Micro and Macro similarities

Micro and Macro Cosmos are alike

In Indian scriptures, many references and descriptions aver that the Pindaanda and Brahmananda systems and structures or similar. Now we have scientific research confirming the same.

LOS ANGELES: Humans may be more aligned with the universe than thought, say scientists who found that the structures of our cell cytoplasm and neutron stars are similar, both resembling helical multistory parking garages.



Researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara in the US, explored the biophysics of shapes - helices that connect stacks of evenly spaced sheets - in a cellular organelle called the endoplasmic reticulum (ER).

These structures named 'Terasaki ramps' were thought to be unique to soft matter (like the interior of cells) until researchers happened upon the work of nuclear physicist Charles Horowitz at Indiana University in the US.

Using computer simulations, Horowitz and his team had found the same shapes deep in the crust of neutron stars.



Nuclear physicists have an apt terminology for the entire class of shapes they see in their high-performance computer simulations of neutron stars: nuclear pasta.

These include tubes (spaghetti) and parallel sheets (lasagna) connected by helical shapes that resemble Terasaki ramps. However, differences can be found in the underlying physics.

Typically matter is characterised by its phase, which depends on thermodynamic variables: density (or volume), temperature and pressure - factors that differ greatly at the nuclear level and in an intracellular context.

"For neutron stars, the strong nuclear force and the electromagnetic force create what is fundamentally a quantum-mechanical problem," said Greg Huber, physicist at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

"In the interior of cells, the forces that hold together membranes are fundamentally entropic and have to do with the minimisation of the overall free energy of the system. At first glance, these could not be more different," said Huber.



Another difference is scale. In the nuclear case, the structures are based on nucleons such as protons and neutrons and those building blocks are measured using femtometres.

For intracellular membranes like the ER, the length scale is nanometres. The ratio between the two is a factor of a million, yet these two vastly different regimes make the same shapes.

"This means that there is some deep thing we do not understand about how to model the nuclear system," Huber said.



The similarity of the structures is riveting for theoretical and nuclear physicists alike.

"Seeing very similar shapes in such strikingly different systems suggests that the energy of a system may depend on its shape in a simple and universal way," said Horowitz.



The study was published in the journal Physical Review C.

Scientific Basis for Gangaa Snaanam

CHANDIGARH: Until now, it was believed that the healing properties of the Ganga were merely the stuff of myths.

However, scientists from the Institute of Microbial Technology (Imtech), Chandigarh, have for the first time come forward with scientific evidence that the water of Ganga does not putrefy easily. They have identified new viruses, or bacteriophages, which mimic bacteria in the river's sediment and eat them up.

The scientific world has always been baffled by the antiseptic properties of Ganga's waters. In 1896, British physician E Hanbury Hankin observed that cholera microbes died within three hours in its water, but thrived in distilled water.

This remained hypothetical until Imtech experts found the new viruses. Imtech is one of the laboratories of the CSIR. The study has revealed 20 to 25 types of bacteriophages in the river which can fight microorganisms that cause diseases like tuberculosis, pneumonia, cholera and urinary tract infection, among others.

"We analysed the viral metagenomes in sediments of the Ganga and found different types of phages, said Dr Shanmugam Mayilraj, senior principal scientist at Imtech. He said the sediments house several novel viruses, which were never reported earlier. These are active against certain bacterial strains and can be used against multidrug resistant infections.

The team collected samples from the highly polluted Haridwar-Varanasi stretch. Also part of the project were National Environment Engineering Research Institute co-ordinating lab, National Botanical Research Institute, Indian Institute of Toxicology Research and Central Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants.

Chance of being nice - a real incident

Read this story. This might change the way you react to people around. Being nice is beneficial to our own life rather than some one else.

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Reproduction of the incident of Mike Harrison

When I was 24, I moved into an apartment and the couple next door were loud all the time. After putting up with it for a couple weeks, I decided to confront them and politely ask them to be quieter after noon, as I had a job that required me to work the midnight shift, so I always went to bed around noon and got up at 8pm.

