Researchers discover new salivary glands in the human head • Hacker News Board

Re: Researchers discover new salivary glands in the human head

#161

Post by techsin101 » Wed, Oct 21, 2020, 5:55 PM UTC

NiceWayToDoIT wrote: post #45

I find this weirdly amazing, as to this day I was reading some medical news and documentaries where it was said that entire human bodies were sliced by millimetre slices. So, somehow I always imagined that each part of body and tissue is 100% known and that only left is to find out what are inner workings on the nano-meter scale, deep molecular levels or genetic level. But in 2018 there was a similar news about Inter…

lymphatic system connected to brain

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/06/150601122445.h...

Re: Researchers discover new salivary glands in the human head

#162

Post by JabavuAdams » Wed, Oct 21, 2020, 5:55 PM UTC

52-6F-62 wrote: post #77

rbanffy wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That we still find new structures within our own bodies should be deeply troubling to anyone in the medical sciences. I for one would be deeply ashamed if I suddenly found that bytes had a ninth bit we never suspected was there in the first place.

Yeah... and hearing some of those being related to the gut. I’ve been diagnosed with a condition this year without real, solid evidence for cause. Seeing some of the brightest doctors try and write off health matters to alcoholism in non-alcoholics was concerning. After even cursory, high-level reading of what those terms mean elf me to believe it’s the favoured diagnosis when they’re unsure of the diagnosis and hesi…

That sucks. The thing to understand is that the vast majority of doctors don't have the mindset of scientists or even engineers. They're more like plumbers who have to triage/fix 400 houses a day.

Re: Researchers discover new salivary glands in the human head

#163

Post by achillesheels » Wed, Oct 21, 2020, 6:08 PM UTC

oblio wrote: post #157

achillesheels wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly speaking, how could you judge? I am coming from a biomedical engineering advanced education from a top 10 institution, mind you. And I can tell you the lack of mathematical completeness in medicine is very alarming. It is too pharmacologically driven without a fundamental appreciation of the electrical sciences being applied, well, anywhere in their disciplines.

Well, almost every field that's "lacking mathematical completeness" is generally more complex than those that are not lacking it. Real life is extremely fuzzy and ill-defined. Almost everything mathematical is a model and models are almost by definition, simpler than the thing they model. I'd be glad to be proven wrong within my lifetime and have someone come up with the Fundamental Laws of History, for example, full…

I would claim that the mathematical models of the electrical engineering sciences which permit frequency domain convolutions empirically demonstrate “real life” is fuzzy because our sensible perceptions are bandlimited, and not because of Nature herself. We arrive at approximations because things are always in motion!

And I’m in the process of writing a scientific work of human history in an evolutionary biological paradigm, justified by the linear time-invariant mechanics of dipole oscillations which are elemental to all natural phenomena.

Re: Researchers discover new salivary glands in the human head

#164

Post by achillesheels » Wed, Oct 21, 2020, 6:15 PM UTC

grishka wrote: post #156

achillesheels wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, you’d be surprised how plausible it is to diagram the human electrophysiology using electromechanical circuit analogs. Everything in the body signals electrically, and biological matter being piezoelectric has been known (probably not popularly) since the late 60’s. Indeed, I am finishing up my dissertation applying electrical engineering theory to model cellular evolutionary biology predicated on digital s…

It's not that. Yes it's all electrical and chemical and electrochemical and so on. The problem is not with finding a good visual/logical representation. You usually don't see connections between different things when you aren't actively looking for them, or when you haven't seen/thought those things to be related in the past. Since CPUs were designed by humans, your logical reasoning would usually work well when reve…

As a matter of fact, Nature does have logic. It’s motion is principally geometrical and affords us the ability to recursively structure electrical signals harmonically, eg feedback amplification.

Feedback circuits are vital to biological systems and prove my point.

Re: Researchers discover new salivary glands in the human head

#165

Post by LocalH » Wed, Oct 21, 2020, 6:26 PM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #68

NiceWayToDoIT wrote: post #45

I find this weirdly amazing, as to this day I was reading some medical news and documentaries where it was said that entire human bodies were sliced by millimetre slices. So, somehow I always imagined that each part of body and tissue is 100% known and that only left is to find out what are inner workings on the nano-meter scale, deep molecular levels or genetic level. But in 2018 there was a similar news about Inter…

That we still find new structures within our own bodies should be deeply troubling to anyone in the medical sciences. I for one would be deeply ashamed if I suddenly found that bytes had a ninth bit we never suspected was there in the first place.

