End of Year Fun, Part 2

                At some point this year, I listened to a series of podcasts that dove into the complicated story of Thomas Edison versus Nikola Tesla.  Everyone knows Thomas Edison while I think Mr. Tesla is a bit more obscure.  The reasons this is true are nuanced and a great education in being not only excellent at your job but also at promoting yourself.  Edison worked tirelessly on his visions, patented his inventions and was, in short, an excellent businessman.  Tesla had the same mind, the same inventions, but fell short in other areas that have now relegated him to the fringes of history while Edison is now being used a baby name (God help us).  I won't weigh in on whether I think Edison was a "jerk" as so many people believe because I would need to read far more about both men before reaching a valid conclusion.

                I recently updated the look of all my blogs so I spent time reading quotes from famous scientists.  By far, Edison had the most inspiring and most heart-touching quotes.  Think what you will of Thomas Edison and come to your own conclusions about the apparent feud (podcast and article links at the bottom!), but read his words on life and let them lift your spirits.  As we say goodbye to 2012 and welcome in 2013, I wanted to offer some inspiration.

“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

“If we all did the things we are capable of, we would astound ourselves.”

“When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this: you haven’t.”

“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up.  The most certain way to succeed is to try just one more time.”

“Your worth consists in what you are and not what you have.”

                These are just the ones that I thought had universal appeal.  I have another five quotes that are specifically science-related.  I’ll incorporate them into another post about perseverance and how science mildly messes with your head but leads you to amazing places.

                As I said before, I’m hopeful and excited for 2013.  It’s been an insanely busy end of 2012 for me with three different papers and a mess of experiments that I needed to finish.  My recent posts have disappointed me in their lack of scientific substance.  I plan to return to scientific-explanation posts again because they are my favorite and the reason I began these blogs to begin with.  Coming soon: triskaidekaphobia (and phobias in general), proteins vs. cells vs. animals and how scientists decide where to focus, migraine hangovers, and prions…

Happy New Year!

REFERENCES

All Thomas Edison quotes came from Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/3091287.Thomas_A_Edison

Edison vs. Tesla podcasts: “How did Nikola Tesla change the way we use energy?” Tuesday, June 9, 2009 (http://www.howstuffworks.com/podcasts/stuff-you-should-know.rss) 

Edison vs. Tesla articles: http://science.howstuffworks.com/nikola-tesla.htm

End of the Year Fun, Part 1

                It’s the end of 2012.  For many reasons, I’m excited to bid adieu to this year.  2013 holds far more promise to me and I’m ready to get on with it.  With luck, I’ll begin a new era of my career, in addition to a few other personal goals.  It’s time to turn over a new leaf and begin again.  I think this is the first year I’ve ever longed for New Year’s Day.

                Let’s look at some fun things!

                Ondrej Pakan photographs the microscopic world.  His website (LINK) shows magnified snowflakes, butterflies and bugs, as well ethereal forests and landscapes.  You might think that bugs can’t look beautiful, but you’d be so mistaken. 

                I have to give a shout-out to “I fucking love science!” on Facebook.  The pictures posted on their wall are of a funny, important or quirky nature.  A lot of it is for those who work in science and know what in the world a Higgs Boson is (I only kinda know), but occasionally you stumble upon something truly cool, like the photographs of Ondrej Pakan!

                A stand-by favorite of mine is definitely PhDComics (Piled higer and deeper!).  I posted some last year and have a few more now!

                I also want to mention this tumblr site that everyone in graduate school already knows about, but in case you don’t, please tell your friends about its awesomeness: WhatShouldWeCallGradSchool

…while waiting for Part 2 of this post, please chuckle at this e-card with me:

Long Life Animals

                Well.  I had planned an entirely different post than this one.  Originally, it was going to begin with a transition out of the past two consciousness and near-death experience posts with a story from my own life.  Today, I sat down to find an appropriate paper to summarize the work I found interesting when, to my horror, I found some unsavory allegations against my person of choice.  I had no idea.  So, I decided to place that idea on the backburner and instead revisit a topic that I posted about before but didn’t offer too much information about yet: aging.  Forgive me, this post isn’t typical for me as I don’t usually summarize articles that are rather self-explanatory, but I didn’t have time to do in-depth research!

**

                The hydra is a small, fresh water animal.  It has the unique distinction of being the only animal on this planet Earth that does not age.  As long as the hydra continues to reproduce asexually (meaning, it blubs off daughter hydra from itself without ever mating), the hydra can – it seems – live forever.  However, if it does choose to mate, then the hydra will die after a short period.

