Next Stop...Hair and Nails

This time let's learn some interesting facts about our hair and nails, two things that I am fond about. I love nail polishes and like to have healthy hair. I don't know why but it always sounds so weird to me when I, or anybody else, say "healthy hair".  I was actually shocked about fact #7. I always thought blondes had the least amount of hair follicles. Things you learn everyday!

1. Facial hair grows faster than any other hair on the body. If you’ve ever had a covering of stubble on your face as you’re clocking out at 5 o’clock you’re probably pretty familiar with this. In fact, if the average man never shaved his beard it would grow to over 30 feet during his lifetime, longer than a killer whale.
2. Every day the average person loses 60-100 strands of hair. Unless you’re already bald, chances are good that you’re shedding pretty heavily on a daily basis. Your hair loss will vary in accordance with the season, pregnancy, illness, diet and age.
3. Women’s hair is about half the diameter of men’s hair. While it might sound strange, it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that men’s hair should be coarser than that of women. Hair diameter also varies on average between races, making hair plugs on some men look especially obvious.
4. One human hair can support 3.5 ounces. That’s about the weight of two full size candy bars, and with hundreds of thousands of hairs on the human head, makes the tale of Rapunzel much more plausible.
5. The fastest growing nail is on the middle finger. And the nail on the middle finger of your dominant hand will grow the fastest of all. Why is not entirely known, but nail growth is related to the length of the finger, with the longest fingers growing nails the fastest and shortest the slowest.
6. There are as many hairs per square inch on your body as a chimpanzee. Humans are not quite the naked apes that we’re made out to be. We have lots of hair, but on most of us it’s not obvious as a majority of the hairs are too fine or light to be seen.
7. Blondes have more hair. They’re said to have more fun, and they definitely have more hair. Hair color determines how dense the hair on your head is. The average human has 100,000 hair follicles, each of which is capable of producing 20 individual hairs during a person’s lifetime. Blondes average 146,000 follicles while people with black hair tend to have about 110,000 follicles. Those with brown hair fit the average with 100,000 follicles and redheads have the least dense hair, with about 86,000 follicles.
8. Fingernails grow nearly 4 times faster than toenails. If you notice that you’re trimming your fingernails much more frequently than your toenails you’re not just imagining it. The nails that get the most exposure and are used most frequently grow the fastest. On average, nails on both the toes and fingers grow about one-tenth of an inch each month.
9. The lifespan of a human hair is 3 to 7 years on average. While you quite a few hairs each day, your hairs actually have a pretty long life providing they aren’t subject to any trauma. Your hairs will likely get to see several different haircuts, styles, and even possibly decades before they fall out on their own.
10. You must lose over 50% of your scalp hairs before it is apparent to anyone. You lose hundreds of hairs a day but you’ll have to lose a lot more before you or anyone else will notice. Half of the hairs on your pretty little head will have to disappear before your impending baldness will become obvious to all those around you.
11. Human hair is virtually indestructible. Aside from it’s flammability, human hair decays at such a slow rate that it is practically non-disintegrative. If you’ve ever wondered how your how clogs up your pipes so quick consider this: hair cannot be destroyed by cold, change of climate, water, or other natural forces and it is resistant to many kinds of acids and corrosive chemicals.

-From I Can't See you

I Found One of My Love!!!

I love learning about human body, especially reproductive system. So i finally found a website that shares interesting facts about the human body. How much fun is that!!!! I want to read the whole page all at once, but at the same time I want it to last a while. So I decided read them everyday and share it on this blog. There are 100 facts. I am not quite sure if I want to post only one fact a day. Maybe I'll split into categories like the site has done. So here it is. First, it's the brain:



The Brain
The human brain is the most complex and least understood part of the human anatomy. There may be a lot we don’t know, but here are a few interesting facts that we’ve got covered.

