Glider

I'm not sure to be honest. I have a feeling that the material making up the lens of the eye is not replaced, although I may well be wrong there.

Anencephallic infants are born now and again. This condition manifests on a contunuum, showing anything from a severely underdeveloped (rudimentary) brain, to complete absence of anything higher than the brainstem. Generally, infants with anencephaly do not survive for long without the aid of life-support.

You can't. Resistance is futile! I rather enjoy the differences between cultures. It's the main reason for travelling. I'd hate to see the world turn into an homogenous, English speaking, McDonalds eating mass.

Pretty much. Things are replaced at different rates though. Your entire skeleton will be replaced about four times throughout your life, whereas the lining of your mouth is completely replaced about four times a day. The molecules making up nerve cells are replaced over time, so in a sense, nerve cells do regenerate, although technically, the cell remains the same cell, however, the material your teeth are made of is never replaced, so once they're gone, they're gone.

If he means bacteria, then they do, all the time, as do fungal spores, and other particulates. ed84c is right, your immune system gets rid of them (secretory IgA, mainly). The mucus secreted by mucosal cells traps them, SIgA kills them, and the cillia lining your lungs move them up and back out of your lungs so you can expel them.

You are. Rate of cooling is a function of the gradient between the coffee and the ambient temperature and a plot of cooling yields a half-life curve. Waiting to add the milk allows the coffee to cool relatively rapidly on its own, due to the difference between it and the ambient temperature. Adding the milk later will cause further cooling. Adding the milk early would cause the coffee to cool a little, suddenly, but subsequent cooling would be slower.

It is still used. It's very effective.

It works for me too, but not for lonely people, or shy, introverted people.

That's true. However, it takes a lot of confidence to turn up somewhere early, without the anonymity of a crowd, and to smile at strangers.

My first word would have been in either Kiluhya or Swahili. As I don't speak those languages any more, I have no idea what it might have been.

Yes, I suppose so, but then being lonely is grim. Missing an individual is akin to lonliness, but it's actually closer to grieving, In these cases, people suffer through the loss of a particular person. People don't have to die for others to suffer from their leaving. People who are grieving can seek social support from others (e.g. friends). Lonely people have no such resource and grieve alone. Being alone is one thing. Many people can be quite happy that way. Being lonely is feeling the need for social contact, but lacking the means to achieve it. Lonliness is often associated with depression. It's a bit 'chicken & egg' though. Depression can lead to social isolation as easily as social isolation can lead to depression. Self esteem is a factor, but again, it's a 'chicken & egg' thing. A poor self-esteem can contribute to social isolation in a "I'm crap. Why would anyone want to be with me?" kind of way, but then equally, social isolation can erode one's self-esteem in a "Nobody wants to be with me; I must be crap" kind of way. Lonely people often do less well in life because their basic outlook is different. For example, people with large social support networks tend to be more confident and can take greater life risks (which in terms of career choices, often pay off). They have constant reinforcement of their worth, and they know that if they stumble, they'll never hit the ground; their friends/family will catch them. On the other hand, lonely people have no reinforcement of their worth and as a consequence, tend to be less confident. They are less likely to take risks and 'go' for things they want, because they know that if they stumble, they will hit the ground and they will have to pick themselves up on their own. They assess potential problems and hurdles by their own personal capacity to deal with them, because they don't expect help. They also tend to avoid risks beyond their percieved capacity to cope with failure, because they know they will have to deal with it alone. There is no-one at home to make it all better. It's one of the hardest cycles to break. Going out to social events/environments doesn't usually help, because lonely people know that a social crowd is one of the most isolating places to be. They become invisible; everyone else there is focussed on their own social group/partner and the individual just fades into the background. Compound this with the contrast; so many people interacting with so many others, watched by a person who may not say a single word, or have a single word spoken to them all night. It throws their own situation into sharp relief, which can often be quite distressing. So, after a while, they tend to avoid such situations. And so it goes on.

Lonely people tend to be so for a number of reasons. Simply being obnoxious aside, they could be introspective by nature, or shy, or depressed. In any of these cases, it means the person is less likely to initiate contact and will wait for contact to happen. In extreme cases, if they have been alone for some time, when contact does occur, they tend to handle it poorly, not having a great deal of social experience to guide them. This doesn't mean they don't want contact. There is a difference between being alone and being lonely. In some cases, after repeated bad experiences, they will simply give up and resign themselves to being alone. This is tragic, especially as most other people tend to regard such individuals as 'saddos', when in fact they are painfully aware of how empty their lives are, but simply lack the means to do anything about it. It is extremely sad (in the traditional sense).

