Showing posts with label madly scientific. Show all posts
Showing posts with label madly scientific. Show all posts

Friday, June 14, 2019

Sisyphean on a Titanic scale

“The only mode of attack is to deal with a heavy decrease in the production of plastics, as opposed to dealing with them after they’ve already been created,” she tells the group. “Your consumer behaviors do not matter. Not on the scale of the problem ... It’s the cessation of production that will make the big-scale changes.” 




*sigh*

Stolen from here.

Monday, April 11, 2016

Iron Man IRL is not really desirable

Popeye the Sailor Man helped popularise the idea that large quantities of iron in your diet is a good thing.

While iron is important to make the red blood cells that carry oxygen and serve as catalyst for vital biochemical reactions in your cells, it is NOT of much help for developing biceps bigger than your head.

But the idea of its importance remain, and you can see most processed food are touted to be enriched in minerals (which is what iron is) and vitamins. Have we gone overboard with our enthusiasm for fortified food?

Have a look.



Judging from the video, I'm thinking that maybe a year's worth of breakfast cereal is sufficient to craft a single nail. That amount would kill ya.

Lucky for you, your liver does a fantastic job of getting rid of undesirable stuff in your body (sadly, not the extra 20 lbs obscuring your six pack) and you can do it all without supplements for detox. Yay for physiology evolution!

Iron toxicity is rare; it is usually seen in people who have to undergo high volume blood transfusion because of anaemia. As a deliberate poison of choice, it takes too long to kill the victim, so murderers should stick to something a little bit more fast acting.

However, there have been cases of children who died from iron toxicity courtesy of multivitamin overdose.

Yep, those cute, tasty, colourful, chewy tablets CAN CAUSE DEATH.

After all, children are small and their juvenile livers are incapable of removing excess iron effectively. Makes it easy to build high concentration of iron in their body enough to kill them. Children with their penchant for sweets and crunchy candy often like multivitamins enough to keep badgering you to give them the tablets.

*That* is why those kiddie multivitamin bottles have WARNING LABELS telling you to KEEP THIS BOTTLE OUT OF CHILDREN'S REACH.

You have been warned.

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Achy breaky heart

Yeah, you now have Miley Cyrus' Dad's lone hit playing on endless loop in your head now. You're welcome.

deadpool,song,stop in the name of love,Super-Lols
Deadpool is a shite.

Poets, lovers and philosophers spent centuries pondering and describing the agony of heart break. Lost love, death and failures, despair and disappointment, all could break a person's heart. The pain is literal; many report a heaviness in the chest, difficulties in breathing and a host of other unpleasant physical symptoms. The thoracic discomfort is so keen that for the longest time people thought that heart break actually affects the pumping organ. Since mental distress is often fueled by the stress hormone cortisol, the elevated blood pressure, constricted blood vessels etc manifest into cardiovascular problems for those susceptible to it.

Lament and dirges are written as paeans of tribute to heartbreaks. Emo kids slash their skin, widows throw themselves on funeral pyres (male wishful fantasy), Johnny Walker consumed by the barrel, entire Afghan poppy fields injected into the blood stream, etc etc was committed because emotional pain can be so overwhelming.

And now scientists show that your heartbreak is all in your head.

Brain signature of emotion-linked pain is uncovered - health - 14 January 2015 - New Scientist

heart,cold

Ehehehe ... *the snicker of the heart-whole*

Thursday, March 13, 2014

Bludgeon me bloody

Have you ever entertained fantasies of being Dexter? No, I'm not talking about the serial killer thing, sheesh. Unless you are a violent sociopath, in which case, keep calm and carry on SUBMERGING HOMICIDAL DESIRES.

The lovable serial killing villain has a day job with the fictitious Miami Metro Police as a blood pattern analyst. So what the heck does that mean? The pictures below shed some light on what Dexter does  in his professional capacity.





 

*All pictures stolen from here, original source is this.