1. Nerve impulses to and from the brain travel as fast as 170 miles per hour. Ever wonder how you can react so fast to things around you or why that stubbed toe hurts right away? It’s due to the super-speedy movement of nerve impulses from your brain to the rest of your body and vice versa, bringing reactions at the speed of a high powered luxury sports car.
2. The brain operates on the same amount of power as 10-watt light bulb. The cartoon image of a light bulb over your head when a great thought occurs isn’t too far off the mark. Your brain generates as much energy as a small light bulb even when you’re sleeping.
3. The human brain cell can hold 5 times as much information as the Encyclopedia Britannica. Or any other encyclopedia for that matter. Scientists have yet to settle on a definitive amount, but the storage capacity of the brain in electronic terms is thought to be between 3 or even 1,000 terabytes. The National Archives of Britain, containing over 900 years of history, only takes up 70 terabytes, making your brain’s memory power pretty darn impressive.
4. Your brain uses 20% of the oxygen that enters your bloodstream. The brain only makes up about 2% of our body mass, yet consumes more oxygen than any other organ in the body, making it extremely susceptible to damage related to oxygen deprivation. So breathe deep to keep your brain happy and swimming in oxygenated cells.
5. The brain is much more active at night than during the day. Logically, you would think that all the moving around, complicated calculations and tasks and general interaction we do on a daily basis during our working hours would take a lot more brain power than, say, lying in bed. Turns out, the opposite is true. When you turn off your brain turns on. Scientists don’t yet know why this is but you can thank the hard work of your brain while you sleep for all those pleasant dreams.
6. Scientists say the higher your I.Q. the more you dream. While this may be true, don’t take it as a sign you’re mentally lacking if you can’t recall your dreams. Most of us don’t remember many of our dreams and the average length of most dreams is only 2-3 seconds–barely long enough to register.
7. Neurons continue to grow throughout human life. For years scientists and doctors thought that brain and neural tissue couldn’t grow or regenerate. While it doesn’t act in the same manner as tissues in many other parts of the body, neurons can and do grow throughout your life, adding a whole new dimension to the study of the brain and the illnesses that affect it.
8. Information travels at different speeds within different types of neurons. Not all neurons are the same. There are a few different types within the body and transmission along these different kinds can be as slow as 0.5 meters/sec or as fast as 120 meters/sec.
9. The brain itself cannot feel pain. While the brain might be the pain center when you cut your finger or burn yourself, the brain itself does not have pain receptors and cannot feel pain. That doesn’t mean your head can’t hurt. The brain is surrounded by loads of tissues, nerves and blood vessels that are plenty receptive to pain and can give you a pounding headache.
10. 80% of the brain is water. Your brain isn’t the firm, gray mass you’ve seen on TV. Living brain tissue is a squishy, pink and jelly-like organ thanks to the loads of blood and high water content of the tissue. So the next time you’re feeling dehydrated get a drink to keep your brain hydrated.

Might Have Something!

So I emailed Dr.Britt last week about joining her research and she emailed me back this past Monday. She told me she did have one or possibly two more spots open in her lab and she is indeed looking for students. She gave me some information about her research and an application to fill out. Her research is about understanding the role of a funagle protein called Bcp1, which is a fungal homolog of a human protein called BCCIP, which is associated with BRCA2, which is a tumor suppressor gene. BCCIP, when associated with BRCA2, may stop cell cycle when DNA is damaged. The organism that will be used is a yeast called S. cerevisiae. S.cerevisiae will be a model of an eukaryotic cell (human are eukaryotic). This yeast does not require a whole lot of taking care of and it is easy to culture (grow); hence, why this yeast was chosen.  Thus, this reasearch will help identify the role of Bcp1 which will tell us the importance of BCCIP, which is an important cofactor for BRCA2 in tumor suppression. I should also mention that mutations (changes, which could be dangerous) to BRCA2 could lead to breast cancer or ovarian cancer.

I also had a one-on-one meeting with Dr. Britt on Tues afternoon. She just gave me some more information abut her research and how it all works.I am a bit scared because Dr.Britt said that she has received a few applications from other students, so I just have to wait til the first week of March. She will let me know if I was "picked". I have my fingers crossed.

Biology Research

Ok, so for my biology research project I have two broad topics that I am interested in. The first one is the Reproductive Physiology, and the second one is Nucleic Acid (specifically, DNA). I want to combine these both topics together, but I'm not so sure how to do that. I have to do more planning. There are two professors that do research on nucleic acid, Dr. Matsumoto and Dr. Britt. On the other hand, there is only one professor doing a research on reproductive physiology, Dr. Hall. I have emailed Dr.Matsumoto, but I am still waiting for a reply. I think I have to drag myself to his office (I have to admit that I am scared of him, though I had him twice). I have emailed Dr.Hall but unfortunately, he told me that he does not have time to work in his laboratory and it'll be better if I find another mentor. I have not emailed Dr. Britt yet. I want to ask other biology major students how is Dr. Britt because I never had her for any of my classes yet.


I wanted to do my research (lab part) over the summer. I am not planning to take summer classes his summer, so I'll have so much free time. And on top of that I'll get paid for the lab research          (pretty good). I have to find a mentor who has funding for the summer. Dr.Hall has emailed me a list of professors who do have funding for the summer. Dr. Britt has summer funding, so more than likely, if anything, I'll do a research with her.

How Did the Internet Start?

 

So I went through a PowerPoint-like webpage here and found out about the evolution of the internet. How it started and et.. The internet all started as a device for the U.S. Military, but it was then called Arpanet. At that time Arpanet only connected five site: UCLA, Stanford, UC Santa Barbara, the University of Utah and BBN. It got the name Internet when it was able to connect to 1000 universities and labs. But now the internet is connected to mare than just 1000 universities and labs. In fact, there's internet to almost all school globally (with some expections). I wonder if there will ever be a time when the internet is not "popular" anymore. I mean I remember when MySpace first came out it was so popular! then it faded and Facebook took its replacement, and now it seems like Twitter and Instagram is taking over Facebook. Hence, I wonder if the internet will be "out of fashion" anytime in the future. I doubt it though. But I hope if it does, then I am alive so see what is the new "popular" item in society.