SALT!
What is the deal with it? Is it true that too much makes you thirsty (dehydrated; although of course salt is what you need if you ARE dehydrated, which confuzzles me), and if so, is it also true that it causes (or worsens) water retention? Or are they the same thing (how?!). Or is none of it true? Please.
Snaffling sheep from the flock of woo
-bobdezon
Originally Posted by seren
I often do hard physical work in hot sun and high temperatures so I sweat a lot. When this happens I get cramp in my fingers and hands. I can buy salt tablets from the Farmacia to counteract this. How much salt do I need to cure my cramps but not affect my blood pressure adversely?
There's some info on it causing thirst over at Wiki . As for needing it when you're dehydrated, most times it's because you've not only lost water; sweating or diarrhoea both flush other minerals from your system
No idea on the exact dosage, ask your Pharmacist for more information, although a 'home-made' rehydration solution may be a better option. The basic WHO recipe is 1 teaspoon of salt, 8 teaspoons of sugar in one litre of water, sip from it frequently. Water can be replaced with other flavoured liquids like fruit juice (reduce the added sugar though) or thin vegetable soups.
Defendants might as well have said: Beneficent creatures from the 17th dimension use this bracelet as a beacon to locate people who need pain relief and whisk them off to their home world every night to provide help in ways unknown to our science.
Judge Frank Easterbrook commenting on the Q-Ray bracelet
"For Gods sake you're an American! Stop thinking of the consequences and blow something up" - Stan Smith, American Dad!
I was quiz mastering in the pub the other day and one of the answers was Big Bang (I can't remember the question). A guy came up to me after the quiz and said "What was it then?"
"What?" says I
"What went bang?"
"What are you talking about?" (It's funny how people assume that the quizmaster knows all the answers)
"Well, if there was a bang, there must have been something there to go bang mustn't there?"
Any suggestions? What was it that went bang?
The universe,
Oh you mean what was it before it was the rapidly inflating universe. Eer don't know. All we know is that it was in a hot dense state. It may have been a singularity, it may have been a small patch of another universe. It may have been another universe which had just colapsed. and if that's not hard enough ot get your head round in fact it needn't have been anything.
As far as the semantics of the phrase are concerned ... "Big Bang" was invented by Fred Hoyle as a term of derision. He was a steady state believer, mostly because as an atheist he didn't like the idea of a moment of creation. He probably intended to cause just the sort of confusion reported here ... if something exploded, what was there before and what space did it explode into?
The answer is that nothing exploded and there was no space there before. Space simply expanded from nothing, in much the same way as the 1-dimensional lines of latitude appear to expand out from nothing if you start at one of the poles and move out towards the equator.
Be skeptical of the things you believe are false, but be very skeptical of the things you believe are true.
1. Please explain shortsightedness to me.
It seems to fail whether you're a creationist or a rational human being. Creationists bleat on about the eye being so complex it had to have been created. Well why would god go to so much effort to create something so intricate so very very badly? Shortsightedness is endemic (hmmm....any studies on the prevalence of it in different races?)- god's a fool.
Evolution-wise....wouldn't you think being able to see would be a major component of survival? How did my squinty ol' ancestors live long enough to breed?! Surely those with better eyesight would have been more likely to pass their genes on? I must be missing something about eyes I suppose.
2. This is a pharmaceutical/brain-wiring type query based on my own experience. I've had a grass pollen allergy for about 15 years. During June I take a daily antihistamine and use a nasal steroid spray. It usually works well, but not perfectly. I will have a few sneezes and sniffles.
This year? Nothing. I've spot-checked the BBC's pollen count a few times and it's been high, but I have no symptoms whatsoever.
I started taking sertraline, an SSRI, about 5 weeks ago.
Is there any possibility this is having some kind of effect and preventing the hayfever? I've dug around on Google and think I found a trial around SSRIs and rhinitis conducted in the mid-90s, but can't get any further information. I understand so little it's hard to follow, but what I'm reading suggests that if anything greater prevalence of serotonin would exacerbate the condition, not improve it.
And, while I'm here-
3. Ben Goldacre is quite scathing about SSRIs in the treatment of depression. Am I taking these things for nothing? Is there any evidence they work on any "level" or manifestation of depression?
I do wish there was an online "ask a pharmageek" service.
