Hiatus

Whoa. Sometimes life is surprising. I started writing this blog as a way to guide myself through school as I tried to find "what I really want to do." I graduated school 6 years ago. I can't believe how fast that time has flown by. I really enjoyed the past six years and don't regret many of my decisions, but I think I was fighting my present life and having some kind of fear of enjoying my present moment in time. I was generally happy throughout all that time, but there was this level of thinking that existed in my day-to-day that was searching for something better instead of just being satisfied. I think this impulse to seek out what is next and what is exciting is good and important, but I might have been doing it to the point of overkill. We need balance in everything, right?

So, it finally made sense to go back to design. Find a good job and do the work I have been trained to do. Maybe I'm not the best designer in the world, but I am a designer, and I can be a productive citizen of the workforce and spend my off hours just living. It is as simple as that. It seems like such a simple realization, but it has taken a huge effort for me to really feel this way. So, new job, new home, new husband (and thank god, no more wedding planning).

So, hiatus. I haven't been writing here for a while, but I really like having a place to write. I will be back here doing what I was doing before but with a different focus and a different mentality.

Living now and looking to the future (but not too much). I think I'm happy doing that.

Taste cells

I came across this today in my chemistry book, and as someone who really likes tasting things, I found this really interesting. The reason some artificial sugars are calorie-free is because our cells don't metabolize them (metabolize is a word we use all the time when talking about diet but I've learned that it really just means chemical reactions happening in cells). They just pass through our bodies unchanged. Sugar, however, is used by our bodies and is metabolized by oxygen to produce energy, CO2, and H20.
But taste is independent of metabolism. Our taste buds or taste receptor proteins have a little space where a food molecule can fit in snugly. When a sugar shaped molecule fits into the sugar receptor protein, the protein splits apart and causes a series of events that result in a nerve signals that tell the brain that you are tasting something sweet.

But what I found to be really interesting is that artificial sugars taste sweet simply because they fit into these receptor proteins. These molecules are similar enough in shape that they taste almost the same. We just metabolize them differently or not at all.

Salt!

Stuff like this just blows my mind. Molecules that, alone, are poisonous to people will combine to be something that our body absolutely must have. Put sodium metal in water and it explodes. Put sodium chloride in water, and it helps water boil faster. I think this stuff is so absolutely amazing. Life is really amazing, and I'm amazed at all the people before us who have discovered these facts. I love it.

New quarter

This quarter I'm taking physics and chemistry. A big step into my new science path. I'm really happy to embrace this new discipline. It seems like the right thing to do in a climate of Rick Santorum, the rise of literal bible interpretations, a mistrust of science, and the current anti-intellectualism world we're creating. What is going on! Yuck!

I'm a little scared about these courses. I'm trying to really focus. I think I can do it if I just study really hard.

I'm reading in the intro of my physics text about pseudoscience and the author is really speaking to this poisonous intellectual climate that is threatening all the advances of the last few centuries:

"Four centuries ago, most humans were dominated by superstition, devils, demons, disease, and magic in their short and difficult lives. Life was cruel in medieval times. Only through enormous effort did humans gain scientific knowledge, overthrow superstition, and gain freedom from ignorance. We should rejoice in what we've learned -- no longer having to die whenever an infectious disease strikes or to live in fear of demons...Yet there is cause for alarm when the superstitions that people once fought to erase come back in force, enchanting a growing number of people. There are now more than 20 thousand practicing astrologers in the US who server millions of credulous believers. A greater percentage of Americans today believe in astrology and occult phenomena than did citizens of medieval Europe. Few newspapers print a daily science column, but nearly all provide daily horoscopes. Although goods and medicines around us have improved with scientific advances, much human thinking has not." Paul G. Hewitt

So, sad. This needs to change. We need scientists to solve the energy crisis causing climate change.

I'm going to keep hard working at science classes, and see where this takes me.

Low calorie diet and longevity

Human cell division seen from an electron microscope.

I have to give my dad some credit. In growing up amidst an obesity epidemic, I can remember this subject coming up a lot in conversation at home. One thing that I remember my dad saying is that when you look at the very elderly, one thing that these people have in common is a healthy weight. Maybe it seems obvious, but as people age and deal with constant senescence, having unneeded body fat is something that must be harmful to an aging body. Interesting idea. It's been a lifelong difficulty for me maintaining a healthy weight, so I'm really interested in this subject.

