Tag: encyclopaedia

Posted in Psychology & Medicine

Silphium

Posted on by Jinavie

Although sex was devised by Mother Nature to promote procreation, humans have been trying to separate the baby-making aspect of sex from the pure carnal pleasure it gives for a very long time. The Romans are known to have used a fennel-like herb called the silphium as a form of birth control. They discovered that the leaves of this plant could be ground up and made into a resin pill, which seemed to reduce the likelihood of women becoming pregnant. The Roman scholar Pliny the Elder recorded that one could use the resin as a pill or pessary to promote menstrual discharge, suggesting pregnancy has not occurred.

News of this medicine spread throughout the empire and there was massive demand for it. The plant grew exclusively on a narrow coastal area in present-day Libya and was impossible to cultivate. This meant settlements in this area could trade the plant at a very high price. It is said silphium was “worth its weight in denarii (silver coins)”. Its economic importance is signified in coins from Cyrene (an ancient North African city where silphium was produced) depict the silphium plant or seed. In fact, one theory of the origin of the heart symbol is the shape of the silphium seed pod. Overharvesting of the plant, the fact that it could not be cultivated and other factors such as changing environments and overgrazing ultimately led to the extinction of this plant and scholars still debate the exact identity of the plant.

Although there are records that indicate silphium was used as a contraceptive and abortifacent (substance that induces abortion), it is unclear as to how effective it was. Related plants such as wild carrots have shown to have abortifacent properties in some studies and there certainly are a vast list of plants that could potentially harm or terminate a pregnancy. Regardless of the potency, the heavy trade of the plant and its intended use points towards the fact that the concept of contraception is not new to human civilisations. It is interesting to think that we are the only species to actively want to reduce the risk of making a baby during sex, which is the original purpose of sex.

Posted in History & Literature

Martini

Posted on by Jinavie

A martini is a classic cocktail made from 3~4 parts gin and 1 part dry vermouth. It is then stirred in a mixing glass with ice cubes, strained then garnished with a green olive or a twist of lemon peel. It is most famous for being the drink of choice of James Bond – the most famous spy in the fictional world. Bond frequently orders a vodka martini (vodka instead of gin) and is famous for asking it to be “shaken, not stirred”.

The reason for his preference has never been given in the novels, but that did not stop Bond enthusiasts, martini connoisseurs and even scientists from investigating why Bond may have preferred a shaken martini as opposed to a stirred one.

When you shake a drink with ice, it becomes colder than when it is stirred for the same amount of time. This may be the main reason Bond liked a shaken martini (also called a Bradford), as a martini is typically served as cold as possible.

However, shaking a cocktail has some consequences. The vigorous shaking will introduce more air into the cocktail (“bruising” the drink), which makes it taste sharper and more bitter. The bubbles also makes the drink cloudier and have a different texture. Furthermore, shaking causes the ice to chip (as opposed to the much gentler stirring), which serves to make the drink cloudier and more diluted. Therefore, the shaking essentially makes the drink weaker.

An alternative theory as to why Bond asked for his martini to be shaken is that vodka was often made from potato more than grain prior to the 1960s. Potato vodka has an oilier texture and shaking helps disperse the oiliness and improve the taste.

A biochemical analysis of stirred versus shaken martinis reveal that shaking causes more hydrogen peroxide to break down, meaning a shaken martini leaves half the peroxide left in a stirred martini. The reduced hydrogen peroxide content results in more antioxidants, which has health benefits such as reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease, cataracts and stroke.

Posted in Science & Nature

Millions And Billions

Posted on by Jinavie

Have you ever stopped and pondered what a million actually is? Sure, you might easily pass it off as the number 1,000,000, or a thousand thousands, but have you really tried to get your head around how big a number that is? For example, you may be able to visualise a hundred people, a thousand people or even tens of thousands of people in your head, but it is very hard to visualise an image of a million people.

