This awesome periodic table tells you how to actually use all those elements Americium could save your life.
Thanks to high school, we’ve all got a pretty good idea about what’s on the periodic table. This awesome periodic table tells you how to actually use all those elements
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ΚΑΤΕΡΊΝΑ ΠΑΠΑΚΥΡΙΑΚΟΠΟΎΛΟΥ
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This awesome periodic table tells you how to actually use all those elements
Americium could save your life.
Thanks to high school, we’ve all got a pretty good idea about what’s on the periodic table.
But whether you’re looking at something common like calcium, iron, and carbon, or something more obscure like krypton and antimony, how well do you know their functions? Could you name just one practical application for vanadium or ruthenium? This awesome periodic table tells you how to actually use all those elements
10:17 AM
ΚΑΤΕΡΊΝΑ ΠΑΠΑΚΥΡΙΑΚΟΠΟΎΛΟΥ
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This awesome periodic table tells you how to actually use all those elements
Americium could save your life.
Thanks to high school, we’ve all got a pretty good idea about what’s on the periodic table.
But whether you’re looking at something common like calcium, iron, and carbon, or something more obscure like krypton and antimony, how well do you know their functions? Could you name just one practical application for vanadium or ruthenium?
Lucky for us, Keith Enevoldsen from elements.wlonk.com has come up with this awesome periodic table that gives you at least one example for every single element (except for those weird superheavy elements that don’t actually exist in nature).
There’s thulium for laser eye surgery, cerium for lighter flints, and krypton for flashlights. You’ve got strontium for fireworks, and xenon for high-intensity lamps inside lighthouses.
Oh and that very patriotic element, americium? We use that in smoke detectors.
First unveiled in 1945 during the Manhattan Project, americium is produced by bombarding plutonium with neutrons in a nuclear reactor.
The resulting americium is radioactive, and while the tiny amounts of americium dioxide (AmO2) used in smoke detector produces alpha radiation to sniff out a fire, it will deliver approximately zero radiation to anyone living nearby.
I kinda want to tell you all about rubidium and how we use it in the world’s most accurate time-keeping devices, and how niobium can help make trains levitate, but you should just check out the periodic table for yourself.
We’ve included a sneak-peak below, but for the real interactive experience, click here to try it out. You can also download the PDF if you’ve got a class to teach, or maybe you just want to be great and put it on your bathroom door.
And if this whole exercise has made you realise just how rusty you’ve become with your science basics, check out AsapSCIENCE’s Periodic Table Song below.
We’d like to see a better way of memorising the periodic table - it's even got the four brand new elements that earned a permanent spot in the seventh row back in January (which unfortunately have no cool uses outside of atomic research).
http://elements.wlonk.com/ElementsTable.htm But whether you’re looking at something common like calcium, iron, and carbon, or something more obscure like krypton and antimony, how well do you know their functions? Could you name just one practical application for vanadium or ruthenium? This awesome periodic table tells you how to actually use all those elements
10:17 AM
ΚΑΤΕΡΊΝΑ ΠΑΠΑΚΥΡΙΑΚΟΠΟΎΛΟΥ
Facebook
This awesome periodic table tells you how to actually use all those elements
Americium could save your life.
Thanks to high school, we’ve all got a pretty good idea about what’s on the periodic table.
But whether you’re looking at something common like calcium, iron, and carbon, or something more obscure like krypton and antimony, how well do you know their functions? Could you name just one practical application for vanadium or ruthenium?
Lucky for us, Keith Enevoldsen from elements.wlonk.com has come up with this awesome periodic table that gives you at least one example for every single element (except for those weird superheavy elements that don’t actually exist in nature).
There’s thulium for laser eye surgery, cerium for lighter flints, and krypton for flashlights. You’ve got strontium for fireworks, and xenon for high-intensity lamps inside lighthouses.
Oh and that very patriotic element, americium? We use that in smoke detectors.
First unveiled in 1945 during the Manhattan Project, americium is produced by bombarding plutonium with neutrons in a nuclear reactor.
