ACCHS Biochemistry and Biophysics

Would you support the development of a bionic person? A bionic person sounds like a character from a sci-fi movie. I would support the development of bionic body parts for people who are missing parts in order to improve their quality of life. I would support them if they were made accessible to everyone who needed it, rather than it becoming a product that is profit driven. I would not support implanting a chip in someone's brain as if they were a computer. Would your view change if this were for a military purpose? I would not support any type of bionics for military purposes. I don't support most military initiatives even though I know many positive advances in sciences have stemmed from military research such as GPS. It would be scary to think about an army of bionic people, but we already have drones being used in the military so how would we able to to stop the military if they wanted to have a bionic army?

Tardigrades may have survived spacecraft crashing on moon I learned about tardigrades for the first time about 6 years ago while going down the rabbit hole on YouTube. They are quite fascinating animals with their abilities to withstand extreme temperatures and pressures, as well as their ability to be in a cryptobiotic state. They might now be on the moon, but there also exists a theory known as panspermia which theorizes that tardigrades came from another planet like Mars and traveled to Earth on debris impact from an asteroid which would account for why they can survive the vacuum of space. We don't know how they've evolved and there aren't any relative animals on Earth, but they have a digestive tract, muscles, and nervous system like us. I doubt we would be able to mimic their biochemistry in order to travel through space. After they are revived from their cryptobiotic state, they continue on as if no time has changed, enjoying the moment and the now. If this is one l...

NOVA Food Classifications It turns out my eating habits fluctuate and although I try to eat healthy, I find there are plenty of processed foods that enter my GI tract. A lot of that category are from enriched AP flour from breads or baked goods. It usually occurs because I haven't cooked from scratch and that's usually because I don't have time. And I happen to like snacks a lot... highly palatable indeed. And cheese. “Researchers have identified some 700 microbial species that inhabit the human mouth” That's probably good for us and our gut! Apparently we have more bacteria in our gut than we do cells in our bodies. There's also another theory that we are actually organisms that are keeping bacteria alive, that their evolution is proliferating through us and that we are just vectors that are feeding into their existence. Or something like that. The discussions this week were pretty interesting with CRSPR and gene-edited babies. On the one hand, gene-editing i...

Acupuncture as an effective energy medicine When people hear "energy medicine," they often see such themes as "woo-woo," supernatural, or pseudoscience. But everything is matter and energy, and energy cannot always be measured scientific terms. Energy medicine is focused on the balancing of morphogenic fields of the body and the flows of energy between the generators/resonators of these fields, as well as vital energies and fields generated by living cells that make up the living substance o the body. Trauma, physical, emotional, or mental, disrupt the balance of morphogenic fields and vital energies, which is the equivalent of imbalanced yin and yang within the body. Acupuncture is about Qi, life force or energy, and balancing yin and yang. After successful treatment of acupuncture, a patient will improve, be healed, and feel better. Though we are not able to measure how this works in terms of physics, the proof is in the experience of the individual and the effec...