                So, pause.  The hydra can either choose to live forever or age and die.  It has both capabilities.  Isn’t that amazing?  How is it choosing?  

Proteins are the workhorses of our cells; the when, which and where proteins are made are all dictated by our DNA (to really over-simply, but still be truthful).  Therefore, the information that the hydra needs to either live forever or age and die is found within its genome.  While this seems extraordinary, it’s not such a drastic deviation from how our own cells are known to differentiate.  If you look at a brain cell and an intestinal cell, you will find the same DNA.  However, the brain cell and intestinal cell will express different parts of the DNA, thus creating a cell with different specialized properties.  If our genomes are detailed maps of the entire world, then the brain cell is very focused on building Paris while the intestinal cell is much more involved in Australia.  And so, when a hydra decides to mate, then its protein expression profile must change in some fundamental way to switch it from being immortal to mortal.  DNA is amazing.

                The short answer is that we have no idea how the hydra does this yet.  Scientists are trying to learn what genes are important in immortality and what genes are necessary for aging.  More than that, though, they are focusing on more global traits of long-living animals versus shorter lifespan animals and they have found a few key pieces of data.

                To start with, long-living animals typically have great protection for themselves.  Clams can live to be 400 years old while giant tortoises can hang around for ~ 180 years!  Both are free hide away inside their shells.  Bowhead whales live for just over 200 years and are so massive in size that they have few enemies.  

                Another trait scientists have found is that cells from longer living animals are more resistant to stresses, such as poisons (in the shape of cadmium and hydrogen peroxide) and heat.  These stressors should cause cells to either die or become sick while dealing with the situations, but the longevity of the animal correlates with cells being more able to cope. Less die.  Less become sick.  It makes sense, of course, that the cells would be so adaptable since the animal would be around a long time and, by sheer chance, would run into many stresses.  If the cells were weak and died easily, then the animal wouldn’t live as long.  Underpinning the cell stability data is the finding that these cells harbor more stable proteins.  When subjected to heat, something that would normally cause a protein to fall apart, the longer living species have proteins that are more resistant to falling apart, meaning they can still do their job, even in the face of a stressful situation.  

                Finally, Nature seems to work a bit like the hydra.  Within every phylum (Kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species or Kings play chess on fine glass surfaces), an array of animals exist that live for short or longer periods of time.  Evolution has made it so life can be short or long depending on the external pressures.  

                The research continues into how other animals age (or not) by studying many species, including hydra.  Scientists are then trying to see if we can use that information to somehow slow aging in humans.  While the hydra is the most interesting case of anti-aging we know about and humans share many genes with hydra that are not found in fruitflies (a commonly studied laboratory animal), we do have to remember that hydras are evolutionarily quite different than us and do not live such active lifestyles.  But still … the possibilities are amazing.  Maybe one day we all will live to be 116 or older!

****************************************************************************

Original Research Paper 1:  Years of work (8), Years trying to be published (2), Journals that have rejected it (3), Current status: Submitted.  I’m working to make some high resolution tables at the moment (in anticipation of the paper’s acceptance, which I’m trying to pretend might actually happen one day!)

Original Research Paper 2: Years of work (2), Months trying to be published (2), Journals that have rejected it (0), Current status: favorable reviews, trying to do one more experiment to appease a reviewer - SAME

Review Paper 1: Requested by a specific journal, Current status: Accepted with favorable reviews!  I have to make a few small changes, but otherwise it will print in January!

****************************************************************************

REFERENCES

Deweerdt, Sarah. “Looking for a master switch.” Nature (2012) 492, pgs S10 – S11.

A big name in aging among animals, including the hydra: Steven Austad of the Barshop Center for Longevity and Aging Studies, University of Texas Health Science Center.

No, no LSD here...

                Since I work so far from where I live (commuting is not for me, folks), I try very hard to schedule my experiments only for weekdays.  I’ve gotten quite adept at it, but I do not like it.  I much prefer to think on the fly and come to work as I need (I'd work such long hours if I worked down the street!).  Creativity and careful thought don’t really follow a 9 to 5 schedule, but such is life.  This past week, one of my experiments involved cells and all my cells decided to die.  Not cool.  In order to not lose a day next week, I dragged myself to work this morning and I had some time to finish reading the article I was discussing in my last post while waiting for my train.  This is when everything I thought I understood about my brain was smashed to pieces.

                What if – just what if – your brain was a radio?  Radio waves are flying all around us, right?  We can’t see them or sense them, but twenty four hours a day, they are transmitting voices, words, and data.  If we want to know what that information is, we merely switch on a radio.  What if consciousness was like radio waves and our brains were radios?  What if consciousness was not something our brains created because of its functioning neurons but our functioning neurons allowed our brains to interact with this large, all-encompassing consciousness that everyone else can tap into, as well?  What if our consciousness can live on without our bodies, but our bodies cannot live without our consciousness?  

