Category Archives: Biological sciences

Why do we kiss?

Posted on March 11, 2014 by | 4 comments

The action of two person’s lips touching: Kissing, has been widely accepted as a means of sharing affection. But, why do we touch lips amongst all other body parts?

Image of Max-factor-lips

First of all, to introduce some trivia, an average human being spends 20, 160 minutes of his or her life kissing. Also, the longest kiss recorded was 58 hours 35 minutes and 58 seconds.

A passionate kiss burns about 2-3 calories per minute, and pumps epinephrine and norepinephrine into the blood stream, making your heart pump faster. Kissing more often has also shown positive correlations with cholesterol reductions and perceived stress.

So, why does our brain equate this action of touching lips with someone else as positive? Evolutionists claim that the evolution of our current kiss is derived from “Kiss-Feeding”.

The action of exchanging pre-chewed food from one mouth to another. This action, most often shown in birds feeding their young, is a sign of love and sacrifice.

House Sparrow feeding the young

It wasn’t long ago that humans were feeding their young with pre-chewed food. Until the commercialization of baby foods, pre-chewing and mouth feeding infants were a popular activity amongst parents.

The brain, with years of evolutions, have learned to associate the touching of mouths with themes such as love and care. Eventually, the touching of the mouths has become the norm for expressing your love and affection for one another.

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Hips Don’t Lie: Are You Poised For Pain?

Posted on March 10, 2014 by | 5 comments

      As students begin to face the ever looming threat of finals they will hopefully be putting in more study time. This likely means more time sitting in chairs, hunched over with terrible posture. Too often the cries of students throughout libraries can be heard: “ow! my back”. While most people are aware of what bad posture looks like (have you ever been told to sit-up straight?), more often than not, the cause of back pain and likewise improper posture, goes unnoticed.

Obtained from Flickr commons

Many people can recognize one of the tell-tale signs of bad posture from curvature of the upper back; this is referred to as thoracic kyphosis. Though kyphosis on its own can lead to various forms of discomfort, its cause can be complicated, especially when in a seated position.

The lumbar spine is the lowest and strongest part of the spinal column. It is comprised of five vertebrae (though some people are born with six!) which remain largely immobile.

Compare the thoracic (left) vertebrae with the lumbar (right). Note the ‘paddle’ like joints called facets which lock-in to one another to prevent rotation in the lumbar.
Obtained from Wikimedia commons.

When in a seated position, the hips are flexed and the pelvis is pulled under the body. This can force hyper-extension of the lumbar spine though a condition known as posterior pelvic tilt (PPT). Due to the extremely limited mobility of the lumbar spine, its extension will transfer force into the more mobile components of the spinal column (upper back, neck).

Effects of posterior pelvic tilt
Obtained from Google images

While the vertebrae of the upper back area (thoracic spine) do allow for movement through three planes (forwards/backwards, side-to-side, rotational), this movement is limited. In an attempt to maintain normal curvature of the spinal column, the hyperextension of the lumbar spine is often coupled with thoracic kyphosis. Unfortunately the problems associated with PPT and long bouts of sitting can be self-perpetuating. The backwards tilting of the pelvis can lead to short and stiff hamstrings, which in turn contribute to more, or difficult to treat posterior pelvic tilt. This coupling of muscular tightening and joint misalignment can be very uncomfortable.

There’s no getting around the fact that being a student comes with a four year contract of studying related back problems.

Obtained from Flickr commons

What then, can you do about this? The go-to move is usually a quick straightening of the back, or the dreaded twist until you hear a crack. While these options may seem to provide relief, the problem is probably coming from your pelvis. Every now and then take a study break and go for a short walk. Try to find some stairs; climbing stairs will help to get the musculature of the hips energised and re-engaged so as to support your pelvis. If you’re studying at home try some simple hip and back stretches. If you have access, use a foam roller to slowly and gently release the tight muscles along the entirety of your spine. However, if none of these options are available simply remember your mother’s advice: sit-up straight and take your elbows off the table!

 

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For the anatomically inclined, check out this video for a more comprehensive view of the lumbar.

– Gregory McMaster

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Is Obesity Caused By Pollutants Around Us?

Posted on March 3, 2014 by | 2 comments

If you are trying earnestly to maintain your weight, you may have the phrase “watch what you eat” in mind.  Junk food and sweets are out, but the question you forgot to ask is: should you be wary of other foods on your plate as well? The answer is yes.  

Studies have revealed that Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) play an indirect role in adding fat mass to the body.  People are affected by the environment because all our needs ultimately come from the surroundings and these very pollutants are able to enter your diet to alter the endocrine system, organ function, tissues, as well as fat cells.