The resulting americium is radioactive, and while the tiny amounts of americium dioxide (AmO2) used in smoke detector produces alpha radiation to sniff out a fire, it will deliver approximately zero radiation to anyone living nearby.
I kinda want to tell you all about rubidium and how we use it in the world’s most accurate time-keeping devices, and how niobium can help make trains levitate, but you should just check out the periodic table for yourself.
We’ve included a sneak-peak below, but for the real interactive experience, click here to try it out. You can also download the PDF if you’ve got a class to teach, or maybe you just want to be great and put it on your bathroom door.
And if this whole exercise has made you realise just how rusty you’ve become with your science basics, check out AsapSCIENCE’s Periodic Table Song below.
We’d like to see a better way of memorising the periodic table - it's even got the four brand new elements that earned a permanent spot in the seventh row back in January (which unfortunately have no cool uses outside of atomic research).
Home Neuroscience January 12, 2017
Entorhinal cortex acts independently of the hippocampus in remembering movement, study finds
January 12, 2017
New system for forming memories
Rats roam around an arena (A) before tackling a maze memory task. A reward awaits them in the T-maze placed in the arena (B). While it sleeps, the rat consolidates the memory of where the reward was located (C). A place cell emits an action …more
Until now, the hippocampus was considered the most important brain region for forming and recalling memory, with other regions only contributing as subordinates. But a study published today in Science finds that a brain region called entorhinal cortex plays a new and independent role in memory. A team of researchers led by Jozsef Csicsvari, Professor at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria), showed that, in rats, the entorhinal cortex replays memories of movement independent of input from the hippocampus.
"Until now, the entorhinal cortex has been considered subservient to the hippocampus in both memory formation and recall. But we show that the medial entorhinal cortex can replay the firing pattern associated with moving in a maze independent of the hippocampus. The entorhinal cortex could be a new system for memory formation that works in parallel to the hippocampus", Jozsef Csicsvari explains.
When a spatial memory is formed, cells in the medial entorhinal cortex (MEC), especially grid cells, act like a navigational system. They provide the hippocampus with information on where an animal is and give cues as to how far and in what direction the animal has moved. Rats encode location and movement by forming networks of neurons in the hippocampus that fire together. When a memory is recalled for memory stabilization, the MEC has been considered as secondary to the hippocampus. In the hippocampus, such recall occurs during the so-called "sharp wave/ripples", when neuronal networks fire in a highly synchronized way. According to the view prevailing until now, the hippocampus is the initiator of this replay and coordinates memory consolidation, while the MEC is just a relay post that spreads the message to other brain areas.
To ask whether replay also occurs in the MEC, the researchers studied memory recall in rats moving in a maze. They showed that neurons in the superficial layers of the medial entorhinal cortex (sMEC), a part of MEC that sends input to the hippocampus and contain the grid cells, fire during the memory task and encode routes as bursts of firing. Surprisingly, the authors find that replay firing in the sMEC is not accompanied by replay firing in the hippocampus. During both sleep and waking periods, the sMEC triggers its own replay and initiates recall and consolidation independent of the hippocampus. Joseph O'Neill, first author and postdoc in the group of Jozsef Csicsvari, explains how these results change the way we see memory formation: "The hippocampus alone does not dominate how memories are formed and recalled. Instead, the entorhinal cortex and the hippocampus are probably two systems for memory formation and recall. Despite being interrelated, the two regions may work in parallel. They may recruit different pathways and play different roles in memory."
Explore further: Brain caught 'filing' memories during rest
More information: "Superficial layers of the medial entorhinal cortex replay independently of the hippocampus" Science, science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi/10.1126/science.aag2787
Journal reference: Science
Provided by: Institute of Science and Technology Austria
Read more at: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-01-entorhinal-cortex-independently-hippocampus-movement.html#jCp
JANUARY 7, 2017
Marijuana to the Glory of God
Thumb jeff lacine hfcrgnc8 Article by Jeff Lacine
Guest Contributor
I used to smoke marijuana every day.
