the abdomen, the region between the breastbone and the navel.) This concept was rejected as science evolved and, for example, we could look under a microscope and see bacteria, parasites, and viruses. The meaning of the term changed, and for many years, doctors used the word “hypochondriac” to describe a person who has a persistent, often inexplicable fear of having a serious medical illness.
But what if this ancient concept of illnesses originating in the gut actually holds some truth? Could some of the chronic diseases our society faces today actually be associated with a dysfunctional gastrointestinal system?
The expression “leaky gut” is getting a lot of attention in medical blogs and social media lately, but don’t be surprised if your doctor does not recognize this term. Leaky gut, also called increased intestinal permeability, is somewhat new and most of the research occurs in basic sciences. However, there is growing interest to develop medications that may be used in patients to combat the effects of this problem.
What exactly is leaky gut?
Inside our bellies, we have an extensive intestinal lining covering more than 4,000 SQUARE FEET OF SURFACE AREA!!! When working properly, it forms a tight barrier that controls what gets absorbed into the bloodstream. An unhealthy gut lining may have large cracks or holes, allowing partially digested food, toxins, and bugs to penetrate the tissues beneath it. This may trigger inflammation and changes in the gut flora (normal bacteria) that could lead to problems within the digestive tract and beyond. The research world is booming today with studies showing that modifications in the intestinal bacteria and inflammation may play a role in the development of several common chronic diseases.
Who gets a leaky gut (and why)?
We all have some degree of leaky gut, as this barrier is not completely impenetrable (and isn’t supposed to be!). Some of us may have a genetic predisposition and may be more sensitive to changes in the digestive system, but our DNA is not the only one to blame. Modern life may actually be the main driver of gut inflammation. There is emerging evidence that the standard American diet, which is low in fiber and high in sugar and saturated fats, may initiate this process. Heavy alcohol use and stress also seem to disrupt this balance.
We already know that increased intestinal permeability plays a role in certain gastrointestinal conditions such as celiac disease, Crohn’s disease, and irritable bowel syndrome. The biggest question is whether or not a leaky gut may cause problems elsewhere in the body. Some studies show that leaky gut may be associated with other autoimmune diseases (lupus, type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis), chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, arthritis, allergies, asthma, acne, obesity, and even mental illness. However, we do not yet have clinical studies in humans showing such a cause and effect.
A path toward a healthier gut
Although it is unusual to hear the term “increased intestinal permeability” in most doctors’ offices, alternative and integrative medicine practitioners have worked on gut healing as an initial step to treat chronic diseases for decades. Other cultures around the world often recommend specific diets to make people feel better. Even in the United States, it is common to see people changing their diets after getting sick. A common initial step some practitioners take is to remove foods that can be inflammatory and could promote changes in the gut flora. Among the most common are alcohol, processed foods, certain medications, and any foods that may cause allergies or sensitivities. In my practice, I often see patients improve significantly when they start eating a healthier diet.
Controversy still exists on whether leaky gut causes the development of diseases outside the gastrointestinal tract in humans. However, it is always a good idea to eat a nutritious, unprocessed diet that includes foods that help quell inflammation (and avoids foods known to trigger inflammation), which may, at least in theory, help to rebuild the gut lining and bring more balance to the gut flora. This recipe could make you feel better, without any side effects. It is definitely worth a try.
Bacteria talks with each other and also turns on and off specific genes to accomplish their task!!!
This is incredible stuff!
Ref: 10% human p. 134.
In Dawkins book, the selfish gene, he states that we are survival machines for bacteria. One survival machine will exploit another survival machine if it’s attack is considered “WORTH IT” for profit considering the consequences.
This can be for food, a mate, or you name it.
The same with a virus, like corona virus. It’s just exploiting looking for a survival machine to make its home and it can thrive there. (From book better angels)
“Natural selection favors genes that control their survival machines in such a way that they make the best use of their environment. This includes making the best use of other survival machines, both of the same and of different species.”
Anyone who has ever seen a hawk tear apart a starling, a swarm of biting insects torment a horse, or the AIDS virus slowly kill a man has firsthand acquaintance with the ways that survival machines callously exploit other survival machines.— Better Angels p 32.
Archaeologists tell us that humans lived in a state of anarchy until the emergence of civilization some five thousand years ago. — Better Angels p 34.
Thalidomide first entered the German market in 1957 as an over-the-counter remedy, based on the maker’s safety claims. They advertised their product as “completely safe” for everyone, including mother and child, “even during pregnancy,” as its developers “could not find a dose high enough to kill a rat.” By 1960, thalidomide was marketed in 46 countries, with sales nearly matching those of aspirin.