Where Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) Come From

Predominantly used as pesticides, Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) are now under restricted usage.  These chemicals were created for industrial processes and were also released as by-products. 

Smog filled with pollutants created from factories easily reach neighbouring crop fields.
Source: Gustavo Madico, Flickr

Once exposed to the environment, POPs travel far and wide, made possible by its resistance to most chemical and biological processes in normal degradation.  Naturally, animals consume available POPs, leading to its bioaccumulation  in tissues.  The problem is then amplified with biomagnification in food webs, and humans are, of course, at the top of the food chain.

This video by Sustainable Consumption and Production Regional Activity Centre summarizes the impact of POPs:

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The Link to Obesity

Since POPs accumulate in fatty tissues of animals, we consume them when our meal includes fatty fish, meat, and dairy products.

Fatty fish are victims of POP bioaccumulation.
Source: Ivan Walsh, Flickr

An increasing number of studies are finding a strong link between POPs and body weight.  POPs have been shown to affect key endocrine pathways in the human fatty tissue and there is a strong correlation between the expression of obesity marker genes (determinants of obesity) and POP concentrations.  In another study, a group of mice tested with a high-fat diet containing high POP levels gained more visceral body fat then the group of mice with a low-fat diet.   This indicated that metabolic processes were altered, leading to obesity and insulin resistance, which can progress to Type 2 Diabetes.  In fact, diabetes poses a possibly even more harmful health problem than obesity itself!

Possible Solutions

Despite the fact that POPs are highly regulated to limit its toxic effects, they can still be found in many environments because of the movement within food chains.  Does this mean you should lose all faith in the foods you eat? Hopefully not! As further research gives more evidence to support the causal role of POPs, awareness will increase and perhaps POPs will no longer be put in use.

It may be helpful to eat food grown with fewer pesticides, but a normal, balanced diet without excessive amounts of fatty fish and meat should be fine.

Post by Madeleine Tsoi

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Death by Sitting

Posted on March 3, 2014 by | 4 comments

Source: El Alvi from Flickr

Sitting too much is bad for you.  Everyone knows that.  As long as you follow the recommendation of 150 mins of exercise a week, you’ll be fine, right?

Nope.

Sitting is a great way to relax for people.  Whether it be to rest during a car ride or to focus on some work, humans like to sit.  This is quite notable with the availability of chairs almost everywhere — in restaurants, in theaters, in cars, at homes, in parks, at bus stops etc.  It is a great way to rest the body when there isn’t much to do, without taking as much space as lying down.

Source: loop_oh from Flickr

With today’s modern lifestyle, many people are sitting pretty much all day everyday. For example, students sit to eat meals, sit during travels, sit during class and sit to do work.  Sure, sitting is very useful and comfortable. But this comes at a cost. Not only are there problems associated with bad posture, its harmfulness to human health has earned it the slogan ‘sitting is the new smoking‘.

The British Journal of Sports Medicine published a paper which claims that each hour of sitting while watching TV will reduce a person’s lifespan by 21.8 min.  The study suggests that someone who watches an average of 6 hr of TV a day throughout their entire life would die 4.8 years earlier than someone who has not watched any TV.

There is also a popular belief that sitting time can be negated by exercise time.  But like I said at the start, that isn’t true.  A recent study published by the Journal of Physical Activity and Health found that every additional hour of sitting (after sitting for 9 hr) was correlated with a doubling of disability risk. This held true in the study regardless of how much the person exercised.

Example of a Standing Desk
Source: Simplified Building from Flickr

Studies from the Journal of American College of Cardiology and PubMed also found that the increased mortality rates due to sitting persisted despite high levels of physical activity.

Does this mean that we are all doomed to die under the hands of sitting? Worry not!  There are solutions!  People have come up with products such as standing desks or even treadmill desks…where you can walk while working.  However, It would be much easier (and free) to just move around for 20 seconds for every 20 mins of sitting.

– David Ng

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The Black-Tailed Antechinus: The Definition of Fatal Attraction

Posted on March 3, 2014 by | Leave a comment

You may think a teenage boy is sex crazed, but this marsupial takes it to a whole other level. Scientists have recently discovered a new species, whose sexual preferences rival those of even the horniest of teenagers.

Agile Antechinus. Courtesy of: Wikimedia Commons (user: Richard001)

Map of Australia. Courtesy of: Wikimedia Commons (User: Martyman)

Meet the Black-Tailed Antechinus, a carnivorous marsupial found in the humid and forested region of southeastern Queensland and northeastern New South Wales, Australia. Although it is an extremely rare and exciting event to discover a new species of mammal, this particular creature piqued the interest of researchers further due the male’s “sex marathons” that ultimately result in their death.

