ScienceBlog.ie

Inspiration from reading a Times article recently and my own debilitating state post Mammy birthday celebrations, makes me soberly (ish) face up to why alcohol causes hangovers in the human body.

Headaches are caused by a lot of processes going on in your body whilst succumbing to the post pub affliction. Here are just a couple:

Alcohol suppresses the anti diuretic hormone in the brain. The ADH signals the kidneys to reabsorb water back into the body but without it the water goes to the bladder which is why there’s a constant flow of people to the pub toilet. The body ends up excreting up to 4 times as much water as it takes in; and to compensate water is taken from the brain by other organs (how rude). So your lovely brain shrinks in size (and no doubt functional capacity) and begins to pull on the membranes that connect it to the skull. Delightful. Not surprisingly this causes headaches.

When you urinate you also lose salts and potassium which are required for cell, nervous system and brain function. A deficiency in these produces, amongst other things, headaches. And of course not scientifically provable but memories of what you got up to the night before are possible contributors to the pain.
Eyes are the window to the soul? Well then it’s one blurry, sore, puffy sad soul. Alcohol in the body causes dehydration and dilation of the blood vessels. So the eyes of the post night out are dried out and bloodshot.

Approximately 90% – 95% of alcohol you take in is broken down by the liver, and the rest is excreted through urine, breath and sweat. This is why even when you’ve showered and avoided eye contact with your bosses they’ll still be able to smell that previous night’s concoction, which seemed like a good idea at the time, off you.
The outside observer of the hung-over individual may notice a multitude of strange behaviour such as, a Vampire-esque sensitivity to light, sensitivity to sound and touch. Also irritability and moodiness that resemble the Hulk on bad day.

One of the causes of these behaviours is the nervous system being hyperactive. This is because alcohol is a sedative and in response to this the human body tries to counteract the effects by making us more alert. So we don’t pass out (right away). When we go to sleep and wake up the next morning though, the nervous system is still hyperactive and this is the shaking and sensitivity experienced sometimes in a hangover.

And one of my personal favourites; the slow, brain dead, immobile, Zombie like behaviour. This results when alcohol breaks down our storage of glycogen (this is the glucose that is not used straight away by the body for energy). When it is broken down in the liver it is excreted in the urine so the morning after your brain and body are depleted of energy giving glucose, hence the weakness and slowness.

So using the shrunken brain that is hanging on by the threads to put one of those moving thingy’s in front of the other and getting to the cold-box-place where the food lives becomes a heroic feat.

Apart from the looking and acting like a stinky, crazy eyed, super duper-scary-crossbred-monstrosity, the rest of your organs are also having a bad day – literally as it takes up to 24 hours for your body to return to normal after a night of drinking.

Your heart rate and blood pressure are increased; your intestines have not been absorbing water back into the body so diarrhoea is a possibility, and the lining of your stomach is aggravated by the toxins and this send messages to the brain to induce vomiting to rid the body of these.

Niamhyb

Former Tour champion Greg LeMond has recently challenged yellow jersey holder Alberto Contador to prove he is clean after data published by the Festina Performace guru, Antoine Vayer, showed that he would need a VO2 max of 99.5 ml / min / kg to sustain the speed at which he recently climbed the Verbier mountain on Stage 17 of this years edition of Le Tour de France. In answering, Contador would not be drawn to the subject, giving the banale: “No comment” response.

Pantani winning the epic 17th Stage at Les Deux Alpes in 1998

To compare, let’s look at Marco Pantani, which involves the tragic downfall of El Pirata (The Pirate) due to horrific drugs abuse in the later stages of his career. I had the pleasure of visiting Pantani’s hometown, Cesenatico and visited his grave a number of years ago. I also caught a glimpse of the man’s first bicycle in one of the local bars.

The following graph gives an interesting view over power output over the last few years:

Graph showing winners and their respective power outputs

Here we can see compare the disgraced winners (Riis, Pantani and Ullrich) against the ‘Clean’ riders (Indurain, Armstrong). Note that I am utilising the principle of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ in the above statement!

Considering Contador’s calculated VO2 max of 99.5 ml / min / kg against Armstrong’s widely reported max of 85 ml / min / kg, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that LeMond is right to be suspicious. If we plot his performance on the above graph, Contador’s Wattage comes in at the level of the disgraced riders. The physiology cannot lie!!!

Taking off my ‘innocent until proven guilty’ hat, surely it’s onlly a matter of time before this Champion-elect is found guilty, especially considering his gargantuan exploits the day after beating allcomers in the Stage 18 Time Trial.

Drugged?

-Brian

brian.c at lifescience.ie

According to the study one in six people of European decent carry two copies of the variant and compared to people with no copies of the gene had a 70% risk of obesity and could be an average of 3kg heavier.

However a more recent study has suggested that the effects of the variants can be counteracted with physical exercise. The research concluded that a person with both variants of the gene would have to burn an extra 900 kilocalories a day to offset the possible weight gain. The average heighted Irish male at 5 foot 9.8 inches, is considered obese at 15 stone (30.3 BMI). Therefore to burn 900 kilocalories is approximately equivalent of walking from the Guinness Brewery to the O2 Arena 3 times, 11.3km or playing a 90 minute game of football every day….

The study also showed that people that had variants of the gene and an average physically active life showed no sign of the effects.

