The name is Thrombo, a fellow Thrombocyte that lives in your blood. You may know me better as a platelet or a fragment of a megakaryocyte, a large bone marrow cell. There’s roughly 150,000 – 450,000 thrombocytes in a single microliter of your blood. My job is to assist in inflammation, tumor growth, natural and adaptive immunity, Hemostasis and Thrombosis. Those last two tasks of mine relate mostly to the coagulation and or clotting of your blood. I’m best described as irregular and disc shaped. We are used in many physiological processes within your body. A proper platelet count is an important part of your health. A low platelet count, Thrombocytopenia, or a high platelet count, Thrombocytosis, may be an indication of some sort of health issue. This health issue can be anything from minimal to something that is life threatening. We can be counted in three diverse ways, two of the three ways identified as electronic counting. There is Hemacytometer, voltage-pulse and electro-optical counting, electronic counting of us Thrombocytes is the most common. I have thousands and thousands of relatives. In both ways of electronic counting of platelets, diluted blood is passed through an electronic counter. The instrument is very specific, only counting particles of certain sizes ignoring any clumps of thrombocytes that exceed its size limit or any particle too small. There is no exact way to properly count each and ever platelet in a single drop of blood as there are hundreds of thousands. However, if you wish to receive the most accurate number in a platelet count, it is best to do it as soon as blood is drawn. If left too long, the platelets after leaving the body may change and vary in size and shapes. On top of that white blood cells may end up filtering out some thrombocytes or if a red blood cell was to burst, its debris may be counted as a platelet. This goes for Hemacytometer counting method as well. There is to be a drop of diluted blood on Hemacytometer slide, which will then be viewed at a specific contrast in a Hemacytometer microscope. It is easy to mistake other particles or cells as one of us Thrombocytes. It’s more likely to get the wrong number of platelets if the blood you took is from capillaries rather then veins which is proved to be a better source of blood for platelet counts. To find out more about me you best head to the Gale Science in Context Database as provided by SD43, you can find quite a bit of information there!! You would definitely need to play around on the keyword search. Since us Thrombocytes are more commonly known as platelets it is easier to put that as our keyword. A couple great questions a human may ask is; What is a thrombocyte? In what ways does a thrombocyte, or platelet, help our bodies? What is the main function of a platelet? What does thrombocytes assist with in our bodies? Would there be a problem if we have too little or too much thrombocytes? The human who I currently reside in asked all these questions, answering them to the best of her abilities with the help of a couple journals from the Science in Context database. She read through several articles finalizing her decision on those that had clear, concise language that still was able to give off its full knowledge. She would scroll down on each article and check for references, if it was deemed to be trustworthy she used that article. My human then read through the articles, taking down some research notes along the way. She tried using a few of the other databases but the journals and writings were too complex for her to apprehend which is why she chose to stay with Science in Context.After compiling her information she went on to creative commons to find suitable pictures, she cited the sources using EasyBib. The Science in Context, site actually had a built in tool for citation of the style you chose, so for the two articles, my human used the built in citation tool. She feels she could’ve done a much better thorough job had she had more time to work on finding out more about us Thrombocytes. My human wouldn’t have minded getting an extra block or two to do a deeper search that would result with even more conclusions and knowledge on the cell. Next time she would try to use different databases, read a few more articles and even watch a couple videos. Just incase you get a cut at anytime of the day, call me or any of my relatives up, we’ll be there trying to clot up your blood and prevent you from bleeding out in no time!
Thrombo, a important part of your physiological processes, the Thrombocyte is out of here.
What does the world of medicine have to offer when mixed with electricity? Would upper limb prosthetics be more effective with a Neuroprosthetic or a Myoelectric prosthetic?