     Seriously.  Chew on that.  

                This is a theory called nonlocal consciousness that has grown from the study of near-death experiences and brain function.  Yes, agreed, it requires a little bit of brain (ha) power to accept.  Or, at least, it took me some time to stop squinting my eyes at the paper in half-hearted amusement.  I’m not saying I’m welcoming this theory with open arms, but I am saying that to understand consciousness, scientists may need to begin thinking outside the box.  This is an excellent start.

                One problem with consciousness, aside from near death experiences, is found with the use of EEGs, PET scans, and fMRIs.  They can easily show increased blood flow to certain areas of the brain in response to certain thought-provoking stimuli, but these studies cannot possibly tell us if the cells produce thoughts themselves.  If you believe that consciousness is truly the result  of stimulating neural networks in the brain, then you’d conclude that the same stimuli would always lead to the same thought processes.  Does that happen?  Not sure.  Maybe so.  Maybe not.  There’s no way to measure how much we feel or think.  So, while one camp of people will continue to believe that consciousness is directly tied to brain function, another camp doesn’t think it all adds up.  Of course there is plenty of evidence for the brain function-begets-consciousness crowd.  The nonlocal consciousness champions also have evidence and they turn to various aspects of near death experiences to substantiate their claims.

                The hallmarks of a near death experience include an out of body experience (typically described as the person viewing the scene from above), life flashing before their eyes, visitation with passed relatives, and a return to the body.  Let’s look individually at each one.

Life flashing: Those that report these experiences say they saw and felt every moment from their life and not only could they feel their own thoughts, but they also understood the thoughts of those involved.  It is described as a connection amongst all beings and a place where time and space have no meaning.  One quoted woman said she felt like she “…was in all places at the same time” and that she “…had the thoughts of everyone involved in the event, as if I had their own thoughts within me.”

Visitation with passed relatives: Deceased relatives are usually recognized by appearance and communication is through thoughts.  One related experience, which has similar aspects to another story I’ve heard anecdotally, explains that the near death experience involved meeting of the patient’s deceased grandmother in addition to another man he did not know, but who looked at him “lovingly.”  Years following the near death experience, the patient saw a picture of the father he never knew and who had died before he born.  This was the man he encountered with his grandmother.  

Out of Body Experience/Return to Body: Patients say it feels as if they have removed their body the same as if they had removed a coat.  They say perception, emotion, thoughts, and clear consciousness continue once removed from their body.  Most out of body experiences are described as veridical.  Scientists have hidden objects in high places of hospital rooms as a way to “know” if patients undergo true out of body experiences.  Only when high in the room and looking down at the scene can these objects be seen.  However, no patient has ever reported seeing one, but researchers feel that patients are more likely focused on other things during the experience rather than checking out the hospital room.  The return to the body, usually through the head, is often accompanied by a “locked up” feeling or restriction.

                All of these experiences have a common thread of nonlocal consciousness: the feeling of no space or time, the ability to encounter the consciousness of others, the feeling of being detached from your body and yet still able to think, feel, and communicate, but only among those within your consciousness plane (ie – those who have passed).  It was a bit unsettling to think about at first for me, but has now morphed into something that could make complete sense.  It makes me wonder: if mediums are real, then do they just have brains that act as stronger radios and tap into this nonlocal consciousness far more deeply than others?  Possibly.  It’s all a bit – well – mind blowing to think about, isn’t it?

****************************************************************************

ASIDE: Because I have three papers in various stages of publication right now, I decided that I’d make a ticker for them.  I quietly celebrate my papers because they are not simple feats of accomplishment.  As you can see, finishing the work to write the paper and finally having the paper accepted can take years. I’ll update the info for each with each post.  You can skip this if you want – I won’t be mad.  Sorta.

Original Research Paper 1:  Years of work (8), Years trying to be published (2), Journals that have rejected it (3), Current status: Revision, re-submission hopefully on 12/3/12

Original Research Paper 2: Years of work (2), Months trying to be published (2), Journals that have rejected it (0), Current status: favorable reviews, trying to do one more experiment to appease a reviewer

Review Paper 1: Requested by a specific journal, Current status: under review

****************************************************************************

REFERENCES

Van Lommel, P. “Near-death experiences: the experience of the deal as real and not as an illusion.” (2011) Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1234, pgs 19 – 28. 

For the pictures, I just googled "Trippy pictures."  Ha.