Television shows like the CSI franchise sold us on the idea that forensic science can solve almost anything. To certain extent, science have made crime investigation a lot more reliable than the previous method of beating up a suspect until he/she confessed (though it's still applied in parts of the world where civil liberty is still a laughable dream). As much as the television show has done to encourage interest in science, it has as much to do with real-life laboratory practice as porn is to making love. My friends and I often laugh at the insane timeline portrayed in CSI (collecting specimen, tagging and paperwork, sample prep, sample run AND analysis in a single day? Please.) and we mock at the clean chromatography results (yeah, nice, distinguishable peaks from a swab at the freeway. Riiiiight.). Not to mention the awkward pipetting techniques or the blase centrifuging without balancing the rotor. To have someone comment, "You're doing it the CSI-style, aren't you?" is considered as a gross insult.

Science, however, is not infallible; DNA profiling is not the magic bullet of conviction as evidenced by the inability to distinguish the rapist twin from the innocent one (though this may change). Samples degrade, there are issues of contamination, false evidence, specimen tampering and many more. That said, it doesn't mean that you can call a video iron (refer to comment by Tuan Guru Haji Hadi Awang on Anwar Ibrahim's Chinadoll video) and throw science out of the window. DNA technology has helped to overthrow convictions on people wrongly imprisoned for rape and give names and faces to victims of mass disasters. Surveillance technology helped to map the unfolding of the Boston marathon bombing step-by-step. Biometrics have been invaluable in enhancing security protocols as well as identify presence at a crime scene.

However, as more and more criminals and villains get smarter from watching Discovery Channel and use forensic science against the law enforcement, legal technicality gets a lot more convoluted and conviction remains equal parts of science, good investigation, robust prosecution and a huge dollop of luck.

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Tears in my eyes

I like onions. I love 'em raw with my satay. I love 'em chopped in my pasta sauce. I love 'em caramellised on my burgers.

I just hate peeling and/or chopping and/or slicing them. For obvious reasons, no?

It is good to know that scientists have discovered what is it about them that made me (and loads of other people) cry. However, until they come up with an eye wash or eye drop that contains a powerful inhibitor to that pesky enzyme, I guess we onion peelers/slicers/dicers will have to continue to cry us a river.


Monday, September 9, 2013

Monday, August 19, 2013

Carry on and vomit acid

You think that humans are the pinnacle of the evolution?



Think again.

The vulture has cast iron stomach; no festivities over-eating will lay it low like it did us. We only see acid barfs in Hollywood movies, the vulture lives the reality. We cringe at pooping in our pants; the vultures elevate it to a sophisticated cooling system-cum-sanitation action.

So how awesome are vultures?

Very awesome.

Sadly, their numbers are dwindling, thanks to human activities (OMG, my favourite painkiller is lethal to them!) that damage their eggs, kill them directly and indirectly and other stuff. Zoroastrians and Buddhists practicing sky burials need vultures. Heck, the ecosystem need vultures; they clean up road kills, diseased animals and thus help recycle nutrients effectively.

So the next time you are tempted to say, "Ew!" and wrinkle your nose in disgust at something nature designed that aren't furry and cute, bear in mind that the creature could be more useful to the environment than you could ever be in your entire gas-guzzling, resource-over-exploiting existence.

The evolution ...

... of physics.

Why couldn't I have seen this when I actually had to sit for the exam?



*fumes*


Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Slow start to the new year

Holy God!

I just remembered today that January is almost over and my last post here was last year for Christmas. In my defense, I have just started a new job, has a steep learning curve to keep up to (and slipping down the slippery slope every so often) and has been falling asleep before 11 pm on a daily basis.


When is a girl gonna have time to update her blog? Does anyone read me anyway?

But then I recalled that my aim for starting this blog wasn't to impress anyone with my (lack of) mad writing skills. I did it to have a repository of some kind to store items that crossed my way that are:

1. Interesting
2. Funny
3. Made me think

I noticed that my writing has slowed down since I got me a smartphone after mooching phones off of my Dad and Sis for the past unknown years. Yeah, the first time I forked out a tonne (or what felt like it) of money for a toy that's gonna be rendered obsolete in a few months time. But in the mean time, I have been using the Flipboard app to read interesting stuff from the New Yorker, Chicago Tribune, Al-Jazeera, The Atlantic, BBC World, The Atlantic Wire, Forbes Tech News, Futurity.org, Popular Science, NYT Bits and many more.

