Science Journal – How indecisive and confused peoples’ brain are different

Why so many people can’t make their
mind in pressure? Why few people are so confused and indecisive? Why is it so
hard for few people to decide on simple matter like whether to trust someone or
not? What makes them so indecisive and confused?

It is not actually their fault! It
is fault of the way the way their brain function. But on a second thought, that
way of function was developed because long lasting thinking patterns. But what
exactly wrong with indecisive people?

Lets learn the learn the reason behind indecisiveness,
watch

Science Journal – Guidebook: Cell –Part II – Prokaryotic Vs Eukaryotic cell Explained

Eu means true and karyon means nucleus.

And bacteria have prokaryotic cell. Pro means primitive

So, here is the main difference.

Our cells have organized nucleus with nucleus membrane, but
bacteria don’t.

Prokaryotic Cells have organelles with dual layer membrane
like mitochondria, lisosome, endoplasmic reticulum, Golgi apparatus etc, but
prokaryotes don’t.

Eukaryotic cell has 80S type ribosomes and prokaryotic cells
have 70S type.

For more details and explanation, watch the video.

The Deadliest for Human - Which sea creatures caused highest number of Human Deaths

Ocean is full of ferocious predators, venomous animals which can kill a human within few minutes. But we only need to worry about those which actually kill people.

This article documented only few animals which are most dangerous to us and caused many fatalities or serious injuries. Sea snakes are not included as they rarely cause any fatality as they are not that aggressive towards human. But, they are deadly, no doubt. One drop of Beaked sea snake venom can kill 3 men and a mature beaked sea snake has enough to kill 39 adults.

And killer whale, which many people think as one of deadliest predator, is not so deadly for us. Study shows that human flesh doesn’t activate their taste buds, means they are not at all interested in killing you unless you are bothering him with a camera crew.

Here are the dangerous creatures which are really deadliest to human.

Stingrays:

These are one of the most common groups of fish responsible for human envenomations; largely because many rays bury themselves on the seafloor and people unintentionally step on them. Stingray venom is generally cardiotoxic and not deadly. In fact, hot water can destroy the venom. The venom composed of the enzymes 5-nucleotidase and phosphodiesterase and the neurotransmitter serotonin. Serotonine

causes severe smooth muscle contract and enzymes causes tissue death. But, if not treated immediately and venom enters abdomen or chest cavity, it causes tissue death in vital organs. Besides, sharp barbs on the spine often cause serious injuries. The sharp tip enters flesh smoothly and then tears every muscle in its way out. So, strike of its spine can cause severe tissue damage, bleeding and even death without using a drop of venom.

Stone fish:

It is considered one of the most venomous fishes. In fact, few people gave it title of most venomous fish. As they look like stone, people often step on them. It has stout dorsal fin spines which inject the venom. It generally delivers neurotoxin which acts on nervous system. A sting from one of these fish can cause severe pain, rapid swelling, tissue death, muscle weakness, temporary paralysis, and in few cases, death.

Pufferfish:

It is actually more venomous than stone fish but it rarely come in contact of human. It  delivers a very powerful neurotoxin known as tedrodotoxin. It has no antivenom. It will inhibit neural transmission leading to weakness, paralysis, respiratory failure, and death.

Cone snail:

This colorful marine snail has the fastest acting venom in the world which kills you in 2 to 3 minutes. And they have more than 100 fatal neurotoxins in their arsenal. They also inject a pain killer along which that venom cocktail. It means would not feel pain when it stings you. And its venom will stop function of nervous system and cause respiratory failure before victim can take any measure. So, don’t pick colorful snails on beach.

Blue ring octopus:

It very small and colorful octopuses also delivers tedrodotoxin like the pufferfish.  But they caused more deaths, around 16. With no antivenom available their sting means death by respiratory and nervous system failure.

Shark:

Sharks are known for their aggressive nature specially the fearsome trio, tiger shark, bull shark and the great white. As they are found in areas where humans enter the water, they had caused many injuries and even fatalities. Till 2014, around 548 fatal shark attacks are recorded and most those include one of these three, specially bull and great white.

