Hey all,
Sorry for not keeping up with my posts recently!
December was really hectic with exams, final papers, a concert (which went REALLY well), and ... SNOW back in Massachusetts! But now that I've been back home in LA for a bit (and will still be for another two weeks before school starts again), I promise I'll get back to blogging!
On the bright side, I've been doing some work at the dentist's over winter break, and will be going in again for a full day this Saturday, from 8-6 !!
Can't wait to share! :)
Eric
Friday, January 7, 2011
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Neanderthal teeth; anemia risk; China's history
Cool news! So every weekday morning during the academic year, Harvard e-mails a briefing called the Harvard Gazette to all students and faculty at the College. The daily Harvard Gazette always appears in the same format, with three featured articles appearing under 'Today's Headlines'.
Unrelated, but I almost always receive this e-mail at 7:01 in the morning, never earlier, but sometimes a couple of minutes later.
Anyhow, the very first feature under 'Today's Headlines' in the issue dated 11/16/20 is titled Teeth Marks!
"An examination of teeth from 11 Neanderthal and early human fossils shows that modern humans are slower than our ancestors to reach full maturity. The finding suggests that our slow development and long childhood are recent and unique to our own species, and may have given early humans an evolutionary advantage over Neanderthals."
Apparently, a longer childhood is a recent evolutionary development, as indicated by the fact that a young Neanderthal's rate of teeth growth and development was significantly faster than of the closest-to-modern humans that lived almost one hundred thousand years ago.
Ultimately, this (and I'm sure a number of other related indicators including proportional cranial size relative to the body) led to an evolutionary advantage of our human ancestors over Neanderthals. From my understanding, longer childhoods essentially prolong a number of crucial behavioral and cognitive developmental periods.
Interesting!
Also ... my post title = the subject of the Gazette e-mail -- strange, I know! To my knowledge, Neanderthal teeth, anemia risk, and China's history are largely unrelated.
Here's the full link to the article!
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2010/11/neanderthal-teeth/
Eric
Unrelated, but I almost always receive this e-mail at 7:01 in the morning, never earlier, but sometimes a couple of minutes later.
Anyhow, the very first feature under 'Today's Headlines' in the issue dated 11/16/20 is titled Teeth Marks!
"An examination of teeth from 11 Neanderthal and early human fossils shows that modern humans are slower than our ancestors to reach full maturity. The finding suggests that our slow development and long childhood are recent and unique to our own species, and may have given early humans an evolutionary advantage over Neanderthals."
Apparently, a longer childhood is a recent evolutionary development, as indicated by the fact that a young Neanderthal's rate of teeth growth and development was significantly faster than of the closest-to-modern humans that lived almost one hundred thousand years ago.
Ultimately, this (and I'm sure a number of other related indicators including proportional cranial size relative to the body) led to an evolutionary advantage of our human ancestors over Neanderthals. From my understanding, longer childhoods essentially prolong a number of crucial behavioral and cognitive developmental periods.
Interesting!
Also ... my post title = the subject of the Gazette e-mail -- strange, I know! To my knowledge, Neanderthal teeth, anemia risk, and China's history are largely unrelated.
Here's the full link to the article!
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2010/11/neanderthal-teeth/
Eric
Monday, November 8, 2010
Tooth and nail (idioms #3)
Tooth and nail usually follows the word fight or some similar verb.
To fight tooth and nail is to fight with all your might, almost viciously. This comes from the idea of fighting with all your teeth and all of your nails, which I guess would be a fair idea if you had sharp fangs or piercing claws.
i.e. She valiantly fought tooth and nail at CVS for that last box of Crest Whitestrips, but her recently manicured claws and braces-decorated-teeth prevented her success.
My thinking is that fighting tooth and nail implies someone really duking it out without restraint (and manners, duh), invoking something rather primal and beast-like. Thus tooth and nail would bode quite well if you had foot-long tusks or the fangs of a sabertooth tiger.
Alas we're humans and should probably only fight tooth and nail with other humans.
An intelligent individual realizing that fighting tooth and nail with this creature would probably be a bad idea.
Photo cred to the movie, 10,000 BC! (An interesting movie to say the least!)
Eric
To fight tooth and nail is to fight with all your might, almost viciously. This comes from the idea of fighting with all your teeth and all of your nails, which I guess would be a fair idea if you had sharp fangs or piercing claws.
i.e. She valiantly fought tooth and nail at CVS for that last box of Crest Whitestrips, but her recently manicured claws and braces-decorated-teeth prevented her success.
My thinking is that fighting tooth and nail implies someone really duking it out without restraint (and manners, duh), invoking something rather primal and beast-like. Thus tooth and nail would bode quite well if you had foot-long tusks or the fangs of a sabertooth tiger.
Alas we're humans and should probably only fight tooth and nail with other humans.
Photo cred to the movie, 10,000 BC! (An interesting movie to say the least!)
Eric
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Elasticity
So the nerd in me is taking a class this semester called Physical Sciences 2: Mechanics, Elasticity, Fluids, and Diffusion (also known as PS 2), or basically the first semester of a year of physics!
