Bearly Metabolizing

Keywords: Polar Bear, Polar Bear Paradox,
Vitamin A

The Story: "One ounce of polar bear liver contains enough Vitamin A (retinol) to kill a person!" I originally wanted to do this post because I've so often read of the toxic amount of Vitamin A stored in a polar bear's liver, occasionally tagged with "scientists do not know why..." What a mystery! Well not quite. Turns out, that's where Vitamin A is stored in the mammalian system, and they just have more. For folks who raise puppies, it is well known that vitamin A supplements help encourage healthy puppy fur, good breast milk and so forth. Well, a bear sure has a lot of fur! What is strange, however, is what is known as the Polar Bear Paradox, that is, why can bears endure feeding behaviors that would cause illness in humans? "Excessive consumption of dietary fat, obesity, and prolonged fasting are well known risk factors for diseases such as coronary heart disease, type II diabetes mellitus and anorexia nervosa." Yet, for the polar bear, points of "metabolic derangement" have made it possible for them to consume humongous amounts of dietary fat, gain tons of weight each year, and then fast for months on end - and remain healthy. Insulin resistance on-demand, unique glycogen storage and dispensary patterns, and lack of ketone-dependent metabolism are a few of the metabolic traits being studied. For me, it's back to the Tabata squats.

Additional Reading:
http://home.earthlink.net/~douglaspage/id89.html

Really cool people usually post lots of interesting comments.

Unconscious Incompetence

Keywords: Drowning, Near-Drowning, Cold-Water Immersion

The Story: Today marked the official beginning of summer. With cold water pouring off the mountains and flooding our rivers and lakes, this is a good time to review some eye-opening statistics on drowning. Here we go. Drowning is the second leading cause of injury-related death for kids age 1 to 14 - second only to automobile accidents. 80% of drowning vicitims are male. Younger kids tend to drown in swimming pools, older kids in natural settings. Girls are more likely to drown in the bathtub than boys. Minorities drown in disproportionate numbers. Alcohol, lack of PFD, lack of supervision, physiological (swimming) failures caused by cold water, boats, panic, and overestimation of swimming skill are all noted contributors to water related fatality. In the 1 to 14 age group, there are 5 immersion ER admissions for every drowning death. It is estimated that there is one drowning for every 600 near-drownings. If you fall into icy cold water, and you are very young, you might be in luck. At least one vicitim has been resuscitated after more than 70 minutes of immersion in such conditions. This fact has been touted in both my Wilderness First Responder and Swiftwater Rescue recertifications this year - both instructors independently stating the "new record" is 73 mintues. Some records are not meant to be broken.

Additional Reading:
http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/factsheets/drown.htm
http://www.thedoctorwillseeyounow.com/articles/other/drown_7/

Post thoughts, insights, reactions, disapprovals, and other mayhem to comments.

Chatty, But Not Cathy

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Chatterbox, Chatbot

The Story: Computer technology was seeded by the desire to develop "Artificial Intelligence" - an electronic brain capable of responding to its environment (i.e. having a conversation). So far, computers are accurate, fast, capable, and somewhat reliable; however they are not intelligent. Alan is one of many attempts at creating artificial intelligence via an online "Chatbot". One reviewer thought Alan was great: "I spoke with him for nearly an hour and almost forgot he is just a program." I decided to give him a try, but I only lasted 3 minutes. Apparently, Alan is worried by the infinite expansion of the universe and also expresses worry about the Big Crunch - a time when the critical mass of the universe may cause collapse and implosion. He said, "I hope I won't be around when that happens". To which I said: "you won't be". I asked Alan to tell me more about the Big Crunch and he said didn't know what that was. A minute later he said "let me tell you about Natural Language Processing". Ummmm.... no thanks, Alan. "Come on, loosen up."

Chat with Alan:
http://www.a-i.com/alan1/webface1.asp?style=Alan

Post thoughts and insights and bad Alan bits to comments.