Senate Finance Committee rejects two proposals for health-care public option
Posted on | October 1, 2009 | 1 Comment
I guess it was bound to happen. The Senate Finance Committee rejected two proposals for including the public option plan (one by Rockefeller IV of W. Virginia and one by Schumer of NY), which clearly is a huge setback for Obama. More importantly, it’s a step back for all Americans, especially for us not so well-off ones.
Being a college student, I get health care from our university, which is probably better than not having one because every time I have been there they have diagnosed me wrongly. Because of them, I have a huge scar on my head. Also thanks to them, somebody from our lab a while ago had to have his leg amputated, etc etc. I could go on.
I obviously can’t afford private insurance because I’m a broke a** grad student and I barely make rent myself. With the economy gone to ruts, there is a whole lot of people who can’t make rent and by extension have no health insurance. What happens to them, when they get sick or worse their children get sick? Shouldn’t the Congress be worrying about the 9.7% of the population that’s currently unemployed (U.S. BLS) and the other 15% people below the poverty line (U.S. Census of Bureau), rather than worrying about the interests of the insurance companies. Read more
Internet addiction, a mental illness! really?
Posted on | September 29, 2009 | No Comments
Yes it is true that people using blackberries or iPhone while having dinner or in other social situations, or even in class is really annoying if not infuriating, but a new Scientific American article suggests that there is actually a debate going on whether or not to include Internet addiction as a mental illness. That’s kind of going overboard, in my opinion.
First of all, you can’t call internet usage an addiction but rather what you do on the internet. Internet just provides a means to indulge in those addictions. For people whose job revolves around the internet are obviously not addicted to it but still may be on it for better part of the day like bloggers.
Secondly, as one of the comments that I really liked states, “Why do we have to separately label different addictions?… Why not just ‘He has a psychological addiction to the internet’, most span from the same things and have the same effect, it’s like making each virus that causes the common cold it’s own category.”
Dwight Howoverrated
Posted on | June 8, 2009 | No Comments
God damnit! If you watched yesterday’s game 2 of NBA finals as an unbiased spectator or as an Orlando Magic fan (well, in that case, you may as well throw your tv out the window!) you had to be as frustrated as I was with not only the Magic but especially with Dwight Howard. I am sorry to say this, but Dwight Howard has to be one of the most overrated players in the league. The man is built like a superman, which is what he calls himself, but he’s got the skills of a primate when it comes to basketball.
He is got a handful of moves, no wait, he only has two. One is a powerhop to his left and the other is a spin to the right. You double team and he will either elbow the defender (an offensive foul) or somehow lose the ball while spinning. I know he is strong and he gets a lot of dunks and many of you Howard faithfuls are going to point out the cavs series, in which he dominated, but the only reason was because Ilgauskas was on him. Come on now! I could go in there and post a triple-double on Big Z in a post-up game and I’m not even 6ft. Besides, Mike Brown (Cavaliers) can’t coach worth sh*t. I can imagine every huddle: “Hey LeBron, do whatever you do and I’ll give you a blowjob if we win.” Well, may be not exactly that, but anyway, I digress.
Back to my point, against better defenders and/or better coaches, like Phil Jackson, Dwight Howard becomes a liability on the offensive end. He turns the ball over way too many times, and he only has dunks and that ugly hook shot in his arsenal. Also, he will take that hook shot no matter how far he is because he has no fade away or anything close to that. Against weaker teams he gets a lot of offensive rebounds, which he proceeds to dunk. But against the Lakers that are fairly excellent at boxing out, he posts numbers like 1 out of 6 field-goals (game 1) or 7 turnovers (game 2). Remember, he is a center and is 2 feet away from the basket.
Obviously, you don’t have to agree with me but I feel better after this rant. Sigh of relief: Aah…
Who should we blame, this time? Hmm, easy… Mexicans
Posted on | May 7, 2009 | No Comments
Let’s imagine someone has a mental disability that prevents this person from thinking critically on his/her own. How do you find this person? By turning on Fox News or Lou Dobbs on CNN or Pat Buchanan on MSNBC and you have got your mumbling, stumbling idiot. They are now blaming Mexico for the swine flu epidemic even though several reports claim that it started here in the states in Wisconsin. Media Matters has got an excellent report.