Snaffling sheep from the flock of woo
-bobdezon
Hmm....I wonder whether pollution levels are lower, and that's improved the hayfever?
Snaffling sheep from the flock of woo
-bobdezon
Well there's a number of reasons why our eyes have evolved the way they have. The biggest mistake seems to have been our back to front retina which was a mistake that once done couldn't be undone through natural selection, it'd involve a step backwards to start agian from scratch. However you're right that short sightedness also seems to be a problem.
There are a whole range of problems which can affect eyesight and these increase with age. However past optimal breeding age natural selection takes less of an interest. If Grandma doens't spot the man eating sabre tooth it's only a problem for her descendants if she happens to be baby sitting at the time.
However what of eyesight problems affecting those who can eb reasonably be expected to breed in the future. Well, some of these are due to the modern way we treat our eyes. Reading for long hours under artificial light and staring at screens can both damage eyesight. We can't criticise evolution for not adapting to these recent environmental changes. Firstly we'd have to give it a few hundred thousand years secondly such changes happened alongside the development of opticians and eliminating much of the need to escape predictors or search for and hunt for food. The selection pressure against short sightedness is now practically non-existant to the extent that those of us with 20-20 vision can buy non-prescription glasses for fashion purposes just to look "more intelectual"
I think that goes part way to explaining why eye problems are a little mroe frequent today than you might otherwise expect.
Also rememebr that the cornea is just another body part. There's a lot of variation in shape of many body parts and it can change from generation to generation. Two short parents can produce a short child if much of the height is down to development ratehr than genetics. I don't knwo the specific role of development in cornea variations but it's somethign you mgiht want to look at.
Swifts. I read recently that when they leave the nest they don't land for the next two or three years which is pretty amazing and I've no reason to doubt it.
My problem is that I can't think of any way that anyone can know that - I mean you can't watch a swift for the first three years of its life can you? Maybe nobody has seen a landed swift but does that mean that they don't ever?
How would you know that?
I don't think they've radio tagged swifts to find out definitively (though I believe it has been proposed). However, swifts are never seen to land except during the nesting season. Since they don't breed for a couple of years after birth there is no need to land during that time. Since swifts get all their food (insects) during flight, they have no need to land to survive, unlike other birds. Swallows also feed on the wing but often land to preen and socialise.
I'm a country boy and I have seen swifts perched on branches with head under wing pushing ZZZZZ's, also swallows, starlings and robins are here all year round they just become more noticeable in the winter due to the other birds buggering off on holiday. Robins are angry little bundle of feathers constantly squabbling and fighting.
You should report your observation to the BTO as I believe it may be unique.
Similarly, if you've seen a swallow in winter, that would be an extraordinary sighting well worth reporting.swallows, starlings and robins are here all year round they just become more noticeable in the winter due to the other birds buggering off on holiday. Robins are angry little bundle of feathers constantly squabbling and fighting.
I don't suppose you have any photos of these bizarre happenings?
I'm a country boy and I have seen swifts perched on branches with head under wing pushing ZZZZZ's, also swallows, starlings. And robins are here all year round they just become more noticeable in the winter due to the other birds buggering off on holiday. Robins are angry little bundle of feathers constantly squabbling and fighting.
Tsk tsk what a bad lad I am for not checking my grammar.
Perhaps the point has been made that observations are not worth reporting as they are every day occurrences and I now live in a town and can’t be bothered with bird spying. Has a swift been observed sleeping whilst in flight or is this conjecture. And as my observation was not documented I will shut up and let you show me your evidence of a swift sleeping whilst in flight.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0427113243.htm
Blimey they are variable geometry airplanes!
A swift adapts the shape of its wings to the immediate task at hand: folding them back to chase insects, or stretching them out to sleep in flight.Swifts do not land to roost, but spend the night at 1.5 km above the ground. To measure their flight speed, Swedish scientists used radar. They found that swifts let the air blow past their wings at 8 to 10 m/s (29-36 km/h). At these air speeds, swift wings deliver maximum flight efficiency. For the swift that means more gliding and less flapping to maintain altitudeQuite a bird!Over their lifetime, swifts cover 4.5 million kilometres, a distance equal to six round trips to the moon or 100 times around the Earth. At day, swifts hunt insects; at night they 'roost' in flight. Swifts even mate in the air
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