Sixteen years ago, when I was in my late teens, cannabis was a big part of my life. Today it continues to confront me as a pastor in a city where recreational marijuana is legally celebrated. Our church office is directly across the street from a dispensary where I can legally buy a pre-rolled joint for seven dollars.
How are we to think about recreational cannabis use in the church? A growing number of Christians today believe that it is biblically permissible to use cannabis recreationally. Are they right?
Cannabis Versus Alcohol
Quick, pat answers to the question of recreational cannabis use are often unhelpful. Responses without nuance will not best serve the church in the long run. To say that alcohol is permissible, and cannabis is not, because “Christians drink beer and wine for the taste, but people only smoke pot to get stoned,” just won’t do. Such a simplification distorts the truth.
For one, Christians don’t drink beer and wine only for the taste. Even moderate drinking, which is biblically permissible, has lubricating psychoactive effects. From a biblical perspective, this lubricating effect can be acceptable. While drunkenness is clearly prohibited (Ephesians 5:18; Romans 13:13; Galatians 5:19–21; 1 Peter 4:3), God has given “wine to gladden the heart of man” (Psalm 104:14–15).
However, evangelical churches sometimes have prohibited the use of alcohol among members because the Bible forbids drunkenness. This is a mistake. The Bible warns us against such extra-biblical prohibitions (1 Timothy 4:3; Colossians 2:16–23). Scripture permits the moderate use of alcohol, when it can be enjoyed in faith, even though it has psychoactive effects.
Does God, then, also permit the recreational use of cannabis? Should we treat cannabis like alcohol in the church? Is it okay to light up around the campfire just like it may be to enjoy wine at a wedding?
Similarities and Dissimilarities
Let’s examine this commonly used comparison between alcohol and cannabis. The following are ways that cannabis and alcohol are similar and dissimilar.
Ways that cannabis is like alcohol:
Cannabis, like alcohol, is an organic substance.
Cannabis, like alcohol, has the potential to intoxicate and distort reality.
Cannabis, like alcohol, has different effects on someone who uses it regularly than someone who uses it occasionally. (In other words, tolerances can be built up with regular marijuana use similar to the way tolerances can be built up with regular alcohol use.)
Cannabis, like alcohol, can be habit-forming (see 1 Timothy 3:8).
Ways that cannabis is unlike alcohol:
Unlike alcohol, you can’t blackout or die from an overdose of cannabis.
Unlike alcohol, there are many different strains of cannabis. The same amount of cannabis smoked or ingested from two different cannabis plants can have different effects on an individual — even if both plants have the same exact amount of THC (the primary psychoactive chemical in cannabis).
Unlike alcohol, marijuana has many different effects on an individual due to its complex chemical makeup. There are at least 113 different chemical compounds (cannabinoids) inside the cannabis plant that combine to cause a variety of effects on an individual when smoked or ingested.
Unlike alcohol, cannabis has not been a staple in cultures all around the world for use in celebrations and ceremonies (like John 2:9).
Unlike alcohol, regular cannabis use is strongly correlated with mental health disorders such as schizoaffective disorder. While heavy drinking (alcohol abuse) has also been linked to mental health disorders, moderate drinking has not.
Unlike alcohol, cannabis has been a cultural symbol of rebellion for a large part of the last century.
Unlike alcohol, cannabis was not used by Jesus in his Last Supper, which is to be regularly commemorated by the church (Mark 14:23–25).
And perhaps most importantly, unlike alcohol, cannabis is not directly addressed in the Bible.
It is unhelpful to make direct correlations between cannabis and alcohol, as if all the Bible’s teaching on alcohol applies to cannabis. Not only are cannabis and alcohol vastly different chemical compounds, with vastly different effects, but the Bible gives us clear and direct permission for the moderate use of alcohol while never directly referencing other psychoactive compounds such as marijuana.
