Mitosis

Even though I know you all understand what Mitosis is, I'm going to write a blog about it. However, I'll spare you the agony of rereading all of the basic biology stuff. Cells make up all life, cells duplicate, yada yada yada. Moving on to the fun stuff.

Mitosis is the way cells duplicate, and without it, none of you would be able to read this today. Or tomorrow. Or whenever it is you read this, Mitosis is what lets you do so. Mitosis is literally *almost* all that is you. Brain cells? Caused by Mitosis. Skin? Mitosis. The wound from falling over on your bike as a child? Healed by - you guessed it - Mitosis. I will point out that your sex cells - sperm and egg - are formed by another process called Meiosis, but I digress.

Mitosis basically goes like this. (I'll warn you now, there's bound to be some spelling errors.)

Interphase - This is before the Mitosis really kicks in. All that really happens here is the organelles duplicate, and the cell grows in size to accommodate them.

Prophase - The chromosomes double and go from a bowl of spaghetti to a bunch of pairs (each set of identical chromosomes) that look like 'x's. While this is happening, two centrioles travel to opposite ends of the cell. Also, throughout the phase, the nuclear membrane is dissolving.

Metaphase - Here, the nuclear membrane has completely disintegrated, and the chromosomes are lining up down the middle of the cell. Also in this phase, the centrioles begin producing spindle fibers, and the organelles begin drifting to ends of the cell, as to be evenly divided when the cell splits.

Anaphase - During this phase, the spindle fibers pull on the chromosomes, pulling them apart and back into single chromosomes. Then, the chromosomes are pulled to the centrioles, and the cell wall begins to slide inward at the middle, and if it were being pinched from the inside.

Telophase - Finally, the cell fully splits into two identical daughter cells, each ready to live on.

Interphase - the cycle starts over again, waiting until it is supposed to to begin again with prophase.



Now, why is this interesting? Well, besides the fact that biology is fascinating, the secrets of Mitosis could unlock the way to growing organs and limbs back. How? well, every body has stem cells, which are basically cells that can become any type of cell. Skin, eye, organ. So, if a scientist were to figure out how to trick the stem cell into continuously going through Mitosis, and provide the necessary energy - all in a laboratory setting, of course - they could have an endless supply of stem cells. At that point, all that has to be done is to trigger the correct bits of DNA to cause the cells to grow into a desired cell type, and find a recipient that can use the newly produced bodily part. This could be used everywhere from treating cancer victims to giving bomb victims new limbs. So, yea. Mitosis is some cool stuff.

Book Review - Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy

Despite the fact that many, many people enjoy this book, I did not. I found it not to my liking primarily because it made no sense, and yes I know that it's not supposed to, hence the name of the Improbability Drive and such. But nevertheless, a summary shall follow. If you don't like spoilers, I wouldn't read what follows.

In the book, our two primary protagonists are a human named Arthur Dent, and an alien that has been stranded on Earth and is going by the name Ford Prefect. Soon into the book, Earth is destroyed, and our protagonists are taken aboard a spaceship. The captain of said ship doesn't tolerate hitchhikers however, and they are jettisoned into space. For reasons unknown, the recently ejected are taken in by a second spaceship, that happens to be stolen by the President of the Galaxy - turned -thief. At this point, the band of travelers find a planet thought to be legend, and find that not only is the planet devoid of life, but actually still very capable of defending itself. Oh, and because it's from legend, and all good legends have something cool, this particular planet actually creates other planets.


**Super spoiler**

While exploring the planet, Arthur is separated from his party, and meets a strange man who decides to show Arthur exactly what Earth was all about. As it so happens, Humans are not the most intelligent of species in the world. Dolphins are second, and actually warned us of impending doom, which we took to be stage tricks. It is revealed that what we took to be a double-backflip while whistling the star-spangled banner was actually dolphin for 'So long, and thanks for all the fish.' What is the most intelligent of the species you ask? The lab mouse. Arthur is told that mice are so cunning that they were conducting  experiments on us while pretending it was the other way around.

So, honestly I didn't like it that much. But there is no book that every single person likes - there can't be.

What do I want to be when I grow up?

There are so many answers to that, it's not even funny. A zookeeper, a teacher, a farmer, a scientist, an explorer, so on an so forth. The thing that every single dream profession has had in common is the animals. For those of you who don't know, I love animals.

Recently, meaning in the past few years, I learned of a potential new job that ties almost all of those old dreams into one - except farming, but I can always grow after I retire!