The species, Antechinus arktos, commonly called the Black-Tailed Antechinus, was first discovered in May 2013 by a team of scientists out of Queensland University of Technology. The team, led by mammologist Andrew Baker, published their discovery in the journal Zootaxa.

The Black-Tailed Antechinus is slightly larger than a mouse and looks very similar to the Agile Antechinus (Antechinus agilis), being distinguishable by its larger skull, as well as its black feet and tail. Male Black-Tailed Antechinuses are semelparous, meaning they reproduce only once in their lives.

Agile Antechinus. Courtesy of: Wikimedia Commons (User: Richard001)

In August, at only 9 months of age the males reach sexual maturity. Once sexual maturity is achieved, sex becomes all these creatures think about. Does this sound familiar? Well, unlike teenage boys, the sexually mature, male, Black-Tailed Antechinuses cease to participate in anything unrelated to finding sexual partners. When a female is found, they engage in unrelenting sex lasting up to 14 hours. The males then move on to find mate after mate for approximately 2 weeks. Andrew Baker describes it as,

“frenetic, there’s no courtship; the males will just grab the females and both will mate promiscuously,”

Unfortunately, during this 2 week orgy the males rid themselves of vital proteins and suppress their immune system. In addition, an overload of stress hormones further damage the body, ultimately resulting in infection and likely death.

“Their fur falls off. The look very sick and stagger around and sometimes they get gangrene infections because their immune system stops working.”

This is how Dr. Diana Fisher of the University of Queensland describes the males unpleasant end. 

Female Agile Antechinus with Joeys. Courtesy of: Wikimedia Commons (User: Richard001)

It is not much better for the females unfortunately, who have to carry up to 14 joeys in their pouch. The female Black-Tailed Antechinuses store the sperm of every male they mate with and only ovulate at the end of the breeding season. This results in a large litter of joeys being born, who are likely from a wide variety of Fathers. Very few females survive raising even one litter. 

Although one may be able to say that they died doing what they loved, the phrase “Fatal Attraction” has never had a more literal meaning.

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Monica Leslie

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Artificial Organs?

Posted on February 24, 2014 by | 5 comments

Imagine if you or someone you know desperately needed an organ transplant and had to wait months to years for a chance to receive one. This is currently happening to people all over the world and according to the Globe and Mail the average wait transplant wait time in British Columbia is 2,145 days, which is far greater than the national average of 1,258 days. Such a long wait could be disastrous for patients and could even prove fatal if they don’t get a transplant in time. But what if there was a solution to this problem? This brings in the concept of human created artificial organs. As the name suggests artificial organs are created in synthetically using newly discovered scientific methods.

From Wikipedia Commons

The first case of a synthetic organ transplant happened in July 2011, when Swedish surgeons implanted the first synthetic trachea in a 36 year old cancer patient. The trachea was created to be nearly identical to the patient’s original organ by using a 3D laser scan and then using that they were able to craft a nearly identical organ. They also immersed the synthetic wind pipe in a stem cell solution which was created from the patient’s bone marrow.  A major benefit from this new method is that antirejection drugs are no longer required since the immune system would recognize the organ and would not attack it.

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Also other body parts could be replaced, for example the jaw bone for an 83 year old woman was replaced in 2012. The artificial jaw bone was created using a 3D printer based on a scan of her original bone that was damaged due to a bone infection. This scan was then used in a 3D printer and the new jaw was created out of titanium.

Although we are currently unable to replace vital organs such as kidneys, we may be able to do it in the future as science is always advancing and new discoveries are made everyday.

By: Justin

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A Grip on Reality: The Future of Prosthetics

Posted on February 24, 2014 by | 1 comment

The human body has five basic senses: sight, sound, taste, smell and touch. Now take a minute and imagine your life without one of them. It’s easy to realize that we as humans rely on our senses for almost everything we do. Yet there are many people in the world, such as amputees, that do not have one or multiple senses.

Dennis Aabo Sørensen, a man from Denmark, became an amputee almost nine years ago when he lost his left hand in an accident. Although he was using a prosthetic hand, he had permanently lost the ability to feel anything from his hand. That is until recently when he became the first human to try the new bionic hand that allows you to feel what you touch with a prosthetic.

Image from Google Images
https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5468/8760623250_a7d842b198_z.jpg

The scientists at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) and the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies of Pisa (SSSA) designed the bionic hand prototype that will allow people like Dennis to feel objects in real-time using sensory feedback technology. The bionic hand works by measuring the force it takes for the tendons in the artificial hand to grasp an object. Once the measurement of force is identified, the tendons send electrical impulses through wires to the electrodes that have been surgically connected to the nerves of the actual arm. Although it seems like the impulse is not instantly sent to the brain, it actually happens in a matter of seconds to give the feeling of real-time. In the following video Silvestro Micera provides a more in-depth preview of the bionic hand and Dennis Aabo Sørensen describes his initial thoughts on this new technology.