Around this time, Australian obstetrician Dr. William McBride discovered that the drug also alleviated morning sickness. He started recommending this off-label use of the drug to his pregnant patients, setting a worldwide trend. Prescribing drugs for off-label purposes, or purposes other than those for which the drug was approved, is still a common practice in many countries today, including the U.S. In many cases, these off-label prescriptions are very effective, such as prescribing depression medication to treat chronic pain.
However, this practice can also lead to a more prevalent occurrence of unanticipated, and often serious, adverse drug reactions. In 1961, McBride began to associate this so-called harmless compound with severe birth defects in the babies he delivered. The drug interfered with the babies’ normal development, causing many of them to be born with phocomelia, resulting in shortened, absent, or flipper-like limbs. A German newspaper soon reported 161 babies were adversely affected by thalidomide, leading the makers of the drug—who had ignored reports of the birth defects associated with the it—to finally stop distribution within Germany. Other countries followed suit and, by March of 1962, the drug was banned in most countries where it was previously sold.
In July of 1962, president John F. Kennedy and the American press began praising their heroine, FDA inspector Frances Kelsey, who prevented the drug’s approval within the United States despite pressure from the pharmaceutical company and FDA supervisors. Kelsey felt the application for thalidomide contained incomplete and insufficient data on its safety and effectiveness. Among her concerns was the lack of data indicating whether the drug could cross the placenta, which provides nourishment to a developing fetus.
Life on Earth began 46 million centuries ago. – Factoid humans
Fish crawled out of the sea about 3.5 million centuries ago!
We are a 90% DNA match with a squirrel yet we look nothing like one.
If we would reverse the tape, completely different life forms would be here instead of man. There is no way all the exact mating would occur that happened in human history.
Global pandemic – odds are 16 to 1 it will happen.
Pandemic 1918. 675,000 Americans died. 50 to 100 million died worldwide.
Microbial. Microbiota–the micro organisms of a particular site, habitat.
Mitochondria – My con Dre ah – Converts our food into energy.
Erectile dysfunction is the consistent inability to achieve or maintain an erection that is adequate for successful and sustained vaginal penetration. ED is not a part of healthy aging. Although the incidence of ED increases with age, it is difficult to gauge the real prevalence of ED due to difficulty in getting confirmation from a lot of men.2 Almost 50% of men over age 40 years have some sort of sexual dysfunction, but only one-third of them report ED. By 70 years of age, two-thirds of men have ED. ED can be a result of physiologic changes of aging; cultural, social, and psychological factors; health status including physical limitations, chronic diseases, and medications; or a combination thereof. About one-fifth of ED cases can be due to psychological factors such as stress, depression, anxiety, or apathy. Other psychogenic causes include relationship conflicts, performance anxiety, childhood sexual abuse, fear of sexually transmitted diseases, and widower’s syndrome. Chronic medical conditions such as vascular, neurological, or other systemic diseases can account for as much as three-fourths of ED cases. Vascular disease is the most common cause of ED in older men, the risk for which increases with smoking, hypertension, atherosclerotic disease, hyperlipidemia, and diabetes. ED is a marker of peripheral vascular disease portending major vascular events such as stroke or myocardial infarction. Neurological causes including stroke, spinal cord injuries, and Parkinson’s disease are the next most common causes of ED.__ Consultant360.com
By Dahr Jamail, Excerpt from Truthout, 16 May 2017. Coral Reefs Could All Die Off by 2050 .
Ref: Catholicclimatemovement.global.
Corals provide 50% of the Earth’s oxygen. Corals plus the rest of ocean plants provide 85% of the world’s oxygen.
The oceans are dying because of man. Overfishing, killing whales and ocean predators, global warming, plastics water pollution, etc.
MN: You think the corona virus pandemic is bad, just think of what life will be like when the Earth runs out of oxygen! People lying on the ground gasping for air. BN February 2021.
Reference 60 minutes episode on February 14, 2021. Bill Gates says the world will add 2.5 trillion square ft.² of buildings by the year 2060. 16% of carbon emissions is from concrete!
Bill Gates said by 2060 this rate of building will be like building New York City every month for the next 40 years!
Concrete is second only to exhaust omissions by automobiles for carbon emissions.
Bill Gates has donated over $1 billion to help fight emissions and save the planet. He also has spent $1 billion or more on preserving plants and vegetable seeds in the ice caves of the Arctic.
Complications (MN: CORONAVIRUS) Ref: Mayo Clinic. MYOCARDITIS
Severe myocarditis can permanently damage your heart muscle, possibly causing:
Heart failure. Untreated, myocarditis can damage your heart’s muscle so that it can’t pump blood effectively. In severe cases, myocarditis-related heart failure may require a ventricular assist device or a heart transplant.