-niamh

It seems that over time and with the development and advancements made in science, it may not be too long before  Science Fiction and Science Fact gradually become one and the same. In a follow up to our previous post of the impending Doomsday via a solar flame, another avenue to doomsday is also on the horizon.

Science Fiction movies, such as Terminator and the Matrix (to name but two), have predicted a day when computers evolve to a time when humans are simply an inconvenience to evolution. As abstract as this may seem, today we witness the dawn of living creatures being used to power a simple computer, visa vie the humans are batteries in the Matrix future.

All that innocent experimentation with fuel cells that run on blood has led to this, a flesh-eating clock. This prototype time-piece from UK-based designers James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau traps insects on flypaper stretched across its roller system before depositing them into a vat of bacteria. The ensuing chemical reaction, or “digestion,” is transformed into power that keeps the rollers rollin’ and the LCD clock ablaze.

Doomsday via solar flare or as computer battery?…is there anything else that could signal our Doom???

http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/29/carnivorous-clock-eats-bugs-counts-down-to-doomsday/

Apocolypse soon!

Predictions abound regarding Doomsday, including Nostradamus, Merlin (Myriddin, Welsh Druidic Seer) Nostradamus, the Mayan Indians and the ancient Chinese in the I Ching, but what has come to light in recent years is that many of these predictions coalesce to the same date – 21st December 2012, the end of the Mayan calendar. The predictions are of global meltdown, of fire and brimstone and of floods and waves, but is there any science behind the predictions?

Surprisingly, the answer is maybe. On the winter solstice (Dec 21st, 2012) the earth, the sun and the centre-point (origin) of the milky-way galaxy are in exact alignment (the word exact is in dispute of, course). Furthermore NASA has predicted an exceptionally strong solar maximum between 2010 and 2012.

The most popular hair-brained theory regarding the outcome of this alignment is Geomagnetic Reversal (Sometimes referred to as polar shift). This theory is supported by evidence that the Earth’s magnetic field is weakening, which indicates that the poles will reverse soon. In fact, a polar shift is long overdue, with the last one occurring 780,000 years ago. Critics believe that if the poles reverse, it will be a slow, not a catastrophic process.

The reality of the situation is that it will probably be the end of the world, so to say, not because of the galactic alignment causing a polar shift, but because of a large solar flare hitting the earth – imagine being without mobile phone reception and satellite TV for a week, as good as the end of the world!!!

- Eamonn

Finally i will never have to worry about leaving my desk for a hot tasty treat. Mind you if i spill it everywhere i’ll need some form of cleaning device. RH

Future of USB Fast Food?

ScienceNews reports that a new type of dinosaur, Limusaurus inextricabilis, has been discovered at a fossil dig site in China. The find is especially exciting due to the dinosaur’s apparent close relation to birds, further proving some scientists’ theory that one group of dinosaurs actually evolved instead of dying out. This group of dinosaurs, called theropods, walked on two legs, and the new dinosaur fossils that was discovered in China extend the link between theropods and modern day birds because of its clear similarity to bird hand-bone arrangements.

Limusaurus inextricabilis is thought to have been a vegetarian, “ostrich-size dinosaur” according to ScienceNews and also had a beak. This dinosaur also has one less finger than most of the other theropods that have been found, a fact that helps some scientists prove that it is more closely related to modern birds than was previously hypothesized. If birds did evolve from this particular dinosaur, as scientists are now considering more seriously, then bird wings would have transitioned from the limusaurus inextricabilis’ unique hand structure, which favors a second, third and fourth finger arrangement, rather than a first, second and third finger design. This hand structure originally evolved from a five-digit hand design.

The dinosaur, whose new, given name means “mire lizard who could not escape” was so named because it is believed to have died by getting trapped in a mudflat in what would have been China 159 million years ago.It may have had feathers, but scientists are inconclusive on this theory. They do know, however, that Limusaurus inextricabilis had no teeth and primarily ate a vegetarian diet that was digested by swallowing small rocks to grind down food. Some rocks, called gastroliths, were found inside the stomachs of these dinosaur fossils and support this theory.

The fossil expedition was led by vertebrate paleontolist James M. Clark, of George Washington University and whose project was partly funded by The National Geographic Society. The expedition and findings are documented in the June 18^th issue of Nature journal.

This post was contributed by Caitlin Smith, who writes about the best online courses. She welcomes your feedback at CaitlinSmith1117 at gmail.com

Scientists have found the “missing link” in human evolution, a 47-million-year-old monkey fossil that they’re calling Ida, aptly named after the discoverer’s 5 year old daughter. In terms of figuring out human evolution, Ida’s a pretty big deal — she’s got features from the non-human evolutionary line (the pro-simians, like lemurs) but is more related to the human evolutionary line (apes and the like). One of the paleontologists, Jørn Hurum of the University of Oslo Natural History Museum, sums it up: “This is the first link to all humans … truly a fossil that links world heritage.”

Many pro-simian (lemur) fossils have been found before but this is the first intact fossil on the human line of the simian branch, and is termed a transitional species. What make’s Ida unique is the completeness and quality of the fossil. Even the outline of her coat and the contents of her stomach are intact, which is amazing for something 47 million years old. They were also able to ascertain was around the same age of a 5 year old human (hence the name Ida, after Jørn’s daughter), from analysis of her teeth.

At last there is some additional vindication for Darwin, who’s evolutionary theory now seems an insurmountable task for the creationists to overcome, although I am sure they will come up with something fantastical to thwart the latest evidence.
- Eamonn