Great post. Really Interesting!
Sucrose and Fructose: The Undoings of Man
Although it is known among many that sugar really is one of the most unhealthy substances for humans, dieters have been on wild goose chases trying to bring down gluten, fat and carbs in our diet. They have neglected the true issue, the sweet poison that is added sugar. Today, I’m here to bust some of the myths about sugar and make the truth hit home.
First things first, it must be acknowledged that is a very vague term and this is where the confusion starts. Within the broad spectrum of sugar, we can break down the sugars we will talk about today into two key groups:
Glucose is the body’s preferred method of sourcing energy . It is in every living cell of your body. If you do not consume it directly from your diet, your body will produce it by converting carbohydrates into glucose. This is either used immediately or converted into glycogen and stored in the muscle cells or the liver for future usage. It is also said to increase the Leptin hormone which helps control appetite and fat storage. As well as all of this, glucose is regulated constantly by the hormone Insulin which is produced in the pancreas. This restricts the blood being overflown by glucose. The lack of Insulin being produced is the cause for type 1 diabetes whereas the cause for type 2 diabetes is if your cells grow resistant to the effects of Insulin.
N.B Before you read the next part, please remember: Over-consuming fructose does not apply to fruit! Although they do also contain fructose, it is almost impossible to consume too much fructose from fruit!
Fructose is where the problems begin. Peter Havel (He is an associate professor of nutrition at the University of California) tells us that “Fructose doesn’t stimulate insulin secretion [and] it doesn’t increase leptin production. [It] appears to behave more like fat with respect to the hormones involved in body weight regulation”. In contrast to Glucose, Fructose is not the preferred energy source for the muscles and brain. Due to its different metabolic pathway, it is only metabolized in the liver. It also produces more fat than Glucose (Lipogenesis). The reason’s that Professor Havel has mentioned above mean that a Fructose-rich diet has no control over energy intake and expenditure. In fact, most diet websites mention that it behaves most like fat out of all the carbohydrates and most likely contributes to weight gain.
Sucrose is the next problem. It is often used in sweet foods in substitute to what I think of as one of the most feared phrases in the dieting industry: High-Fructose Corn Syrup. Everywhere you see the horror and chaos caused by this toxic nectar found only in the deepest bowels of the godforsaken soft drink aisle. Let us ignore that for now because High-Fructose Corn Syrup is made primarily of Fructose (whose disadvantages I’ve already explained enough). Let us move on to sucrose (also known as table sugar). It is found in cane sugar and naturally in fruit. It is made up of both Glucose and Fructose. The body splits them up and uses the glucose as it prefers. If not needed (and with the amount of carbs in our western diets, it often isn’t) the Fructose goes into Fatty Acid Synthesis. You can watch a series of videos all about this process and metabolic pathways in general on Khan Academy Medicine:
It’s definitely worth a look at the next parts if your interested in medicine or just generally liked the video. So is a cool Ted-Ed lesson by Robert Lustig which is also worth checking out:
http://ed.ted.com/lessons/sugar-hiding-in-plain-sight-robert-lustig
The Secrets behind Smiling
We’ve been told often enough, especially as school kids to smile more often. After all, it can’t do any harm! Not only that but it turn out that there are various positive effects that can be accumulated by smiling more often. Here is a quick breakdown of the basics:
It is also known that our brain keeps track of how many times we smile in a certain period of time to figure out our overall emotional status. This can be very helpful, especially because multiple studies have found a correlation between how “smiley” a person is and their success.
One of the more extreme studies, one led by Professor Matthew Hertenstein of the DePauw University Psychology. sought out to find a correlation between the smile in a person’s yearbook photo and their happiness in later life. He reports finding: “that people who smile the least are about five times more likely to obtain divorces at some point in their lives compared to those who smiled the most.”
The main superpower that smiling provides us with is being able to feel “better”. This stimulation of happiness is not found in many other things, in fact, in a recent study, Eric Savitz tells us, smiling can give the same level of brain stimulation as 2,000 chocolate bars or £16,000 being given to you. The masters of this game are however by far the children. The average adult smiles 20 times per day and the happiest of the adults up to 30 or 40 times but the average child smiles way over that at a ground-breaking 400 times every day! This works because the cycle between the brain and the smiling muscles is a positive feedback loop. Our brain feels happiness and tells our muscles to smile which makes our brain feel happiness and so on.