Saltwater Crocodile:

It grows upto 20 feet and known for its aggressiveness. They cause 106 deaths only in Australia during 1970 to 2013 time periods. They have most powerful bite, ever measured, even stronger than shark bite. Their jaw shut with 3,700 pounds per square inch or 16,460 newtons of bite force, powerful enough to crush bones.

Box Jellyfish:

It is one of the most venomous animals in the planet. It grow up to 20 cm and the tentacles can grow up to 3 meter. The tentacles have nematocyst cells for venom production. This killer jellyfish delivers a cocktail of neurotoxins, cardiotoxin and tissue killer chemical. Means the victim will feel weakness, severe pain, high blood pressure, and may die from cardiac arrest.

There are almost 60 fatal cases, but real number is much higher.

So, if you ever feel like going to ocean, be alert to avoid contact with one of these killers.

Stay tuned for weekly release:

Feed the Curiosity

How much memory do we have and How memory is stored-retrieved in our brain

How much memory our brain can store or how many gigabyte of space is there in our brain?

The concept of storing data in our brain isn’t like storing data in hard drive at all.

In Hard disk, Data is stored digitally in the form of tiny magnetized regions on the platter where each region represents a bit.

How data is stored in hard- drive

But in our brain data is stored as circuit of neurons.

During memory recall, electricity flows through the neural pathway associated with the memory.

Few scientists claim our brain may have up to 100 billion neurons and each can make upto 1000 links, so 100 billion x 1000 = 100 trillion.

Many say, Neurons can combine with each-other to make very complex circuits which increases the estimation of memory many fold, as high as many petabytes, enough to record TV programs in HD for few hundred years.

But they were quick to admit that all this calculations are way too unreliable.

Our brain can't be compared to any other storage devices:

What we store in hard disk is there in form of 0, 1.

But our memory recreate itself on every recall because our brain stores different data in different places like visual data in visual cortex, memory of smell, sound, touch etc are stored in different parts of brain, amygdale stores emotions etc. So, recalling a whole event caused reassemble of data. That is why our memory changes a little every time we recall.

A memory is stored as collection of scattered fragment and reassembled on recall

For us, remembering means reconstruction of memory from scattered fragments.

You can say Jurassic Park 4 movie is 16 gb. But when u recalling whole movie ur brain recreating it on-the-fly, that’s why it may be little different from real one though u didn’t missed a scene.

Say, u try to recall Jurassic park 3 after that, brain would use many common fragments to recreate it.

So, in your hard drive Jurassic Park 3 and 4 may be 14gb + 16gb, but in your brain those are fragmented data and brain have enough capacity to reconstruct them to a full movie. That is why every time you recall the movie some of the details would be little different or absent.

In 2012, IBM successfully simulate 530 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses using Blue Gene/Q super computer, still it was 1500 times slower than human brain, ignoring the fact, our brain process much complex inputs and routines.

Brain vs IBM super computer and brain win by miles

Our brain is so efficient that recalling memory is rethinking and reconstructing it on-the-fly from tiny bits and pieces, not lame like just reading data from a disc.

That means our brain can’t be measured in gb or tb.

Forgotten, lost memories have been successfully retrieved through hypnosis which is evident that we normally don’t forget long-term memories.

We don't lose long-time memory, we lose retrieval cues

As our brain is constantly changing with every information and memory, we sometimes lose retrieval cue to some memory.

Watch to understand how our memory works and How memory is stored-retrieved and memory capacity of our brain:

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Most Hazardous, Most Inflammable, Most Explosive, Most Toxic and Most Corrosive Chemicals in this planet

Whenever we hear the word ‘chemical’, we imagine of acid eating metals or corrosive alkali which burns our skin or colorful liquids in test-tubes. Most of us pretty much know by instinct that we should be careful in chemistry lab as there are sulphuric acid, nitric acid and many other chemicals which can give you painful chemical burn. But most of us have no idea how the most dangerous most hazardous chemicals are. You probably haven’t seen those chemicals in real life and after reading this you would wish that you never come close to them.

The list of most dangerous chemicals consist of chemical which can blow you into pieces if you just touch it or kill you instantly if you just inhale it or it can burn down everything or eat through glass, concrete as if they are cotton candy. Few of them are so dangerous that no scientists want them in his lab.

RMX

It belongs to same family as RDX but much stronger than it. RMX is heavily used in C4 devices and missiles. It’s heck of an explosive.

