Bloogg - Anything and Everything

Definition

Paralysis is defined as complete loss of strength in an affected limb or muscle group.

Description

The chain of nerve cells that runs from the brain through the spinal cord out to the muscle is called the motor pathway. Normal muscle function requires intact connections all along this motor pathway. Damage at any point reduces the brain’s ability to control the muscle’s movements. This reduced efficiency causes weakness, also called paresis. Complete loss of communication prevents any willed movement at all. This lack of control is called paralysis. Certain inherited abnormalities in muscle cause periodic paralysis, in which the weakness comes and goes. Read the rest of this entry »

Not content with running your computer, Microsoft now wants to read your mind too.

The company says that it is hard to properly evaluate the way people interact with computers since questioning them at the time is distracting and asking questions later may not produce reliable answers. “Human beings are often poor reporters of their own actions,” the company says.

Instead, Microsoft wants to read the data straight from the user’s brain as he or she works away. They plan to do this using electroencephalograms (EEGs) to record electrical signals within the brain. The trouble is that EEG data is filled with artefacts caused, for example, by blinking or involuntary actions, and this is hard to tease apart from the cognitive data that Microsoft would like to study. Read the rest of this entry »

Everyone knows it is not safe to drive around if you have poor vision, but Spanish researchers hope to overcome that problem by successfully developing and testing a computer simulator that actually enables the visually impaired to drive. This system is known as SERBA (short for ‘Sistema Electro-óptico Reconfigurable de ayuda para Baja Visión’), when translation to English means ‘Reconfigurable Electric-Optical System for Low Vision’. It uses an innovative system that is based on a reconfigurable device known as FPGA (or Field Programmable Gate Array). In layman’s terms, the SERBA system can be reprogrammed easily under different and changing circumstances. Whenever a user’s vision declines, all they need to do is download a new version of the software that has been adapted to cater for this new environment without the need to purchase a new device. Guess this is a high tech version of changing the lens in your glasses without picking up a new frame.

Any driver using the SERBA system will have to use the transparent viewfinder that makes him/her look like part of the Borg collective. Using a real-time video processing system that stores a number of image processing algorithms, it is capable of adapting to the user’s needs and to the evolution of their disease. To date, eight patients who are suffering from Retinitis Pigmentosa (a visual impairment that reduces the field of vision) were involved in the device’s assessment, along with half a dozen others suffering from different pathologies that generate a loss of sharpness of vision, with rather encouraging results.

The software itself can be updated via an Internet connection, where the program will then be stored in the internal memory of the prototype board while the selection of the dump algorithm in the FPGA is carried out automatically. The images shown in the transparent viewfinder are no different than those used in the army, but I guess there is a limit to this technology if the disease gets progressively worse (touch wood). Still, it is great to know that such technology provides a greater degree of mobility for older folks as well as those suffering from visual impairment of some sort.

The Amazon is the greatest river in the world by so many measures; the volume of water it carries to the sea (approximately 20% of all the freshwater discharge into the oceans), the area of land that drains into it, and its length and width. It is one of the longest rivers in the world and, depending upon who you talk to, is anywhere between 6,259km/3,903mi and 6,712km/4,195mi long.

At its widest point the Amazon River can be 11km/6.8 mi wide during the dry season. The area covered by the Amazon River and its tributaries more than triples over the course of a year. In an average dry season 110,000 square km of land are water-covered, while in the wet season the flooded area of the Amazon Basin rises to 350,000 square km. When the flood plains and the Amazon River Basin flood during the rainy season the Amazon River can be up to 40km/24.8 mi wide. Where the Amazon opens at its estuary the river is over 325km/202 mi wide!

Because the Amazon drains the entire Northern half of the South American continent (approx. 40% landmass), including all the torrential tropical rains that deluge the rainforests, it carries an enormous amount of water. The mouth of the Amazon River, where it meets the sea, is so wide and deep that ocean-going ships have navigated its waters and traveled as far inland as two-thirds the way up the entire length of the river.

The Amazon River is not only the greatest in the world, it is home to many other “Extremes” of the natural world. Have you ever seen a catfish? They’re usually found in warm, slow moving waters of lakes and streams, and some people keep them as pets in aquariums. Catfish are pretty creepy looking fish with big flat heads and “whiskers” on either side of their heads (hence the name, catfish). Most catfish that we’re familiar with here in the U.S. are anywhere from eight inches long to about five feet, weighing in at up to 60 pounds. But the catfish that live in the world’s greatest river have all the room in the world to grow as big as nature will allow - they have been captured weighing over 200 pounds! One of the largest freshwater fish in the world is found living in the waters of the Amazon River. Arapaima, also known locally as Pirarucu, Arapaima gigas are the largest, exclusively fresh water fish in the world. They have been found to reach a length of 15 ft/4m and can weigh up to 440lbs/200kg. And yes, for you smartypants out there, sturgeon are even larger than this, but they are not exclusively freshwater fish. Sturgeon spend most of their lives at sea, or in brackish water, and only swim into freshwater rivers to spawn. (Read about the biggest freshwater fish in the world.)

The Amazon is also home to some other extreme creatures, featured here in “Extreme Science”; the Anaconda (biggest snake), and Piranha (most ferocious). Check it out!

Amazon River Facts  

So, how did the Amazon get to be so big? The first reason has to do with its location - right at the equator. Around the “belt line” of the earth lies a warm, tropical zone where over 400 in/1016cm of rain fall every year. That averages out to more than an inch (3cm) of rain, everyday! A lot of water falls onto the land surrounding the river, what is called the “Amazon River drainage basin”. A good way to understand what a drainage basin is to think of the whole northern half of the continent of South America as a shallow dish, or saucer. Whenever rain falls and lands anywhere in the river basin it all runs into the lowest place in the pan, which happens to be the Amazon River. The sheer volume of rain in the Amazon jungle, as well as the slope of the surrounding land, combine to create the enormous river known as the Amazon.

Mount Everest is so famous for being so high that you’ve probably heard of it before. It has been known the world over since the early 1950s when Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzig Norgay first climbed to its awesome summit. Hillary surveyed Everest at the time and determined that it was 29,000 ft/8840m high - a figure amazingly close to the current reading of 29,035 ft/8850m, which was confirmed using radar and global positioning satellite (GPS) technology. Read the rest of this entry »