The Tapeworm

I have recently just got back from a 5 day walking exhibition in the Highlands (Scotland) with some friends, however, to my surprise after I went to the toilet I soon found that I had worms (disgusting I know) - more pacifically Threadworm or Pinworm. This probably occurred from me drinking stream water that I did not properly purify using a Chlorine tablet and so the 'Eggs' were ingested, giving them a home as well as a host. This got me even more interested into parasites than I already had, as I myself could say (not out loud and excluding natural parasites already in the human body) that I too had a parasite (not a dangerous one, but still...). So I did some further research into this, dusted off a few books and decided to write an article on a very interesting parasite - the Tapeworm.


Tapeworm
Tapeworms are parasites that belong to a group of animals called Flatworms. The Flatworm have a fairly long bodies but if you take a cross section they are very thin in comparison to other parasitic worms. Tapeworms are more specifically 'Obligate Parasites', meaning they cannot survive without a host. They are also called 'Endoparasites' meaning they live inside the bodies of their hosts. 

Structure
The adult 'Pork Tapeworm' lives inside the small intestine of humans (this parasite occurs in humans when pork is under-cooked). The body looks creamy-white piece of ribbon. They can reach up to 37 feet long when a doctor pulled a tapeworm out of a patient called Sally Mae Wallace out of her mouth in 1991. 


The tapeworm scolex becomes attached at one end to the internal intestine lining using its crowed hooks and four suckers - clearly shown in the image above - and grows progressively broader in length and width. 

What is truly remarkable about this particular parasite is the fact that the tapeworm is composed of a chains of as many as a 1000 divisions of proglottides. A proglottide are sections of tapeworms containing both the male and female gametes. This means that surgeons could leave a proglottide still in the patient meaning the tapeworm will continue to grow and carry out the same cycle as before. The sections of proglottides are shown in the image above. This is also how the tapeworm grows in length as the last section of the tapeworm grows another section and then of which will then grow another section etc. 


Problems the Tapeworm May Cause to Their Hosts
Surprisingly tapeworms cause very little physical problems to their host apart from depriving the body of essential nutrients. The tapeworm has been specifically adapted to have a flat body providing it with a very large surface area, as I have said before the tapeworm becomes attached to the small intestine so the mammal would have fully digested the food and is ready to be absorbed which is where the large surface area of the tapeworm comes into its element and how it becomes a successful organism, which I find remarkable and amazing!  


The main symptom that people complain about is weird tummy sensations, nervous system and a general lack of energy. It has also been found that some larvae get trapped in the wrong bloodstream and are pumped through the heart eventually to the brain and to the muscles. This can cause a variety of problems to the host, some of which include regular seizers, headaches and muscle spasms. It also causes intracranial pressure when the tapeworm blocks the cerebrospinal fluid from leaving the brain.




On a pure scientific level I find the tapeworm an incredible organism and its amazing how well adapt the organism is. 

The Life Cycle of a tapeworm.

The Periodic Table

The Periodic Table is simply a way of displaying chemical elements. One of the special things about the periodic table is how it is arraged, elements are listed in order of the increasing atomic number in rows. The atomic number is derived from the number of protons in the atoms nucleus. The columns in the periodic table are elements that are arranged with similar properties to other elements  For example group 1 is Alkali metals. The Alkali metals are very reactive! This is because the 'outer ring' of each element has 1 electron and so this element will do anything to get rid of its electron making it very unstable. (Here's a quick video showing some of the elements reacting with water in a bath tub). They are so reactive that when cut with a knife they react with the atmosphere to form compounds (they are soft metals and so are easily cut with a knife). On the other hand group 8 or the 'Halogen Group' all have a full outer ring of electrons and so are very stable. An example of a Halogen is Neon (Ne), you may recognise this element as it is commonly used to create colourful lettering that light up - Neon Lights - it is used for this purpose and can be set-up outside shops without reacting and so will not cause harm to passers by.

The History
In 1869, a Russian chemist named Dmitri Mendeleev came up with a way of organizing the elements into a table - this was obviously the "Periodic Table" He set them out in order of the weight of the atom, and then grouped them into rows and columns based on their chemical and physical properties.

   One of the things which made it even more incredible is that he was able to place these elements in the periodic table with out the aid of any modern equipment, but what I find quite amusing is that he played a sort of game to place these elements. What he did was he wrote the elements on a piece of card and played a sorting game with them ( their size, how much electrons each element had. etc) This then led to the shape of the periodic table. 
The periodic table to left of Dmitri Mendeleev was his own version of the periodic table. As you can see from todays periodic table there are similarities but noticeable differences.

