Author: Jinavie

Posted in Science & Nature

Rain

Posted on by Jinavie

Let’s imagine that you are walking outside, when rain clouds catch you by surprise and suddenly pour down on you. Assuming that you have no umbrella or anything to cover yourself with, is it best to run back home or walk back? Or to elaborate, should you walk and spend more time in the rain, or should you run, which means you will run into rain sideways?

There are two ways you can get wet in the rain: it will either fall on top of your head, or you will run into it from the side. The amount of rain that falls on your head is constant whether you are walking or raining, as the entire field you are travelling through is full of raindrops. Therefore, one would naturally think that running would not add much benefit as you run into more rain by moving faster, as you essentially hit a wall of raindrops.

But this is not true. No matter how fast you travel, the amount of rain you hit sideways is constant. The only variable that affects the amount of rain you hit sideways is the distance you travel. This is because the amount of raindrops in the space between you and your destination is constant.

Summarising this, the wetness from rain you receive is:

(wetness falling on your head per second x time spent in rain) + (wetness you run into per meter x distance travelled).

Since you cannot really change how far you are from your destination, the best way to minimise getting wet is to run as fast as you can to minimise the time you spend in the rain.

Then again, this is only the most practical option to keep you dry. If you are feeling particularly romantic or blue, then feel free to stroll through the rain, savouring the cold drops on your face (or wallow in the sadness that is your life).

(Here’s a very good video explaining the maths/science of it all: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MqYE2UuN24)

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Posted in History & Literature

2012

Posted on by Jinavie

One of the things that mankind has been fascinated with throughout history is the concept of an apocalypse or doomsday. Just in the last decade, there have been no less than fifty claims that the world would end on a certain day. The most famous of these include Nostradamus’ prediction that the world would end on July 1999, the Y2K problem that suggested that the year 2000 would cause all computers to malfunction, and many claims that a certain date would be the Rapture – the second coming of Christ and the end of the world. The latest of these doomsday predictions is the one regarding the Mayan calendar. There are claims that on the 21st of December, 2012, the Mayan calendar finishes its 5125-year cycle, leading to a cataclysmic event that will destroy the universe. But of course as usual, this theory is complete and utter nonsense.

Firstly, there are no records that the Mayans predicted that the world would be doomed when the cycle would finish. It is true that December 2012 marks the end of a b’ak’tun – a time period in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar equating to about 394 years, much like how we measure 1000 years by 1 millennium. Essentially, it is like a “turn of the century” for the Mayans. Pretty much the entire concept of the Mayan calendar ending bringing doom to us all was fabricated by some shoddy academics and New Age believers.

Secondly, every theory about how the world might end in such a scenario has been disproven. Some of the most popular “theories” were: the collision of a Planet X or “Nibiru” with Earth, geomagnetic reversal and galactic alignments. However, to this date (20th December, 2012), there are no large rocks or planets hurtling directly towards Earth (would have been noticed by thousands of astronomers worldwide months prior), the magnetic poles are stable (even if they switched it would not cause much harm) and there are no alignments between planets, moons or stars scheduled at the time.

No matter how crazy the theories and predictions are, there will always be people claiming that the world will end soon, and that we should repent our sins or something like that. Even better, there will be a significant amount of people who believe it or at least worry enough about it to affect their lives somehow.

Perhaps the most fitting quote for this phenomenon is something that Martin Luther wrote in his diary at a young age: “Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree”. Whether the world is ending or not, live your life to the fullest, seizing every day and making the most of your chances.

Posted in Science & Nature

Chicken Or The Egg

Posted on by Jinavie

One of the most well-known philosophical questions is what came first: the chicken or the egg? A chicken is born from an egg, and an egg is birthed by a chicken. This means that the cause and effect are intertwined in a never-ending cycle. This kind of problem is known as circular cause and consequence or circular reference.