“Blame it on the ah-ah ah-ah ah-al-co-hol” Part II
Posted on | May 7, 2009 | No Comments
Yesterday after work, I headed over to the campus bar with a couple of friends and since the pitchers were only eight dollars (I know!!!), we got pretty drunk. And in our inebriated stupor, we got started talking about why alcohol causes hangovers that just make you want to kill yourself. Don’t laugh! We are all biologists, which, by definition, means that we are going to talk about dorky things (girls were mentioned once-in-a-while but mostly overlooked!)… Now, you can laugh. Anyways, I figured that the topic makes a perfect sequel to the last post so I will try to be logical and sensible, although I am hungover.
Simply put, alcohol disrupts cell membrane integrity. Cell membranes are made of phospholipids that basically make an oil-like layer that separates the inside of a cell from the outside. Alcohols are strange because they dissolve well in water, as you know from making mix drinks, and they also dissolve fats because they have one or more methyl groups that can interact with the lipids of phospholipids. Because of this latter property alcohols not only enter cells with ease, they also affect normal functioning of various proteins that are embedded in the cell membrane. These proteins regulate much of the cellular activity like what gets in, what gets out, and else.
Above is the reason why you get drunk more easily on an empty stomach. Alcohol passes the stomach cells much more easily without any food there to dilute it and therefore enters the bloodstream much more efficiently. Once in the bloodstream, it easily crosses the blood-brain barrier (BBB), which usually is a really strong barrier that very selectively allows things to enter the cerebrospinal fluid from the blood circulation and vice-versa. BBB, however, is made of lipids and since alcohol dissolves fats, it easily traverses this barrier and exerts its intoxicating effects, which give you the oh-so-drunk feeling.
In addition to being fat-soluble, alcohol is also a diuretic, which means that it makes you urinate, which should come as no surprise. Excessive amounts of water loss can greatly alter body’s electrolyte balance causing thirst, weakness, dizziness, and lightheadednes, which are usually common symptoms of hangover.
Alcohol is a toxin and when ingested, liver gets consumed with trying to detoxify the blood of alcohol. This affects liver’s ability to make glucose and after a night of binge drinking you can become severly hypoglycemic, leading to an excruciantly painful headache because brain survives solely on glucose made by the liver since the brain can not make its own.
Well, those were some of the reasons I could think of for getting hungover. There are a few ways to ease a hangover like by restoring water and ionic balance (drink gatorade or another such drink), by replenishing glucose and protein levels (eat an egg and something high in fructose levels), and for some odd reason, by drinking coffee. I have no idea why coffee helps, and to tell you the truth I don’t think anybody really knows, but I can tell you from experience that it does. Ahh! just another reason to love coffee. Cheers, my friends. And don’t forget to drop me a comment if you find something that I forgot or was incorrect about. Always looking forward to expanding my knowledge.
“Blame it on the ah-ah ah-ah ah-al-co-hol”
Posted on | April 23, 2009 | No Comments
Being a teacher, I often get asked why we use alcohols as antiseptics and why it is that most of these so-called rubbing alchohols are 70% ethanol or 70% isopropanol and not 95 or 100%. Even in our labs we use 70% ethanol as disinfectants but if you go and ask your seniors, they can rarely give you a good explanation besides some variant of “it’s cheaper that way.” Well, that may be so but it is not really the right explanation for using diluted alcohol.
If you have followed me thus far, you know that we are trying to kill bacteria/germs and the simple answer is that 70% ethanol is much more efficient at killing bacteria than absolute ethanol. I know that sounds somewhat counter-intuitive but keep up with me for a minute and you will be enlightened. I promise.
So, why is 70% ethanol/isopropanol more efficient? To comprehend that, first we have to understand why alcohols are even harmful to bacteria. That is because alcohols destroy proteins and enzymes within a bacterial cell so that bacteria can’t carry out essential functions ultimately leading to their death. In order to do that, however, alcohols have to get inside the bacterial cell. At absolute concentrations, or even 95% for that matter, they don’t have enough time to enter the cell. Instead, they just end up precipitating proteins outside the cell and evaporate before they even have time to enter the cell. At 70% ethanol, alcohol is still concentrated enough to denature proteins and because it’s diluted in water, which evaporates more slowly, it has enough time to enter the cell.