Savitz also led a similar study to Hertenstein at UC Berkeley except his study was a whopping 30 years long and he reports consistently finding similar results:
“By measuring the smiles in the photographs the researchers were able to predict: how fulfilling and long lasting their marriages would be, how highly they would score on standardized tests of well-being and general happiness, and how inspiring they would be to others. The widest smilers consistently ranked highest in all of the above.”
So its true, smiling can really give you extra advantages in life. Although all the studies I have seen display a correlation, not necessarily a causation, you can check out some of the other topics Savitz found studies on in his Forbes article about “The Untapped Power Of Smiling” below. Maybe smiling not only affects your happiness but your life expectancy too…
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2011/03/22/the-untapped-power-of-smiling/
Super Hydrophobic Knife Cuts Water Droplet in Two
Recently, there has been word on the internet that scientists have managed to cut a water droplet into two by using a super hydrophobic knife and super hydrophobic surfaces to manipulate surface tension. You can see the gif below:
Here, scientists from Arizona State University have rested the droplet on a Teflon surface. The two loops of wire on either side, holding the drop in place, were also coated in Teflon. The team from the “Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry” led by Ryan Yanashima and Antonio Garcia have created knives from zinc, copper and polyethylene (a plastic polymer used to create most commercial plastic bags). These were then submerged in a silver nitrate solution and Heptadecafluoro-1-decanethiol (aka HDFT) thus creating a super hydrophobic surface.
The purpose of this experiment was published two years ago in a scientific paper. It was primarily to separate proteins from the biological fluids they are naturally found in. This isolation would let individual detection of the proteins a lot simpler and consequently, more information about genes could be gathered leading to more accurate predictions of diseases and illnesses. All in all, a very useful and praiseworthy goal!
Black Belts in Martial Arts
It is commonly known that a black belt represents a ‘graduate’ in any form of Martial Arts and although it is difficult to obtain a black belt in itself, there are 10 “dans” or kyus” of Black Belt each of which denoting a higher seniority in Martial Arts. Any Martial Artist with a 9th dan or above is known as a grandmaster. Although each organization has a different set of rules and conditions, very few award up to 10th dan. Many stop at just 9th. Currently, there are no living 10th dan holders in one of the most popular forms of Martial Arts – Taekwondo. Anyway, here are a few celebrities who you might not have known owned black belts.
- Elvis Presley (1935-1977) – 1st Dan Black Belt in Karate
- Vladimir Putin – 9th Dan Black Belt in Taekwondo
- Bear Grylls – 2nd Dan Black Belt in Shotokan Karate
- Chuck Norris – 8th Dan Black Belt in Taekwondo, 10th Dan Black Belt Chun Kuk Do and 9th Dan Black Belt Tang Soo Do
For a few more unexpected items, CelebrityToob has quite a few surprises in celebrities who I certainly didn’t expect to have Black Belts:
http://celebritytoob.com/celebrity-news/15-celebrities-hold-black-belts-martial-arts/
Secular Humanism
“The arguments of ancient and modern secular humanists against theism and religion are convincing and have more strengths than weaknesses.”
I strongly disagree with the statement above and do not believe in any way that the arguments of ancient and modern secular humanists against theism and religion have more strength and weaknesses. This is because, I agree with the views of Stephen J. Gould that religion and science should be kept separate. They should not be merged together. Gould calls his views NOMA (Non-Overlapping Magisteria). The name is derived from the Latin word “magister’ – meaning teacher. It represents how the teachings of religion and the teachings of science should not merge or “overlap”. The views of the renowned palaeontologist are whittled down from the highly complex philosophical views of Immanuel Kant – arguably the greatest figure in modern philosophy.
As well as this, I believe that Gould’s views are very logical. He argued that in a society like todays, science and religion should be kept apart. The palaeontologist claimed that science gave us facts through empirical data about our origins and other things which religion couldn’t possibly give us. He also claimed that religion gave use values through morality and metaphysics which science couldn’t possibly give us. The gap between these is called the fact value distinction. It is a distinction between what is (The positive statements that are claimed based on facts) and what ought to be (The normative statements that are claimed based on values).
Secondly, I find Archbishop Welby’s views convincing too. He is the symbolic head of the worldwide Anglican community and the current Archbishop of Canterbury. He also believes in the NOMA concept along with most other Protestant Archbishops. When Jesus was asked by the Jews
“Is it lawful to pay a poll-tax to Caesar or not?”
he replied,
“Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
This is evidence of how Christianity in general supports the NOMA solution and believes in keeping faith and reason as separate things.