In some ways, this question is extremely easy to answer. In biology, many different creatures lay eggs to give birth to their young, but there are no examples of a chicken being born without an egg being involved. The chicken is most likely a product of a lineage of evolving species that ultimately resulted in the genetic makeup of a chicken. That “proto-chicken” would have laid an egg, which had enough mutations in its genome to be sufficiently different from the proto-chicken to be called a “chicken”. Therefore, the egg must have come before the chicken. Even if we use the strict rule of defining “egg” by as a “chicken egg”, the egg that birthed the first chicken contained the original genetic makeup for chickens; ergo the chicken egg came before the chicken.

Science and philosophy aside, a completely unrelated point about chickens and eggs is that there is a Japanese dish called oyakodon, which is made with chicken and egg over a bowl of rice and vegetables. The name comes from the Japanese for parent (“oya”, 親) and child (“ko”, 子), giving away the cruel nature of the relationship between the main ingredients in the dish.

Posted in History & Literature

Judgement of Solomon

Posted on by Jinavie

The Bible tells many stories of a King Solomon, son of David. King Solomon is most famous for his wisdom, of which there are many accounts of in the Bible. The following is an example of the wisdom of Solomon.

There once lived two women living under the same roof who both gave birth to a son at similar times. One of the mothers accidentally smothered her own son while sleeping, and decided to switch the two infants, claiming the living one to be her own. The other woman instantly noticed that the dead baby was not hers and confronted the culprit, asking for her baby back. She refused, leading to a very heated argument that ultimately ended up in the court of King Solomon. The two women pleaded him to make the decision of who the real mother was. After much deliberation, King Solomon called for a sword to be brought before him. He stated that since both women were claiming the boy to be their own, there was only one solution: to split the baby in two and give each person a half of the baby. The lying woman, in bitter jealousy, urged King Solomon to cut the baby. She thought that if she could not have the baby, then no one shall. The true mother, mortified by what King Solomon planned on doing, pleaded him to just give the baby to the other women and not to kill the baby. The king then judged that she must be the true mother and gave the baby back to her, while punishing the other for her sins.

The story shows how the wisdom of King Solomon led to justice and reuniting the mother and baby by method of creating a fake situation that would instantly distinguish the actual mother from the liar. The expression “splitting the baby” is still used in legal professions to describe the act of coming to a simple compromise between two parties.

The intended moral of the story is probably to teach people that wisdom can defeat even the greatest of challenges. But perhaps the real moral of the story is: if you are insane enough to steal a baby, at least have enough acting skills to follow through with it instead of telling someone to kill the baby.

Posted in Science & Nature

Hammer And Feather

Posted on by Jinavie

What would happen if you dropped a 1kg ball and a 10kg ball at the same time from a high building? Most people would think that the 10kg ball would obviously fall faster and thus hit the ground faster, but the truth is they would fall at exactly the same time. The reason for this is that the force that accelerates a falling object is gravity, which on Earth is constant at 9.81ms-2. This means that no matter how heavy the object is, they will always accelerate by 9.81 metres per second per second. This was hypothesised by Galileo Galilei, who came up with the thought experiment of dropping two balls of different mass from the Leaning Tower of Pisa (there is debate as to whether he actually performed the experiment). The theory was later solidified by a certain Isaac Newton, who devised the laws of universal gravitation and the three laws of motion.

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However, if the two balls were dropped from an extremely high place, they may land at different times as mass affects the terminal velocity – when the force of gravity equals the force of drag caused by air resistance, leading to a constant velocity. A heavier object will keep accelerating to a greater velocity than a lighter object, which would have reached terminal velocity before the heavier object.

One place where this will not happen is in a vacuum where there is no drag force. To prove that the hypothesis that two objects of different masses will fall at the same time in the absence of air resistance, Commander David Scott of the Apollo 15 moon mission took a hammer and a feather with him. Once he landed on the moon, he dropped the hammer and feather in front of a live camera, showing that the two landed at exactly the same time. He thus proved that Galileo’s conclusion from two hundred years ago was in fact correct.

Posted in Science & Nature

Alligator

Posted on by Jinavie

What is the best or easiest way to protect yourself from an alligator attack? Obvious answers aside (such as avoiding them), it is to use something like an elastic band or a rope to tie their snout shut. Alligators have the strongest bite in the natural world – clocking in at about 2125 pounds of force (about 966kg). The sheer force of the bite is enough to crush the victim and kill them instantly. Even if the victim survives, there is a serious risk of being left with a permanent disability or die from an infected wound.