Heart attack or stroke. If your heart’s muscle is injured and can’t pump blood, the blood that pools in your heart can form clots. If a clot blocks one of your heart’s arteries, you can have a heart attack. If a blood clot in your heart travels to an artery leading to your brain before becoming lodged, you can have a stroke.
Rapid or abnormal heart rhythms (arrhythmias). Damage to your heart muscle can cause arrhythmias.
Sudden cardiac death. Certain serious arrhythmias can cause your heart to stop beating (sudden cardiac arrest). It’s fatal if not treated immediately.
Ref: heart.org for coronavirus below. Jan. 2021.
Coronavirus: ongoing myocardial inflammation a result of coronavirus in 60% of recovered people. With 78% ongoing abnormalities!
Another JAMA Cardiology study used cardiac MRIs on 100 people who had recovered from COVID-19 within the past two to three months.
Researchers found abnormalities in the hearts of 78% recovered patients and “ongoing myocardial inflammation” in 60%. The same study found high levels of the blood enzyme troponin, an indicator of heart damage, in 76% of patients tested, although heart function appeared to be generally preserved. Most patients in the study had not required hospitalization.
“There’s a group of people who seem to be more affected from the cardiac point of view,” said Dr. Mina Chung, a cardiologist and professor of medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University.
Not like a camera Many people think that the brain’s visual system works like a camera, simply collecting and processing the raw visual data provided by our outside world. Seeing seems effortless, 100 percent trustworthy, capable of providing a completely accurate representation of what’s actually out there. Though we are used to thinking about our vision in such reliable terms, nothing in that last sentence is true. The process is extremely complex, seldom provides a completely accurate representation of our world, and is not 100 percent trustworthy. We actually experience our visual environment as a fully analyzed opinion about what the brain thinks is out there. It starts with the retina, vying for the title of amateur filmmaker. We used to think the retina acted like a passive antenna in an automated process: First, light (groups of photons, actually) enters our eyes, where it is bent by the cornea, the fluid-filled structure upon which your contacts normally sit. The light travels through the eye to the lens, where it is focused and allowed to strike the retina, a group of neurons in the back of the eye. The collision generates electric signals in these cells, and the signals travel to the back of the brain via the optic nerve for analysis. But, it turns out, the retina isn’t just waving through a series of unaltered electric signals. Instead, specialized nerve cells deep within the retina interpret the patterns of photons, assemble the patterns into a collection of “movies,” and then send these movies for analysis. The retina, it seems, is filled with teams of tiny Martin Scorseses. These movies are called tracks. Tracks are coherent, though partial, abstractions of specific features of the visual environment. One track appears to transmit a movie you might call Eye Meets Wireframe. It is composed only of outlines, or edges. Another makes a film you might call Eye Meets Motion, processing only the movement of an object (and often in a specific direction). Another makes Eye Meets Shadows. There may be as many as 12 of these tracks operating simultaneously in the retina, sending off interpretations of specific features of the visual field.
Brain Rule #9. Visual processing doesn’t just assist in the perception of our world. It dominates the perception of our world.
WE DO NOT SEE with our eyes. We see with our brains.
From the brain rules, p. 184.
Rivers of visual information These movies now stream out from the optic nerve, one from each eye, and flood the thalamus, that egg-shaped structure in the middle of our heads that serves as a central distribution center for most of our senses. If these streams of visual information can be likened to a large, flowing river, the thalamus can be likened to the beginning of a delta. Once the information leaves the thalamus, it travels along increasingly divided neural streams. Eventually, thousands of small neural tributaries will be carrying parts of the original information to the back of the brain. (Put your hand on the back of your head. Your palm is now less than a quarter of an inch away from the visual cortex, the area of the brain that is currently allowing you to see these words.) The information drains into a large complex region within the occipital lobe called the visual cortex.