Now consider this. When was a million seconds ago? You know a second is very short and a million is a very large number. But it is difficult to put the two together. Make a guess. Last year? Two months ago? Surprisingly, the answer is only a week and a half ago (11.6 days).
Then what about a billion seconds? A billion is a thousand million so you might think it is easy to just add some zeroes, but a billion seconds is 31.7 years ago. Just by changing one syllable, or adding three zeroes, we went from a scale of weeks to years. If we go one step further to a trillion seconds, you leap back in time 31,700 years. You can probably remember what happened a million seconds ago, you might not have even been born a billion seconds ago and our ancestors were still hunter-gatherers roaming Europe a trillion seconds ago. That is how mind-blowing the scale of large numbers can be.

Now let’s look at some other things to really understand how big a million and a billion can be. A million dollars (USD) could buy you a luxury house, a manufacturing line, a 41-acre island in Belize or over 200 years’ worth of coffee (if you drank two cups a day). A million dollars in $1 bills would weigh 1000kg and stack to 30 stories high. A billion dollars – even if you were to convert it into $100 bills – would weigh 10 tonnes, almost as heavy as the truck that would carry it.

The pitter-patter of raindrops on your face feels nice, but a million drops of water weighs 50kg and would break your neck. A billion red helium balloons would have enough lift to carry 14,000 tonnes – enough to lift a hundred small, two-storey houses up into the air. A million grains of rice will feed a person for almost two months, while a billion ants would weigh twice a standard car (3 tonnes total).

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(You should definitely check out Hank Green’s take on “a million seconds”, because everything is better if Hank Green is ranting about it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJ7A0yTDiqQ)

Posted in Life & Happiness

The Perfect Toast

Posted on by Jinavie

Toast is one of those simple meals that anyone can make. Bread goes in, toast comes out. But some scientists decided to embark on a quest for the “perfect” toast. After spending a week toasting and tasting over two thousand slices of toast, the scientists came up with some figures.

The perfect toast should be:

  • 14mm thick
  • Made from pale-seeded loaf of bread taken from a fridge at 3°C
  • Cooked in a 900-watt toaster set to 5 out of 6 power
  • Cooked at a temperature of 154°C evenly from both sides
  • Cooked for exactly 3 minutes and 36 seconds (216 seconds)
  • Transferred gently to a plate that is pre-warmed to 45°C
  • Immediately slathered with 68.2mg per square centimetre of butter
  • Sliced once diagonally

The result of this formula is a perfectly golden-brown toast of 12:1 exterior to interior crispiness, with the “ultimate balance of external crunch and internal softness”.

Posted in Science & Nature

HeLa

Posted on by Jinavie

In February 1951, a woman named Henrietta Lacks was diagnosed with cervical cancer. The cancer was aggressive and her health quickly deteriorated, until her ultimate demise in October 1951. Although Henrietta Lacks passed away on that day, not all of her was dead. A scientist named George Otto Gey succeeded in culturing (growing on a petri dish) the biopsied cervical cancer cells, provided by Lacks’ physician. He discovered that this lineage of cells could keep dividing and growing without stopping. In the human body, cells will eventually reach a limit of dividing and be destroyed. The cells from Henrietta Lacks, however, were immortal. Gey named this cell line HeLa, taking the first two letters of Lacks’ first and last names.

The HeLa cell line (and all other immortal cell lines since) have proven very useful in research as they give an infinite supply of identical cells, giving scientists a model template they can experiment on. The immortality of the HeLa cells is such that 60 years later, scientists are still using cells from that lineage – cells virtually identical to the cells taken from Henrietta Lacks (save for random mutations that happen in any cells). The cells are so well-adapted to unlimited growth that they are sometimes considered a laboratory “weed”, because it can easily invade another cell culture and completely take it over. One biologist even went as far as claiming that HeLa cells were no longer human, but instead a new species. He supported his claim with the fact that HeLa cells are self-sufficient and can reproduce on its own, and that it has a different genome (even chromosome numbers) to human cells due to the nature of cervical cancer.

