07 MAR 2015 by ideonexus
Questioning Air Pollution
How should a living organism live?
When spring arrives, you open your doors, the wind blows in. The smell of flowers fills the airand colors come back to lifeSometimes when it rains or when it’s foggy out. You can’t help but breathe the air deep into your lungs and experience the feeling of small water droplets filling them up. Both piercingly cold but also pure and fresh.
In autumn, you would spend a whole afternoon with a loved one doing absolutely nothing, basking lazily in the sun.... 1 
notes
notes16 AUG 2014 by ideonexus
Being Happy is Punk Rock
Certainly dystopia has appeared in science fiction from the genre’s inception, but the past decade has observed an unprecedented rise in its authorship. Once a literary niche within a niche, mankind is now destroyed with clockwork regularity by nuclear weapons, computers gone rogue, nanotechnology, and man-made viruses in the pages of what was once our true north; we have plague and we have zombies and we have zombie plague.
Ever more disturbing than the critique of technology in these sto...
1 03 OCT 2013 by ideonexus
Specialization is Unnatural
All universities have been progressively organized for ever finer
specialization. Society assumes that specialization is natural,
inevitable, and desirable. Yet in observing a little child, we find it is
interested in everything and spontaneously apprehends,
comprehends, and co-ordinates an ever expending inventory of
experiences. Children are enthusiastic planetarium audiences.
Nothing seems to be more prominent about human life than its
wanting to understand all and put everything together.... 1 notes
notesHomo sapiens most prominent adaptation is our adaptability.
16 JUL 2013 by ideonexus
Physiological Effects from Exposure to a Vaccum
Vacuum doesn’t have a temperature of its own,
so space is not really that cold. It’s a great insulator
too, meaning that your core body heat doesn’t get
sucked away. Without an atmosphere to transfer heat
away, the risk of exposure is somewhat mitigated. The saliva on your tongue may boil off, as it’s not
pressurized like your blood is, and you may get some
frost on your skin. Sunburn from direct contact with
the sun’s ultraviolet rays is a more immediate danger
than perishing from ... 1 notes
notesA good description.
12 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Candles and Animals Both Need Oxygen
If a small animal and a lighted candle be placed in a closed flask, so that no air can enter, in a short time the candle will go out, nor will the animal long survive. ... The animal is not suffocated by the smoke of the candle. ... The reason why the animal can live some time after the candle has gone out seems to be that the flame needs a continuous rapid and full supply of nitro-aereal particles. ... For animals, a less aereal spirit is sufficient. ... The movements of the lungs help not a...Folksonomies: physiology respiration
Folksonomies: physiology respiration
1 notes
notesQuoting John Mayow.
11 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
The Chemical Decline in Energy
It is the destiny of wine to be drunk, and it is the destiny of glucose to be oxidized. But it was not oxidized immediately: its drinker kept it in his liver for more than a week, well curled up and tranquil, as a reserve aliment for a sudden effort; an effort that he was forced to make the following Sunday, pursuing a bolting horse. Farewell to the hexagonal structure: in the space of a few instants the skein was unwound and became glucose again, and this was dragged by the bloodstream all t...Levi describes with wonder the chain of events leading to an increase in entropy as energy is used up in the body.
07 MAY 2012 by ideonexus
Molecules of Water and Air Passed Through Famous People
Take water. It's simple, common, and vital. There are more molecules of water in an eight-ounce cup of the stuff than there are cups of water in all the world's oceans. Every cup that passes through a single person and eventually rejoins the world's water supply holds enough molecules to mix fifteen hundred of them into every other cup of water in the world. No way around it: some of the water you just drank passed through the kidneys of Socrates, Genghis Khan, and Joan of Arc.
How about ai...Best explanation for why the H2O in a glass of water has molecules that passed through the kidneys of historical figures (even dinosaurs).
30 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Homeostasis
The constant conditions which are maintained in the body might be termed equilibria. That word, however, has come to have fairly exact meaning as applied to relatively simple physico-chemical states, in closed systems, where known forces are balanced. The coordinated physiological processes which maintain most of the steady states in the organism are so complex and so peculiar to living beings- involving, as they may, the brain and nerves, the heart, lungs, kidneys and spleen, all working coo... 1 notes
notesOrigin of the word, meaning the tendency of animal life to maintain an internal equilibrium.
09 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
The Uselessness of Nitrogen in the Atmosphere
My 165-pound body consists of about 110 pounds of oxygen, 30 pounds of carbon, 16 pounds of hydrogen, 6 pounds of nitrogen, and 3 pounds of everything else. Basic stuff, mostly, the stuff of water and air. You'd think we could get almost everything we need to build our bodies by taking deep breaths and gulps of water. But it's not quite that simple. Consider those 6 pounds of nitrogen in my body. Our cells build proteins by stringing together chemical units called amino acids, and every amino... 1 notes
notesRaymo describes how many pounds of each element there are in his body, and why, despite them mostly all existing in the air we breath, they are bound up in molecules so that we cannot access them.
08 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
The Science on the Path
A weed plucked at the side of the path might have found its way to the New World in a seventeenth century sailing ship. Scratches on a rocky ledge evoke colossal mountain-building events on the other side of the world millions of years ago that modified the planet's climate and caused glaciers to creep across New England. The oxygen atoms I suck into my lungs were forged in stars that lived and died long before the Earth was born. It is something of a cliche to say that everything is connecte... 1 notes
notesA brief summary of the scientific concepts to be considered on a nature walk.
