BIOLOGY 103 FALL, 2002 FORUM 1

Ok, get ready for the insanity that is my mind:

Has anyone else noticed that an atom resembles a galaxy? seriously, we don't have a very good picture of an atom, but they really do look similar. What if a galaxy as we know it is just one big atom, and earth is actually revolving around one of the outer most electrons in this atom and the galaxy-atom we live in makes up someones toenail? Think about it, the world might end if they stub their toe...

I seriously think this class is driving me to a point of insanity I have never previously visited. I'll leave you ponder and with the hope that we are part of someone with very good coordination.

have any of you ever read/seen "horton hears a who" by dr. seuss? horton, this big elephant, can hear someone talking very quietly. it turns out it's a scientist from a little tiny planet on a piece of dust. throughout the story, everyone makes fun of horton and calls him crazy and all of that. oh, and they try to kill the dustball planet. being dr. suess, the story has a moral at the end. we should be accepting of others even if we don't understand them. how sweet.

so we can totally blame our good/bad days on the shoes the chick whose toe we live on is wearing, but we have to forgive her for them!

I briefly looked through the bio book (which is only the... uh... well, let's just say I haven't spent a lot of time with it), and maybe I wasn't looking in the right places, but I didn't get too much useful information to my questions. In the pictures, it looked like eukaryotic cells are transparent so you can look through them, whereas the prokaryotic cells are either opaque or you can look through them but there's nothing there. I don't know if that's just something with the way the pictues are in the book, if there are cross-sections done, or if that's the way things really are with those particular organisms. There is a diagram showing that two paramecia (parameciums?) are needed to reproduce, but I didn't really understand the caption. There was also something about parameciums eating bacteria, which makes me wonder what the size difference is between the eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells. The question of why there aren't multi-cellular organisms made of prokaryotic cells is also definitely worth thinking about, but I'd rather understand how the single-celled ones work first.

I'm reading this book for an english class, but thought this quote applied to the idea that no scientific theory can ever be accepted as absolute truth.

-Emily

Source: http://www.yourhealth.com/ahl/2109.html

Chelsea- I love your description of the good day, and the possible reasons for why. It's nice to think we should just go with it, because it does make the possibilities endless. Of course, then none of us will ever get any sleep.

So then, speaking of sleep... I haven't been getting any! It isn't, amazingly enough, because I'm too busy. For the past week and a half, I just haven't been able to sleep. I lay in bed for hours until I fall asleep, and then I wake up at 5 or 6 in the morning. I'm open to alternative sleeping patterns, so I have tried napping in the afternoons when I'm done with class. I can't fall asleep even then. Insomnia, perhaps? Well that is what I thought, so I decided I would do my web paper on insomnia and see what is going on. (Yay for finding a topic!) I don't have any of the normal problems that would cause insomnia, and the weirdest thing is that I don't wake up feeling unrefreshed, drowsy or irritable. I can go all day on as little as three hours of sleep, and then still can't fall asleep that evening. It is rather difficult to concentrate during the day, especially, say, in French class. But I'm not tired all day, or irritable (more than normal) and I don't ever drift off to sleep in classes. So besides not being able to concentrate as well as I used to, I am not that affected by this. Strange. Nothing that I have found on any sleep disorders has given me an explanation. If anyone has had prior experiences like this, or any other sleeping disorders, I would be interested... especially since I need some help for my paper!

On a slightly related note, I've discovered why I was so hyper on Monday and, consequentially, why I've been getting such good sleep. One word: Exercise. You've all heard how much exercise helps you sleep better, feel better during the day, but I never realized how true it was! I never really had anything to judge it against, but this summer I didn't really have the time or the resources to work out like I wanted to. I came back to school and have been going to the gym religiously. Since then, I've gotten more sleep, better quality sleep, and I have more energy during the day (except for those two hours or so after I've worked out, my body's tired then, and in the morning because I am NOT a morning person). So, there is truth to the exercise theory we've all had drilled into our head by coaches and gym teachers and health official alike. Yay, it's not just a ploy by the gym enterprise to get us to spend money to join them!

First, I would like to say that everyone has made some really interesting comments this week! It's so much fun to see what other people are thinking about what we're learning. This is one of the coolest science classes I have ever taken because it makes me think in a much more fun way than memorizing facts, etc. does.

Well, anyway...

So I was trying to think of a paper topic last week, and I don't recall quite how, but somehow I stumbled upon the topic of artificial intelligence (AI). It is a really fascinating (and controversial!!) subject, and there are SO many different aspects of it. I decided to focus on the aspect of AI that is attempting to create humanistic AI, that is to say robots like ourselves. What struck me the most in my research was how far back the quest for AI goes. The first automaton that fully replicated human form was created in A.D. 1525! Of course, AI is still far from resembling the imaginative creations of the science fiction genre, such as Robby, C-3PO, and HAL, but progress is definitely being made. One of the most interesting things I did in my research was have an online chat with an AI computer. While I was chatting with the AI computer, I was expecting it to make a lot of mistakes that would reveal it as a machine, but the AI computer made far fewer mistakes than I had expected. It was really fun and interesting. And although it may seem strange, I got the most interesting information about AI from the movie website for Spielberg's AI:Artificial Intelligence. That is where I had the chat with the AI computer, and also they have a really good timeline of the history of AI (although they go up to the year A.D. 2126 with stuff that happened in the movie, I guess). They also have some really good links.