Someone like Richard Dawkins or Greek Philosopher Epicurus would disagree with me and criticize Welby and Gould because they would say that there are many areas in which religion and science overlap and clash. They would say that we cannot confine religion to moral and values. They may say that this is wrong and we haven’t considered material concepts religion is responsible for like prayer and miracles. These views are weak because prayer and miracles, along with other religious material claims are also bases for teachings on morals and values. Religion is not telling us that prayer is the best way to gain the attention of god or that miracle will occur because god exist but that we should not give up hope because there is always a small chance that what you want will happen (i.e. a miracle) or that you should pray to god to calm your mind and be aware of your goals. These are all moral teachings.
In conclusion, I think that the views of secular humanists, both modern and ancient, are unconvincing and have more weaknesses than strengths because there are more disadvantages than advantages with the idea teaching areas of education where religion and science overlap and create tension between the two distinct areas of western civilisation. Secular humanism is not only philosophically flawed in many areas, it is morally wrong because it has a pernicious effect on society when it tries to combine two distinctly separate areas of society.
Project QB50
In my opinion, Project QB50 is a great display of how space exploration has evolved over the past half-decade. The 18th of March 2015 was the 50th anniversary of the first EVA (Extravehicular Activity) more commonly known as a spacewalk. It was done by Alexey Arkhipovich Leonov on the Voskhod 2 when he became “the first person to leave the spacecraft in a specialized spacesuit to conduct a 12 minute spacewalk.” We can see how much space exploration technology has developed since then and Project QB50 is a perfect example. On the 9th to the 11th of September 2015 will be the 7th European CubeSat Symposium (a conference or meeting). Here they will discuss QB50 which was “an European FP7 Project for Facilitating Access in Space”. What this basically means is that the aim of the project was to launch a network of 50 CubeSats to explore the lower thermosphere. The primary purpose of this was to “achieve a sustained and affordable access to space for small scale research space missions and planetary exploration.” A CubeSat is a mini satellite with a volume of exactly 1 litre. Their purpose is to be cheap but still gather data about our planet. QB50p1 and QB50p2 are currently in orbit in a precursor mission to investigate any problems that could occur in the final mission. The main launch is planned for mid-2015.
Wikipedia puts out the main info very clearly. It mentions:
“QB50 is an initiative of the Von Karman Institute and is funded by the European Union. Double-unit (“2-U”) CubeSats (10x10x20 cm) are foreseen, with one unit (the ‘functional’ unit) providing the usual satellite functions and the other unit (the ‘science’ unit) accommodating a set of standardised sensors for lower thermosphere and re-entry research.”
Killing Hitler
Scenario: “It Is July 1939. You were born into a highly educated upper middle class family in Berlin and have graduated from university with a PHD in philosophy and ethics. You have travelled and taught around the world and have mixed with people of all races, classes and worldviews. You now live in Berlin and teach at a prestigious university. Owing to your family’s connections to relatives in the military high command, you have been aware, at a very early stage, of Hitler’s intentions to declare war and conquer Europe, and furthermore his plans for the deportment, detention if not extermination of the Jewish population in Germany and Europe. As a result, you spoke out against the National Socialists as soon as they were elected to power. Despite this, you are still repeatedly invited by numerous academic, business and political groups to take up leadership roles carrying high levels of prestige, privilege and influence in both social and financial terms. These groups are indirectly regulated by the National Socialists. This morning however, you have been approached by a trusted friend and college. You have known for some time that he is a member of a Nazi resistance group. He has informed you that they plan to kill Hider sometime this month, and dearly need your connections and influence to help arrange this. He also informed you that there are considerable risks to your safety; if discovered, the various members of the resistance would almost certainly be jailed and executed. That said, there is no time to waste; war appears imminent Your friend requires a simple yes or no to the question: given the opportunity, will you help kill Hitler?”
Dear Klaus,
I am sorry but I cannot help you in killing Hitler just yet. I understand that it is a time of crisis and Hitler’s plans to deport if not exterminate the entire Jewish population. I have family connections to relatives in the higher military command so I know best how close we are to all-out war, how close Hitler is to unleashing his army and conquering all of Europe. But despite this, I cannot help you – it goes against my ethical principles.