Azidoazide Azide:

It was first produced in a German lab during a US-German project to produce high energy compound. It is little too high. German scientist reported that sensitivity of this compound is beyond measurement. It explodes if you touch it, move it, expose to bright light or heat or just do nothing. So, in conclusion, no matter what they do, it is going to explode. 

Its molecule has 14 nitrogen atoms bonding with each-other through single bond or double bond. So, all nitrogen atoms want to attain the most stable state i.e. triple bond with another nitrogen atom. Hence, molecules are so unstable.

Fluroantimonic acid: the Super Acid

 It is the most corrosive acid which eats through glass, concrete as if those are cotton candies.

How dangerous it is:

·         It explodes when it comes in contact of water and produce tremendous amount of heat.

·         Evolves highly toxic vapors.

·         Fluoroantimonic acid is 2×1019 (20 quintillion) times stronger than 100% sulfuric acid. Fluoroantimonic acid has a H₀ (Hammett acidity function) value of -31.3.

·         Dissolves glass and many other materials and protonates nearly all organic compounds (such as everything in your body, it can even burn through your bones). This acid is stores in PTFE (polytetrafluoroethylene) containers.

If you have fascination for acid, it is highly recommended for you to ignore this fellow.

Chlorine Trifluoride: The most inflammable substance:

It can burn almost everything, even things which are not considered burnable like stone, brick, sand, asbestos etc. Chlorine trifluoride's fluorination and oxidation power surpasses the oxidizing power of oxygen. The fire it produced which is a fluronine fire can’t be extinguished by general fire control or suppression system fire-brigade use. Means once it starts burning it wouldn’t stop until turn everything to ash. During World War II, Germans were planning to produce 90 ton of it per month to melt enemy bunkers but in the end, this dangerous fire-child made even Nazis scared.

Dimethyl Cadmium: Pretty much most toxic element:

Few microgram of this compound in a cubic metre of air exceed the safety limit.

We know that cyanide is an assassin. Let us compare this fellow to cyanide. Fatal dose of cyanide is 1.5mg/kg body weight, means almost 100 mg potassium cyanide is required to kill a 70kg person. But few mg of dimethyl cadmium is enough to kill you. It get dissolved in blood quickly and travels to blood-rich organs like heart, kidney, lungs and damage them. If you manage to survive that it will bring you down with cancer. Cyanide works faster. Fatal cyanide dose kills in 10-15 sec but dimethyl cadmium takes much longer than that. You will be fine if cyanide dose is much lesser than its fatal dose as their is antidote. But one way or another, dimethyl cadmium will kill for sure and nothing can stop it and not 100 mg, 1 mg is suffice for that task.

Watch:

 

 

Stay with 'The Journal' for weekly publications and feed your curiosity:

 That is all for now from me, Saphyaire

Take Care and keep feeding your curiosity

How Our Biological Clock Works (The Circadian Rhythm) and How it Control Our Activity

Biological Clock and how it works:

Our body has a clock of its own, often called our Biological clock. It controls everything. From feeling hungry, to feeling active or sleepy, all are controlled by this one clock.

Not only us, all the animals has a body clock which controls their basic necessities i.e. eating, sleeping and mating.  That clock is called circadian rhythm or circadian clock. Now, this clock is old sun-dial. So, day-night cycle influences the circadian clock.

Regulator of circadian clock or circadian is in Hypothalamus, deep inside our brain.

SCN in Hypothalamus control Circadian Rhythm

 Group of cell in hypothalamus known as Suprachiasmatic nucleus or SCN control this clock. SCN  is connected optic nerves of eyes. Hence it adjusts our body clock with day-night cycle.

SCN tries to sync our Biological clock with Day-Night cycle

In morning, with exposure to light SCN instruct our body to increase temperature, heart beat and blood pressure and get ready to for action. Then it gradually stops melatonin secretion, the hormone which makes us feel sleepy. With melatonin gone, we gets into top gear in late morning between 10 to 11 am.After sunset, in absence of natural light SCN instruct to release melatonin. As melatonin rises during night we feel less active.

