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Topic Review
The Autonomic Nervous System Interaction with Immunity
The autonomic nervous system (ANS) and the immune system are deeply interrelated. The ANS regulates both innate and adaptive immunity through the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches, and an imbalance in this system can determine an altered inflammatory response as typically observed in chronic conditions such as systemic autoimmune diseases. Rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, and systemic sclerosis all show a dysfunction of the ANS that is mutually related to the increase in inflammation and cardiovascular risk. Moreover, an interaction between ANS and the gut microbiota has direct effects on inflammation homeostasis. Recently vagal stimulation techniques have emerged as an unprecedented possibility to reduce ANS dysfunction, especially in chronic diseases characterized by pain and a decreased quality of life as well as in chronic inflammation.
  • 4.1K
  • 07 Mar 2022
Topic Review
Goose Bumps
Goose bumps, goosebumps or goose-pimples are the bumps on a person's skin at the base of body hairs which may involuntarily develop when a person is tickled, cold or experiencing strong emotions such as fear, euphoria or sexual arousal. The formation of goose bumps in humans under stress is considered to be a vestigial reflex. Its function in other apes is to raise the body's hair, and would have made human ancestors appear larger to scare off predators or to increase the amount of air trapped in the fur to make it more insulating. The reflex of producing goose bumps is known as piloerection or the pilomotor reflex, or, more traditionally, horripilation. It occurs in many mammals; a prominent example is porcupines, which raise their quills when threatened, or sea otters when they encounter sharks or other predators.
  • 4.1K
  • 29 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Operation Bertram
Operation Bertram was a Second World War deception operation practised by the Allied forces in Egypt led by Bernard Montgomery, in the months before the Second Battle of El Alamein in 1942. Bertram was devised by Dudley Clarke to deceive Erwin Rommel about the timing and location of the Allied attack. The operation consisted of physical deceptions using dummies and camouflage, designed and made by the British Middle East Command Camouflage Directorate led by Geoffrey Barkas. These were accompanied by electromagnetic deceptions codenamed Operation Canwell, using false radio traffic. All of these were planned to make the Axis believe that the attack would take place to the south, far from the coast road and railway, about two days later than the real attack. Bertram consisted of the creation of the appearance of army units where none existed and in concealing armour, artillery and matériel. Dummy tanks and guns were made mainly of local materials including calico and palm-frond hurdles. Real tanks were disguised as trucks, using light "Sunshield" canopies. Field guns and their limbers were also disguised as trucks, their real wheels visible, under a simple box-shaped "Cannibal" canopy to give the shape of a truck. Petrol cans were stacked along the sides of existing revetted trenches, hidden in the shadows. Food was stacked in piles of boxes and draped with camouflage nets to resemble trucks. Trucks were parked openly in the tank assembly area for some weeks. Real tanks were similarly parked openly, far behind the front. Two nights before the attack, the tanks replaced the trucks, being covered with "Sunshields" before dawn. The tanks were replaced that same night with dummies in their original positions, so the armour remained seemingly two or more days' journey behind the front line. To reinforce the impression that the attack was not ready, a dummy water pipeline was constructed, at an apparent rate of 5 mi (8.0 km) per day. Some days' worth remained to be built at the time of the attack; dummy tanks, guns and supplies were constructed to the south. After the battle, the captured German panzerarmee general Wilhelm Ritter von Thoma told Montgomery that he had believed the Allies had at least one more armoured division than they did and that the attack would be in the south. Rommel's stand-in, general Georg Stumme, thought the attack would not begin for several weeks. Bertram had succeeded; when announcing the victory at El Alamein in the House of Commons, Winston Churchill praised the camouflage operation.