String Theory in a nut shell...

String Theory
Though the happenings of the research happening in CERN scientists are constantly thinking up of new possibilities that would help us redefine how we perceive the universe 


First of all take a moment to look in front of you at the picture on screen. Now look to your left (at your mountain of books) and right (to your mug of tea/coffee) sides. Now up and down. These three spatial dimensions represent everything in our universe. Add time and we know live in a four-dimensional world. This is what is known as the Space-time Continuum – three dimensions of space (height, width, and length) and time. But have you ever wondered if there are additional dimensions that escape our observation? That there is something else out there? What is space made up of?


There are two areas of research that we don't know much about and where research over the next twenty years will slowly uncover their mysteries and by the time this is posted there will be information that could of been proved wrong or would have been updated but here we go... the two fields are: Quantum Mechanics and String Theory. In this article I'm going to try and discuss String Theory and why we think all things are made up of tiny strings. String Theory is a contender for The Theory of Everything (thought up by Albert Einstein on his death bed) and it is based on the principle that all things are made up of tiny 1-dimensional superstrings. It is also a emerging branch of Quantum Mechanics and General Relativy that explains that the sub-atomic particles are in really tiny bits of energy that vibarate and are in one-dimensions.  


String Theory offers amazing possibilities and holds potential to explain all matter and forces of nature from sub-atomic particles to galaxies. String theory is a leading candidate to for a unified "Theory of Everything" . A theory so powerful it holds potential to describe the workings of our universe, why it is the way it is. 


The History
The first ever String Theory was formulated in the late 1960s and was called Bosonic String theory. However, soon afterwards it was abandoned as it predicted the existence of a particle that we don't believe to exist and it predict only the position of boson whereas most physical particles are fermions. Then along came the Superstring Theory which predicted a 10-dimensional universe. This was then split in to five versions of this theory. However, all these versions seemed to be right but this wasn't possible. Here, we introduce Edward Witten who has been hailed as the next Einstein. He looked at all these theories and decided that they were all different ways of saying the same thing. He then went on to unite these theories in what we call M-Theory which is based on a 11-dimensional universe. This is just a very basic article on string theory behind string theory, but for more advanced reading go to the CERN website .

How Does an Aircraft Fly?

How does an Airplane fly? Every day of our lives, we hear or see at least one type of aircraft sore above our heads. Most of us travel on one once a year to make a journey of over a hundred miles to another country in an hour or two on an airplane. But how can a standard 737 (which weighs roughly 50 kg per square meter) resist the force of gravity. How can it soar at 35,000 feet at a speed of 500 miles per hour. In this article I will talk about the science behind flying in heavier than air machines. There are two factors that prevent an airplane from flying. These are weight (preventing a plane from rising) and drag (preventing it from moving forward. For an airplane to fly, these factors must be equalled out be another two which are produced by the airplane. These are lift (created by the wings and other parts) and thrust (created by the engines. The following equations below must be obeyed to take off from the ground. - Drag < Thrust (to move forward) - Weight < Lift (to rise) Now let's look at each component individually. Drag is caused by friction with the air. As an airplane flies, its body brushes against the different air molecules creating friction. This slows the plane down. Thrust is the opposite of drag as it is used to propel a body forward. It is created using Newton's third law of motion. It states that when one force goes one way, a force of equal strength must go the other way. Hence thrust is created by huge engines pulling and pushing huge amounts of air out the back. Therefore, an equal force must go the other way. Weight is caused by gravity. The mass of an object depends upon what it is made up of and the weight of an object is this number in kilograms multiplied by the gravitational field strength of the Earth which is roughly 9.8 N/kg. Einstein proposed General Relatity in 1915 which states that a body curves Sapce-Time and this curvature pulls bodies into the object. This is known as gravity. We counter gravity by using lift. We generate lift by angling the the wings so that it pushes air down. Newton's third law comes in to play again here as the air is pushed down, another force must go up. IN other words, the plane rises. Of course, Lift doesn't have to be more than weight when its cruising as the pilot will want to remain level so the the lift will be equal the weight. So next time you are watching a plane cruise in to the sky, remember the physics behind this way of travelling that has been attempted many times for centuries that has now become a reality.