Miscellaneous
Being a Decent Person
On April 23 1910, Roosevelt delivered a speech on “Citizenship in a Republic” at the Sorbonne in Paris. In the speech, he spoke about his family history, war, human and property rights, and the responsibilities of citizenship. “The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer,” he said. “A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticize work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life’s realities—all these are marks, not … of superiority but of weakness.” (McCarthy, 2015, updated 2020)
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Hormone Disrupters
The 8 glands in our endocrine systems produce and release hormones that regulate metabolism, growth, development, tissue function, sleep, reproduction, sexual function and mood. Almost every cell in the body is affected by the endocrine system. A report issued in March 2013 jointly by the United Nations and the World Health Organization states that “Endocrine Disrupters (EDC’s) are a global threat to fertility and the environment.”
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Inherited Traits
We all inherit a variety of traits from our families – height, weight, eye color, intelligence, etc. And we also wonder if things such as our weight, digestive issues, skin problems, tendency toward depression and anxiety, alcoholism, cancer might also be genetically set and there’s nothing we can do about any of it.
The good news is that this seems not to be true. Now that scientists are discovering the important role our gut microbiota plays in our health, inheriting a tendency for a disease seems to carry less importance.
Japan
The archipelago that is Japan is made up of 2,456 islands. Its varied climate ranges from cool temperate in the north to tropical in the south. Honshu (where Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe and Hiroshima are located) is the largest. Hokaido, (where Saporo is located), to the north of Honshu, is the second largest. Shikoku, between the Inland Sea to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south, is the smallest. Kyushu (where Nagasaki is located), to the south of Shikoku, is the 3rd largest.
Lymph System
The lymphatic system transports nutrients to the cells and collects the cells’ waste products. It is made up of lymph fluid, lymph nodes, bone marrow, organs (thymus, spleen, appendix, tonsils, adenoids), lymphoid tissue in the small and large intestines (called Peyer’s patches), capillaries, vessels, and ducts that transport lymph and fluids secreted by glands through the body. This system is responsible for removing cellular debris, large proteins, foreign bodies, pathogenic agents (bacteria, viruses, toxins, cancer cells, etc), and excess fluid from the extracellular spaces.
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Medical Research - Can YouTrust it?
A number of books critical of the pharmaceutical industry have recently been published, but none has been an exposé written by a senior executive of one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies. The Whistleblower is at once an unmasking of how corporations take care of malcontents and a gripping story of one man’s fight to maintain his family and his sanity. Starting in 2003, the book details the illegal, even criminal business practices the author witnessed at his corporation, as well as his crusade to legalize the reimportation of drugs. It also explains how in this post-Enron world whistle-blowers can’t simply be fired, and what the author’s corporation did to coerce and silence him.
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Quorum Sensing
Did you know bacteria ‘talk’ with one another? Although bacteria are primitive single-celled organisms, their ability to use chemical signals to communicate with each allows them to synchronize their behavior and act together much like large, multi-cellular organisms. This communication process allows pathogenic bacteria to know when they have amassed enough troops to mount a successful attack to infect a plant or animal, including humans.
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Surgery
Do you remember being told that we don’t need our appendixes, that they’re vestiges left over from when early humans needed them to digest fibrous materials like tree bark? Well, not surprisingly, it turns out ALL our organs are useful – if not necessary – to the well-being of the body. Nothing is superfluous.
The appendix is a small, finger-shaped pouch branching off the cecum, where the small and large intestines join. The cecum is the start of the large intestine. It’s generally located in the lower right portion of the abdomen.
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Additional Miscellaneous Posts
It’s about the photographic work of South Korean artist Seung-Hwan Oh, who fuses art with microbiology. He immerses his developed film portraits of people in various collections of microbes and lets them sit in this bath for weeks – sometimes months or years. The microbes slowly eat away at the silver halide particles in the medium format positive film’s emulsion, destabilizing the silver halides and causing the dyes to run and change color.