The Big Picture
Even though cannabis is never directly mentioned in Scripture, we do have God-revealed principles to guide and direct our thinking about its recreational use. We often get help on specific questions when we keep our eyes on the big picture. What is the endgame for the Christian life? What should we be aiming at in all things?
As Christians, our goal is knowing and experiencing the full and undistorted reality of the glory of God in our resurrected physical bodies (1 Corinthians 15:12–49; Philippians 3:20–21; 1 Corinthians 13:12). This is our trajectory as Christians. This is our aim.
God is glorious beyond measure, and Christians seek to experience the reality of his glory, for the sake of his glory. Sin has distorted our vision and corrupted our world. Ever since sin first entered the world, all of us have been born spiritually dead, unable to discern the true glory of God (Ephesians 2:1–5; Colossians 2:13; 2 Corinthians 4:4). When we experience the redemptive work of Christ through the Holy Spirit, we are awakened to the reality and beauty of God (2 Corinthians 4:6). But until we see him face to face, we still see his glory as through a glass dimly (1 Corinthians 13:12). As redeemed believers, we are on a journey to knowing him without obstruction. Therefore, we do not want to distort reality; rather, we aim to know him as he really is. We want to see things as they really are.
The Christian use of any kind of psychoactive substance should always align with this gospel goal of looking to see things clearer. We do not want our vision of reality distorted.
Christian Cup of Coffee?
Consider this principle in terms of a psychoactive substance most American adults use every day: caffeine. Why do people drink coffee in the morning? To help them to see things as they really are, rather than through the fog of grogginess. The right and proper use of this God-given substance helps us see things as they really are.
But how does this principle apply to alcohol? At times moderate lubrication in Godward celebrations can be in keeping with the reality. People don’t drink wine at funerals, which are a reminder of the curse and consequences of sin. If someone drank wine at a funeral, I would wonder whether they have an unhealthy relationship with alcohol.
But people do drink wine at weddings, in which we celebrate the profound parable being played out before our eyes: the great Bridegroom is coming for his bride, the church (Revelation 19:7)! And wine (explicitly) will have a God-given role at the final consummating celebration (Mark 14:23–25). In this way, the proper and moderate use of alcohol can be a clarifier, not a distorter. It points us to the joy, fellowship, and celebration of the great coming feast.
What About Weed?
Is there a proper and moderate use of marijuana that can actually serve to clarify and point to biblical realities like alcohol may in certain circumstances? Or does the recreational use of marijuana always distort?
I believe, both from research and experience, that recreational cannabis distorts reality and numbs people to the ability to experience life as it truly is. Even a relatively small amount of THC puts the infrequent user into a fog. A larger amount can potentially cause paranoia.
What about more regular, high-functioning users who have built up a tolerance and experience a less intense high when they smoke or ingest cannabis? While cannabis won’t induce hallucinations or the same intense high for frequent users, we have other troubling factors to consider with persistent use.
There is a reason that marijuana has long been associated with the couch, a bag of chips, and a television remote. Put another way, marijuana has never been associated with engaged parenting. Regular marijuana use causes disengagement, dulling individuals into a long-term, slow, and subtle numbness. If you ask almost anyone who has formerly used cannabis on a regular basis, he will speak about this phenomena. To confirm this testimony, studies have shown a high correlation between regular cannabis use and the clinical diagnosis of Amotivational Syndrome.
It doesn’t surprise me when a regular marijuana user tries to refute the reality of cannabis’s reality-numbing effect. When you are in the numbing cloud of regular cannabis use, it is hard to realize that you are in such a cloud — even when it is obvious to close friends and family. Cannabis may distort reality in a more subtle way for the regular user than for the occasional user, but the subtlety of it makes the negative effects all the more insidious and deep.
