Martian polar ice caps (August 2008)

SPANISH FLU

1918 flu pandemic

Soldiers from Fort Riley, Kansas, ill with Spanish influenza at a hospital ward at Camp Funston.

The 1918 flu pandemic (January 1918 – December 1920) was an unusually deadly influenza pandemic, the first of the two pandemics involving H1N1 influenza virus.^[1] It infected 500 million people across the world, including remote Pacific islands and the Arctic, and killed 50 to 100 million of them—three to five percent of the world's population —making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history.
Most influenza outbreaks disproportionately kill juvenile, elderly, or already weakened patients; in contrast the 1918 pandemic killed predominantly previously healthy young adults. Modern research, using virus taken from the bodies of frozen victims, has concluded that the virus kills through a cytokine storm (overreaction of the body's immune system). The strong immune reactions of young adults ravaged the body, whereas the weaker immune systems of children and middle-aged adults resulted in fewer deaths among those groups.
Historical and epidemiological data are inadequate to identify the pandemic's geographic origin. It was implicated in the outbreak of encephalitis lethargica in the 1920s.
To maintain morale, wartime censors minimized early reports of illness and mortality in Germany, Britain, France, and the United States; but papers were free to report the epidemic's effects in neutral Spain (such as the grave illness of King Alfonso XIII), creating a false impression of Spain as especially hard hit—thus the pandemic's nickname Spanish flu.

Penfield's homúnculo

 
 The Canadian neurologist Wilder Penfield discovered this little person in the 1930s, when he opened up the skulls of his patients to perform brain surgery. He would sometimes apply a little electric jolt to different spots on the surface of the brain and ask his patients–still conscious–to tell him if they felt anything. Sometimes their tongues tingled. Other times their hand twitched. Penfield drew a map of these responses. He ended up with a surreal portrait of the human body stretched out across the surface of the brain. In a 1950 book, he offered a map of this so-called homunculus.




 

 Phantom Limb (Sensorimotor Homunculus in Panton Phantom Chair), 2011

Sensorimotor Homunculus is a pictorial representation of the anatomical divisions of the portion of the human brain directly responsible for the movement and exchange of sense and motor information of the rest of the body. It gives us an image of how our brain and our body is connected. The 3D model relates to Wilder Penfield's diagram, where the individual body parts are drawn lying across the surface of the brain. This diagram offers an explanation to why some people sense amputated or missing limbs, as short circuits in neighbouring areas of the brain can give the sensation of a phantom limb. Verner Panton's Phantom Chair represents an amorpheous body, which in this image is represented by the fleshy colour, a reference to the brain or an amputated body or a tongue.
 

Induced pluripotent stem cells

Induced pluripotent stem cells, commonly abbreviated as iPS cells or iPSCs are a type of pluripotent stem cell artificially derived from a non-pluripotent cell, typically an adult somatic cell, by inducing a "forced" expression of certain genes and transcription factors.These transcription factors play a key role in determining the state of these cells and also highlights the fact that these somatic cells do preserve the same genetic information as early embryonic cells.The ability to induce cells into a pluripotent state was initially pioneered using mouse fibroblasts and four transcription factors, Oct4, Sox2, Klf4 and c-Myc, in 2006.This was then followed in 2007 by the successful induction of human iPSCs derived from human dermal fibroblasts using methods similar to those used for the induction of mouse cells. These induced cells exhibit similar traits to those of embryonic stem cells (ESCs) but do not require the use of embryos. Some of the similarities between ESCs and iPSCs include pluripotency,morphology, self-renewal ability, a trait that implies that they can divide and replicate indefinitely, and gene expression.

Evaluating Ecosystems in “Lion King” 

Authors: Philip Durkin and Susanne Coleman
Grade Level: 5

For additional free online lessons integrating media literacy and critical thinking into the curriculum, go towww.projectlooksharp.org.

Summary: 
Students will view the first scene from the “The Lion King” during which baby Simba is introduced. They will analyze the interactions or relationships they observe between the living things in each environment and infer which relationships are realistic and which are fictional and explain their reasoning.

Key terms: ecology, biotic factors, abiotic factors, population, community, ecosystem, symbiosis, mutualism, commensalism, parasitism, predator-prey

Objectives:

• Students will review the terms biotic and abiotic by identifying the biotic and abiotic factors they observe in the savanna and reef ecosystems in multiple media forms.
• Students will describe some of the interactions or relationships they observe between the living things in each environment and will infer whether each interaction represents an example of mutualism, commensalism, parasitism or a predator-prey relationship and offer evidence that supports their inference.
• Students will infer which relationships (in media represt

Pasteur Swan Neck Flask Experiment

Pasteur Swan Neck Flask Experiment

In his famous experiment, Louis Pasteur used a special flask whose neck was shaped like an S or the neck of a swan, hence the name "Swan Neck Flask." He put a nutrient rich broth in the flask, which he called the "infusion." He then boiled the infusion killing any microorganisms which were already present. Then he allowed the infusion to sit. Because of the shape of the flask, the infusion was exposed to air. However, dust particles and other things in the air never made it into the infusion. Because they were trapped in the curve of the Swan Neck Flask. No matter how long he allowed the flask to sit, microorganisms never appeared in the infusion. However, if he tipped the flask and allowed the things trapped in the neck to get into the infusion then microorgranisms began to appear in the infusion and multiply rapidly. This demonstrates that microorganisms do not appear as a result of Spontaneous Generation. Instead, they are introduced into food through dust particles and other things that happen to land on the food.