Saturday, December 26, 2009

Atheism anyone?

Well, this guy is hilirious. Seriously in his own world and giving evidence as to why religious people are a bit illogical.



Let me give my own evidence on the logic of God:


"The Babel fish is small yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier, but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the unconscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish. Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God. The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing." "But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves that you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED." "Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly disappears in a puff of logic. "Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is whte and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing. Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo's kidneys, but that did not stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme of his best selling book 'Well That About Wraps It Up For God'. Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different race and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation. "

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, 1979, Chapter 6

I really like Douglas Adams arguments against religions. In response to people who would claim that we are so perfectly designed to work in our world and that our world meeting all our needs, that a God must have played some role in creation (or intelligent design), he would put forward this analogy:
A puddle, were it sentient and using the same argument, would claim it was so perfectly fitted to the hole it occupies that the hole MUST have been designed just for it. However, ofcourse the puddle is the shape it is purely because of the shape of the hole it occupies. Just as humans and all plant and animal life has evolved (Yes, EVOLVED) to fit and work with the environment we are in.

Evolution, gotta love it.

Its Super-Cool.

Friday, December 25, 2009

Monday, December 14, 2009

A timely reminder that evolution favours the stongest traits... No time for the forgetful or water shy in this scenario...

Found this online somewhere a while ago- not sure where, but its signed in the bottom corner- so I thinks i'm good for coyright laws...

Thursday, December 10, 2009

VIDEO: Strange spiral UFO?

VIDEO: Strange spiral UFO?

Aliens among us?
Maybe not...

http://www.news.com.au/world/norway-wormhole-is-first-contact-claim-ufo-watchers/story-e6frfkyi-1225808892785?from=igoogle+gadget+compact+news_rss

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Hi Everyone,
Sorry for the very poor attempt at regular blogging. Work was busy, then my computer broke, then our internet was down for almost a day (heaven help us!!!). I will try better in the future! However a thing that piqued my interest (and that of those in my office) was the result of a visiting researcher at work.

The posts a bit long but once I wrote it I didn’t want to give up. I’ll try to give brief posts in the future!!
Anyhow, the visiting researcher told us to watch a video. I'm fairly sure it’s not real. But it made me think about the topic it is mocking/highlighting. The videos quite creepy but comical really... It made me angry though if it was real and people believed this guy!!!

Check it out:






Watch The Placenta Salesman in Comedy View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

The Human Placenta
The placenta is the organ which develops following conception to exchange blood and nutrients for a foetus. In my line of work (as a research assistant in a lab concerned with the foetal origins of adult heath) we end up discussing the placenta a lot. It a fascinating and complex piece of physiology, which is essentially a matrix of maternal and foetal vessels within a supporting structure cell layers. The cell layers separate the maternal and foetal circulations and allow diffusion of nutrients and oxygen from the mother to the foetus.


These picture show how the placenta would attach to the fetus and, shows a close up of the placenta tissue structure. (photos taken from Cornell University's http://www.biog1105-1106.org/

Here is a real Placenta shown from both the side that attaches to the uterus wall (the red side) and the side that has the umbilical cord which attaches to the baby.














Placentophagia

The placenta is integral to many cultural birth practices, including ceremonial burial or, the topic i'm interested in today, consumption. This practice of eating the placenta is called Placentophagia. Many mammals eat the placenta following birth, however it is not an instinctive practice for humans. It has become common practice in some cultures. From a brief search online it seems that it is quite common in Asian culture, but rare in Western culture, although growing in popularity in some circles. The placenta is used in traditional Chinese medicine and often eaten by mothers raw or used cooked, dried and then powdered in various traditional remedies.

I have read a lot of online ‘articles’ relating to the ‘benefits of placentophagy’. While they have some good conceptual ideas and claim that studies show benefits, such as relief of post partum depression and increased energy, they provide no actual evidence of this. For an example, check out
http://www.purebirth-australia.com/lotusbirth/placentophagia.html.

So I did my own research into whether or not it would be beneficial.