We had a heatwave here (UK) in 1976. One of the phenomena reported during that summer was the number of ladybirds, particularly the large variety. They had come in response to the huge numbers of aphids that year. The thing is, it hit the news because people were being bitten by them. Ladybirds can give a painful (but harmless) nip. They have no interest in biting humans. It turns out they were after the salt, but they did draw blood. We prefer 'ladybird' to 'ladybug' because 'bug', although it has become a generic term for insects, is actually a specific term for insects with piercing and sucking mouthparts. For example, aphids, mosquitos and assassin bugs are bugs, ladybirds, having mandibles, are not. As far as I know, the wing cases of most beetles are made of chitin.

Yes, it's perfectly normal. It is only temporary and will pass. It happens because nicotine is an acetylcholine receptor antagonist (it blocks ACh receptors). ACh is a major motor neurotransmitter. When you smoke, nicotine triggers these receptors and provides a hit, but it won't release the receptors and blocks them. To compensate, your body produces more, so your overall numbers of ACh receptors are higher than a non-smoker's. As you are no longer blocking them with nicotine, normal levels of ACh are now triggering greater numbers of receptors. This leads to agitation, sleeplessness and a bunch of other stuff. However, your body will re-establish its normal balance. This takes around 3 - 4 weeks, although you should notice an improvement in your ability to sleep in a shorter time. Hang in there!

Yes, in many cases this is true. This is the basis of modern determinism.

It's not just you. That's a terrible thought.

Yes.

Oh, it's still there. The problem is it isn't alone, it coexists with "Ease Suffering" and "Preserve Life". This is where the core of the conflict lies. In cases of intractable pain associated with a terminal condition, the level of drugs used to "Ease suffering" does harm (if the intent is also to preserve life). Under those circumstances, interventions used to preserve life also does harm, because it prolongs suffering. The essential argument is about how we deal with those cases where the principles "Ease Suffering" and Preserve Life" come into direct conflict. Of all three, the principle "Do no harm" is the most flexible. Under this principle, the short term cost and long term gains must be weighed carefully. If the principle was taken literally, we couldn't use chemotherapy (a seriously poisonous mix of cytotoxins). But the short term harm is weighed against the longer term gain of defeating a potentially lethal disease. In reality, given that medicine is actually quite brutal in many cases, the principle "Do no harm" translates as "Do the least harm" or "Do the best for your patient". This means that the other principles, "Ease Suffering" and "Preserve Life", must be weighed against each other on the merits of each individual case. In every single case, the degree of suffering, its controllability and the potential for life and quality of life must be considered.

I don't think it's particularly older people who hate it. I suspect its more people who are forced to hear it every time someone drives by with subwoofers more powerful than their engine. It's not necessarily the music they hate, it's the attitude that says it's ok to play it loud enough in public to be heard over half a mile away.

Dolphin brains are also more convoluted (greater numbers of gyri & sulci relative to the human cortex), but I believe much of that is devoted to the significant demands of their echo location system, which is also more complex than had previously been thought.

If they were immersed, no. The body loses heat four times faster in water than in air, and it's hard to maintain your temperature for long under those circumstances. Exhaustion would soon set in and hypothermia would kill you.

Good question. I know that plague is easily transmissable person to person in close proximity, but I don't doubt that many of the people carried fleas with them also. I'm guessing, but as fleas are quite specific, e.g. dog fleas don't like people, nor do rat fleas and won't live on them for long unless there is a paucity of rats (which is unlikely, even today), it seems most probable that the primary mechanism of transmission was close contact between infected migrants and the people of the towns they migrated to.

Yeah, that's a tricky one. The administration of any drug requires patient consent, but in these cases it's not possible to obtain it. I suppose you just have to work out the patient's probable preference; to remain frozen, or to 'wake up'. coquina: Yes, Parkinson's is a strange disease. The ability to move remains largely unaffected. It's the ability to initiate movement that suffers. Many Parkinsons' patients have to learn 'tricks' to start walking, like pretending there's an obstacle in front of them that they have to step over. Once they take that first step, they can walk for a way.

Sounds like you're on your way now. You should feel fine in a few more days.