I'm Seeing Floaters

I explained to my mother that I can see dead people and she just told me to stop wiping my eyes with dirty hands. I'm trying to catch black dots that fall in every direction I look. Every time I try to focus, they begin to drift off. Is it floating spiritual energy or just some dirt in my eye?

Photo Courtesy of Google

A. Doctors call them eye floaters, which are circles, spots, or cloud-like objects that appear in the field of your vision, are only seen by that person and nothing is seen on the eye. The floaters are small, dark, shadowy shapes that you can not focus on because they dart away when you look at them, and they usually don't follow the eye movement since they drift only when the eye stops. Eye floaters can be seen if looking at a plain, light-colored background; To see them clearly look at a white piece of paper, a white wall, a clear sky and even light. Most people have had eye floaters before, but we learn to ignore them even if they become more prominent.


Photo Courtesy of The National Eye Institute

Floaters occur when the vitreous humour, a gel like substance that fills the space between the retina and the lens as well as other vertebrates and helps stabilize the eye, slowly shrinks. When the vitreous begins to shrink, it becomes stringy and the strands can create tiny shadows on the retina. As we get older the more the vitreous humour degenerates and can detach causing more floaters. If you have an eye injury severe enough that it changed the structure of the vitreous humour, you are likely to have retinal detachment along with more eye floaters. Flashes of light may appear as one gets more eye floaters. High blood pressure and migraines can also contribute tot the flashes of light. However, there are much more serious causes of floaters such as infection, inflammation, retinal tears, pregnancy, hemorrhaging, and other injuries to the eye. Floaters are very common in people with diabetes, near-sighted and people who are cataract operation.


Eye floaters are simply annoying and no treatment is really recommended because they are usually ignored. People do go to eye care professionals to see if there are more complicated issues. For extreme cases in which the floaters are so dense and numerous that they affect vision, there are laser treatments and surgery to remove them. This surgery is called vitrectomy, which is the removal of the vitreous gel along with the floating debris inside the eye. The vitreous is usually replaced with a salt solution and because the vitreous is mostly water, you would not know the difference.

http://www.eyecaresource.com/problems/eye-floaters.html
http://www.nei.nih.gov/health/floaters/index.asp

Can Men Produce Milk?

Q. Can men produce milk?

A. If men have the ability to get breast cancer, why wouldn't they be able to breastfeed?

Generally, everyone thinks men have nipples for no reason -- They're wrong. According to lactation consultant, Jan Barger, men can put those nipples to work. When a baby is conceived, the embryo follows a female template, so males inherit female traits such as milk ducts, some mammary tissue, oxytocin and prolactin, which are the hormones responsible for milk production.

In some cases, men have been reported to undergo intense breast and nipple stimulation producing drops of milk (That's disturbing). However, not all men have the ability to lactate. Men who suffer from diseases or other conditions that require hormonal treatment are much more likely to stimulate their mammary glands successfully producing milk. Though this may not be as good as mommy's milk, it's still appetizing, for hungry babies at least.Men don't need to develop breasts to breastfeed, but they can lactate under extreme circumstances. Jack Newman, a breastfeeding expert, says putting a baby to its father's breast won't necessarily promise a lactating father.

"It would be the same reason- increased prolactin levels&mdashin the one case drug-induced, in the other due to a tumor or some sort of neurological problem," said Newman.

Extreme stress, demanding physical activity and starvation, which inhibits the functioning of hormone-producing glands, also can increase lactation. Survivors of Nazi concentration camps and Japanese POW camps in World War II have experienced the untimely lactation.

This may seem very abnormal, but this just might be a societal norm soon. Mothers who plan to work after their children are born will most likely face the stressful demands of balancing work and family, so those lactating dads will come in handy. Men get ready to trade places.


http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=strange-but-true-males-can-lactate&sc=rss
http://web.archive.org.nyud.net/web/20040909091015/http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1511/is_n2_v16/ai_16051177
http://www.babycenter.com/404_can-men-breastfeed_8824.bc

Discover: Stephen Hawking Is Making His Comeback

"But was the Big Bang a singularity. Or was it a concentrated, hot ball of energy – awesome and mind-bending, but still describable by the laws of physics?”

Could Hawking be making a comeback or losing his iconic status? Journalist Tim Folger does a spectacular job covering both angles of the article. The profile of the “master of time,” Stephen Hawking, touched on topics like the false rumors about Hawking retiring, “the capstone to his career,” and his possible setbacks when trying to “reclaim the aura of youthful genius.”

Ironically, Folger creatively compared Hawking’s future and comeback to black holes – “The master of black holes is himself becoming steadily less visible.” It is saddening to know that the person “popular media had likened to Albert Einstein” now has to try to regain the influence he once had on cosmology and physics. Hawking no longer has the ability to keep up with what is now happening to the field because of his thin body and fatal condition. Quite frankly, Hawking could be headed towards the black hole.

A) Lede: 20 out of 20. Folger was the eyes and ears for readers as he described exactly what was going on during the convention, what Hawking looked like, what he said, and the music that played. The narrative lede with its descriptive set of words definitely drew in me in.


B) Content: 17 out of 20. As I said before, I feel both angles were represented well, but I still feel there should’ve been more information about his comeback. Instead, the article focused on if Hawking was well enough to reclaim his status. The background information serves its purpose and solely supports the rest of article: explaining Hawking’s achievements and life.


C) Organization: 18 out of 20. The separation of his previous achievements and his comeback is acceptable, but I prefer that information be intertwined with the rest of the article. The transitions worked smoothly and most of the time I knew what I was reading.


D) Quality of writing: 19 out of 20. I loved how Folger wrote an interesting, easy-read article/profile on a physicist who studies black holes: He turned something not so appealing into something one would enjoy reading. He spoke to associates and co-workers of Hawking, which help support some of Folger’s points. There were also humorous parts in the article: Folger felt the need to plop in the quote when speaking of Hawking having three children -- “The disease only affects voluntary muscule.” Hoiwever, there was occasionally a bit of jargon scattered around.


E) Clarity of exposition: 19 out of 20. The scientific language was certainly kept at a minimum and that was one thing I enjoyed about the article. Folger was very descriptive and in-depth about the theories along with the happenings of the universe.

Why Humans Alone Have Pubic Hair?

Q. Why humans alone have pubic hair?

A. "Hey, nice pubs!"

Pubic hair developed as a sexual ornament, said Robin Weiss, virologist at University College London. After our ancestors split from non-human primates, we lost most of our hair. So when things down there got bushy, it served as a visual sign of sexual maturity. The hairier and coarser it was, the sexier you appeared to be.

Pubic hair has also been known to be around for plenty of reasons: warmth, a visual maturity indicator, to reduce friction during sexual intercourse, and to hold the scent of pheromones (designed to make you sexually attractive towards to the opposite sex). While other animals have fur and feathers designed to protect and attract, humans only have armpit hair and hair in the genital area to rely on.

Weiss was studying and comparing gorilla lice to today's pubic lice, which crossed back into the human lineage about 3.3 million years ago, and he discovered gorillas pubic hair is much more finer and softer than any other place on their fur-filled bodies. When humans begin to grow pubic hair, it starts off as smooth fur, but later evolving it something much more bushier and coarse -- total opposite of the great apes.

"Human pubic hair is different and probably unique, both in its evolution and in its physical appearance and purpose," said Weiss.

Good news is bushy and coarse is no longer fashionable. Bare skin seems to be in and shaving off pubic hair is a must in today's culture.

"There may be a health benefit to this emerging sexual lifestyle -- the extinction of crabs," Weiss said.