Although the force of the bite is incredible thanks to its extremely strong jaw muscles, alligators do not have nearly enough the same strength when opening their jaws. This means that a simple elastic band is enough to keep their jaws shut, leaving the alligator helpless and giving you a chance to run before its friends come to find you.

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Posted in Psychology & Medicine

Empty Nest Syndrome

Posted on by Jinavie

When children grow up and learn to become independent, parents must let go of their children and allow them to fly free. However, it is the inevitable human condition that the parents will be saddened by this change. For many parents, the moving out of their children can lead to depression and a loss in purpose. This phenomenon has been named empty nest syndrome as it happens as the children leave the metaphorical nest that is home.

As obvious as it sounds, empty nest syndrome can have a serious effect on the parent’s well-being. Common symptoms include depression, loss of purpose, anxiety, stress and a feeling of rejection. The suffering parent continues to obsess whether they brought up their child in a way to prepare them for the big world. At the same time, they feel that they are losing their identity as a “parent” – something they may have defined themselves as while they were bringing up the child. They may also feel rejected as they may believe that the child “does not need them anymore”. It has been observed that mothers are more likely to suffer empty nest syndrome (occasionally, menopause may be a confounding factor). Other factors that contribute are parents who find change difficult, have an unstable relationship with their spouse or those with an unhealthy obsession with their children or with the idea of being a parent.

Empty nest syndrome is a natural part of parenthood, but it is important to know how to prevent it from becoming too severe. The best way to cope with this syndrome is to keep in touch with the children and accept that they are young adults who are moving on with their life. Not only that, but the parents must also recognise that a new era has begun for them as well. This is important as failure to do so will lead to the identity crisis mentioned above. A good way to remedy this is through discovering hobbies and interests while maintaining healthy social networks with other people. Essentially, the parents have to “begin a new life”, just like their children. It is also worth noting that it helps if the children recognise this as well and try to keep in touch with their parents to make sure they are coping well without them.

Posted in History & Literature

Rod Of Asclepius

Posted on by Jinavie

There are many symbols that represent the field of medicine such as a red cross or a stethoscope. However, one of the most famous symbols representing medicine and healthcare is the rod of Asclepius. This symbol is used in the logos of numerous medical associations and army medical corps. Those who do know of the rod may describe it as a staff with two wings and two snakes intertwining on it, but this is a common misconception. That symbol is called the caduceus and is actually the symbol of Hermes – the Greek god of messengers, merchants, markets, the high roads, gamblers and thieves. The misconception is very common and many medical associations use the caduceus as their symbol instead of the correct Rod of Asclepius.

The Caduceus

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The actual rod of Asclepius is much simpler looking, as it is simply a stick with one serpent intertwining it. The reason that it is associated with medicine and healthcare is that it was wielded by the Greek god Asclepius – the god of medicine and healing. Asclepius was the son of Apollo and had a particular interest in the human body and the healing of ailments. The ancient Greeks often referred to Asclepius in the field of medicine. In fact, the famous Hippocratic Oath originally began with the line “I swear by Apollo the Physician and by Asclepius and by Hygieia and Panacea and by all the gods…” (Apollo was the god of many things and medicine was one of his minor domains).

The rod of Asclepius

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So why does the rod of Asclepius have a serpent wrapped around it? In Greek mythology, it is said that Asclepius commanded many non-venomous snakes which he used in healing rituals. The snakes would crawl around the temple, living freely among the physicians and patients. A certain species of snake called the Aesculapian snake is considered to be the model for this story. The reason why the Greeks chose the snake as the animal of healing may be because snakes shed their skin periodically – symbolising rebirth and fertility. 

Another possible root of the symbol may be the traditional treatment for a certain parasitic infection. The Guinea worm (Dracunculus medinensis) is a parasite that lives under the skin, digging itself out through a painful blister when mature. As the blisters burn, the patient immerses the area in cold water to soothe it. The worm detects the change in temperature and releases its larva, completing its life cycle. The traditional treatment was to slowly pull the worm out of the skin, entwine it around a stick and leave it for a period of hours to weeks until it would be completely removed. The Greeks may have taken this image (of the worm wrapped around a stick) and applied it to the rod of Asclepius.