The name of this profession eludes me, but what they do is fairly simple. They research animals and their natural habitats to show us how animals interact, coexist, and generally live day to day. I found a place where I can start immediately - Snapshot Serengeti.

Here, people from anywhere in the world, and at any age - provided they have internet access and the comprehension level required to recognize an animal - can load anywhere from 1 to 3 images taken in succession by a camera trap. These traps are activated by seeing heat higher than the temperature around them, resulting in very few pictures of plan old grass being taken. Using this information, scientists are estimating populations and population densities, along with determining the interactions at the species level. The only drawback to this, is that since wildebeests, zebras, and gazelles have the highest populations in the savannah, a large percentage of those photographs are of the same three species. I think this could be a serious profession for me, especially if I get to be one of the people who also gives the presentations and such.

Now, like I said, It's a lot of the same few species in the images. So to save you from the boring ones and playing the percentages (because I know you all have lives you must lead, regardless of how much you want to sit at the computer and catalog thousands of zebras all day), I went ahead and pulled a few images of the 'cute' ones. In other words, I grabbed a bunch of snapshots that had babies in them.

To all persons who suffer Cute and Fuzzy Bunny Syndrome, or the irrepressible urge to buy/adopt an animal because of the sheer cute-ness of it, be careful when looking at these images. Or don't blame me when you find yourself flying to Africa to hold a baby elephant. Either way.

Adorable, Right? I think so. And I want to help prevent these creatures from going extinct. For my last little tidbit, I'll direct you below this line. I added these pictures because I find them really picturesque, which is not to say the former weren't.

So that's what I want to do, for this 5 minutes. Save the animals by showing them the way they really are - amazing.

If you don't like spiders....you might (or might not) like this

Everyone knows what a spider is, I hope. If you're rusty on arachnid knowledge, click here to see some images. Now that you're back from that fun trip, we can get down to the true topic of this post.

Believe it or not, there are things out there that are worse than spiders. First and foremost to me, is the Assassin Bug. This is a member of the order Hemiptera, and they range from .5 to a full inch long, at least in North America. Oh, and they carry enough poison to kill a caterpillar 400 times their weight in about 8 seconds. Everyone knows that cockroaches are basically indestructible, right? Not so to the little assassin bug, in 3 or 4 seconds that little tank that could, can't.

Now, thankfully these demons eat spiders. Well, most of them. The thing is, there's 6600 or so species of assassin bugs and they couldn't all eat the same thing. So some of them eat spiders, some eat caterpillars, and some eat praying mantises, and so on. Oh, and the ones in the more tropical places enjoy killing birds, reptiles, and smaller mammals.

Still not seeing a downside to tiny marauding bugs? What about when they can kill you? That's right, the bane of spider's existence can also have unpleasant (and deadly besides), effects on human beings.

There's an undesirable pathogen hiding inside the bodies of some of these insects, and trust me - you do NOT want to get infected. See, they happen to have this disease in them called  Chagas disease. Sounds vaguely official, and not exactly threatening. Right?

BUT it is actually quite deadly. First, you'll have the standard fever and inflammation commonly associated with a bug bite. But then, the symptoms go away and there are hardly ever parasites found in the blood. Then the bad part - 20-30% develop the chronic symptoms. Abnormalities in the heart beat,  failing to pump blood effectively, and dialation in the digestive track, leading to issues eating and using the bathroom. And *then* you die, if you haven't treated it.

Wondering what this little guy might look like? For full effect, here's the one that kills spiders...and then wears the corpses as armor.

So with that happy image in your head, have fun sleeping tonight!

Evolution and Technology might be interconnected more than we thought

Normally, evolution takes place oven long periods of time, and in rather isolated populations. Isolated, meaning not breeding with organisms of the other population. Over time, those two populations each develop characteristics that make them more fit to survive in their respective environments. Now, I'm not talking about little body-builder squirrels kind of fit, but fit as in able to evade predators, gather food, and reproduce.

But now, things are changing much more rapidly. In 1850, the average man stood 5' 7" and weighed 146 lbs. by 1980, men were standing at 5' 10" and weighing 174 lbs. From the evolutionary standpoint, that is no time at all. So how did we change that much? We thought our way into evolution.

Thanks to this nifty bit of brain called the forebrain, we can focus our thoughts on more than 'Food', 'Hunt', and 'Sleep'. Now, we think 'Build', 'Work', and 'Change'. This has resulted in us as a race doing things so simple as attaching a sharpened stone to a stick, all the way to things as complex as putting people on the moon and bringing them safely home. What does this mean for us?