  • 4.0K
  • 02 Nov 2022
Biography
Ziauddin Sardar
Ziauddin Sardar (Urdu: ضیاء الدین سردار‎; born 31 October 1951) is a British-Pakistani scholar, award-winning writer, cultural critic and public intellectual who specialises in Muslim thought, the future of Islam, futurology and science and cultural relations. The author of more than 50 books,[1] Prospect magazine has named him as one of Britain's top 100 public intellectuals and
  • 4.0K
  • 11 Nov 2022
Biography
Alexander Amini
Alexander Amini (born April 29, 1995) is an American scientist from Dublin, Ireland, currently studying at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in America. He is the first prize winner of the 23rd European Union Contest for Young Scientists and the 47th BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition in 2011 at the age of fifteen for his project entitled: “Tennis Sensor Data Analysis:
  • 4.0K
  • 26 Dec 2022
Topic Review
History of Intersex Surgery
The history of intersex surgery is intertwined with the development of the specialities of pediatric surgery, pediatric urology, and pediatric endocrinology, with our increasingly refined understanding of sexual differentiation, with the development of political advocacy groups united by a human qualified analysis, and in the last decade by doubts as to efficacy, and controversy over when and even whether some procedures should be performed. Prior to the medicalization of intersex, Canon and common law referred to a person's sex as male, female or hermaphrodite, with legal rights as male or female depending on the characteristics that appeared most dominant. The foundation of common law, the Institutes of the Lawes of England described how a hermaphrodite could inherit "either as male or female, according to that kind of sexe which doth prevaile." Single cases have been described by legal cases sporadically over the centuries. Modern ideas of medicalization of intersex and birth defects can be traced to French anatomist Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1805–1861), who pioneered the field of teratology. Since the 1920s surgeons have attempted to "fix" an increasing variety of conditions. Success has often been partial and surgery is often associated with minor or major, transient or permanent complications. Techniques in all fields of surgery are frequently revised in a quest for higher success rates and lower complication rates. Some surgeons, well aware of the immediate limitations and risks of surgery, feel that significant rates of imperfect outcomes are no scandal (especially for the more severe and disabling conditions). Instead they see these negative outcomes as a challenge to be overcome by improving the techniques. Genital reconstruction evolved within this tradition. In recent decades, nearly every aspect of this perspective has been called into question, with increasing concern regarding the human rights implications of medical interventions.
  • 4.0K
  • 01 Nov 2022
Biography
Karl Sven Woytek Sas Konkovitch Matthew Kruszelnicki
Karl Sven Woytek Sas Konkovitch Matthew Kruszelnicki AM (born 1948), often referred to as "Dr Karl",[1] is an Australian science communicator and popularizer,[1] who is known as an author, and as a science commentator on Australian radio and television. Kruszelnicki is the Julius Sumner Miller Fellow in the Science Foundation for Physics at the School of Physics, University of Sydney.[2] Kru
  • 4.0K
  • 06 Dec 2022
Biography
Anthony Fauci
Anthony Stephen Fauci OMRI (born December 24, 1940) is an American physician-scientist and immunologist serving as the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the Chief Medical Advisor to the President. As a physician with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Fauci has served the American public health sector in various capacities for more than fift
  • 4.0K
  • 15 Nov 2022
Biography
Dave Rubin
David Joshua Rubin (born June 26, 1976)[1] is an American political commentator and talk show host. He is the creator and host of The Rubin Report, a political talk show and podcast currently airing on YouTube and formerly part of The Young Turks Network[2] and Ora TV.[3] He previously hosted The Ben and Dave Show and The Six Pack, a podcast and radio show on Sirius XM Radio.[4] Topics Rubin fr
  • 4.0K
  • 22 Nov 2022
Biography
Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
Venkatraman "Venki" Ramakrishnan (born 1952)[1] is an American and British structural biologist of Indian origin. He was elected President of the Royal Society in November 2015; Presidents serve for five years.[2] In 2009 he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Thomas A. Steitz and Ada Yonath, "for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome".[3][4][5][6][7] Since 1999, he has wor
  • 3.9K
  • 21 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Tree of Life
The tree of life or universal tree of life is a metaphor, model and research tool used to explore the evolution of life and describe the relationships between organisms, both living and extinct, as described in a famous passage in Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859). {{Blockquote Tree diagrams originated in the medieval era to represent genealogical relationships. Phylogenetic tree diagrams in the evolutionary sense date back to the mid-nineteenth century. The term phylogeny for the evolutionary relationships of species through time was coined by Ernst Haeckel, who went further than Darwin in proposing phylogenic histories of life. In contemporary usage, tree of life refers to the compilation of comprehensive phylogenetic databases rooted at the last universal common ancestor of life on Earth. Two public databases for the tree of life are TimeTree, for phylogeny and divergence times, and the Open Tree of Life, for phylogeny.
