27 JUL 2018 by ideonexus

 Heritable IQ is Boosted by Environment, Just Like Height

hough it’s not easy to pinpoint the causes of the rise in IQ scores, it’s no paradox that a heritable trait can be boosted by changes in the environment. That’s what happened with height, a trait that also is highly heritable and has increased over the decades, and for some of the same reasons: better nutrition and less disease. Brains are greedy organs, consuming about a fifth of the body’s energy, and they are made of fats and proteins that are demanding for the body to produce. Fig...
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20 MAR 2018 by ideonexus

 Adult Physical Activity Keeps Immune System Young

It is widely accepted that aging is accompanied by remodelling of the immune system including thymic atrophy and increased frequency of senescent T cells, leading to immune compromise. However, physical activity, which influences immunity but declines dramatically with age, is not considered in this literature. We assessed immune profiles in 125 adults (55–79 years) who had maintained a high level of physical activity (cycling) for much of their adult lives, 75 age-matched older adults and ...
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17 FEB 2015 by ideonexus

 Instruction vs. Selection

The main difference between an instructional system and a selectional system is that the instructional system uses information from the environment to change the properties of the object in question, but a selectional system has a large and varied population of objects, and the ones that are most fit for the environment are differentially reproduced. Hopefully an example Edelman uses from immunology will help clear this up. The theory prevailing before the present one was called the theory ...
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06 JUN 2012 by ideonexus

 The Immune System

An immune system of enormous complexity is present in all vertebrate animals. When we place a population of lymphocytes from such an animal in appropriate tissue culture fluid, and when we add an antigen, the lymphocytes will produce specific antibody molecules, in the absense of any nerve cells. I find it astonishing that the immune system embodies a degree of complexity which suggests some more or less superficial though striking analogies with human language, and that this cognitive system...
Folksonomies: immune system physiology
Folksonomies: immune system physiology
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Enormously complex and acts independently of the brain.

01 JAN 2012 by ideonexus

 The Immune System Reaction and Overreaction

The body has a very ingenious and usually effective system of natural defence against parasites, called the immune system. The immune system is so complicated that it would take a whole book to explain it. Briefly, when it senses a dangerous parasite the body is mobilized to produce special cells, which are carried by the blood into battle like a kind of army, tailor-made to attack the particular parasites concerned. Usually the immune system wins, and the person recovers. After that, the imm...
Folksonomies: immune system allergies
Folksonomies: immune system allergies
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It is a delicate balance, as when a mother is carrying a baby and her immune system must not be allowed to attack it, or when people get hay fever or allergies.

03 MAY 2011 by ideonexus

 The Immune System VS Viruses

The immune system consists of white blood cells that come in about 10 million different types. Each type has a protein lock on it called an "antibody," which corresponds to a key carried by a bacterium called an "antigen." If a key enters that lock, the white cell starts multiplying ferociously in order to produce an army of white cells to gobble up the key-carrying invader, be it a flu virus, a tuberculosis bacterium, or even the cells of a transplanted heart. But the body has a problem. It ...
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An excellent description of the battle going on inside our bodies.