The main issue with HeLa cells is the ethics behind it. At no point did Lacks or her family give permission to the doctor for him to donate her cells for research. Since her death, the cells were not only used for the purpose of pure research, but also commercialised. Unfortunately, medical ethics was not well-established at the time and asking the patient’s consent for such things was not common. The two major sides in this debate would be the unethical act of taking human tissue and using it without consent, versus the potential benefit it brings. For example, HeLa cells were used by Jonas Salk for his research that led to the development of the polio vaccine. It may be a stretch, but if those cells were not taken from Lacks, the development of the polio vaccine may have been delayed and countless more people would have suffered from a lifelong crippling illness. This is the great question in medical ethics: how much of an individual’s human rights can we afford to sacrifice for the needs of the many? Do the needs of the many really outweigh the needs of the few, or the one?

Posted in Psychology & Medicine

Memories

Posted on by Jinavie

When you remember a scene from the past, you are not remembering the past. You are remembering a memory of the past. Your brain works in a very funny way where it does not record memories like film. Instead, it seems to remember things as a collage. Everytime you recall a memory – whether it be a happy memory of your first love, or a sad memory of lost love – your brain recalls your last recollection of the event. Simply put, every time you “remember” something, you are merely remembering the latest memory of the event. Each time you replay an event in your mind, it is rewriting a version of the memory over itself.

This means that the more you dwell on a memory, the more it is distorted. You romanticise the good parts and dramaticise the bad parts. The memory is ultimately warped beyond the point of telling the true story. Instead, it becomes something akin to a movie script or a fairy tale. But if it truly is a memory you deem special and hold dear, then maybe it isn’t too bad keeping a romanticised, “perfect” version of it somewhere in your heart to look back on every now and then.

Posted in Psychology & Medicine

Autotelic

Posted on by Jinavie

From a very young age, goals are set for us by others. As babies we are encouraged to walk and talk, as children we are encouraged to do well in school, as teenagers we are encouraged to get a good degree and as adults, we are encouraged to be a model member of society. Advertisements put forward money, fame and power as models of success. Motivational speakers give speeches telling us paths we should follow to succeed. Parents tell children that they should listen to their advice if they wish to lead a comfortable life in the future. Amongst all of this external pressure, sometimes it seems difficult to have a say in what direction your life should go in.

The word autotelic is derived from the Greek words auto, meaning “self”, and telos, meaning “goal”. An autotelic is one who does not need external reminders to tell them who they are. They have a purpose in and not apart from themselves. They are driven by their own goals, curiosities and motivation. An autotelic does not live life like a connect-the-dots puzzle drawn by society, but chooses to paint their own life on a blank canvas.

The defining feature of autotelic personalities is that they are not driven by the want to be successful, but by the desire to seek challenges and be in flow state. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the psychologist who coined the term flow, defined the mark of the autotelic personality as “the ability to manage a rewarding balance between the “play” of challenge finding and the “work” of skill building“. They are far less interested in external rewards, such as a gold star from a teacher or a raise from a employer. Their reward is the flow state they enter while they work on their goal and the satisfaction that comes with knowing that they completed a challenge.

Some of the greatest achievers in history were autotelics. They did not achieve amazing feats because of the promise of money and fame, but because they were internally driven by the thirst for flow. When questioned why he wanted to climb Mount Everest, famous mountaineer George Mallory replied: ”Because it’s there“. An autotelic personality is not necessarily something you have to be born with. All you need is to constantly challenge yourself, discover whatever brings you to flow state and not let outside forces sway you from your own goals. For the only judge of your life that matters is you.

(If you don’t get the reference, go watch some How I Met Your Mother, coz it’s awesome 😛 Barney Stinson always sets new challenges for himself, always pushing himself to the limits of awesomeness. Examples: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iOi_iPNC50)

Posted in Science & Nature

Lava

Posted on by Jinavie

Death by lava is an often-used trope in films, most likely because of its slow, dramatic nature and the poetic beauty of being engulfed by liquid fire. But unfortunately as with so many things in the film world, most movie scenes depicting a person slowly sinking into lava until they are completely submerged is completely unscientific.