So now I am inundated with COOL STUFF TO READ. Well, as long as my battery is still alive, that is; my addiction to Word Feud puts a significant dent on my battery. But the drawback to using the smart phone is that the multitude of access to COOL STUFF TO READ has kinda slowed down my writing; I still haven't figured out how to update my blog using the phone. On the other hand, typing is darn slow (*shakes fist at touchscreen keyboard*) and redolent with spelling errors (no, auto correct doesn't always help).

Anyhoo, I am promising myself (hah!) that I shall work harder on writing on this blog (and the others that I have, hehehe) and to post something at least once a week. We'll see how that goes.

Well, inaugural post for the year is of course sharing prurient stories (which are always the best kind) with a scientific bend. The first of which is good news for men who drink green tea and take the little blue pills to keep their soldier upright. A team of Japanese researchers from Kyushu University have found that the healthily arousing cocktail is beneficial to suppress cancer or to promote the effectiveness of chemotherapy on cancer. Of course this exciting experiment has been conducted only on rodents at the moment, but I am sure there won't be a lack for human volunteers.

And other non-Homo sapiens volunteers.
(Stolen from http://morgueradio.blogspot.com/2009/06/lol-cats-and-immortal.html)

So far so good, right? Hehehe. Not quite.

Bad news for Internet porn aficionados is next. Apparently, viewing Internet porn  has serious effects on your working memory. So if you have been missing appointments, forgetting your significant other's birthday (how could you with Facebook?) and finding it difficult to concentrate on work, take a long, hard look at your Internet porn habits. Granted, the study was only on a small number of men (n=28, all claiming to be straight), but it is highly likely that the same outcome will be seen in females as well as non-heterosexual males AND females.

Spanking the monkey wasn't an experimental parameter in the study.
(Stolen from http://www.inquisitr.com/wp-content/omg-masturbating-lolcat.jpg)

The Internet has helped democratise pornography. Previously, it can only be obtained furtively from shady stores and if you are from countries that heavily censors the reading and viewing material of its citizens, great pains are involved (aided and abetted by your local friendly DVD pirates). But the cyber revolution has helped everyone with a computer and a modem to access a plethora of erotic materials in various forms and genre. Gone are the days where a flash of flesh is enough to make a sex-obsessed person's (this goes for males and females of all ages, ok? No ageism) day, it seems that vanilla sex is no longer good enough for those who are actually getting some. Porn addiction has been changing expectations of both partners and not for the better. Oh dear. There are more scientific studies out there on this issue and not just a Cosmopolitan survey, but you can Google those up on your own free time.

Perhaps this new year (with the upcoming lunar new year) we should resolve to clean up our Internet habits, should this pertains to us. Ahem.

*whistles and looks innocent*

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Natural gas explosion

I recently wrote a post about surgical fire, an event that could happen often enough that it merits a good few pages on the FDA's website (check 'em out, you don't need to sleep, do ya?). I thought, there goes the once a month (or maybe longer) medical scare I dish out to the lovely people who visits my blog (You love me! You really love me!  ♥♥♥!).

But I came across this and just had to share. I mean, colonoscopy (where a tube with a camera attached gets shoved up where the sun don't shine so the doctor can have a good look at the condition of your intestine) has become one of the most widely performed medical procedure, thanks to greater appreciation of how hard it is to survive cancer in your colon if you don't get rid of it. Colonoscopy is also performed when you see blood before flushing your daily load (I ain't talking about the ladies' monthly haemorrhage, aye?), you have problems with your bowel movement (too much, too little, too rare, too often, spurred by the food you love to hate) or you are so anaemic that Edward passed you over for not being nutritious enough.
Edward Cullen: a centenarian who still goes to high school. Cos high school is so *hard*, you know.

As much as you enjoy letting a loud one rip in the privacy of your loo, or releasing a silent killer in a crowded elevator, intestinal gas is not something to take lightly when the surgeon is trying to remove a nasty polyp using laser.

Because it could be a blast.

And not in a good way.



Monday, October 8, 2012

Hearts on fire

You would think that the line above is only something out of a torrid romance novel, right? But what if I tell you that it can happen to you while you are lying helpless and paralysed?

Yup, I'm talking about surgical fire.

