Notes From A Bear's Journey

    Okay, the last post brought up both my difficulty and fascination with the book Instant Science * but here were a few additional things that I found fascinating as I muddled through the final pages: our nerve cells: ... are the longest-living cells in our bodies ; and: ... there are about 10 times more microbes in our bodies than there are cells ; our skin: ... is inhabited by bacteria, fungi, viruses, and archaea...fungi and bacteria engage in molecular warfare as they compete for the same resources ; and yes, we are truly made of star dust since carbon is a very difficult element to create but basically it's an element that "hosts" different numbers of neutrons which are labeled C6, C14 and such, and: ... all living creatures contain a tiny amount of radioisotope C14.  In a living organism, the percentage of C14 stays constant as it is continually being replaced by eating and breathing  (this is how scientists can "date" something that is millions of year...

    Math has always fascinated me, even if I don't quite "get it" at times.  But one only has to glance at the spans of a bridge or the straight lines of a building to recognize that there must be something to angles and lines and such.  So when I saw a book titled Instant Science with wording underneath saying "explained on a single page," well, I was hooked.   And then I opened it and...yikes!  Perhaps I should start with the author's background which is casually mentioned as: ... a background in physics. Her PhD research explores physical phenomena through craft, including weaving biomedical data, Fourier transforming through weaving, and the co-design and making of MRI and CT phantoms with scientists.  What???   But the cover of the book featured something I had heard about over and over but basically didn't know what it was...The Fibonacci Sequence (& the Golden Ratio it leads to).  What the heck was that??*     ...

    On occasion I read a host of magazines that feature a "youthful" feature, generally those with titlles such as "30 Under 30" or the "50 Most Influential People Under 40."  I tend to do this because it gives me hope to read about what is coming on the horizon, well out of my view.  As one ages, it becomes  more and more difficult to keep a fresh perspective of things, the technology and views and attitudes virtually whizzing by; and admittedly after years of being on the "treadmill," I have found that settling back and letting the world just mosey along seems fine and allows me time to now give help in other ways.  My "time" has passed in my opinion, which makes it all the more frustrating that so many others my age (and older) simply refuse to let go of their "control" of things.  In my view, this is a time of compassion and empathy and of recognizing that as one rabbi told a reporter, when we bury or cremate a person we...

    Don't worry, this won't be about the rising levels of carbon dioxide and climate change, itself an issue so polarizing that we may as well start labeling it CQ 2 .  But as a quick primer, here is how Britannica sums up the definition of CO 2 : Carbon dioxide, (CO 2 ), a colourless gas having a faint sharp odour and a sour taste.  It is one of the most important greenhouse gases linked to global warming, but it is a minor component of Earth’s atmosphere (about 3 volumes in 10,000), formed in combustion of carbon-containing materials, in fermentation, and in respiration of animals and employed by plants in the photosynthesis of carbohydrates.  The presence of the gas in the atmosphere keeps some of the radiant energy received by Earth from being returned to space, thus producing the so-called greenhouse effect.  And if you happen to want the latest data (and see the graph), there's always NASA's site .  But this isn't about any of that, at least not...

    When Cat Stevens (now renamed Yusuf Islam and out with a new album) first wrote and sang the song The First Cut Is the Deepest (later made popular by Rod Steward, Sheryl Crow and others), he was writing about heartache.  But the word "cut" has many meanings...a cut in pay, budget cuts, a paper cut, cut it out (a popular children's phrase to stop mucking about), to cut in line, and the phrase, "cut to the bone," which online dictionaries define it this way: Severely reduced, as in "During the Depression Grandmother's housekeeping money was cut to the bone."  The phrase to the bone, literally meaning "through the flesh to the inmost part or core," dates from about 1400.  This expression in effect means that everything extraneous has been cut away so that only bone remains.       One would think that as these re-formatted holidays brought friends and family picking and choosing just who to gather with (if anyone at all) that our conver...

    With vaccines and reverse technology in the news so much, it can be difficult to keep up with who and what is leading the pack regarding the fight against this novel coronavirus and the search for a vaccine; and yes, there is a LOT of bad information out there mixed in with the good.  As  The Conversation warned: It’s an increasingly important skill to identify between reliable and unreliable sources.  Social media is often superficial and prone to spreading misinformation.  On the other hand, journal articles and clinical trial registries can be hard to interpret for anyone except specialists... Seek out publications with editorial oversight and a track record of reliable scientific and medical reporting.  Reading more than one interpretation can help you get a balanced view.   It’s also important to ask where a journalist found the information they are reporting on.  Referencing results published in peer-reviewed journals is a goo...