Well, first and foremost, it means we live longer, and better, than we have in the past. That in turn allows us to make the lives of our posterity better, and that process continues on and on. Couple this with inventions allowing us to genetically modify organisms, we could eventually be producing tailor-made pets and children. So other than the morals behind it, what are the problems?

First, we don't know all of the effects of genetic manipulation. Could be that memory and intellect are directly related, and improving one improves the others capacity. Could just as easily be that by driving up our intelligence, we drop our memory. We just don't know. The second, and potentially far greater problem, is that as we begin to alter our species, we won't all alter our children the same way. Some parents will elect for enhanced brain power, while others will encourage strength. Continue that path for a few hundred, maybe thousand, years, now we are looking at having many different strains of Homo sapiens walking around on earth. And there's absolutely no way to guarantee that those new strains will be able to produce viable offspring.

That means there are many factions of people on earth, which to me sounds like a recipe for war.  Or it means the human race will slowly drive itself to extinction.

I don't particularly like either of those options.

Animals - the Living, the Dead, the Unknown. And some that aren't in any catagory.

Cryptid - an animal whose existence or survival is disputed or unsubstantiated, such as the yeti.

That's the Oxford Dictionary definition.

Included in this would be Mothman, Giant Anaconda(s), Goatman, Yeti, Chupacabra, Loch Ness Monster, Lycanthrope(s), Mermaid(s), Dragon(s), and Sasquach. Some others that are much less common include the Mongolian Death Worm, Orang Pendek, Inkanyamba, Thunderbirds, Emela Ntouka, Skunk Ape(s), and 'Atmospheric Beasts'.

While the existence of these creatures hasn't been proved, it hasn't been DISPROVED either. After all, how do you show something isn't?

Now, there are also numerous animals that have been promoted from cryptid to animal. Like the Devil Bird, Ziphius, Bondegezou, Kangaroo, Platypus, Sea Serpent, Komodo Dragon, Mountain Gorilla, Okapi, and the Giant Squid. Photos here.

I also want to direct you to some mini-animals here, and some interesting color variations here, as these animals are cool, but not overly special for the most part. (Although the 'Melanistic Bengal Tiger' is pretty cool.)

Finally, what do Wooly Mammoths, Passenger Pigeons, Tasmanian Tigers, Baiji (River Dolphin), Japanese Wolves, Ivory-Billed Woodpeckers, Eastern Cougars, Japanese River Otters, Mexican Grizzly Bears, and Javan Tigers have in common?

Answer - They're all extinct. Or so we think. And yet, sightings are made to this day (by sober people, that's important.) Some, like the Woodpecker, have more than 15 documented and official sightings, albeit without the actual bird captive to back them up.

And to wrap this up is the Mastodon. It's been extinct for 11,000 years or so, right? Maybe not. An Englishman by the name of David Ingram took a walkabout of sorts around the newly discovered North America (A walkabout is something Australians do to clear their mind, usually involving wandering in the outback.). So on David's 2,000 mile or so walk, he saw what you would expect - Native Americans, buffalo, deer, etc. But he also describes everything in detail, the buffalo, the geography if the land - and the mastodons. Why is this significant? Because not only did he show he was where he thought he was, but he accurately described animals that were unknown to him, and so he wasn't expecting them to be there. When was this? Fairly recent in perspective - about 500 years ago. So you tell me; what else could he have been describing? I don't believe we've had elephants in North America, and there aren't other animals that remotely fit the description.

Thunder...Snow?

It's a snowstorm, with a little thunder and lightning mixed in for flavor.

Facts

• While the thunder of a normal thunderstorm can be heard for a few miles, thundersnow thunder can be heard from many miles away.
• Thundersnow is more common in the 'lake-effect' area of the great lake, as well as the Great Salt Lake.
• Ski Mountains are usually evacuated during these storms for safety reasons.
• Thundersnow storm cells often result in snow accumulation of 2-4 inches an hour.

I can personally verify that dogs do not enjoy this kind of storm, and I didn't find it that great either.

Something else that I thought was interesting...

Soft Hail. Or, to use a funnier sounding word, Graupel.

Basically, it's what happens when a snowflake collects a bunch of supercooled raindrops, which then freeze on the snowflake, resulting in a capsule around the flake. It's not hail, because it doesn't fall in thunderstorms, and it will usually crumble at the touch.

Personally, I'd like to see just a few inches of snow, and not have the hail, ice sheets, or immense windstorms. But oh well, can't have everything, I suppose