Why would it be troubling that there is more to learn? There is always more to learn. If you were under the misconception that we knew everything about the human body, then I’m glad you’re now enlightened

Re: Researchers discover new salivary glands in the human head

#166

Post by teawrecks » Wed, Oct 21, 2020, 6:29 PM UTC

NiceWayToDoIT wrote: post #45

I find this weirdly amazing, as to this day I was reading some medical news and documentaries where it was said that entire human bodies were sliced by millimetre slices. So, somehow I always imagined that each part of body and tissue is 100% known and that only left is to find out what are inner workings on the nano-meter scale, deep molecular levels or genetic level. But in 2018 there was a similar news about Inter…

Well I guess you could say the Neuralinks that Musk implanted in everyone are hidden in plain sight. We're just programmed to not notice them ;)

Re: Researchers discover new salivary glands in the human head

#167

Post by dynamite-ready » Wed, Oct 21, 2020, 6:32 PM UTC

iguy wrote: post #71

majewsky wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> drugs developed with a specific purpose, but then afterwards found to have a completely different effect to what was originally intended I don't find that surprising. You have to do the early phases of drug development in model systems like cell cultures for practical reasons: It makes evidence obtained more reproducible and has less ethical concerns than experimenting on humans immediately. It's like how software…

What seems weird about this is that the process for deciding that an approved drug is useful for a certain condition (not the one it was intended for) is really informal, it seems to rely on common knowledge circulating in the guild. For the initial approval, we have this very formal process, the FDA wants this kind of data from trials of this size to show this statistical level, etc. All very scientific-looking. But…

You can, almost randomly, take any well known, synthetic drug, and trace a wildly eclectic history of use.

If anyone is interested, the history of anabolic steroids is almost comical... https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/ster...

And the period of time over which the change took place, is actually quite remarkable.

Re: Researchers discover new salivary glands in the human head

#168

Post by edmundsauto » Wed, Oct 21, 2020, 6:37 PM UTC

DoreenMichele wrote: post #64

dynamite-ready wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read a little about the complexity of the gut and it's nervous system connections, but was just thinking of a rough comparison of the two sites. I mean, if you include the anatomy of brain, the head is conclusively more complicated. But if you consider the brain, and perhaps the nervous network to be a single, extremely complex part, then I suppose you'd still have to believe the head is the more complicated of…

I think a hard question to answer is "Where does the gut end and the contents of the gut begin?" Stomach acid is contents of the gut but also part of the digestive tract. An even more thorny issue: the microbiome, which is a hot topic in research. And that's a complication the head lacks.

Going up a meta-level, for different types of research/analysis, its also important to ask "when is it important to look at gut/contents of gut as separate" and "when should we use a systems understanding".

My personal opinion is that modern medicine doesn't really like to think about the systems, because it's easier to look at something in isolation. Sometimes this is helpful - simply the problem space and you can simplify the solution - but much of the time it is inappropriate.

Re: Researchers discover new salivary glands in the human head

#169

Post by oblio » Wed, Oct 21, 2020, 6:55 PM UTC

achillesheels wrote: post #163

oblio wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, almost every field that's "lacking mathematical completeness" is generally more complex than those that are not lacking it. Real life is extremely fuzzy and ill-defined. Almost everything mathematical is a model and models are almost by definition, simpler than the thing they model. I'd be glad to be proven wrong within my lifetime and have someone come up with the Fundamental Laws of History, for example, full…

I would claim that the mathematical models of the electrical engineering sciences which permit frequency domain convolutions empirically demonstrate “real life” is fuzzy because our sensible perceptions are bandlimited, and not because of Nature herself. We arrive at approximations because things are always in motion! And I’m in the process of writing a scientific work of human history in an evolutionary biological p…

Even if Nature were perfectly defined, which it might well be, I'd venture to say, without any proof, of course, that its mathematical definition could still be beyond our current or even future power of comprehension.

Re: Researchers discover new salivary glands in the human head

#170

Post by rbanffy » Wed, Oct 21, 2020, 7:01 PM UTC

bgribble wrote: post #144

rbanffy wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That we still find new structures within our own bodies should be deeply troubling to anyone in the medical sciences. I for one would be deeply ashamed if I suddenly found that bytes had a ninth bit we never suspected was there in the first place.

Funny you pick that as an example! I do seem to recall a very large cohort of programmers (LOCALE=en_us) finding themselves dumped through a rabbithole of wonder which turned the black-and-white scenery of the Land of ASCII to the kaliedoscopic technicolor of Unicode. We did, in fact, discover that there were extra bits on those characters that we had been pretending weren't there all along :)

And don't get me started about the concept of first and last names outside the US...