Counsel and Hope
Though the Bible does not forbid the use of every substance that affects the mind, the recreational use of cannabis seems to violate the Christian value of sobriety (1 Thessalonians 5:6–8; Titus 2:2, 6; 1 Peter 4:7). As our culture celebrates the casual use of cannabis today, and does so increasing in the coming days, we should be vigilant not to be deceived as a church. We should not idly stand by as we watch brothers and sisters who profess faith in Christ enter into a mind-numbing, reality-distorting cloud of cannabis. We should encourage one another to peer through the dim glass and discern the glory of God with all our might as the Day draws near (Hebrews 10:25).
However, it is worth saying that we should also be careful not to make the same mistakes that churches made by previous generations with regard to alcohol, adding extra prohibitions to God’s revealed word. Because of the many variables involved with marijuana use (for example, its medicinal use), I believe we should be very slow to make a firm prohibition policy for members of the church, such that we would automatically proceed with church discipline upon unrepentant use. However, it should be clear that unrepentant marijuana use could easily lead to church discipline.
We should be quick to engage with individual members who use marijuana, asking them questions and seeking to understand, being ready to exhort and rebuke them if it becomes apparent that they are violating the biblical standards of sobriety and integrity.
The details and nuances we’ll encounter will be complex, but Jesus’s church, holding fast to his word, led by a team of wise pastors, will be up for the challenge. God will have new mercies for us as we walk together by faith in the age of legal marijuana.
Jeff Lacine is pastor of Sellwood Baptist Church in Portland, Oregon. He graduated from Bethlehem Seminary. He and his wife have four children.
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Another organ has been hiding in your belly all along
Maria Gallucci•January 4, 2017
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This week, as you dream up ways to improve yourself in 2017, give yourself a pat on the back: You've already made a significant change this year, from deep within your belly.
You technically gained an organ.
Irish researchers have confirmed that the mesentery — a fold of membrane that connects the intestine to the abdomen — is its own continuous organ, and not a series of fragmented parts like experts had previously thought.
SEE ALSO: This bacteria is getting harder for kids to fight
The discovery could create a new field of "mesenteric" science and may help doctors better understand and treat abdominal diseases, said Calvin Coffey, a professor of surgery at University of Limerick's Graduate Entry Medical School.
Digital representation of the small and large intestines and associated mesentery.View photos
Digital representation of the small and large intestines and associated mesentery.
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Image: The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology
"We are now saying we have an organ in the body which hasn't been acknowledged as such to date," he said in a news release.
Coffey published his peer-reviewed findings in the November issue of The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology, a top medical journal on the digestive system.
Mashable was unable to reach Coffey for comment by the time of publication.
An organ is considered to be a self-contained body part that serves a specific vital function. The heart, for instance, is a muscular organ that pumps blood through our blood vessels.
Researchers say they still don't quite understand the mesentery's key functions, beyond the obvious role as a connective layer.
One of the world's earliest depictions of the mesentery was produced by the Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci. While his drawing and subsequent medical illustrations showed the mesentery as a continuous structure, in the past century scientists came to believe it was a series of broken-up pieces, and thus less medically significant.
Drawing of mesenteric organ by Leonardo Da Vinci.View photos
Drawing of mesenteric organ by Leonardo Da Vinci.
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Image: Digestive surgery/researchgate
In 2012, Coffey and his colleagues first showed through microscopic analyses that the fold of membrane was, in fact, a single connected structure.
Over the last four years, the team continued to collect evidence confirming the mesentery's classification as an organ, which culminated with the November paper.
The research prompted the publishers of Gray's Anatomy, one of the world's best-known medical textbooks, to update the entry for mesentery.
Elsevier, which publishes both Gray's Anatomy and The Lancet journal, included the reclassification of mesentery in its 41st edition of Gray's, which came out September 2015, Mashable confirmed.
Coffey said that better understanding and further scientific study of the mesentery could result in less invasive abdominal surgeries, fewer complications and faster patient recovery.
"When we approach it like every other organ...we can categorize abdominal disease in terms of this organ," he said in the news release.
"This is relevant universally as it affects all of us," he added. "Up to now there was no such field as mesenteric science."