Circadian Rhythm

Consequences altering body Clock:

But, our body clock can be altered by ourselves. Like people who does night shift can stay awakes whole night. But circadian circle doesn’t only control sleep cycle, it also controls many other functions in body. So, changing your sleep pattern can put sleep cycle out of sync with other activities. So, when you try altering body clock you just mess up the synchronization between brain and other organs. That is why people who do shift works often experience a sleeping disorder named “Shift Work Sleeping disorder”.

Shift Work Sleeping Disorder

Shift Work Sleeping Disorder:

Because of changing shift they get obliged to sleep in different times on different days. Hence, their body often has to adjust against the scheduled made by their Biological clock. So, feel active or sleepy on abnormal times as their circadian cycle gets messed up because of their changing schedules.

They experience some drastic consequences of it.

Symptoms:

• Feeling tired when they need to stay awake
• Inability to sleep or being sleepy suddenly
• Difficulty in concentration
• Irritation, depression
• Difficulty in coping up with situations and peoples

Jet Lag:

People who fly across the time zones frequently experiences sleeping issues, tiredness, lack of concentration etc. That condition is called Jet Lag. It is considered a circadian rhythm sleep disorder as it is caused by disturbance in the internal body clock. 

Reason of Jet Lag:

Say, you live in USA and you visit Japan. During your natural sleeping time, it is daytime in Japan. So your brain try to make adjustment to keep you awake but your body wants sleep. Then again you change your time zone. Say, you go to India. Again your body clock tries to make adjustment for the 5-6 hour change in time because of sudden change of time zone. But this adjustments are not as easy to make as it sounds. This adjustments requires resetting times of secretions of many hormones (like melatonin ) , synchronizing all organ clocks with the change and that can’t be accomplished in just few hours. So, you end up feeling fatigued, confused, having sleeping issues.

Messing up with body clock is never a good idea.

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Why we feel pain and how pain is produced? How pain killer works?

Pain is not a very good feeling. In fact, we hate pain. But just like other feelings pain is also product of our Mr.Brain’s magnificent electro-chemical expertise. Why the hell brain creates such an intense unpleasant feeling which we hate so freaking much.

But pain may not be good but it is necessary. 

You are feeling pain means brain is informing you that your body is taking some damage. If we touch a hot thing or press our hand against a tip of needle unconsciously, our hand moves away from it by itself. These automatic involuntary reflexes are for protection of our body from harm.

Now, when you get a cut, brain creates feeling of pain to draw your attention to that damaged part. Its brain’s way to tell, ‘Your body suffered some damage and do something about it!’

And pain is very compelling; if there were no pain, we wouldn’t even bother treat a cut or even worse. Few people has reduced sensation of pain because of mutation in SCN9A gen and they can walk

around with broken ankle or deep wound without feeling much pain but that injury becomes more serious over time. Luckily that condition is found very rarely; so almost all us have our brain warn us through pain about damages in our body.

Pain is for informing you of damage or something wrong about in your body that is why in most of the diseases we feel pain as our brain responds to unpleasant changes inside our body.

Now, how pain is generated?

Our nerve receptors are constantly picking up signals from outside world. There is a specialized receptor called nociceptors for feeling of pain.

If you touch blunt edge of a thing, you don’t feel pain as it is not doing any damage like penetrating your skin to make nociception fire a signal. But if you touch pointy needle and it penetrates your skin, that stimulation hits the nociceptive threshold and then ‘ouch’. The nociceptor’s work is like sending SOS in distress and it makes brain aware that “body is taking damage”.

Then some of your tissues are damaged brain sends some tuning chemical at that place to lower the nociceptve threshold of that area. That’s why a simple touch on a bruise hurts like hell.

There are different types of nociceptors :

Thermal nociceptors are activated by too much heat or cold

Mechanical nociceptors reacts when too much pressure or mechanical force doing damage like when someone use you as punching bag.

Chemical nocicpetor responses to unpleasant chemical changes  like you being poisoned or some bacteria is doing chemical party inside you.

And sleeping nociceptor which only activates when you are really injured and when this silent daddy shouts shout in pain too.

Inflammation:

Generally damage cell releases arachidonic acid.

It interacts with two cyclo-oxygenase enzymes, COX1 and COX2.

And we get prostaglandin which is culprit for inflammation, increased heartbeat.

Actually, in this case, inflammation is our immune system’s response to presence of prostaglandin.