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Although this technology is still years away from being commercially available, it is still a great achievement in the medical world. I believe the next steps in this project would be to figure out how to make this technology available in portable prosthetics and how much it would cost for the general public. Having said that, this technology holds great promises for people like Dennis who have been unable to experience their life fully due to their lost sense. Many individuals can now look forward to a brighter future in the world of prosthetics.

Vishav Gill

 

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Oxytocin: The reason for monogamy?

Posted on February 10, 2014 by | 4 comments

To the insecure, the girlfriends, the wives and the crazies: I guess you can finally put an end to splurging on beauty products! It turns out it is not the endless hours we have spent before date nights that reminds your man to remain faithful to you – it is actually because of the hormone, oxytocin. Oxytocin is a hormone secreted by the pituitary gland. It is often referred to as the “love hormone” or the “cuddle hormone” since it’s released during hugging, touching, and other intimate moments.  

Many people mistakenly call oxytocin the “love hormone” when “attachment hormone” or “bonding hormone” would be more suitable. This video outlines other chemicals released in the brain through the various stages of romance!

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Chemical Structure of Oxytocin
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Monogamy is not prevalent in mammals. In fact, humans are part of the few species that serve as an exception to this and it is oxytocin that is responsible for this partner bonding.

Larry Young, a professor of psychiatry from Emory University in Atlanta, examined prairie vole brain activity during bonding. Young compares these rodents’ behaviour to humans, in that their oxytocin concentrations rise during bonding. It was observed that monogamous male voles had a strong desire for their partner and acted in a hostile manner towards other females.

This video outlines Young’s findings of prairie vole brain activity with regards to bonding.

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Dr. René Hurlemann, an executive senior physician from Bonn University Medical Center, and researchers from Ruhr University of Bochum in Germany and the University of Chengdu in China, collaborated to examine the effects of oxytocin in humans, specifically in males. They showed pictures of their female partners and pictures of other women to 40 heterosexual males. These males were given a dose of oxytocin (in a nasal spray form) and then a placebo, on another day.

The Good?
After being administered oxytocin, it appeared that their reward system, in their brain, was very active when shown pictures of their female partners. In fact, according to their brain activity, males found their partners more attractive than other women.

The Bad?
With oxytocin activating the reward system between lovers, Hurlemann suggests that the lack-of oxytocin  might be responsible for the immense sadness and depression people experience after parting ways with their partner. Individuals experience a state of withdrawal, with the reward system being significantly less active.

Your best bet for faithfulness would be to increase your oxytocin concentration! Give your special someone a hug or two and complete a challenge together! This should increase activity in your reward system and remind your significant other to remain faithful!

-Brenda Nguyen

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Science behind the Morning Wood

Posted on February 10, 2014 by | 2 comments

It happens to grown men, little boys, and even male still in utero: the ability to pitch a tent in the morning in your pyjamas without any camping skills.

All jokes aside, nocturnal penile tumescence, otherwise known as morning wood, is a phenomenon that males experience on a daily basis without a full understanding of how and why it happens.

An experience we men are too familiar with

It is revealed by studies that morning wood occurs numerously during sleep, and is in direct correlation with the sleep cycle that alternates between levels of sleep.

One of the most important stages of sleep is the Rapid Eye Movement (REM) stage. An average male undergoes REM stage around 4-8 times over regular sleep, and at this stage of sleep certain neurotransmitters decrease.

Of the many neurotransmitters that decrease during REM sleep, Norepinephrine is one of them.

Norepinephrine structure

Norepinephrine acts as a vasoconstrictor that regulates erections. Metaphorically, it is used as a stop sign chemical that inhibits blood flow into penis muscles and thus inhibiting the erection.

In REM sleep, it is proved that norepinephrine levels drastically drop and allow vasodilation, increasing the blood flow into the penile muscles.

So why is morning wood important?

To answer the question, increased blood flow into the penis muscles, like any other tissue in the body, increases oxygenation. This increased blood flow and oxygenation is critical in repairing and maintaining functionality.

Another question one might bring up is why we always wake up to this phenomena. The answer is because we most usually wake up just out of REM sleep and thus observe the remnants of this sleep stage.

It is profound how such phenomena we face everyday without much thought can be the result of chemical reactions in the male body. Perhaps next time you wake up with morning wood you’ll be assured that you’re fully repaired and fully functional.

 

 

 

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