Oh, and thanks for everyone making me feel even more guilty for not exercising this year! *laugh* Maybe I should force myself to start again, and see if my sleeping improves.

And I think it's great that we're pressuring each other to exercise. Peer pressure at it's best, eh?

That being said, I can see how there may have been multi-prokaryotic organisms, but since living cell would be limited in its capacity as to what it actually can do, I would tend to think that most (if not all) or such organisms "evolved" to the point where they then had eukaryotic cells.

This may not work, but I think that as a theory, it might be something to ponder.

this also goes back to the stress thing as well i guess. stress is the number one cause of a lot of problems at here, sleeplessness being one of them. it's a sad day when you wake up from a two hour nap, only to be racked by instense guilt because you should have been working on you bio web paper... not that'd i'd know or anything... i personally like the mantra "this too shall pass" or another favorite is "nothing lasts forever" (which i'm liking less, the closer i get to being a senior... proving that i indeed do still like this place). So, maybe just realizing that Bryn Mawr turns us all into a bunch of guilty, stressed-out, sleep-deprived masochits could all help us get a little more perspective on what we're doing, and maybe make us worry a little less about catching some sleep.

Also, I was wondering if diabetes and depression could have any links? I know someone with diabetes and whenever they don't eat at normal scheduled time, they get extremely moody. I know it is due to their blood sugar, but I wonder what causes the abrupt moodiness and extreme change in personality?

Of course, then there are the people, the friends and family members who serve as proof against that justification.

But...after echoing her comments, what I actually wanted to pose was a question regarding treatment. Do we treat depression and anxiety disorders with pills (the dreaded SSRIs), like most Western medicinal practices? Or do we solve the problem with a more holistic approach, involving counseling and exercise, for example? Personally, I'm wary of the pills. Certainly, they can serve as a crutch and ultimately be discarded once the depression has run its course. But they also have the potential to be abused (then again, what doesn't?). People can become too dependent upon them; I've seen it happen to friends, watched the dosages get higher and higher and then the prescriptions change. And, besides, isn't it stronger to solve these problems on your own, without the aid of medication? To become more content through self-reflection and diligence rather than with a pill? But, perhaps others need the catalyst that the medicene is.

Clearly, I'm rambling. And the answer regarding treatment depends solely on the individual, as well. But, it is slightly interesting to note that perhaps my bias against medication stems from the same biases we've been discussing and that Prof. Grobstein observed.

I know someone who goes to a very large college. This person is someone I am very close to, have been for years. Due to whatever reasons, they became depressed and basically had a breakdown before winter break. Due to the size of the school, and the time of the year, the counselor they went to gave them a perscription fo Zoloft, which is an anti-depressant. Now, all this I can understand. It's a quick way to get them through the crazy finals time, when many people are in need of counselors and so my friend could not get the treatment they needed.

My problem: They never stopped taking the anti-depressant.

For six months this person took this anti-depressant, without any form of counseling except to get the perscription filled yet again. They became a different person, had mood swings to the two exremes of the spectrum. And yet, they didn't know why they were taking these pills, what was causing their problems.

I've known some other people who went on anti-depressants, but they needed it. They went through years of therapy, trying everything other than changing their body chemistry to heal their mind as well as they could so they could function. The point is that anti-depressants are being given out like a miracle drug. I've even heard of people taking them because they might lower risks of breast cancer or something like that. DOES NO ONE CARE THAT THEY ARE CHANGING THEIR BODY CHEMISTRY, THAT THEIR BRAIN IS SUFFERING FOR THIS?!?!?! An anti-depressant changes the chemicals that work with your brain. Some people biologically need these pills, but the only real way to find this out is to go through years of therapy and rule out every other option. I think it's disgusting that anti-depressants are being given out so frivilously by people who should know better. Our minds are complex areas that can only be understood by the person who owns it. Everyone's is different, everyone has different factors effecting it. And thus, what is good for one person is not necessarily good for another. Anti-depressants, and most drugs also, should be a last resort if at all possible or there may be some horrible consequences to face.

I hate it when people, especially girls (not so much at this school, but in other places) feel like they have to loose weight and be stick-insects, to use Bridget Jones-terms, in order to feel even remotely attractive. So they starve themselves and do these crazy excercise regimes so they can get down to 115 pounds. Does that strike anyone else as crazy? I knew a girl in high school who went on a 1200 calories-a-day diet, and after two weeks she looked, in lay-men's terms, like shit. I mean, don't you need like 2,000 calories a day just to survive? That, to me, is just insane.

Just my thoughts ...


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