  • 3.9K
  • 18 Oct 2022
Biography
Margaret Hamilton
Margaret Heafield Hamilton (born Heafield on August 17, 1936)[1] is an American computer scientist, systems engineer, and business owner. She is credited with coining the term, "software engineering". Hamilton was Director of the Software Engineering Division[2] of the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, which developed on-board flight software for the Apollo space program.[3] In 1986, she became th
  • 3.9K
  • 10 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Monotreme
Monotremes (/ˈmɒnətriːmz/) are prototherian mammals of the order Monotremata. They are one of the three groups of living mammals, along with placentals (Eutheria) and marsupials (Metatheria). Monotremes are typified by structural differences in their brains, jaws, digestive tract, reproductive tract, and other body parts, compared to the more common mammalian types. In addition, they lay eggs rather than bearing live young, but, like all mammals, the female monotremes nurse their young with milk. Monotremes have been considered members of Australosphenida, a clade that contains extinct mammals from the Jurassic and Cretaceous of Madagascar, South America, and Australia, though this is disputed. The only surviving examples of monotremes are all indigenous to Australia and New Guinea, although there is evidence that they were once more widespread, as Monotrematum is known from the Paleocene of South America. The extant monotreme species are the platypus and four species of echidnas. There is currently some debate regarding monotreme taxonomy. The name monotreme derives from the Greek words μονός (monós 'single') and τρῆμα (trêma 'hole'), referring to the cloaca.
  • 3.9K
  • 28 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Memory Span
In psychology and neuroscience, memory span is the longest list of items that a person can repeat back in correct order immediately after presentation on 50% of all trials. Items may include words, numbers, or letters. The task is known as digit span when numbers are used. Memory span is a common measure of working memory and short-term memory. It is also a component of cognitive ability tests such as the WAIS. Backward memory span is a more challenging variation which involves recalling items in reverse order.
  • 3.9K
  • 20 Oct 2022
Biography
Nakayama Miki
Nakayama Miki (中山 みき, 18 April 1798 – 26 January 1887 by the Japanese calendar[1]) was a nineteenth-century Japanese farmer and religious leader. She is the primary figure of the Japanese new religion Tenrikyo. Followers, who refer to her as Oyasama (おやさま), believe that she was settled as the Shrine of Tsukihi from the moment she experienced a divine revelation in 1838 until h
  • 3.9K
  • 15 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Muscle Memory
Muscle memory is a form of procedural memory that involves consolidating a specific motor task into memory through repetition, which has been used synonymously with motor learning. When a movement is repeated over time, a long-term muscle memory is created for that task, eventually allowing it to be performed with little to no conscious effort. This process decreases the need for attention and creates maximum efficiency within the motor and memory systems. Muscle memory is found in many everyday activities that become automatic and improve with practice, such as riding bicycles, driving motor vehicles, playing ball sports, typing on keyboards, entering PINs, playing musical instruments, poker, martial arts, and dancing.
  • 3.9K
  • 04 Nov 2022
Topic Review
O-Linked Glycosylation
O-linked glycosylation is the attachment of a sugar molecule to the oxygen atom of serine (Ser) or threonine (Thr) residues in a protein. O-glycosylation is a post-translational modification that occurs after the protein has been synthesised. In eukaryotes, it occurs in the endoplasmic reticulum, Golgi apparatus and occasionally in the cytoplasm; in prokaryotes, it occurs in the cytoplasm. Several different sugars can be added to the serine or threonine, and they affect the protein in different ways by changing protein stability and regulating protein activity. O-glycans, which are the sugars added to the serine or threonine, have numerous functions throughout the body, including trafficking of cells in the immune system, allowing recognition of foreign material, controlling cell metabolism and providing cartilage and tendon flexibility. Because of the many functions they have, changes in O-glycosylation are important in many diseases including cancer, diabetes and Alzheimer's. O-glycosylation occurs in all domains of life, including eukaryotes, archaea and a number of pathogenic bacteria including Burkholderia cenocepacia, Neisseria gonorrhoeae and Acinetobacter baumannii.
