notes-science-bio-bioMisc

human outliers:

• http://emgn.com/entertainment/15-people-with-real-life-superpowers/2/ (warning: skipped #! because picture is creepy, and the subject is uninteresting (the guy can make a creepy face))
  • http://emgn.com/entertainment/15-people-with-real-life-superpowers/2/ "Stephen Wiltshire has the ability to look at a subject just once and create a drawing of the subject in full detail and accuracy. Wiltshire was able to accurately recreate New York city after a brief helicopter ride above it! The detail and accuracy is stunning – every building will be to scale and in the correct place along with doors, windows, light poles and anything else Wiltshire sees."
  • http://emgn.com/entertainment/15-people-with-real-life-superpowers/5/ "Hai Ngoc hasn’t slept since he got a flu in 1973! Amazingly, he continues to function completely normally and the lack of sleep has had no impact on his day to day activities."
  • http://emgn.com/entertainment/15-people-with-real-life-superpowers/6/ "...Isao Machii from Japan. Machii has the ability to process his surroundings in a different way to normal humans. Rather than seeing an item move through the air, he can anticipate the exact location of the item at any given moment with incredible accuracy. He uses this talent to chop items out of the air using his Katana for people’s entertainment – he’s popular on the internet for chopping up airsoft pellets fired directly at him, which can travel at speeds of up to 550 ft/s!"
  • http://emgn.com/entertainment/15-people-with-real-life-superpowers/7/ "...Wim Hof and he is completely impervious to cold. A lot of people may be able to do what he’s doing in the picture below but Wim has accomplished something quite special that makes him stand out from every other human! Wim Hof climbed Mount Everest in nothing but a pair of bicycle shorts! The temperatures on Mount Everest can vary from between minus 35 degrees Celsius and minus 60 degrees Celsius – temperatures where any other human would have been killed in minutes without the correct protection. Wim stated that it was a very easy task for him." "Hof seems to be able to raise his cortisol levels...just by using his meditation techniques...After 30 years of training and exposing himself to extreme environments, Hof is teaching people his methods. According to Hof, the human body has the ability to control itself more than is generally accepted. In March 2011, Hof founded the company Innerfire together with his oldest son. The company goals are to help people master the parasympathetic nervous system through meditation and the sympathetic nervous system through exercise.. In November 2011 Hof and his student Justin Rosales published Becoming the Iceman, a book documenting their background, adventures, training, exclusive methods and exercises used to attain the ability to endure extreme temperatures. The book proposes that it is possible for anyone to control his own body temperature." -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wim_Hof
  • http://emgn.com/entertainment/15-people-with-real-life-superpowers/8/ "Ben Underwood lost his eyesight at the young age of 3 from cancer. Ben is able to make clicking sounds using his mouth and judge the echo produced to understand his surroundings and any obstacles in his path. This unique ability has allowed Ben to walk around without any assistance, ride his bike and have other normal childhood experiences."
  • http://emgn.com/entertainment/15-people-with-real-life-superpowers/10/ "Michel Lotito from France has been eating metal, rubber and all sorts of crazy stuff that should never enter the human body! He goes by the nickname ‘Monsieur Mangetout’ which translated is ‘Mr. Eat it All’."
  • http://emgn.com/entertainment/15-people-with-real-life-superpowers/11/ "The ‘Garth’ Monks from Tibet has the ability to change their body temperature using only their minds! They have been recorded to have changed their temperature by 8 degrees Celsius."
  • http://emgn.com/entertainment/15-people-with-real-life-superpowers/13/ "David Tammet has a special kind of brain. He can solve complex mathematical problems in his head!"
  • http://emgn.com/entertainment/15-people-with-real-life-superpowers/14/ "Liew Thow Lin is 70 years old and only recently discovered that he has an amazing ability of sticking metallic objects to his body like a magnet just by touching them together!" "Liew's ability is not due to any source of magnetism. Scientists from Malaysia's University of Technology found no magnetic field in Lin's body, but did determine that his skin exhibits very high levels of friction,[2] providing a "suction effect".[3] The trait appears to be genetic, appearing in Lin's three grandchildren.[2]" -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liew_Thow_Lin

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" Angela A Stanton PhD? • 2 years ago

I think that a very important element was left out of this extremely elegant and well-written article. Thank you; I truly enjoyed reading it. I am a scientist and constantly bump into damage caused (to protein, to mitochondrial DNA, and similar others) by modern medicine! Some medicines deliberately modify the shape of proteins. For example, SSRIs use an "inhibitor" to plug up a neurotransmitter sensor similar to how a cork plugs up a bottle of wine. Unfortunately the cork is not the shape and polarity as what the protein expects and it damages it in the process.

The same with medicines that are ligands (such as Ambien)--they mimic the properties of a real neurotransmitter but they are not and modify the shape of the receptor to behave like they were that neurotransmitter, damaging the proteins. We also have an antibiotics class (quinolones, such as Cipro, a very common medicine many of us have taken) that damages bacterial DNA, which is great...it kills bacteria except our mitochondria is bacteria as well and it has DNA that does not permit errors.

Thus the apoptosis you refer to is very much in busy-business from our drugs. I suppose ageing is hastened by the damage our drugs cause (I only gave here few examples) but ALL drugs without exception modify protein(s) and/or DNA (ours or mitochondrial DNA) causing increased chaos. Not sure how this fits into the thermal explanation though I assume that a protein that is being squished into a different shape releases heat from the pressure so it may add to the thermal devastation. I also can see that a mitochondria ordered to commit apoptosis would release all its electrons to be oxidized (free radicals) creating thermal energy in the process. I find your article very thought provoking. You sure got my wheels rolling! Angela " [1]

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" But I think that Medawar's argument was that all animals are subject to random accidents, predation, disease, etc. This will produce an exponential distribution of lifetimes. As a consequence, beyond a few half-lifes, there will be exponentially few members of the species. So if there is some mutation in the DNA which causes the animal to die beyond that time, there will be so few members of the species around to exhibit it that there will be effectively no selection pressure to keep this mutation out of the population. As a consequence, even if you started out with a population that could in theory live forever, it will very quickly become riddled with mutations which start to kill the animals after a couple of half-lifes. From the outside, it would appear as though the animals were "programmed" to die at a certain time.

George Williams presented a similar argument, but also claimed that some mutations can increase an animal's fitness early in life at the expense of decreased fitness much later in life. If the animal will likely have died of some accident by that time anyway, this trait effectively has no downside and will be selected for. " -- antognini