Placentophagia in Animals

I couldn't find much on the whether the practice in animals is health related. In my personal opinion I think the practice of plancentophagy in animals is purely realted to blood loss and depletion of energy (as the vascular placenta will replace much protein and iron). For humans, we are, in most cases, attended by others and have access to food and drink quite easily following birth. We will not suffer health deterioration from not being able to hunt or gather our food as is the case with mammals in the wild. We are not at risk of predation when weak following birth- in fact we usually go out of our way to make sure the birth is in a place of comfort, be it home, hospital water etc. Therefore the risk of death of the mother or the young due to an inability to get food leading to malnourishment is negligible (especially with modern medicine helping out following severe blood loss or complications). I have found only a few articles on the possible benefits in rats/rabbits consuming placentas (raw of course), and all related to the analgesic (pain relief) effects to be gained from the hormones that bind to specific pain receptors. This would an advantage if you had to be on the move or caring for young quickly.
But that doesn’t explain it for humans...
Placentophagia in Humans

While I wouldn’t do it myself, I am in no way opposed to the practice of people consuming THEIR OWN (or perhaps a friends as part of a ceremony) placenta. The most common advice is to cook, dry and then powder it and insert it into capsules. I think this would be relatively safe practice if done properly (professionals come and do it for mothers in many cases). In my opinion though, regardless of testimonies praising the medicinal properties of the placenta, I think the placebo effect is acting more strongly than anything else.

To be perfectly honest- there is no scientific literature** (based on a search of Medline, Embase, and Ovid journals) relating to the physiology (or the nutrition vs toxicity) of consuming the human placenta. I found a few articles relating to the practice in humans, written by shocked old men in the early seventies (after reading an account of a homebirth with the placenta eaten afterwards in a Rolling Stone magazine- Hilarious!). They then described it as a ‘tribal practice’ but give no details or benefits etc- simply discuss its occurrence.

However the **’s above are important- the lack of evidence is because it is primarily practived by people in Asia and as a part of traditional Eastern medicines, as far as I can tell, there won’t be many people interested in it here- and thus less articles. As I can’t read any Asian languages I am unable to search Asian journals. However I think that if they discovered a world breakthrough in post partum depression (a touted effect of eating placenta) they would announce it in as many journals across the globe as they can- which is what happens with most important science articles. So my opinion still stands, but with this lengthy disclaimer.

Back to the placebo effect: The only benefit of eating one’s own placenta that I was tempted to believe without any evidence to the contrary was stated benefit to post partum hormonal balance. However I do wonder if consuming more ‘We’re pregnant’ hormones interrupt the ‘Ooh we just gave birth and need to prepare our body to look after the baby externally’ hormones.... PLUS Most people like to cook it- which is good- gets rid of any germs depending on how long its kept after birth (that’s right they freeze them and defrost ‘em later!) which means that any hormones, as far as I understand it are denatured. Thus no hormones would have any effect!!!!
Hence my conclusion that its placebo effect for that particular benefit. Which is fine- a placebo is as helpful as any other treatment.

The only real article I found was in German (but recent and from a very respectable institution). The author, M. Menges wrote:

Over the last 30 years it could be observed that a very small minority of modern humans consumes the human placenta that belongs to the afterbirth. ... However, humans of traditional human cultures consume the afterbirth only in rare cases. In detail, the present essay discusses the hypothesis that human placentophagia has a phylogenetic basis and the hypothesis that human placentophagia is physiologically reasonable. It is concluded that the behavior of the human placentophagia neither possesses a phylogenetic basis nor can be regarded as physiologically reasonable.Anthropol Anz. 2007 Mar;65(1):97-108.
That’s good enough for me.

Placenta Products:
I don’t think you can put a product such as placenta on your face and expect miracles. I don’t think many cosmetics work in any sort of restorative way. Do a google search though and there a thousands of products with placenta in them. Mostly sheep or other animals I assume. Placenta collection for mass products would be a bit more than creepy.

The Juices and Tablets- A) Gross- a juice- are they kidding!!! B) aforementioned denaturing of any actual hormones or proteins would occur so it would be doing very little in my opinion.

The cosmetics: I think its to do with hormones, or maybe stem cells?? Well would you rub meat paste, with preservatives in it, on your face and expect results? I think they think stem cells be able to replace or restore damaged skin. I don’t think there are many stem cells floating around in the placenta though. You’d be better off using bone marrow products- they are full of stem cells... except that you need the cells to A) be yours or your body will kill them, B) the same species to differentiate (grow/develop) into the needed cells- if somehow they managed to overcome the ‘not from your body’ problem... oh and C) someway to get your skin or hair or whatever to absorb it...