  • 3.9K
  • 25 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Chital
The chital (/tʃiːtəl/; Axis axis), also known as spotted deer, chital deer, and axis deer, is a species of deer that is native to the Indian subcontinent. It was first described by German naturalist Johann Christian Polycarp Erxleben in 1777. A moderate-sized deer, male chital reach nearly 90 cm (35 in) and females 70 cm (28 in) at the shoulder. While males weigh 30–75 kg (66–165 lb), the lighter females weigh 25–45 kg (55–99 lb). It is sexually dimorphic; males are larger than females, and antlers are present only on males. The upper parts are golden to rufous, completely covered in white spots. The abdomen, rump, throat, insides of legs, ears, and tail are all white. The antlers, three-pronged, are nearly 1 m (3.3 ft) long.
  • 3.8K
  • 29 Sep 2022
Topic Review
Marine Mammal
Marine mammals are aquatic mammals that rely on the ocean and other marine ecosystems for their existence. They include animals such as seals, whales, manatees, sea otters and polar bears. They do not represent a distinct taxon or systematic grouping, but rather have a polyphyletic relation due to convergent evolution, as in they do not have an immediate common ancestor. They are also unified by their reliance on the marine environment for feeding. Marine mammal adaptation to an aquatic lifestyle varies considerably between species. Both cetaceans and sirenians are fully aquatic and therefore are obligate water dwellers. Seals and sea-lions are semiaquatic; they spend the majority of their time in the water, but need to return to land for important activities such as mating, breeding and molting. In contrast, both otters and the polar bear are much less adapted to aquatic living. Their diet varies considerably as well; some may eat zooplankton, others may eat fish, squid, shellfish, sea-grass and a few may eat other mammals. While the number of marine mammals is small compared to those found on land, their roles in various ecosystems are large, especially concerning the maintenance of marine ecosystems, through processes including the regulation of prey populations. This role in maintaining ecosystems makes them of particular concern as 23% of marine mammal species are currently threatened. Marine mammals were first hunted by aboriginal peoples for food and other resources. Many were also the target for commercial industry, leading to a sharp decline in all populations of exploited species, such as whales and seals. Commercial hunting lead to the extinction of †Steller's sea cow, †sea mink, †Japanese sea lion and the †Caribbean monk seal. After commercial hunting ended, some species, such as the gray whale and northern elephant seal, have rebounded in numbers; conversely, other species, such as the North Atlantic right whale, are critically endangered. Other than hunting, marine mammals can be killed as bycatch from fisheries, where they become entangled in fixed netting and drown or starve. Increased ocean traffic causes collisions between fast ocean vessels and large marine mammals. Habitat degradation also threatens marine mammals and their ability to find and catch food. Noise pollution, for example, may adversely affect echolocating mammals, and the ongoing effects of global warming degrade arctic environments.
  • 3.8K
  • 21 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Domestic Turkey
The domestic turkey (Meleagris gallopavo domesticus) is a large fowl, one of the two species in the genus Meleagris and the same species as the wild turkey. Although turkey domestication was thought to have occurred in central Mesoamerica at least 2,000 years ago, recent research suggests a possible second domestication event in the southwestern United States between 200 BC and AD 500. However, all of the main domestic turkey varieties today descend from the turkey raised in central Mexico that was subsequently imported into Europe by the Spanish in the 16th century. The domestic turkey is a popular form of poultry, and it is raised throughout temperate parts of the world, partially because industrialized farming has made it very cheap for the amount of meat it produces. Female domestic turkeys are referred to as hens, and the chicks may be called poults or turkeylings. In the United States, the males are referred to as toms, while in the United Kingdom and Ireland, males are stags. The great majority of domestic turkeys are bred to have white feathers because their pin feathers are less visible when the carcass is dressed, although brown or bronze-feathered varieties are also raised. The fleshy protuberance atop the beak is the snood, and the one attached to the underside of the beak is known as a wattle. The English-language name for this species results from an early misidentification of the bird with an unrelated species which was imported to Europe through the country of Turkey. The Latin species name gallopāvō means "chicken peacock".
  • 3.8K
  • 18 Nov 2022
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