Don’t get me wrong here Klaus, I am not an absolutist. I have the sense to change my principles in accordance to the situation. I am not moulded by my principles, my principles are moulded to me. I am not a deontologist either – I do care for the consequences of my actions, I don’t blindly act in the belief that my deeds are intrinsically “good” or “bad”. Then why can’t I help you, you ask? Well, I am a utilitarian my friend and I must do whatever leads to the greatest good for the greatest number. I know you may see this as a bit contradictory so let me explain.
We are almost sure that Hitler will go ahead with his plans. This, however, is the same as being clueless in the eyes of a Utilitarian like me. We are almost sure, we aren’t certain yet. We cannot afford to kill Hitler yet. He is innocent until proven guilty. Klaus, you must see that miracles can happen. If we kill Hitler now, we have killed one man for nothing. We have to wait until he has killed at least one Jew before we kill him. Then we have killed on man for the greater good of every Jew on this planet.
I know you may interpret this as revenge my friend but I assure you it is not. An eye for an eye makes everyone blind Klaus. This is not about revenge. This is about making sure that we have killed a man who deserves to die, not a man who (as he is now) is simply an innocent civilian. I know of others who would think I am wrong. The people who would disagree with me are the
At the moment Hitler is part of “the greatest number”, when he steps outside of this category, when he stumbles off the fine line he is treading on, then and only then will I back you Klaus.
Best of luck,
CriticalRhino
A Mathematical Fallacy to Trick your Friends
I’m sure most of us know that you cannot divide by zero. Any sum which involves dividing by zero is automatically invalid. Why? Because we don’t really know what you get when you divide by zero. Dividing is like splitting sweets between a certain number of people. If you divide by zero then there is nobody to split the sweets between. So who get it? Anyways, there are quite a few things you can do if you divide by 0. The coolest being by far in algebraic proof. The most famous fallacy (or mistake) which can be done by employing division by zero is the any number equals any other number fallacy. So much so that there is a Wikipedia page on it. Here I’ll show it with 2 = 1 but you can modify it to work with any other numbers.
(a and b are not zero)
Let us say that a = b
(Multiply by a on both sides)
a² = ab
(Subtract b² form both sides)
a² – b² = ab – b²
(Factorize both sides. On the left, we are using the “difference of two squares” or DOTS rule and on the right we are factorizing by the “greatest common divisor”)
(a – b)(a + b) = b(a – b)
(Divide both sides by a – b)
a + b = b
(Due to the fact that a = b)
b + b = b
(Bring together like terms)
2b = b
(Divide by b – which is not zero)
2 = 1
The fallacy here occurs when we divide by a – b because as we have said at the beginning, a and b are equal non-zero numbers and so a – b will always be zero. And so, admittedly very cunningly, we have divided by 0 and “proved” that 2 = 1. The moral of the story here being: the reason we don’t divide by zero, is because it breaks maths!
Jeremy Clarkson Sacked!
I’m sure we’ve all heard the breaking news – Top Gear presenter, Jeremy Clarkson, is to be sacked from the BBC after a row he had with Top Gear producer Oisin Tymon. The alleged assault “was said to have occurred because no hot food was provided following a day’s filming.” says the BBC. An investigation found that Jeremy subject Mr Tymon to an unprovoked physical attack which led to Oisin being struck and the consequent bleeding and swelling on his lip meant he had to go to Accident and Emergency. This was also accompanied by prolonged verbal abuse and threats to sack Mr Tymon who already , as the BBC say, “believed he had lost his job”. But the subsidiary question still remains, should Jeremy Clarkson have been sacked? Well, It is quite obvious that what was done was wrong but Lord Tony Hall words both sides of the argument very well. He mentions: “This decision should in no way detract from the extraordinary contribution that Jeremy Clarkson has made to the BBC. I have always personally been a great fan of his work and Top Gear.” This is very true and proven by the 350 million large audience worldwide. In fact there has been an online petition to bring back Jeremy Clarkson with over 1,000,000 online entries already. The hash-tag: #bringbackclarkson is being used online for these purposes too. But as Lord Hall also rightly says: “For me a line has been crossed. There cannot be one rule for one and one rule for another dictated by either rank, or public relations and commercial considerations. [we] cannot condone what has happened on this occasion”. Of course again, we cannot disagree with the things said here. We cannot condone abuse at all and we cannot treat people differently depending on their public relations in these situations. Abuse is by far a major crime. The TFL charges the highest fines for passenger abuse. But was this a little row gone too far? We don’t know and the question still remains… Should Clarkson have been fired?
The Learnaholic 