Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Governed

The fuel gauge reads "empty" (literally--whatever little annoying alert sound went off a while ago), and you're still on the road, in fact, let's make it the freeway. You're pushing it, obviously; your eyes consistently travel from the red line which that white hand has negatively passed, yet you persist in thinking that it's probably a little off, that it's an inexact science, this fuel gauge mechanism, that you're really-actually-truly not as low on gas as the inanimate car insists you are. You hunch forward in the seat, as if to will the vehicle forward for just a little longer...


My you're optimistic! It's that relentless pursuit to the finish line, be it to the next sightable gas station or across a triathlon finish line, that makes us winners. Cue the "Governor Theory". The brain is a savvy sucker. During exercise, it has its own fuel gauge which monitors the levels of energy you have for the activity's exertion and the amount of oxygen present in your muscles and organs as well as correlating data based on past training experience to know how far you've pushed yourself in the past, independent of the feeling you have that you may "die". In fact, the Governor Theory takes it one step further to account for the conscious process you're going through as well, with respect to motivation and expectation. Prior to the Governor Theory, it was widely believed that one's expectation for success (during physical exertion) resided in and depended upon the muscles and organs solely. However, as most any champion will attest, the brain has a seriously significant role.

This is perhaps to endow routine practice with even more merit. "Practice makes perfect." And, practice can in fact govern the outcome. Training = learning what one's body is capable of = robust results for the brain to correlate and gauge during strenuous activity = better control during performance = winning* (hopefully).

*not running out of gas mid-freeway

Life sometimes can be governed.
Governed: --verb
  Ruled over by right of authority. 

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Implanted

King's College Hospital of London reported what they dub a "world first" breakthrough in medicine. An eight-month old boy was suffering from severe liver failure, the kind of failure that puts one on a lengthy waiting list, fingers-crossed for a donation. Instead, doctors took donated healthy liver cells and injected them directly into the young patient's failing liver. These injected cells acted as a stand-in liver by processing toxins and producing essential proteins.

 

As if this were not amazing enough, the injected liver cells were coated in a chemical that typically resides in algae. This chemical acted like armor on the injected cells and protected them from attack from the boy's immune system (since they were technically foreign invaders, albeit, waving white flags of biological peace). Algae, generally "aqua botanicals", hold significant promise in a variety of advancements within the world of medicine (they play well with stem cell research) as well more disparate fields like energy (fuel derived of algae may someday be a hot-at-the-pump item). And, on a symbiotic note, the first example of mutualism between a plant and a vertebrate was observed between salamanders and algae. The algae were observed living inside the salamander eggs giving oxygen to the embryo. Go Team Algae!

Whether or not the injection technique will be successful on others remains to be tested. King's intends on running a large clinical trial, the crux of its success hindering on anti-rejection of the injected cells.

Life sometimes can be implanted.
Implanted: --verb
  put or fixed firmly