Posted in Psychology & Medicine

Urine

Posted on by Jinavie

Despite the implied disgusting nature (especially smell) of urine, it is one of the most important types of “samples” used in medicine for diagnostic purposes. Like blood, urine can tell a lot about a person’s health and whether they have a certain disease or not.

One of the earliest recorded uses of urine as a medical test was for the detection of diabetes mellitus. People noticed that the urine of a diabetic would often smell quite sweet, and also taste sweet (it is uncertain how they came to test urine this way). This is because a diabetic has too much glucose (sugar) in their blood, causing it to spill over into the urine as the kidneys become saturated. In fact, the words diabetes mellitus stand for “passing through” (referring to the symptom of frequent urination) and “honey-sweet”. A completely unrelated disease called diabetes insipidus also causes frequent urination, but the urine does not taste sweet, hence “insipidus” (tasteless). This type of etymology is also seen in countries like Korea, China and Japan, where the word 당뇨(糖尿) literally stands for “sugar urine”. Although we no longer taste urine, it is still used to gauge the severity of diabetes by measuring the amount of protein in the urine (due to kidney damage).

There are many other tests one can do with urine to check for certain diseases. The chemical composition of urine tells us about the hydration status of a person, while giving away clues to diseases that cause electrolyte imbalance. It also gives some indication of how well the kidneys can do their job of concentrating urine. Certain markers such as white blood cells and bacteria in the urine can indicate a urinary tract infection. Antibodies in the urine can point towards a certain type of bacteria as the cause of a patient’s pneumonia, or whether a woman is pregnant (βhCG). Looking for proteins or sediments in the urine can be diagnostic of certain kidney diseases such as glomerulonephritis. Even rare diseases such as phaeochromocytomas can be diagnosed from the level of catecholamines in the urine (this is slightly too complex for our scopes).

A more interesting part of urinalysis is looking at the colour of the urine. Urine is usually a yellow colour, ranging in darkness depending on the concentration of urine. But when there are other things in the urine, the colour changes. Reddish urine suggests blood (which is not an indicator of kidney failure as TV shows say), which can be caused by trauma, UTIs, kidney stones or some other disease. Brown urine could be due to muscle breakdown somewhere in the body. Urine can appear very dark if the person has an illness called obstructive jaundice. Eating beetroots can cause your urine to turn bright red, while medications can change your urine colour from anywhere from red to orange to green. Murky or cloudy urine (with an offensive smell) may suggest a UTI.

Perhaps the most interesting urine colour known in medicine is purple. This unique colour is produced in a rare genetic disease called acute intermittent porphyria. If urine is collected from a patient suffering an attack of AIP (causes crippling abdominal pain) then left in the sun or under a UV light, it will turn purple due to certain proteins. Because of this, urine collected to test for AIP is wrapped in tinfoil before sending to the lab (where the chemicals are measured) to limit light exposure.

(Also read the article on how different colours of skin can be of diagnostic importance: http://jinavie.tumblr.com/post/32313894252/skin-colour)

Posted in History & Literature

Nude

Posted on by Jinavie

The concept of the female body being the ideal subject for nude art only became popular around the 16th century when the Renaissance was in full bloom. Art before this time mainly focussed on the male figure that could portray the perfection of gods, such as the young and beautiful Apollo or Jesus Christ on the cross. In ancient Greece, the naked male figure was associated with triumph and victory (possibly related to the Olympic games being played in nude). Thus, statues focussed on nude male figures, with female figures tending to be clothed.

The point in history when this perception of nudity changed was when an Italian artist called Giorgione painted the Sleeping Venus in 1510. This painting portrays a nude Venus (or Aphrodite) lying peacefully on white and red cloths upon the backdrop of Venetia. This new type of nude art where the naked female form was displayed – with the figure posed with grace and shyness – sparked a revolution, changing the concept that the female body evoked an “uncomfortable feeling” in the audience. Many art historians consider this painting one of the starting points of modern art.

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