Author Archives: wenyu422

Stem Cells Remember Past Injuries of Tissues

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“What are stem cells? – Craig A. Kohn”  Video Source: TED-Ed Youtube Channel

What are stem cells?

Stem cells are your body’s internal repair system and seemingly remember past injuries of tissues by retaining memories of old injuries for improvement of  healing in the future. Studies have indicated that stem cells also have behavioral roles of responding to the environment and sensing it.

As living beings, there are times we encounter various kinds of injuries through some traumatic events. These can be simple from paper cuts to serious injuries like the loss of limbs infarction. The body has a mechanism of healing these damaged tissues. Some organisms like earthworms have the ability of regrowth of complete body parts after an injury but human beings have no such ability. Stem cells are known to replenish such types of injuries by focusing on the healing of other cell types.

” What is a Stem Cell“ Source:Relievus

How can stem cells repair injuries?

In the healing context, repair refers to restoring tissue function and architecture after an injury. This is based on the processes of replacement and regeneration. Research has indicated that these stem cells also have the ability of remembering past inflammation and wounds. The suggestion from studies of the gut, airways and the skin is that together with the immune system, stem cells use the memories for the improvement of tissue responses to later assaults by pathogens which are bacteriums, viruses that can cause disease.

“VESC system in the liver” Source: MedicalExpress

The repair of tissues can lead to restoration of some of the original structures of the tissue damaged like epithelial layers but in complex healing of organ functions. Additionally, when the responses of the stem cells fail to go in the right way, they can lead to various enduring health problems based on chronic inflammation. It thus means that stem cells directly communicate with the immune system to facilitate healing but the stem cells have a central role of making tissues adapt to preservation.

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Wenyu Zhao

How to develop critical thinking skills?

Source: New York City: NearSay

When a 13 year old by gives a speech that rivals that of an adult, he can be considered as a genius because it is unexpected for a child to think critically about serious issues. Is it really possible?

Source: MissionSelf

Growing up, people are told to develop their critical thinking skills. It is hard for one to understand how that can happen, especially not knowing how the brain works. However, research has shown that young adolescents are the ones that go through significant brain development and growth. This gives them greater cognitive development and thus, this stage is the beginning of critical thinking.

The prefrontal cortex is the main center in the brain that facilitates critical thinking. Its structure and location in the brain is shown in the figure below. It gives people the potential of consideration and voluntary control of emotional responses, thinking and behavior. Humans have the highest percentage volume of the prefrontal cortex compared to other animals, giving them a higher potential of critical thinking. It is the last part of the brain to mature rapidly changing between 8 and 16 years and continuing into the 20s. The networks in this area are stimulated during these ages, strongly influencing the development of socio-emotional control and high thinking skills, developing into adulthood.

Source: neuroscienceofdating

In the book Mind in the Making, Ellen Galinsky, PhD, gives an articulate revelation that it is important for parents to build on the emotional and social skills as well as intellectual competencies in children during their preschool years. This ensures that they grow up with full potential for their thinking skills to develop. At this stage, there is a lot of curiosity. Curiosity develops when there are new things and a child does not know or understand what these things entail. This is also the same for adolescents and adults. In the video below, Dr. Craig Childress gives a brief description of how critical thinking skills can be developed in children noting that it is important to improve communication with children as they grow.

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Teachers play a significant role of facilitating thinking, opening the door to discourse using open-ended assignments, performance tasks and problem-solving opportunities, which can be used in the application of knowledge through creativity.

Therefore, it becomes important to develop critical thinking skills through the evaluation of evidence, learning the concept of cause and effect, separating fact from fiction and learning from personal experiences and other reliable resources. Experiments and tests can be made up and then hypotheses created and tested where a person can ask questions and evaluate the available information to come up with conclusions. This requires having critical thinking skills where the issue can possibly be identified.

Wenyu Zhao

References

Galinsky, Ellen. “Mind in the making.” National Association for the Education of Young Children: Washington, DC 124 (2010).