Note to self: Do not attempt corneal transplants before first cup of coffee. As usual, I learned this the hard way. I've been practicing tissue grafts this week, and was about to restore sight to Edison, the blind old veteran of my lab rat colony. But I was a little groggy this morning and accidentally mixed the wrong solution into the corneal graft bed. After lunch I heard lots of zapping and squealing from the rat cage room.
Well, experience has taught me: This means trouble. It seems Edison can now shoot beams of high-energy plasma from his eyes at will. Naturally, he's terrorizing the younger rats and scaring the hell out of my faithful guard dog, Copernicus. Ever try to sedate a lab rat with raygun eyes? It's very stressful, let's just say that. Bad Edison! Bad!
Anyway, moving along … reader Hannah J. writes:
"Hey, Doc! My boyfriend has bet me a six-pack that the entire surface area of the human lungs is larger than the total surface area of the skin. He is, of course, insane -- but we need you to settle the matter. What's the scoop?"
Hannah, I hate to tell you this, but you're about to become a little poorer and your boyfriend is about to drink beer. The brutal truth is that the total surface area of the lungs -- if you count all the air sacs therein -- is actually about 50 times greater than the total surface area of the skin. That ratio suffers a bit in the case of, say, Roger Ebert, but generally holds true.
The left and right bronchial tubes, see, branch out into thousands of bronchioles, which in turn branch into alveolar ducts, which in turn end in hundreds of millions of air sacs. Total surface area: around 93 square meters. Think of it like this. A stone and a sponge of the same dimensions will have radically different surface areas, because of all the tiny holes and tunnels and niches within a sponge. It is thus with the lungs.
Not that you're using all that space. A person not engaged in vigorous physical activity uses only about one-twentieth of the total available gaseous-exchange surface of the lung. More fun facts:
-In a typical day, you exhale nearly a quart of water, as vapor, via the lungs.
-The lungs can store glycogen (animal starch) and metabolize it; thus aiding the liver in the regulation of carbohydrates.
-Here's one for the smokers: Lung tissue, once destroyed, scars over and blocks underlying tissue from respiration duties, too.
-Healthy lungs will float in water; diseased lungs will sink.
-Finally, if it makes you feel any better, you can tell your smug, self-satisfied, beer-drinking lug of a boyfriend that the lungs also excrete alcohol from the bloodstream.
INSECT BILE RESEARCH OF THE WEEK AWARD
Speaking of beverages, scientists at the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research near Tokyo are hyping the latest human performance-boosting substance: the stomach juice of giant killer hornets. Researchers claim the juice helps the three-inch long hornets fly incredible distances in search of food, and that it has similar effects on human endurance by reducing muscle fatigue and improving the body's efficiency. You may have heard of this already. Japanese marathon runner Naoko Takahashi drank the hornet juice before and during the woman's marathon in Sydney. She won the gold.
BITE SIZE TRIVIA
What is an eyewall? (A) a part of the retina (B) a part of a hurricane (C) a fish (D) an optical measuring term
Answer to last week's question: (B) The insect order Lepidoptera includes butterflies
and moths.
PLANETS, STARS AND THE MANLY Y CHROMOSOME
So I was up on the Lab HQ Observation Deck the other night, charting some debris clusters near the Cygnus Loop, when my telescope lens exploded with light. "Supernova!" I thought, and reached for my notepad. Then several dozen fireworks detonated around the observation deck, and I realized the situation -- the neighborhood kids were attacking with bottle rockets. (They call me "Crazy Doc" around here and like to pull pranks.) The adorable little rascals. Of course, they don't know about my ongoing experiments with the neighborhood water supply. Wait'll they hit puberty. Then we'll see who's laughing.
Anyway, speaking of telescopes, astronomers at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena recently reported discovering 18 planet-sized objects floating independently in space some 1,200 light-years from Earth. It's causing quite a stir, actually. The objects are too small and too cold to be stars. Yet they don't meet the classic definition of a planet, either, because they are free-floating instead of being locked into orbit around an existing star.
In a report by the Associated Press (with the unfortunate title "Scientists Find Planet-Sized Balls"), CIT researcher Maria Rosa Zapatero Osorio says the newfound objects present an intriguing dilemma for astronomers. "Everybody agrees with our mass determination of these objects, but what we should call them is not decided yet," said Osorio. "There is a nomenclature problem."
The trouble is that astronomers have hard-and-fast guidelines for categorizing heavenly bodies. The smallest type of star, for example, is the brown dwarf, an object between 15 and 75 times the mass of the planet Jupiter. The newfound objects are too small to qualify. In addition, spectrographic readings indicate the objects have the chemistry and temperature of young giant planets, and not that of brown dwarfs.
Now, dozens of planets outside the solar system have been detected by astronomers, but all are in orbit of distant stars. The very existence of nomadic, free-floating planets doesn't mesh with our concept of how bodies form in space.
As such, we're dealing here with intergalactic outlaws; rogue planets drifting through space and beholden to no star. To me, this suggests and obvious naming convention: famous cowboys. You guys at CIT want a preliminary list? Just drop me a line. My Sergio Leone video catalogue is vast.
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MANLY RESEARCH OF THE WEEK AWARD
Good news, fellas. Scientists working on the Human Genome Project, which is aiming to map the chemical building blocks of human chromosomes, hope to have worked out the DNA sequence of the manly Y chromosome by this winter. The Y chromosome, present in males but not females, suffers from something of a slacker reputation in biology. It's only a third the size of the X chromosome, and contains but a fraction of the genes. Geneticists acknowledge the Y chromosome determines male sexual development, but have historically credited it with little else. With luck, the new gene-mapping project will give old Y some credit. For updates, bookmark the Human Genome Project Information page at:
http://www.ornl.gov/hgmis/
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BITE SIZED TRIVIA
Who was recently voted most influential individual of the millennium by the Arts and Entertainment network? (A) Galileo (B) Johannes Gutenberg (C) Albert Einstein (D) Isaac Newton
Answer to last week's question: (B) The eyewall is the ring of storm clouds
and turbulence around the eye of a hurricane, and is often the most violent
part of the storm.
