Monthly Archive for March, 2008

Life cannot be taken personally or too seriously

Published
by
Phil
on March 31, 2008
in Life
. 0 Comments

Duke Medicine logoI was at the Duke Medical Center today and I saw a poster entitled “10 things to do while having a heart attack.” Something like that definitely catches your eye. Didn’t have a camera on me, but I managed to copy down the text. I think most of it is only mediocre, but #2 definitely stands out to me.

  1. Relax. (Panic depletes your oxygen supply.)

  2. Remember life or its lack cannot be taken personally or too seriously.

  3. Think how surprised all the people who accused you of not having one are going to be.
  4. Call up your happiest memory, whether a desert sunset of shimmering turquoise skies shot with flickers of scorched gold, or how much you gypped the IRS out of.
  5. Tell the rescue squad how angelic they look even without wings.
  6. Be glad you have on clean underwear.
  7. Congratulate yourself on convincing the Life Flight helicopter pilot not to cut your Nikita Koloff tee-shirt off.
  8. Wish you had paid closer attention when the American Heart Association began preaching the cholesterol gospel.
  9. Arrange for a sibling to feed your Siamese cats and to call your supervisor at work conveying profound regrets for unavoidable nonattendence.
  10. Pray.

— Virginia Love Long, DUMC patient
Poetry in the Halls project, Cultural Services Program, DUMC

Life is simply a natural creation that has a beginning and an end. So like nature, it is impartial — generous, yet unforgiving. How, then, can we take it personally? “Life or its lack cannot be taken personally or too seriously.” I couldn’t have put it better myself.

Inner life of a cell

Published
by
Phil
on March 24, 2008
in Science and Videos
. 1 Comment

A group at Harvard came up with this incredible, realistic animation of the inner workings of a cell. There are two versions. One is a 3-minute animation with (good!) music; the other is an 8-minute animation with narration.

The “story” is about leukocyte extravasation, or the movement of a white blood cell out of the bloodstream and into infected tissue. A fairly decent background in science will be necessary for anyone to get a good grasp of what’s going on in the video, but even the common person will be impressed or even amazed by how intricate our bodies are, down to the very molecules. (I would recommend the 3-minute version if you find yourself short on science background.)

We live in an amazing world, we are amazing worlds, and, in light of this video, each one of our cells is an amazing world. Who knows, molecules and atoms could also be worlds of their own, far more complex than we could ever imagine. Nature works in astounding ways.

3-minute version

If you would like me to remove this video for legitimate reasons, please email me.

The only thing scientists, partially including myself, might have against this is that the animations of the molecular movements are too “perfect.” In reality, molecules wiggle against each other randomly (Brownian motion) until these things happen naturally - more of a chaos really. Of course, if they were to show that in the video, it would probably greatly confuse the viewer, so I can see why they decided against it.

If you’re skeptical about the kinesin motor “walking” protein (and you have every right to be), there’s also a video that breaks down the process of how it “walks,” courtesy of the Milligan lab:

If you would like me to remove this video for legitimate reasons, please email me.

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