Physiological Decline in the Body When You Stop Exercising
...regular endurance exercise leads to four major consequences:
Increased ability of the heart to eject blood
increased ability of the blood vessels to send blood to where blood is needed
Increased number of capillaries (the vessels that deliver oxygen and ‘food’ to the muscles)
increased size and the number of mitochondria (the “power plants” of the cells).
All these changes lead to the more efficient use of oxygen, as well as nutrients.
[...]
Pino considers a person who can run...
Bacillus Vampiris
Bacteria could be the answer to the vampire.
Everything seemed to flood over him then. It was as though he’d been the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike, refusing to let the sea of reason in. There he’d been, crouching and content with his iron-bound theory. Now he’d straightened up and taken his finger out. The sea of answers was already beginning to wash in.
The plague had spread so quickly. Could it have done that if only vampires had spread it?
Could their nightly marau...A bacteria that fuels the muscles even after the heart stops pumping blood, that instills a repulsion of the sun and garlic to survive.
Sensations are Related in the Brain
Production of speech is seen as a pure motor act, involving muscles and the neurons controlling them, while perception of speech is seen as purely sensory, involving the ear and the auditory pathway. This parcellation of the systems appear intuitive and clear, but recent studies [beginning with Taine 1870!] ... suggest that such divisions may be fundamentally wrong. Rather than separate processes for motor outputs and individual sensory modalities, adaptive action seems to use all the availab...Speaking involves not just motor functions in the brain, but auditory, suggesting sensory inputs for the brain are not segregated.
All Human Accomplishments are Works of Muscles
Muscles are in a most intimate and peculiar sense the organs of the will. They have built all the roads, cities and machines in the world, written all the books, spoken all the words, and, in fact done everything that man has accomplished with matter. Character might be a sense defined as a plexus of motor habits. Which carry out the will of their owners. All human character "might be a sense defined as a plexus of motor habits."
The Brain Consumes Lactose During Exercise
Scientists have discovered that lactose, a byproduct of intense muscular activities, can be used to fuel the brain with energy. When glucose, the natural fuel of the brain, is no longer present in sufficient quantities, the cell tissue can “switch” to alternative energy, to prevent any damage to the brain on account of the lack of energy.
[...]
Consequently, by consuming the lactose in the blood, the brain clears the way for glucose, the main powering substance in the body, to reach the...This frees up the body's glucose to fuel the muscles in times of high energy demands on the body (Note: This meme must be wrong in using the term "lactose," because that is a sugar that comes from milk. "Lactate" is a byproduct of muscles consuming glucose that fuels the brain while the muscles take energy-precedence).
A Succinct Definition of Lactate
Lactate is a dynamic substrate with great potential as an energy
source in sports drinks. To date, however, the efficacy of adding
lactate to these drinks has been sparsely assessed [5,15,16]. Lactate
was once considered a metabolic waste but is now recognized as an
important energy substrate in the body. Lactate is the main
product of carbohydrate metabolism and can be used as a fuel in
working muscle cells shuttled to other tissues such as the heart where lactate is fuel [17], or to the liv...A byproduct of our muscles converting carbohydrates to energy, which appears to serve as a secondary energy source.
Evolution of the Eye
A possible sequence of such changes begins with simple eyespots made
of light-sensitive pigment, as seen in flatworms. The skin then folds in,
forming a cup that protects the eyespot and allows it to better localize
the light source. Limpets have eyes like this. In the chambered nautilus,
we see a further narrowing of the cup’s opening to produce an improved
image, and in ragworms the cup is capped by a protective transparent
cover to protect the opening. In abalones, part of the fluid in t...A simple series of adaptive steps explain the evolution of eyes over time.
Birds to Reptiles
Because reptiles appear in the fossil record before birds, we can guess
that the common ancestor of birds and reptiles was an ancient reptile,
and would have looked like one. We now know that this common ancestor
was a dinosaur. Its overall appearance would give few clues that it was
indeed a “missing link”—that one lineage of descendants would later give
rise to all modern birds, and the other to more dinosaurs. Truly birdlike
traits, such as wings and a large breastbone for anchoring ...Birds and reptiles share many resemblances, meaning they have a common ancestor, which is dinosaurs.
Patience, Attentiveness, and Thoroughness are Naturalist ...
Each branch of natural history
study demands its special abilities: the superior ear of
the birdwatcher, the attention to minute detail of the
entomologist, the courage of the herpetologist wading
into swamps full of poisonous snakes. But some “field
skills” are nearly ubiquitous. Perhaps the most
important are patience, perseverance, thoroughness
and attentiveness. The birdwatcher searching for that
one rare gull on a pond among seven hundred
common ones may have to watch for hours in bi...Without them the naturalist would miss the rarities in nature.
With Warm-Bloodedness Comes Freedom
Pelorat said, "Tortoises are cold-blooded. Terminus doesn't have any, but some worlds do. They are shelled creatures, very slow-moving but long-living.”
"Well, then, isn't it better to be a human being than a tortoise; to move quickly whatever the temperature, rather than slowly? Isn't it better to support high-energy activities, quickly contracting muscles, quickly working nerve fibers, intense and long-sustained thought-than to creep slowly, and sense gradually, and have only a blurred a......but it is costly, requiring much more fuel.