walking
dr. dolittle | October 23, 2015The Tennessee Physiological Society held their annual conference on October 9th at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
Here are highlights from the meeting:
Have you ever heard of "dry needling"? It is a treatment used by some physical therapists that is designed to help alleviate muscle pain by inserting small needles into trigger points. Researchers in Tennessee wanted to know if there were any risks for bacterial infections so they swabbed areas of the skin where dry needling typically takes place as well as the needles that were used. They found that at least one swab collected…
dr. dolittle | August 1, 2014 Cartoon image from www.teenwritersblog.com
Physiologist Laurie Goodyear (Joslin Diabetes Center, Harvard Medical School, MA) and her colleagues recently published a study in the American Journal of Physiology that shows how overexpressing a protein can increase exercise capacity. The protein of interest was tribbles homolog 3 (TRB3), which is a mammalian form of the tribbles protein found in fruit flies (aka: Drosophila). Prior to this study, data suggested that TRB3 plays a role in metabolism so Dr. Goodyear's team decided to examine this more closely in skeletal muscle, which is a major…
lborkowski | April 10, 2012Slate has just started a new series by Tom Vanderbilt called "The Crisis in American Walking: How we got off the pedestrian path." Vanderbilt observes that it's odd to see things like "Campaign to Get America Walking" when ambulation is one of the most natural activities for our species. Reliance on cars seems to be the main culprit in the United States' sad distinction as being the industrialized country where people walk the least. And that's a shame, Vanderbilt explains, because walking has many health benefits:
Here are just some of the benefits, physical, cognitive and otherwise, that it…
edyong | August 20, 2009
In 2007, Jan Souman dropped three volunteers into the Sahara desert and watched as they walked for several miles, in an attempt to walk in a straight line. Souman was interested in the widespread belief that lost travelers end up walking in circles, a belief that has never been properly tested but has nonetheless become firmly entrenched in the popular consciousness. Just think about Frodo and Sam's hike through Mordor or the three hapless teens in the Blair Witch Project.
To see how non-fictional humans would fare, Souman tracked a group of volunteers using GPS as they walked through a…
edyong | April 22, 2009
Seals and sea-lions gracefully careen through today's oceans with the help of legs that have become wide, flat flippers. But it was not always this way. Seals evolved from carnivorous ancestors that walked on land with sturdy legs; only later did these evolve into the flippers that the family is known for. Now, a beautifully new fossil called Puijila illustrates just what such early steps in seal evolution looked like. With four legs and a long tail, it must have resembled a large otter but it was, in fact, a walking seal.
Natalia Rybczynski unearthed the new animal at Devon Island, Canada…
edyong | March 21, 2009
Walking on two legs, or bipedalism, immediately sets us apart form other apes. It frees our arms for using tools and weapons and is a key part of our evolutionary success. Scientists have put forward a few theories to explain how our upright gait evolved, but the 'savannah theory' is by far the most prolific.
It's nicely illustrated by this misleading image that has become a mainstay of popular culture. It suggests that our ancestors went from four legs to two via the four-legged knuckle-walking gait of gorillas and chimps. Dwindling forests eventually pushed them from knuckle-walking to a…
zooillogix | July 23, 2008After some torrential rain in Pinellas County, Fla, residents were treated to some friendly neighborhood walking catfish. Once again, this was sent to us by Kevin Zelnio who runs an online Viagra store or some such. Interestingly, the link he sent us was from a recent local news broadcast, but a little bit of sleuthing showed that they were just running old CNN footage from YouTube which they tried to pass off as their own. Scoundrels! Reminds me of what we do here everyday...
esiegel | May 2, 2008Clearly, neither the man nor the bull below is headed for anything good in their attempt to walk on water,
and for that matter, neither is this poor, bristling cat,
but what about this reptile?
Unbelievably, this lizard actually can walk on water! And without using any surface tension tricks like insects do, either. No, whereas a human puts his foot into the water and sinks, this lizard has a very low mass and a very large surface area on his feet, allowing him to "run" on water as long as he moves quickly enough. For this lizard, that's about 10 miles-per-hour. As opposed to a human, who…