I learned this today. Diazepam is a benzodiazepine drug that works by increasing the amount of a chemical called GABA in the brain to inhibit electrical impulses. GABA is Gamma-aminobutyric acid. It is a chemical that your brain produces. It is an amino acid and is an inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brain. It inhibits brain […]
#134 How does Valium (diazepam) work on the brain? Read More »
I learned this today. Corals are animals because they don’t produce their own food. Corals are sometimes thought to be rocks and sometimes thought to be plants, but they are neither. They are animals. They are thousands of tiny animals collected together. Because of this, they are known as colonial organisms. They belong to the
#133 Is coral a plant or an animal? Read More »
I learned this today. Cancer kills people because it grows into key organs, nerves or blood vessels and impairs their function. Cancer is caused when cells start to change abnormally. New cells in our bodies form through growth and division. When cells become old and need to be replaced, they are switched off and die.
#127 How does cancer kill people? Read More »
I learned this today. The body produces a fever because pyrogens cause the hypothalamus to raise its set-point for body temperature. Fever is a defense mechanism, and most fevers happen when your body has a bacterial, viral or parasitic infection. Other things, such as alcohol withdrawal and heat stroke, can also cause a fever. Raising
#124 What makes the body produce a fever? Read More »
I learned this today. Our skin can allow sweat out, but it doesn’t let water in thanks to a thin layer of fat between the outermost layers of skin cells. The skin is said to be the largest organ in the human body. Actually, by surface area, it is the second largest because the inside
#82 Why is skin waterproof? Read More »
I learned this today. Dogs can probably smell cancer in people. Dogs have a phenomenal sense of smell. They have 300 million olfactory receptors in their noses. We have about 6 million. On top of this, the part of their brain that is devoted to analyzing smells is about 40 times larger than ours. It
#79 Can dogs smell cancer? Read More »
I learned this today. We feel pain when we touch something very cold or very hot because of thermoreceptors in our skin that are activated by different proteins. Humans are able to withstand a fairly large range of temperatures, but we have to wear clothes to do this. Ancient humans started wearing clothes about 780,000
#63 Why do we feel pain when we touch cold or hot things? Read More »
I learned this today. The tallest a human could potentially grow is about 9 feet, 274cm. Humans grow because of a growth hormone called somatropin. It stimulates growth by telling cells to reproduce. It is released by the pituitary gland. It reacts with a specific receptor on the surface of cells, and it stimulates cell
#58 How tall could a human grow? Read More »
I learned this today. White blood cells kill invading bacteria, germs, and viruses in your body by eating them. White blood cells are produced by bone marrow. They are produced by hematopoietic stem cells, and they are stored within the bone marrow or lymph tissue until they are needed. They are also called leukocytes. When
#50 How do white blood cells kill pathogens? Read More »
I learned this today. Slime mold is a collection of single-celled organisms that can move, function, and “think” as a single organism. Slime molds are eukaryotes: cells that have a nucleus enclosed within a nuclear envelope. They usually live as single cells, but they can join together with other cells to create a multicellular organism.
#45 Why is slime mold so awesome? Read More »