Lava is essentially molten rock. Just as ice and rock have different densities (try smashing two together for comparison), water and lava have completely different densities. In fact, lava is just over three times denser than water and somewhere between 100,000 to 1,000,000 times thicker (viscosity). The extremely high viscosity is why lava does not flow well, much like thick syrup and pitch. Density matters because less dense objects float when placed in a denser substance. Human beings are slightly denser than water (1010kg/m³ vs 1000kg/m³), meaning we can float if we have enough air in our lungs to provide the buoyancy. However, we are far less dense than molten lava. Even if we were as dense as lava, the extreme viscosity would make it very difficult for us to sink as the lava would not flow away from you that quickly. Ergo, if you were thrown into a pool of lava, you would not sink into a dramatic death.

Instead, you would most likely experience an even more horrific death as you stay afloat on the lava, as the surface of your body touching the lava is burned. Typical lava is between 1100~1200°C – well beyond the ignition point of human flesh. Not only will the skin, fat and muscle melt and peel away, but it will light up like a wick. The flame will soon cover the entire person and they will not only burn, but combust. Ultimately, only ash and completely dried up bone will be left floating on the lava, which will also end up igniting eventually.

Unfortunately, objects made of material such as steel and most other metals are denser than lava. This means that the Terminator would actually sink as dramatically as it did in the ending of Terminator 2 if he were to descend into a pool of lava.

(NB: It is important to note that in the movie, he descends into a vat of molten steel, not lava. Therefore, the accuracy of that scene hinges on whether the Terminator is made of a metal alloy denser than molten steel)

Posted in Philosophy

Ouroboros

Posted on by Jinavie

The Ouroboros is a symbol that depicts a serpent or a dragon biting its own tail, forming a ring. It is the symbol of cyclicality – something that is in a constant cycle of rebirth through the three steps of creation, maintenance and destruction.

The concept of a serpent devouring itself likely stems from the ancient belief that a snake shedding its skin is the act of leaving an old, inferior body to be reborn into a better, new body. The ancient Greeks explained that the Ouroboros connects its beginning (mouth) and end (tail) to form a metaphor for the link between life and death. By forming a circle, the Ouroboros has no beginning and no end; it is an infinite, linear path that cycles endlessly. Because of this, the Ouroboros is also the symbol of infinity, immortality and the cycle of time. An alternate ancient explanation for the Ouroboros is that because it eats itself, it will ultimately end up as nothing.

The Ouroboros was an important symbol in medieval alchemy. Alchemists used the symbol “O” to represent the Ouroboros. To the alchemists, the Ouroboros was an entity that did not place importance in the two natural processes of creation and destruction, but the often-neglected third force – maintenance. This neutral process is the connection between the start and end of anything. Alchemists knew that in any chemical reaction, the process is just as important as the starting ingredients and the final product. The Ouroboros also represented “everything” and “perfection” to alchemists as it connected its own beginning and end. Because of this, the Ouroboros came to represent the Philosopher’s stone.

Perhaps the most relevant application of the Ouroboros to us is the concept of rebirth and cycling. Nothing in nature is permanent. Matter changes states, chemicals react and species evolve. We too are never permanent. There is always room for change – to destroy what you do not like about yourself, create something better and then maintain that state until the next cycle comes. As much as it is important to know to love who you are, it is vital that you continuously recycle, refine and develop yourself to become the person that you are truly happy to call “me”.

Posted in Science & Nature

Around The World

Posted on by Jinavie

Imagine, if you will, a very long piece of ropethat loops around the Earth, fitting it tightly around the equator like a belt. If you wanted to raise this rope off the surface by one metre all around, how much more rope will you need?

The length of rope is the same as the circumference of the Earth which is 40,075km (24,901 miles). Ergo, it is easy to think that you would need kilometres of rope to extend it enough to float a metre off the Earth’s surface. However, in reality you need a mere 6.28m of extra rope to achieve this.

The reason is extremely simple, mathematically speaking. The circumference of any given circle is given by the equation 2πr, where r is the radius of the circle. Therefore, if you increase r by 1 unit (e.g. 1m), then the circumference increases by 2π x 1 = 2π = 6.28. No matter how large the circle may be, this rule does not change.

(This is a famous maths riddle, but here’s a much more interesting application of the concept in this What If? article. God I love that blog! http://what-if.xkcd.com/67/)