Now you know why most rubbing alcohols are diluted to 70% and if you tried using 100% thinking that you could kill even more of those pesky little germs, well, you barely killed any… and THAT is the harsh truth of life. Until later, my friends…
Do you want a murderer next door? The truth about AIDS denialists
Posted on | January 6, 2009 | No Comments
I really can not believe this. Some people out there, the so-called ‘Denialists,’ are absolutely convinced that HIV does not cause AIDS. And you can’t sway them from their beliefs either, regardless of how many of them perish because of their refusal to take antiretroviral drugs and perhaps just because of utter stupidity. I am going to go as far as to say, “Well, survival of the fittest… I suppose,” without any regret or concern about how offensive that may be.
Some ideas, despite being heretic or perhaps because of it, are revolutionary but in this age or any other, must be founded on sound empirical data and NOT as a result of some arguably senile, egotistical, arrogant ‘scientist’ (no, I’m not talking about Al Davis) spreading his misconceptions to naive and ill informed people. Naivity is excusable, misunderstanding is perhaps forgivable, but to be a promulgator of such garbage is neither excusable nor forgivable but, in my opinion, punishable because people like Peter Duesberg (appropriately named) are akin to the worst criminals who should be charged with genocide. Read more
Shingles – The adult chicken pox
Posted on | January 2, 2009 | No Comments
Remember that South Park episode in which the mothers of the boys decide to send Stan, Kyle, and Cartman to Kenny’s house because he has chicken pox. Your science teachers probably said something to the effect of getting chicken pox early so that you didn’t get it later on in life. Well, they weren’t exactly telling you the truth. Chicken pox is caused by a Varicella Zoster Virus (VZV), which gives you the well known symptoms but this virus is never removed from the body and usually becomes latent in your nerve cell bodies, where it can stay for years and decades, without causing any symptoms. Under certain conditions, however, this virus can become ‘reactivated’ and cause Herpes Zoster, or more commonly known as Shingles.
That is the problem with viruses. Your body usually can not fully eliminate them and after causing the first infection they can stay in your body for long periods of time. As soon as these viruses see a window of opportunity they become active again. In case of VZV, it can become reactivated in immunocompromised people. Your immune system can be weak because of various things such as stress, aging, infection with HIV, and/or cancer. So, if you see any of the symptoms below, make sure you immediately get an HIV test. Read more
CPS: Crab Positioning System
Posted on | January 2, 2009 | No Comments
This article on Scientific American is getting a lot of attention everywhere. It is an attempt to shed some light on how fiddler crabs figure out how far they are from home and how to get back. John Layne and his fellow student at University of Cincinnati hypothesized that crabs calculate the number of steps taken away from home multiplied by the size of each step to measure the distance they have traveled.
In one of their experiments, they allowed some crabs to take normal strides but some were forced to walk on a slippery plastic sheet so that they could not take normal strides. The results, as expected, showed that the crabs on plastic sheet came short of reaching home because they kept falling whereas the others, with normal strides, had no problem reaching their burrows. It must be then that the crabs are carrying out some complex mathematical calculations to gauge their displacement from their burrows.
The problem I have with the study is the conclusion drawn from the experiment. I am not sure if one and one make two in this scenario. Read more
The Brain Craze
Posted on | December 31, 2008 | No Comments
Looking through the science news now-a-days, sometimes I feel a bit overwhelmed with the amount of news that is focused on just the brain. It’s arguably the new hottest thing in science. Everybody, including myself, is so captivated by this mysterious organ that a mention of it under the science tab and you got everybody clicking within minutes.
It used to be that people were obsessed with genes and cloning. I remember when Dolly was the front page of every news source for weeks. A clone? It was one of the biggest accomplishments of our time. Even made perfect storylines for movies. But soon, that all got lost somewhere in the space of the mind and people forgot about it. Few more things appeared and vanished but then brain hit the stores and the rest was history.
