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--------------------------- - 1837 - Microbes control your life?
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- Zika is in today’s headlines. A virus carried by mosquitoes that has infected 9 pregnant women in the U.S. to date. All 9 got infected while visiting places where zika virus outbreaks have occurred. Many travelers are rethinking plans to attend the Olympics and other vacation spots south of the border this summer.
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- The virus spreads through mosquito bites. The symptoms are mainly a mild illness but the danger is very real for birth defects. The disease is called microcephaly.
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- There are teeming masses of microbes are all over and inside your body. In fact for every human cell in your body there are 10 bacteria. Let me say that again bacteria outnumber your cells 10 to one. You are more bacteria than human! Or, is this simply a partnership for a healthy life?
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- Those bacteria in you cells are essential for life. You could say that your body is a conglomerate of super organisms composed of thousands of species. We humans are definitely in a relationship with microbes.
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- Intestinal bacteria digest our food.
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- Microbes protect organs against infection from other disease -causing- bacteria. Microbes are even educating your immune system against these diseases.
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- Current studies are indicating that “ clean living” is breaking up some of the healthy friendships between people and microbes. My Mom saying to my brother and me , “ go out and play in the dirt” was probably good therapy.
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- Loosing a friendly bacteria can have some unpleasant side effects. Researchers are having trouble telling what bacteria are healthy and which are not. So, now they refer to certain bacteria as “ normal”.
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- Having acne - is it healthy? But, is it “ normal”?
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- How about dandruff?
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- Certain microbes are associated with obesity. Others, with high cholesterol. Also, microbes seem to control how much fat gets into our liver.
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- Some bacteria create lactic acid that fights off infection.
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- Science is trying to learn how these trillions of bacteria operate inside their human hosts.
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- Does memory exist between brain cells that send chemical communications across synapses, or, does memory exit inside these brain cells with the brain microbes. Are the microbes part of the brain memory and even part of the thinking processes.?
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- How many microbes can dance on the head of a pin? How many protons can dance on the head of a pin?
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- How many protons does it take to have a living microbe? Microbes are alive. How many protons, which are just hydrogen nuclei, are needed to go from chemistry to biology?
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- How big is the proton. The building block for all the atoms, and the proteins, that give us life.
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- A proton is the nucleus of the hydrogen atom. A neutral hydrogen atom has one proton and one electron. Proton has a positive charge and the electron a negative charge, together they cancel and create a neutral atom.
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- Hydrogen is the lightest atom. Each heavier atom has another proton. 2 make up helium, 3 lithium, 4 up to 92 , Uranium , make up all the elements in the Periodic Table. Most of your body is water in the form of hydrogen and oxygen, H2O. But, traces of most all of the Periodic Table elements can be found in your body.
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- So how big is the proton? It is a particle with a radius of 0.84087 femtometers.
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- 0.84087 millionth of a billionth of a meter.
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- That is so small , it is smaller than the wavelength of a Gamma Ray that is 100 times larger. In fact, when you get down to this size there is a duality in particles and waves. But , that is another Review.
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- Obviously this measurement for the radius of a proton is difficult and precision is a challenge. A different measurement approach put the radius at 0.8768 femtometers.
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- The 4% difference is causing some stir in the field of quantum electrodynamics. QED is the science of how light and matter interact, how waves and particles interact.
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- A third measurement method got 0.84185 femtometers.
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- One of the measurement techniques use “ electron scattering”. Firing electrons ant hydrogen nuclei and measuring how much their paths are deflected.
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- Another way is to measure how much energy it takes to get an electron to move to different orbits about the nucleus. The wavelength of the photon that is the release of energy when the electron drops back to a lower energy orbit.
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- Still a third measurement involves muonic hydrogen. This hydrogen nucleus with a proton and a muon, instead of an electron. A muon is a high energy electron. It is 207 times “ heavier”, more energy. Remember energy and mass are the same thing,
(E = mc^2).
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- Somewhat the same process: A laser is fired at the muonic hydrogen raising it into a higher energy orbit. When it falls back it emits an X-Ray photon. the frequency tells us the amount of energy, ( E = h*f ). But, that is another Review.
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----------------------- 0.80087 femtometers.
----------------------- 0.8768 femtometers
----------------------- 0.84185 femtometers.
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- Understanding the small differences of the smallest dimensions may change our understanding of the proton structure which is made of Quarks and Gluons. But, that is another Review.
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- Maybe the Quantum Electrodynamics’ theories need to be corrected?
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- Maybe science has made some simple measurement errors? Error analysis!
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- The search goes on to understand how the very small controls our lives. When does the physics of particles and waves become biology? How is that possible? Physics and astronomy puts “alive” in the middle of the size scale. May you live in interesting times with the curiosity to figure this all out. An announcement will be made shortly stay tuned.
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- Request these Reviews to learn more:
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- #1374 - Microbes, dominant life on Earth.
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- # 787 - Microbes include bacteria, fungi archaea, protists but not viruses and prions which are considered as non-living.
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- The human gut is 20 feet long , contains 10^15 microbes of 1,000 different species.
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- #906 - Vaccines work because they are a variation of the microbe that causes your immune system to go to work.
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- #959 - Bad microbes originate in animals and our bodies are not equipped to handle them.
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- #881 - Microbes make climate change. Microbes may have arrived on Earth hitchhiking on meteorites.
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- #989 - Extreme microbes. If you stop an antibiotic too soon some microbes might survive and mutate to become resistant to the antibiotic.
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- #1654 - Everything about protons. The proton lifetime is 2.1*10^29 years.
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- #979 - Calculating the mass of a proton.
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--- Some reviews are at: -------------- http://jdetrick.blogspot.com -----
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- to: ------- jamesdetrick@comcast.net ------ “Jim Detrick” -----------
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----- 707-536-3272 ---------------- Tuesday, March 1, 2016 -----
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