Anyways, today's lecture was on elasticity. I can summarize ninety minutes of lecture (beginning at 9:30am ... which is quite early on my schedule) and a notebook of equations for you by saying that all solids essentially obey Hooke's law for small deformations. If we deform a solid slightly, this will lead to a linear restoring force, which is equivalent to that derived from simple harmonic oscillation, aka a spring!
So basically, at a very fundamental and slightly perturbed level, everything acts like a spring.
Thus, all solids have some sort of elasticity! Coming back to Hooke's law, we can generalize it by using stress, strain, and something called Young's modulus. Young's modulus is like a spring constant, but it depends only on the material and NOT the size or shape.
So the reason why I thought I'd bring this up is because the professor discussed the Young's modulus some examples of various biological and technological materials.
Teeth (dentine) has a Young's modulus of 1.5 x 10^10 Pascals.
That probably means nothing to you.
So for reference, bone has a slightly higher Young's modulus of 1.7 x 10^10 Pascals, and steel has a Young's modulus of 2 x 10^11 Pascals.
Collagen (tendon) has a Young's modulus of 2 x 10^9 Pascals, and Elastin (skin) has a Young's modulus of 4 x 10^5 Pascals.
Take home message: if we were to make a spring composed of your (or my) teeth, it would be more springy than a spring made of your hip bone or your SUV, but less springy than one made of your skin.
Intuitive? Somewhat!
Biological? YES!
Eric
Anyways, today's lecture was on elasticity. I can summarize ninety minutes of lecture (beginning at 9:30am ... which is quite early on my schedule) and a notebook of equations for you by saying that all solids essentially obey Hooke's law for small deformations. If we deform a solid slightly, this will lead to a linear restoring force, which is equivalent to that derived from simple harmonic oscillation, aka a spring!
So basically, at a very fundamental and slightly perturbed level, everything acts like a spring.
Thus, all solids have some sort of elasticity! Coming back to Hooke's law, we can generalize it by using stress, strain, and something called Young's modulus. Young's modulus is like a spring constant, but it depends only on the material and NOT the size or shape.
So the reason why I thought I'd bring this up is because the professor discussed the Young's modulus some examples of various biological and technological materials.
Teeth (dentine) has a Young's modulus of 1.5 x 10^10 Pascals.
That probably means nothing to you.
So for reference, bone has a slightly higher Young's modulus of 1.7 x 10^10 Pascals, and steel has a Young's modulus of 2 x 10^11 Pascals.
Collagen (tendon) has a Young's modulus of 2 x 10^9 Pascals, and Elastin (skin) has a Young's modulus of 4 x 10^5 Pascals.
Take home message: if we were to make a spring composed of your (or my) teeth, it would be more springy than a spring made of your hip bone or your SUV, but less springy than one made of your skin.
Intuitive? Somewhat!
Biological? YES!
Eric
Monday, September 20, 2010
Election results!
So the results are in ...
I'm now Treasurer of the Harvard Pre-Dental Society!
And YES the Pre-Dental Society is in fact officially reinstated after a relatively long hiatus (a couple of years).
See my previous post about Harvard's Pre-Dental Society!
I'll continue to blog about the events we will host and the services we will provide to the university as well as to Cambridge community - stay tuned :)
Eric
I'm now Treasurer of the Harvard Pre-Dental Society!
And YES the Pre-Dental Society is in fact officially reinstated after a relatively long hiatus (a couple of years).
See my previous post about Harvard's Pre-Dental Society!
I'll continue to blog about the events we will host and the services we will provide to the university as well as to Cambridge community - stay tuned :)
Eric
Saturday, September 11, 2010
The Harvard Pre-Dental Society - reinstated!
On Saturday, September the 11th, 2010, the Harvard community experienced a small-scale renaissance (VERY small-scale) - the reinstatement of the Harvard Pre-Dental Society!
That's right folks - earlier today a group of determined and enthusiastic individuals sharing the same career plans assembled themselves and discussed the plans, goals, and future of one of Harvard's three pre-professional student organizations. In this gathering birthed a number of ideas for the year including a dental research symposium and community outreach through flossing/brushing education for grade-school students in Boston.
Although this group is relatively modest in size, I DO see a ton of potential and momentum in us members alone, not to mention the additional faculty support. Here's to an exciting year!
PS - There will be elections for board positions at some point next week, and I'm definitely interested in running for a position to play an immediate and active role in the pre-dental society's revival and education/research initiatives. Board member or not, I'll be sure to keep posting about our group's accomplishments and ideas!
Eric
That's right folks - earlier today a group of determined and enthusiastic individuals sharing the same career plans assembled themselves and discussed the plans, goals, and future of one of Harvard's three pre-professional student organizations. In this gathering birthed a number of ideas for the year including a dental research symposium and community outreach through flossing/brushing education for grade-school students in Boston.
Although this group is relatively modest in size, I DO see a ton of potential and momentum in us members alone, not to mention the additional faculty support. Here's to an exciting year!
PS - There will be elections for board positions at some point next week, and I'm definitely interested in running for a position to play an immediate and active role in the pre-dental society's revival and education/research initiatives. Board member or not, I'll be sure to keep posting about our group's accomplishments and ideas!
Eric
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