Random Analogies

What: "There's Myriam eating the yellow soup. Sometimes eating an ancient soup is like saying prayers." A poem about love and soup.

Writer: Derek Walcott

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Date: Aug 11 2011 11:45 AM

What:

"Basically, the scientists have discovered a protein (EAT-2) that makes a very important part of your immune system lazy. Imagine the NK/T-cell is like a cop, the EAT-2 protein is a doughnut, and herpes is a career criminal on the loose. A cop who eats too many doughnuts isn't going to be very good at chasing down a sneaky criminal... But if you can keep the cop from eating the doughnuts -- by destroying the Krispy Kreme factory or just hijacking the doughnut truck -- the cop is a lot more likely to be in the kind of shape that will allow him to track down and arrest the criminal."

Writer: Grr. Argh

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Date: Jan 10 2014 6:08 PM

What:

The viral coat as chocolate? The linked article has a list of why the flu is more common in the winter months. One idea discussed in the article is the characteristics of the viral coat. As the temperature drops the coat get harder, as the temperature increases the coat become gooey and soft, much like chocolate does when the temperature changes.

Writer: Not Stated

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Date: Feb 27 2014 7:38 PM

What: " The frog heart differs from the mammalian heart anatomically in that they are three chambers rather than four chambers. As mentioned above, the pacemaker in the amphibian heart is in the sinus venosus, a thin-walled sac that receives blood from the anterior and posterior veins and empties blood into the right atrium. Similarly, the left atrium receives oxygenated blood from the pulmonary veins returning from the lungs. The single ventricle receives blood from both atria and pumps blood out through the large artery called the truncus arteriosus (Figure 1). In contrast, the mammalian ventricle has separate left and right chambers, which completely prevent mixing of the venous and arterial blood. Obviously, the frog heart will have a small amount of mixing of oxygenated and deoxygenated blood. However, the mixing is not very thorough. This stems from the fact that the pressure, and thus turbulent flow, in the frog circulation is low. Also, the ventricle is like a sponge with spaces called trabeculae that separate arterial and venous blood. Finally, the blood leaving the heart through the conus arteriosus contains a ridge of material called a spiral valve, which allows for the shunting of the appropriate blood volumes to the pulmonary circuit and the systemic circuit."

Writer: Not Stated

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Date: Mar 4 2014 12:50 PM