HEALTH AND WELLNESS

                                              Bone has been described as an engineering masterpiece of tensile, compressive and elastic strength.           The human skeleton consists of approximately 206 bones and 68 joints. The largest bone is the femur, or thighbone; the smallest is the stapes, a bone inside your ear. As skilled gymnasts clearly demonstrate, bones, muscles, cartilage, and joints can give a healthy body an astonishing degree of flexibility and range of movement. The thumb alone would convince anyone that the architect of our body [whoever that may be to each one of us].         Bones can also take an incredible pounding. They are constructed in exactly the same way that reinforced concrete is constructed. The steel of reinforced concrete provides the tensile strength, while the cement, sand, and rock provide the compressional strength. However, the compressional strength of bone is greater than that of even the best reinforced concrete. We only wish we co

            Scientists have long known that the eyes of mammals contain neurons that respond to light and set the body’s internal, or circadian, clock. It was long assumed that this light-sensing function was performed by known visual cells called rods and cones. But in 1999, report the journal Science, researchers found that “mutant mice lacking all rods and cones [who are thus functionally blind] still have light-responsive clocks.” This led researchers to the conclusion that “some other cells in the eye had to be sensing light”            Now these elusive light sensors have been found. Although intermingled with the image-forming rods and cones, the sensors form “a separate visual circuit, running in parallel with this image-forming visual system,” explains Science. The newly discovered circuit’s functions include governing pupil size and melatonin release, synchronizing the body’s internal clock with the cycle of light and dark and other tasks. It may even play a role in

                                     SOME physicians in Japan say there is an increase in the number of babies who neither cry nor smile. Pediatrician Satoshi Yanagisawa calls them silent babies. Why do the babies stop expressing their emotions? Some doctors believe that the condition arises because babies are deprived of parental contact. The condition is called enforced helplessness. One theory suggests that when needs for communication are constantly ignored or misinterpreted, the infants eventually give up trying.        If a baby is not given proper stimulations at the right time, the part of his brain that makes him emphatic may not develop, suggests Dr. Bruce Perry, chief of psychiatry at Texas Children’s Hospital. In cases of profound emotional neglect, capacity to feel empathy may be irretrievably lost. Dr. Perry believes that in some case substance abuse and adolescent violence can be linked to such early life experiences.       Queensland researchers who stud

           Dolly the sheep was the first mammal cloned from an adult cell. Scientists implanted the nucleus of a cell from the mammary gland of an adult sheep into an enucleated egg cell.              According to a report prepared by the National Institutes of Health in the United States, stem cells may hold the key to replacing cells lost in many devastating diseases. These include, Parkinson’s disease, end-stage kidney disease, liver failure, and cancer, to name just a few. Stem cells can also give rise to blood, and they may even make blood banks obsolete, it is claimed. In fact, doctors have been using stem cells for many years to treat certain blood disorders. These treatments have usually involved transplantation of bone marrow, which is rich in blood-forming stem cells, but now doctors prefers to harvest stem cells taken from circulating blood. Because stem-cell therapies hold promise of regenerating healthy new tissues, they come under the general designation “regene

                                                              DÉJÀ VU gives us the feeling we have experienced an event before, even though this may seem to be an impossibility. Thus, the feeling of familiarity accompanying déjà vu is often unexpected and inexplicable, leading many people to wonder if their déjà vu experiences are psychic, physiological, or both.          A number of mechanisms have been advanced to account for the déjà vu experience. Because psychic experiences of many kinds have been associated with déjà vu, it has often been suggested that déjà vu itself is a psychic experience. In this regard, déjà vu has been reported to be the result of reincarnation memories, subconscious memories of dream projections or out-of-body –experiences, subconscious memories of precognitive dreams, and clairvoyance. A higher frequency of déjà vu experiences have been reported for those who meditate frequently.        Another proposed mechanism for déjà vu is that of bioche