How pain killer works?

We get prostaglandin when arachidonic acid reacts with COX enzymes.

So, common painkillers have chemicals which neutralize either arachidonic acid or COX enzyme.

Like aspirine has salacin which produce salicylic acid and blocks cox 1.

Ibuprofen derived from propionic acid blocks arachidonic acid.Paracetamol takes charge after arachidonic acid merges with cox enzymes and it blocks effect of created compound.

That is all for now. Please watch the video for simpler and complete explaination.

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I am Saphyaire,
Signing off for now and take care

Why science can't make human biologically immortal like bacteria

We were told that all living organisms are made to die, which is not exactly the truth. Unicellular life forms like bacteria don't have to suffer that fate. An amoeba or a bacterium becomes old and then divides, yielding two newborn cells. Nothing has died. So, they are biologically immortal. Biological aging is named senescence. Bacteria and many unicellular organisms and even simple multi-cellular organisms like hydra has negligible senescence as their cells keep dividing. They get killed by other organisms or harsh environment like high temperature.

Bacteria are biologically immortal

If those creatures can keep their internal structures intact and working indefinitely, why can't human cells do so?

Let us understand why humans can’t be immortal and why we die.

First, as our cells get nutrition, they divide and we grow. Eventually cells lose their ability to multiply. Biologist Hayflick found that human cells can be grown in the laboratory for only about 40 to 60 rounds of cell division.

Our body cells can't divide after 40-60 round of division

So, after that they don’t renew and we know, whatever doesn’t renew decays.

Mouse lives for 3 years and its cell can go through 14 to 28 divisions.

The tortoise can live really long, averaging 100 years and its cells keep dividing for 90 to 120 rounds. So, how long an organism would live appears to be related to the number of cell divisions its cells can sustain.

But why can't a cell keep dividing?

Because, each time a cell divides, the telomeres of chromosome get shorter. When telomeres get too short, the cell can no longer divide. If you are wandering what is telomere, a telomere is the end part of a chromatid, which protect our genetic data and doesn’t allow chromosome to fuse with its neighbor chromosome. Telomeres are really important.

Telomere gets shorter and shorter with every round of division

  

When cell divides, chromosome replicates itself, new chromosome gets little shorter telomere, then that cell again divides and length of telomere gets shorter. When telomere becomes too short, cell can’t replicate that chromosome anymore.

And if cell can’t replicate its chromosomes it can’t divide anymore.

 

Why does a cell die?

There are many theories as there are many reasons.

Our cells are chemical plant where lots of chemical reactions taking place continuously.

All products of those reactions are not exactly good for the cell. Sometimes unstable compound or ions with unpaired electrons are produced. Those are called free radicals. Free radicals can also be produced because of light and heat radiation.

These electron hungry free radicals break apart other molecules. Then those molecules who lost electrons try to steal electrons from another molecules, thus a chain reaction may start which destroy the whole work-flow inside cell chemical plant and plant shuts down, cell dies.

But we often heard of antioxidant which is good for us and this is the thing which can stop free radicals. Antioxidants give electrons to free radicals but it doesn’t turn to a harmful substance itself after giving electrons.

Vitamin C, E etc are excellent anti-oxidant.

But anti-oxidants can’t keep a cell alive for ever, though it can extend the life of cells.

But still you have to die because many cells which are given specialized functions can’t get renewed by division. Like nerves and most of muscle. 

Just think, our nerves make circuit in brain to retain memories, information of things we have learned. If they divide then those circuits or connection would be destroyed.

The maintenance credit goes to lysosomes in cells. Lysosomes produces enzyme to recycle old parts of cells to renew the cells. But many indigestible debris (lipofuscin) get accumulated inside lisosome and just like an old machine it loses its ability. Then cell dies as it can’t get renewed. 

As your body is made of cells, even the healthiest person of the earth has to die.

But many other factors like pollution, increase of light and heat radiation because of global warming also contribute a lot to produce free radicals in our cells.

Unhealthy diet can disturb the delicate work-flow in the chemical plant of our body and thus it reduces your life.

So, a healthy diet in a healthy environment can increase your life-span but you will die one day.

 

 

To understand better please watch the full video.

I am Saphyaire, Signing off for now

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