Showing posts with label Biology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Biology. Show all posts

Saturday, November 1, 2008

Nature's Deadly Bong

Caption : I like how the lake is oxidized to a muddy brown, has yet to recover(reduction?) since 1984.
"... limnic eruption is when a large body of water suddenly releases large amounts of carbon dioxide which, being h eavier than air, displaces it at ground level, suffocating oxygen breathers."
While there are only three places where this phenomenon is known to happen, which itself is extremely rare, namely Lake Manoun in Cameroon, Lake Nyos, Cameroon
and Lake Kivu(between the Congo and Rwanda). The Lake Nyos explosion killed almost 2000 people, bearing in mind that that was only CO2 displaced from a lake. Reports suggest that limnic explosions could have a greater effect since there is, well, more water.

Conditions for a limnic explosion:

~ Tropical and prone to volcanic activity areas
~ Body of water must be quite deep


So, what does this phenomenon tell us? That we should be hogging around an O2 tank? Or kick start our quest for space colonization? Nah, we should just start seriously researching on bio-mechanical lungs. OK, I have no idea what I'm talking about now.

I'm thinking of a contraption that utilizes plants' photosynthesis, then channel the O2 to somewhere needed, might have to work around that when plants' undergo respiration. Bah, my biology knowledge is near zero.

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Lifespan Increased By Ten-fold

Looks like Methuselah's record as the longest-living man in recorded history may be challenged. Well, almost, just short of 169 years.

Researchers from University of Southern California annouced that they can "slow aging and extend life span in organisms ranging from yeast to mice". By tinkering with some genes, researchers are able to increase the life span by 10-fold.

They say can extend the lifetime of yeast to 800 years. Awesome, but erm, who's gonna be the one testing whether yeast can still be used to bake a cake 800 years later?