Once they reach the visual cortex, the various streams flow into specific parcels. There are thousands of lots, and their functions are almost ridiculously specific. Some parcels respond only to diagonal lines, and only to specific diagonal lines (one region responds to a line tilted at 40 degrees, but not to one tilted at 45 degrees). Some process only the color information in a visual signal; others, only edges; others, only motion. This means you can damage the region of the brain in charge of, say, motion, and get an extraordinary deficit. You’d be able to see and identify objects quite clearly, but not tell whether the objects are stationary or moving. This happened to a patient known to scientists as L.M. It’s called cerebral akinetopsia, or motion blindness. L.M. perceives a moving object as a progressive series of still snapshots—like looking at an animator’s drawings one page at a time. This can be quite hazardous. When L.M. crosses the street, for example, she can see a car, but she does not know if it is actually coming at her. L.M.’s experience illustrates just how modular visual processing is. And if that was the end of the visual story, we might perceive our world with the unorganized fury of a Picasso painting—a nightmare of fragmented objects, untethered colors, and strange, unboundaried edges. But that’s not what happens, because of what takes place next. The brain reassembles the scattered information. Individual tributaries start recombining, merging, pooling their information, comparing their findings, and then sending their analysis to higher brain centers. The centers gather these hopelessly intricate calculations from many sources and integrate them at an even more sophisticated level. Higher and higher they go, eventually collapsing into two giant streams of processed information.
Blind spots There is a region in the eye where retinal neurons, carrying visual information, gather together to begin their journey into deep brain tissue. That gathering place is called the optic disk. It’s a strange region, because there are no cells that can perceive sight in the optic disk. It is blind in that region—and you are, too. It is called the blind spot, and each eye has one. Do you ever see two black holes in your field of view that won’t go away? That’s what you should see. But your brain plays a trick on you. As the signals are sent to your visual cortex, the brain detects the presence of the holes, examines the visual information 360 degrees around the spot, and calculates what is most likely to be there. Then, like a paint program on a computer, it fills in the spot. The process is called “filling in,” but it could be called “faking it.” Some scientists believe that the brain simply ignores the lack of visual information, rather than calculating what’s missing. Either way, you’re not getting a 100 percent accurate representation.
Millions of people suffer from a phenomenon known as the Charles Bonnet Syndrome. Most who have it keep their mouth shut, however, and perhaps with good reason. People with Charles Bonnet Syndrome see things that aren’t there. Everyday household objects suddenly pop into view. Or unfamiliar people unexpectedly appear next to them at dinner. Neurologist Vilayanur Ramachandran describes the case of a woman who suddenly—and delightfully—observed two tiny policemen scurrying across the floor, guiding an even smaller criminal to a matchbox-size van. Other patients have reported angels, goats in overcoats, clowns, Roman chariots, and elves. The illusions often occur in the evening and are usually quite benign. Charles Bonnet Syndrome is common among the elderly, especially among those who previously suffered damage somewhere along their visual pathway. Interestingly, almost all of the patients know that the hallucinations aren’t real.
Far from being a camera, the brain is actively deconstructing the information given to it by the eyes, pushing it through a series of filters, and then reconstructing what it thinks it sees. Or what it thinks you should see. All of this happens in about the time it takes to blink your eyes. Indeed, it is happening right now. If you think the brain has to devote to vision a lot of its precious thinking resources, you are right on the money. Visual processing takes up about half of everything your brain does, in fact. This helps explain why professional wine tasters toss aside their taste buds so quickly in the thrall of visual stimuli. And why vision affects other senses, too.
The pictorial superiority effect is truly Olympian. Tests performed years ago showed that people could remember more than 2,500 pictures with at least 90 percent accuracy several days later, even though subjects saw each picture for about 10 seconds. (This is recognition memory, not working memory, at work.) Accuracy rates a year later still hovered around 63 percent. In one paper, picture recognition information was reliably retrieved several decades later. Sprinkled throughout these experiments were comparisons with text or oral presentations. The usual result was “picture demolishes them both.” It still does. Text and oral presentations are not just less efficient than pictures for retaining certain types of information; they are far less efficient. If information is presented orally, people remember about 10 percent, tested 72 hours after exposure. That figure goes up to 65 percent if you add a picture. Why is text less efficient than pictures? Because, it turns out, the brain sees words as lots of tiny pictures. A word is unreadable unless the brain can separately identify simple features in the letters. Instead of words, we see complex little art-museum masterpieces, with hundreds of features embedded in hundreds of letters. Like an art junkie, our brains linger at each feature, rigorously and independently verifying it before moving to the next. So reading creates a bottleneck in comprehension. To our cortex, surprisingly, there is no such thing as words. That’s not necessarily obvious. After all, the brain is as adaptive as Silly Putty. Given your years of reading books, writing email, and sending text messages, you might think your visual system could be trained to recognize common words without slogging through tedious additional steps of letter-feature recognition. But that is not what happens. No matter how experienced a reader you become, your brain will still stop and ponder the individual features of each letter you read—and do so until you can’t read anymore. By now, you can probably guess why this might be. Our evolutionary history was never dominated by books or email or text messages. It was dominated by trees and saber-toothed tigers. Vision means so much to us because most of the major threats to our lives in the savannah were apprehended visually.
End of brain rules vision.
