January 04, 2019 Friday
Bedtime Story
Patch-Clamp
Erwin Neher (Germany) and Bert Sakmann
(Germany) were awarded the 1991 Nobel Price for Physiology or Medicine for
developing the patch-clamp technique.
Patch-clamp technique is a highly refined voltage
clamp that is capable of recording currents across a single ion channel
molecule!
It essentially works using a micropipette
with an electrolyte solution that allows current to flow through it.
This forms the recording electrode that is
attached to a magnifier.
The circuit is completed with a second
electrode that is immersed in the bath electrode that forms the reference
ground electrode.
This solution may mimic the physiological
extracellular solution or the cytoplasm depending on the nature of the
experiment.
This whole set-up is placed on an
anti-vibration table along with a microscope that allows an accurate placement
of the recording electrode within a cell.
I am astounded at the extent of desire of
these few rare apes to probe the nature with such meticulousness and finesse.
Yet they have all been forgotten and what
is most popular among apes is mumbo jumbo that has a great “spiritual appeal”
simply because reductionism is too unacceptable for our neuronal brains.
Absence of this membrane potential is
incompatible with life and a paper published in the journal Nature in 2001by
Indian authors titled “Resting membrane potential as a marker of apoptosis”
underlines this fact.
Hence it must never be forgotten that the
concept of biological organization is fundamental to teaching of medicine.
All the alternative forms of medicine break
away from this cardinal rule and end up in convoluted and distorted theories
that have no place in modern science.
It is indeed a strange irony of history
that the bark of the plant that gives us one of the most potent Western or
allopathic medicines (as it is called in India in contrast to homeopathy) was
also the source of the origin of the Homeopathy that is supposed to be very
opposite of the Western medicine.
The surprising thing was that his own
personal claim of getting malaria like symptoms on consuming extract of
Cinchona bark came after taking large dose of the same rather than in its
homeopathic dose.
Such personal unverifiable anecdotal
evidence have no place in rue science and medicine.
When tested by others for replication of
such effects as claimed by Hahnemann, such as the American polymath Oliver
Wendell Holmes Senior, who was a doctor of medicine having graduated from
Harvard Medical School, no such affect was found that simulated the symptoms of
malaria.
Holmes Senior served as a faculty at the
Geisel School of Medicine of Dartmouth College in New Hampshire from 1838 to
1840.
Stay tuned to the voice of an
average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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