Not likely. I’ll stick to good old fashioned chemicals which give me the illusion of better skin!

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

New hope for small penises :)


Who would have thought... but instead of the first major succesful advances in creating and growing organs/tissue being in something with a wide applicability- perhaps growing heart cells to replace damaged tissue following myocardial infarction (heart attacks) or you know the ever present need to grow neurons for the brain- instead penises get the guernsey!

That was a bit tongue in cheek- there have been many advances made in other areas- but i thought this one was interesting... heralds well for the future of growing organs! Check out the ninemsn article:

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/health/969620/us-scientists-create-artificial-rabbit-penises...

PS getting the hang of this blogging thing- need to keep them brief I think!
Picture borrowed from someone elses blog: http://to55er.wordpress.com/2009/03/19/

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Epic fantasy taking to the small screen...

Sorry there are a lack of posts. I am working on a couple but tend to want to do researcha and have been hectic at work of late, so no time for that!

Just a little info, passed on from my good friend Robot Fingers, about an awesome fantasy novel being made into a series. For all the nerds out there:

G.R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones is being made into a pilot for a TV series by HBO. It looks to be good and the cast has been chosen. Can't wait to see it!
http://www.thrfeed.com/2009/10/game-of-thrones-cast-with-photos-.html

But will be interested because the whole Lannister family is blonde but for somereason they have cast brunettes. If I see a repeat of Colin Farrell as 'Alexander' -bleach blonder hair and dark eyebrows I will be very dissapointed. It's not that hard to do both!

Ok, tiny rant over,
Michelle :)

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Whaling about...

Okay, I suppose I should get started- it is actually really difficult to just start writing a blog. I was looking for a good place to start and that got me thinking about evolution and where ‘we’ started. I love learning about evolution and the history of our species in particular. The evidence for evolution is so overwhelming I can’t believe I can still find things written by critics, implying that evolution is non-existent.

However, the clues are all around us!

“It is important to note that suddenly, and against all probability, a Sperm Whale had been called into existence, several miles above the surface of an alien planet and since this is not a naturally tenable position for a whale, this innocent creature had very little time to come to terms with its identity.”
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams.

Much as this whale spontaneously comes into existence in space, in the Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy, whales on Earth did not. In fact, they carry their own proof of evolution in the form of a vestigial pelvis and leg like structures. I believe the structures exist in some species of whale and some dolphins. The fact that the remnants of a lower limb structure exist provides strong evidence towards the fact that these sea dwelling mammal’s predecessors walked on land before adapting to a marine life.
The first two images below are taken from http://www.edwardtbabinski.us/whales/evolution_of_whales/, as an example of the vestigial pelvic structure.

The following picture is no necessarily scientifically accurate- it comes from http://www.envisioningscience.com/whale_skeleton.html , which may well be a graphic design company, however i like how it shows the pelvis as it would appear in the body of a whale.

If your interested:

I like this article- it’s a nice interest piece on the evolution of whales from land animals, it’s a bit old, but so are the fossils!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1974869.stm

This is a good website in my non-academic (in this area) opinion. It seems to have a bit of information on the fossil periods that show whale evolution: http://www.talkorigins.org/features/whales/

If you search online academic journals for information you'll find a wealth of papers on whales fossils and current anatomy. I didn't do much research for this post- I'm still warming upto this blogging business. But the real information is out there if you want it.

:) Michelle

Monday, October 5, 2009

Welcome to Nerd Nation

I have created this blog to alleviate the boredom that has set in since I graduated and I no longer have to learn crazy-cool things about the anatomy and physiology. I love to learn new and interesting information particularly about biology and physiology. I figure that when weird questions pop into my head- if I actually take the time to find out the answer- other people might actually be interested to know the answers too! Its not everyones cup of tea, but if you like weird facts and learn the reason behind random things from nature then hopefully you'll find my blog interesting.

And because 'a vague disclaimer is nobody's friend', I must stress that if you want to use information from this blog for any sort of assignments (perhaps google has directed you here)... do your own research in case I have not been as thorough in my research as anyone should be if they are doing it for more than mere interest.

I welcome comments on anything I write if someone has more information or something to correct me on (except spelling and punctuation, which I'm shocking at most of the time, and don't actually care about anymore) or if people have things that they would like to know please ask so it will give me motivation to write this blog...

Thanks,
Michelle