What's that you ask me? It's fire that can happen while you are under the knife for something as innocuous as an appendectomy (removal of that little caecum that nobody knows the raison d'etre of which that is inflamed, causing you pain and potentially fatal) or even something as scary as a quadruple bypass. The operation theatre is a ripe fire hazard what with the easy availability of fuel (e.g. surgical drapes, clothes, alcohol-based prep, the patient [yes, that's right. Spontaneous human combustion nightmare much? Hahaha!]), ignition source (you don't need a smoker to light up, just the surgeon happily working with lasers and lights and whatnot) as well as an oxidiser (i.e. oxygen for you to keep breathing while being sedated).


Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Fire in the surgery may be minor (no one got singed, nothing got damaged) or even catastrophical (someone - usually the patient - has minor to third degree burns). If you want the gory stuff, there's this magical thing called Google. You can look it up!

However, I am not here to be a fear-monger and make you cancel that life-saving surgery you just scheduled. It's just a little educational tip for you to know that there are more risks to medical procedures than overdosing on your painkiller and permanently damaging your kidneys or suffering another heart attack when your insurance company won't cough up for the much needed quadruple bypass.

Surgical fires are preventable. There are training for the medical personnel and information made available to patients. So please ask questions before you go for ANY medical procedures and make sure that your health care providers are able to educate you on the risks

If I gave you another medical phobia, well, too bad.

*insert evil laughter*


Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Science does it


All that noise for a booty call.


Raindrops keep falling on my head ...


Tattoo the cheat sheet where you can see it, dummy.


E. coli evolution art. Those microbiologists sure have a lot of time on their hands, don't they?


Sneaky fluorine.


Let me endocytose, I mean, embrace you, darling.


Dirty war

War is a dirty business. And this Russian invention means that it's gonna get dirtier.

But don't worry, it's not going to involve things like depleted uranium. More like ... a diarrhoeal barrage.

*snerk*


Thursday, July 12, 2012

Excitement!

I love her contagious enthusiasm: I will never look at a penis (mammalian or otherwise) the same way again.



I admire how she could discuss something titillating in a funny and creepy way.

(Undercut because pretty NSFW)

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

The ties that bind

Pregnancy is a miraculous thing. The human body is designed to expel whatever that is strange or foreign to it; that's the basis of our immune system (yes, our bodies are racist, get over it). But here we have an infestation of an organism (or even more) with half of its genetic material coming from a foreign source, and the woman's body adapts to nourishing and protecting it (except in rare cases).

When the time comes, the foreign organism makes the host's body expel it, with a great deal of labour (ahem) and pain. Et voila! A baby is now born. A helpless, piteously mewling little thing that is completely dependent on the former host (if lucky, and host's partner) for everything from food, water to shelter. And for the most part, the host is supportive and protective.

O_____o

I mean, this organism has made your life difficult for the best part of nine months,  takes it's own sweet time to get out with much effort and discomfort on your part, and you welcome it with open arms? Superficially, it doesn't sound logical to grow attached and wanting ferociously to take care of what is, essentially, a parasite on your physiological and material resources.

But you do and that is thanks to the bonding molecule, oxytocin. No, not superglue.

Oxytocin doesn't just make a mother tend to be more nurturing (particularly breastfeeding mum), but it can also be stimulated in others. Visual cues such as a baby's cuteness, is thought to elicit the hypothalamus to produce oxytocin, making us want to coo and cuddle the adorkable little things.

To wit, my current source of oxytocin tsunami.

 Stolen with permission from my cousin
 
Escape artist have escaped the swaddling.  
  Dinner with mummy, post bath.








Tea time with big sister. 

 Oxytocin has also been implicated in development of trust and relationship-building behaviour. It appears that oxytocin starvation leads to impaired moral conduct. Could we one day modulate antisocial behaviour with judicious application of oxytocin?

Who knows?

But it would be great to find out, don't you think?

Monday, June 4, 2012

Human behaviour



As eloquently elucidated by Bjork.

I just discovered that what I thought is my pretty decent gaydar is likely to be accurate only about 60% of the time. I am not sure what good this would be except to make sure that I don't hit on guys who have "Daddy" fantasies rather than James Bond and Pussy Galore role plays.

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Scent for trouble

Limburger cheese is now helping to eradicate malaria. But perhaps not the way you would think so.



Let your curiosity guide you to look for answers in unlikely places!


Thursday, May 24, 2012

Keep the faith!

Men, if you want to reduce the risk of dying from a heart attack, stay faithful to your wife.

The numbers don't lie.