However, on Saturday I was reading in my human development book about longevity and found out about research at a cellular level that might explain longevity, and it really made sense to me. The idea is that a lifelong tendency to have a low calorie diet that maintains the necessary nutrients slows cell division. Cell division is perfectly natural, but with each division, we loose a little bit of DNA. Over the years, these losses are seen as the aging process. So, slowing cell division improves longevity. It made me think about my time in Taiwan where the elderly seemed to have so much vitality. I think an eastern diet, at least a more traditional one, is usually more healthy with fewer calories, and this must have a lot to do with the healthy elderly people that are seen in a lot of Asian countries.

I find this interesting but also challenging. My western diet leaves me to crave so many of the foods that I should not be eating. But reading this is a good reminder that a healthy weight has little to do with vanity. It is really does come down to long-term health.

Cancer cells

Learning about the body's capabilities at a cellular level is absolutely fascinating. Each cells is like a city with all the molecules performing specific duties doing extremely precise things like copying thousands of genes in our DNA. Studying this gives me so much respect for what our cells do. But then I read about cancer cells. They reak havoc in doing nothing but destroy the beautiful, amazing progress other cells have done in the process of living and growing. We start as one cell and our amazing cells differentiate and turn us into who we are. Then cancer comes in with complete disregard. Such a sad thing. I don't like those kinds of cells.

Two things

I love reading about something that happens in a cell that billions of years later is imitated by human technology. The thing I learned about was an action in the mitochondria where hydrogen protons are shot through a protein (ATP synthase) in chemiosmosis to produce energy (ATP) by causing a molecular turbine-like structure to spin. Cells do this constantly to produce energy. But this process wasn't discovered until the 1960-70s. We've been using this concept to produce energy outside our bodies for centuries using wind and water power. But little did we know our cells have been doing this for billions of years, even before humans existed.

SO CRAZY.

The other thing I learned about was in my medical terms class about swelling. So, basophils (a type of white blood cell) release histamines in response to microorganisms. The histamine dilates blood vessels and increases blood flow. Here's what I think is so cool – it also changes the permeability of blood vessel wall. This causes allows large molecules like water and proteins to leak into tissues. And this is what we can see as swelling. Of course, things swell for other reasons. I just found this one so interesting because I've been learning about selective permeability in cells membranes, and so I found this concept realllllly cool, too.

There is so much going on in our body. It's like this crazy complex machine. But different from a machine because we think and feel and love. But we're also this big fleshy bag of chemicals. So crazy and cool. I love it.

Back in school

Halfway through the first quarter back of full-time school. I love it. I have wanted to do this for 5 years. Not sure what that means. I'm glad I studied design, and I love design. I'm also glad I'm back in school doing something new.

I can't get over how interesting my Bio 112 class is. Every once in a while I come across something that is SO interesting to me that I want to jump up and down. Poor Justin gets the brunt of my "enthusiasm." Probably a little annoying. Oops.

Today I was reading about the way cells get energy – cellular respiration. Before we were even people, our cells were evolving in ways to make life as we know if possible. I never really thought about it on such a small level. I think about fish to land animals to monkeys to people. But I've never thought about it like this.

But this is what blew my mind. 2.7 billion years ago, our cells, as we know them, did not exist. There were these other early cells (prokaryotes, which still exist) that were getting energy through a process we use still as the first step in making energy – glycolysis. Glycolysis produces energy but it doesn't need oxygen. So, during this time certain bacteria were creating oxygen as a by-product of photosynthesis. And it look about a billion years of this continuing process just to accumulate enough oxygen in the environment for cells to develop the ability to create energy using oxygen, like our cells do! And just think what had to happen for those cells to start evolving into more complex animals. But once there was oxygen in the environment, cells started changing in order to be able to use it. And this is all before we even evolved into anything that resembles any kind of animal. And all this is possible simply because of the electrons in chemical bonds.

This is absolutely mind blowing to me. Life is so amazing even at this small level. I might not be getting all this right...I'm a little new at the science thing, but I really love learning this stuff. I just can't believe what had to happen over billions of years in order for us to live life as we know it. So crazy.