I went next door and knocked on the door around 10am and a woman who was 68 answered and I introduced myself and she asked if I had come over to complain about the noise, which I said yes. She explained that both her and her husband are going deaf and they need to speak loudly to each other in order to hear each other. She invited me in and offered me a Pepsi and we just started talking about anything and everything about each other and after about 30 minutes or so we heard a loud bang in the kitchen area of the apartment so we went to investigate and her husband had collapsed and was not breathing. I told her to call 911(emergency services) and I started doing CPR on him, the ambulance and fire department arrived about 10 minutes later and by the time they arrived, I had revived him. I asked if she needed a ride to the hospital and she said no, so after the police took my info and statement for the reports, I went home and went to bed and woke up at 8pm and went next door and knocked and got no answer, so I assumed she was still at the hospital, and went to work that night.

When I came home from work there was a note on my apartment door from the lady asking me to come over. When I went over, she had cooked me breakfast and asked if I would drive her to the hospital as a police officer had driven her home around 3am because she was to distraught to drive, which I said no problem and asked when she wanted to go. When we got to the hospital I followed her to his room in ICU and he was in decent shape and he thanked me for doing CPR, which I replied that anyone would do it. He ended up staying in the hospital for a couple weeks and was released. I ended up becoming friends with this couple ( and never once complained again about the noises they made every day) until they moved to an assisted living facility in another state to be closer to their children, a year later.

Flash forward 10 years and I get a phone call from an attorney in Kentucky asking me to come down to his office. I of course was wondering what was going on, so I went down the next day and when I arrived at his office, the lawyer asked me if I knew a couple by their names and I said yes, they used to live next door to me. He told me that the woman had died a couple years ago and that the husband had died a month ago and he was hired by their children to find me, and that the man had changed his will to include me in it. He handed me an envelope that had a check for $25,000 (which I did not take, instead I told the lawyer to give it to the couples kids) and he asked if I would like to meet their children and grandchildren, because they wanted to thank me personally for saving the husbands life a decade ago and the couple had talked so highly about me saving his life, and also never once complaining about the noises they made and always asking if they needed anything whenever I went to the store or running around, and asking if they would like to go out to eat or see a movie(even if it wasn’t a movie I really wanted to see, I still went to whatever movie the wife wanted to see). I met the family and the two children (who are basically my age) introduced me to their kids as their adopted brother and to this day, we are all still friends and see each other constantly, as they moved to my area shortly after as their parents had a house that they had been renting out when I met them, and it went to the kids, so the son moved into the house with his family and his sister moved up here a few years later. In fact, the oldest daughter of the son is getting married this weekend, and my family and I are going to it.

To this day, I still have no regrets about not taking the money offered. The friendships I have gotten from the couples children is more than enough to make me happy

Written Jul 28

Constant sitters - Tip to avoid heart trouble

If your job needs to sit for long hours either at table or on flight, make it a habit to move your toes to keep the blood circulation in order to avert heart problem.

New York: Fidgeting while sitting for an extended period of time at a computer or during a long flight can protect the arteries in your legs and potentially help prevent arterial disease, a new study has claimed.

Research has shown that sitting for an extended period of time reduces blood flow to the legs, which may contribute to the development of cardiovascular disease. "Many of us sit for hours at a time, whether it is binge watching our favourite TV show or working at a computer," said Jaumme Padilla from University of Missouri in the US.

"We wanted to know whether a small amount of leg fidgeting could prevent a decline in leg vascular function caused by prolonged sitting," said Padilla. While researchers expected fidgeting to increase blood flow to the lower limbs, they actually found that this would be sufficient to prevent a decline in arterial function.
Researchers compared the leg vascular function of 11 healthy young men and women before and after three hours of sitting.

While sitting, participants were asked to fidget one leg intermittently, tapping one foot for one minute and then resting it for four minutes, while the other leg remained still throughout. On average, the participants moved their feet 250 times per minute. Researchers then measured the blood flow of the popliteal - an artery in the lower leg - and found that the fidgeting leg had a significant increase in blood flow, as expected, while the stationary leg experienced a reduction in blood flow.

Previous research has shown that increased blood flow and its associated shear stress - the friction of the flowing blood on the artery wall - is an important stimulus for vascular health. However, fidgeting's protective role had not
been established. While only one leg was exposed to fidgeting during the experiment, in a real-world scenario researchers recommend tapping both legs to maximise the beneficial effects.

However, researchers caution that fidgeting is not a substitute for walking and exercise, which produce more overall cardiovascular benefits. "You should attempt to break up sitting time as much as possible by standing or walking. But if you are stuck in a situation in which walking just is not an option, fidgeting
can be a good alternative. Any movement is better than no movement," said Padilla.

The findings were published in the American Journal of Physiology Heart and Circulatory Physiology.