imadjidov's blog

Methods: 

• Begin outside the BCRC main doors. 
• Facing away from the BCRC door, walk left down the hallway and take the stairs to the very first floor.  
• Exit the Morrill doors facing the East side of the campus. 
• Once you walk out, you should be facing the Shade Tree lab and the Franklin Dining Commons. 
• Go straight up until you reach Stockbridge road. 
• Make a left on Stockbridge road or walk North. 
• Walk up Stockbridge road past French Hall and the University Club. 
• Stop once you reach Wilder Hall. 
• Look right or East and you should see apple tree.
• The apple trees are near the Durfee Conservatory.
• Enter the first section of apples trees and walk to the end of the tree. 
• I found the evidence for phytophegy near the apple trees. 

Did you know that Machu Pichu, a city considered one of the greatest architectural achievements was deliberately built over major fault zones!​

Rualdo Menegat, a geologist from the Universidade of Rio Grande do Sul, research suggests that the legendary city of Machu Pichu are oriented along the direction lines of the main faults.

According to Dr. Menegat, this gave the Incas some advantages. For example, meltwater and rainwater flowed through the faults into the city, so there was always a filled spring there. In addition, the city was protected from avalanches and landslides. Faults and fissures beneath Machu Picchu also helped to drain this area during heavy rains.

#funfactfriday

Here is the link to the article: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190923140814.htm

In the 1960s, there was a request for understanding the reach of right material to the right audience. During the segmentation phase of the U.S. market, businesses took advantage of radio and especially t.v. to sell their messages to the consumer. Advertising not only opened the consumer to a variety of information, but also enabled them to a greater variety of goods and services. The article points out that t.v. was the main method of choice for advertisement because it gave individual brands their very own identity. In the end, the introduction of the television to American families revolutionized the strategies of marketing. Television allowed marketers to apply their advertisements to a broad range of audience. This phase of U.S. marketing allowed for the one on one relationship of the seller and the customer. This close relationship strategy of the producer and consumer of the 1960s can be witnessed in the modern world. Today, the key function of social media is allowing more producers to interact with their customers. Social media is serving as a structure that not only producers, but also consumers to critique and rate back their service. This in sense is pushing companies and brands to question where they can improve their products and how they can go about it. 

In marketing exchange, the producer and and the consumer are so important, that a market cannot function without the other. According to Richard Tedlow, the market prior to 1800s was divided through geographic fragments. This way of market called fragmentation, employed “brute facts of logistics” (Tedlow 10). In other words, the markets of the U.S. at that time were dependent on the specific region with no consideration for marketing strategies.  After World War II, the United States’ production and transportation of goods had increased with the increase in American infrastructure. The most important innovation that led to such increase was the railroad and the telegraph. The telegraph was an older version of present day social media. With the telegraph, commercial information grew, enabling industries “to direct a sales force whose members worked thousands of miles from the home office”(Tedlow 12). Furthermore, the railroad transported people and goods across the U.S. in a much faster rate. This efficiency in transportation led to industrial growth.

Since the landing in November 2018, InSight lander has been collecting information to help scientists better understand the internal structure and evolution of our neighboring planet. The device measures the temperature of the upper crust of Mars, records the sounds of alien earthquakes and measures the strength and direction of the planet’s magnetic field. InSight discovered a very peculiar electrically conductive layer, about 6.4 kilometers thick, deep below the surface of Mars. It is too early to speak with any certainty, but there is a chance that this layer can be a global reservoir of liquid water. 

Figure 1. Photographic image of a Drosera rotundifolia. A diagnostic characterstic of Drosera rotundifolia are the adhesive mucilagess that help it catch prey. "Drosera rotundifolia." flickr photo by Free the Image https://flickr.com/photos/freetheimage/14129398634 shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license

Spiders are among the world’s largest and most diverse animal lineages. They have diverse behaviors. For example, some families build webs for prey capture whereas others are active hunters that stalk their prey using vision.  These behaviors correlate with differences in their visual systems. The number, complexity and arrangement of spider eyes vary across spider families. Spiders thus provide an opportunity to undertake comparative studies. In particular, very little is known about the neurobiology of spider brains. Spider brains are very different than those of insects and even other chelicerates, such as scorpions and harvestmen. Due to the absence of a dedicated olfactory/chemosensory appendange, spiders lack the associated neural processing regions found in most other arthropods. Spiders are also the only known chelicerates that lack immunoreactivity to proteins involved in arthropod learning and memory found in other arthropods. Instead, most of a spider’s protocerebrum, the first segment of its fused nervous system, is dedicated to visual processing. The size and organization of the visual processing regions of the protocerebrum varies across spider families.

How technology has changed medicine and  its history?

I am interested in finding out how far medicine has moved in solving a variety of problems related to human health, with and without technology. I would like to compare the challenges that are faced by modern medicine and that of a century ago. For example, cancer is still not conquered, previously unknown viruses appear with enviable regularity, antibiotics lose their strength, new habits and lifestyle bring new diseases. At the same time, we are at the epicenter of the genetic revolution, intensively studying the structure of the brain, relying on big data and robots, waiting for breakthroughs in the fight against aging. 

I am also interested in understanding how healthcare will be affected by an increase in the sophistication of technology. Personally, I predict that with technology we will see a rise in personalized therapy. This is because personal online doctors exist today, but over the coming decades they might dominate the professional environment. Not a single person interested in a healthy lifestyle will refuse instant access to expert opinion, especially if there is a convenient platform for this, and diagnostic tools are at hand. The work of the doctor will be similar to the work of a personal trainer and psychoanalyst. This idea is similar to what I have read in our book SHA about the physicians of the 19th century.

Discussion Questions: 

1. I did not really understand what Abraham Flexner meant by “Medical students must be trained to regard the body as an infinitely complex machine”?

2. Are Flexner’s suggestions for improving the medical education system still acknowledged today? I am asking this because we currently have more than 31 medical schools in the nation. How does this affect medical education today?

3. How did the rise in medicine in the US affects medicine today? For example, the rise of cost in medical education, shortage of medical doctors, and the cost of medical care.

4. How did the low “wage” for physicians like Brisbane affect mediccal practice? Was this the main contributor for the shift in public and private family dynamics?

Abraham Flexner is a prominent figure in the history of modern medicine within the United States. He played a key role in introducing modern methods of teaching medicine in the United States. A report he published in 1908 criticized the quality of teaching medicine and the prestige of the 155 medical colleges at that time. He proposed two ways to revolutionize modern medicine. One way was to reduce the number of medical schools to 31. The other way was to ensure that medical schools are committed to medical research and academic excellence. Abraham Flexner’s ideas also had a heavy affect on American homeopathy. Among the main recommendations given in the Flexner report, there was a requirement that the curriculum of medical schools be based on generally accepted classical practice, which, in fact, put an end to the education of homeopathy in major hospitals.

Over the past 40 years, the bird population in the United States and Canada has declined by 29% or almost 3 billion birds. Research was conducted by American scientists at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. According to the results, of the 3 billion dead birds, 90% belong to common families, in particular sparrows, finches and swallows. They play an important role in food chains and support the functioning of ecosystems, such as pest control.

The study noted that bird losses in North America are similar to bird losses in other parts of the world. Co-author of the study, John Sauer, believes that the main factor that affects the extinction of birds is habitat loss, including due to intensive farming and urbanization. Scientists suggest that further climate change will worsen the situation.