Language is one of the most complex things to ever have been created by humanity. We have created around seven thousand different intricate dialects, each with a distinct articulation, sounds and symbol. Most of our languages have corresponding letters of an alphabet or symbol system, we put them together in different orders forming diverse words that make up our extravagant range of vocabulary. For centuries, people have been wondering if all the variety of languages shape the way we think. If our mother tongue was English compared to Russian, would are brains be wired to think and react unalike? Do languages affect the way we think? In the past we did not have any data or research to back up any side of the arguments. In the Ted Talk How Languages Shape the way we Thinkby Lera Boroditsky, she briefly describes how we form words through a sequence of huffs and puffs which then travel in air vibrations. Once the vibrations reach our ears, our brain processes the sound waves and turns them into thoughts. We recognize these distinct patterns of sounds and call many of them words. Boroditsky worked with an Aboriginal tribe from Australia called the Kuuk Thaayorre or Thaayorre Tribe, who speaks Kuuk Thaayorre Language, a Paman language. They are natives who reside in the settlement Pormpuraaw, the western part of the Cape York Peninsula, Queensland in Australia. This tribe’s unique language is such a wonder. They use cardinal direction, north, south, east and west, instead of simple left and right. However, they do use the cardinal direction for more then just direction, it’s used in greetings, telling time and moving objects. When we English speakers greet someone we normally say “Hello,” where in Kuuk Thaayorre you would say “Which way are you going?”. Our response is entirely different as well, people of the Thaayorre tribe would respond with “North, north, east in the near distance,” if all is going quite well. This unique way of simply just greeting people makes our universal language quite boring. Telling time is also different as well, it all depends on which cardinal direction they are facing, for each direction would mean a new arrangement. It’s not just this tribal language that has a unique system, Russian compared to English and German to Spanish also have many radical differences. In English when we see a colour, such as blue, we simply address it as blue. Russian speaker tend to differentiate light blue and dark blue respectively. As part of Boroditsky’s research, their team would watch brain patterns and the different reactions from multiple things of all sort of language speakers. Those who speak Russian, their brain has like a quick surprise/reaction when seeing a shade of blue change from light to dark, whereas in English speakers there wasn’t. A lot of languages have grammatical gender, different nouns and adjectives are categorized as a more feminine or masculine word. In German the sun is feminine, described with more feminine adjectives and the moon masculine. Contrastingly, in Spanish the moon is portrayed more feminine and the sun masculine. Certain languages train you to pay attention to different things. For example, in an accident, English speakers are more likely to remember who caused the accident where in another language people zero in on how the even actually unfolded. Languages shape the way we view time, numbers, colours, grammatical gender, memory and what we focus on. The variety of different sounds, symbols, articulation for each language is so unique, quite a fascination language is. It is unfortunate that currently we are losing around a language a week. Finishing the Ted Talk, I have concluded that the different languages we speak affect the way we think one way or another, all this research supporting this argument. Then again, our research is all done in just solely English by English speakers so is our research valid? Is all our research and data simply narrow minded and biased? What are we to believe?
After reading the short story, The Veldt by Ray Bradbury, I wrote this poem to acknowledge all the alienation that is forming within our society due to our ever advancing technology. Our excessive usage of technology is slowly leading us to a social devastation.
Chained Eagles
The sun used to shine brighter,
Back when the skies were clearer,
The eagle’s wings free with possibility,
When the children played amongst the trees,
Swinging from its able-bodied branches,
Humanity’s advancements,
Creating this obsessive compulsion,
These so-called improvements,
Sitting alone on a park bench,
The vacant swings moving at the command of the wind,
Slides dull and hollow,
The laughter from playgrounds no longer ring,
As they’re covered up by a tablets DING,
DING, a new notification,
Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter,
It’s like our communication skills has started to wither,
With every BEEP and DING,
Our anxiety builds up if we don’t check it’s ringing,
It’s a chain and ball confining our wings,
DING, a new posting,
Our new measurement of self-value,
Measured in the number of likes,
Followers and comments replacing our breathing,
Our technological solutions,
Ridding of all our emotions,
Dividing our connections,
A black hole,
A devastation,
No more eye to eye conversations,
Hiding from behind a screen,
Attacking, harassing, bullying,
Driving some to breaking,
With seven billion on the planet,
We’re facing this new lonely world alone,
Not many friends in real life,
As time’s days grow weary,
We do nothing but continue to scroll on our Blackberry’s,
