Could this be the soul?
Probably not? Why would you think that?
Researchers discover new salivary glands in the human head
191–200 of 215 posts
Re: Researchers discover new salivary glands in the human head
#192It amazes me that we are still discovering new features in our anatomy. I studied biological sciences in undergrad, and studying anatomy was like studying history because almost all of it was discovered by the 1950's.
Re: Researchers discover new salivary glands in the human head
#193Could this be the soul?
Probably not? Why would you think that?
It was probably a joke. You know we're looking for the soul, right? Some say it's a part of the body. If this was the soul this would have made a lot of philosophers unhappy. Unfortunately it's just saliva. Maybe next time.
Re: Researchers discover new salivary glands in the human head
#194I’m a little surprised they went to a press release but didn’t say they identified a structure in a cadaver. So, at the moment, this is sort of like a geological feature that’s only ever been seen using a satellite.
Like Landsat island: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landsat_Island
Re: Researchers discover new salivary glands in the human head
#195Earlier 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.
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
It's about expectations. We obviously will never know everything about anything. Some things seem easier to discover than others. This seems like something easy to discover that has long since gone undiscovered.
Re: Researchers discover new salivary glands in the human head
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. Though, to be fair, I have met my share of arrogant medical practitioners.
I'm sure, but in the case of medical practitioners, that arrogance may be borne by confidence rather than ignorance. You certainly need to be confident in your abilities if you're going to take the responsibility of someone's health in your hands.
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Re: Researchers discover new salivary glands in the human head
#197I 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…
From Wikipedia: "The total fluid volume of the interstitium during health is about 20% of body weight". Wow. How could we possibly have missed this? Medical researchers must tend non-quantitative.
Putting aside your insult to medical researchers, it's not that they couldn't account for 20% of body weight. They knew there was fluid around cells, but the tissue sampling method would not preserve it so they couldn't inspect it. With the new sampling method they could see the structure, and realized these are more like connected spaces filled with fluid rather than small individual pockets.
>Although researchers already knew that there is fluid between individual cells, the idea of a larger, connected interstitium — in which there are fluid-filled spaces within tissues — had been described only vaguely in the literature, Theise said. The new study, he said, expands the concept of the interstitium by showing these structured, fluid-filled spaces within tissues, and is the first to define the interstitium as an organ in and of itself.
Re: Researchers discover new salivary glands in the human head
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
They examined 100 patients and two brains and it appeared in all of them. There are no instances of a new organ appearing in a local human population.
Some vestigial structures are missing on some people. For example the little muscles at the point of the ears (Darwin's tubercle). It has been documented to be present in about 10.5% of the Spanish adult population, 40% of Indian adults, and 58% of Swedish school children.
I don't believe Darwin's tubercle is a muscle - it appears to be just variation in appearence (like connected ear lobes): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin%27s_tubercle
However, TIL about the Palmaris longus muscle which is absent in around 14% of people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmaris_longus_muscle
Re: Researchers discover new salivary glands in the human head
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are a number of "bucket" diagnoses that you can get thrown into once other things are ruled out, because there simply is no way to test to confirm that is what they are. Most mental illnesses, but also physical ones like fibromyalgia and psoriatic arthritis have no definitive test.
The concerning factor for me re: alcoholic diagnosis is that there is typically a baseline for minimum consumption that has been tested and "proven". And that even said baseline isn't necessarily adhered to, and that bucket is used in preference over more accurate, but less resolute, buckets (like idiopathy).
I've been reasonably critical of medicos and medical science in posts to this article, but in all fairness I think this sort of thing happens in almost all professions.
Everything from time constraints to lack of knowledge to incompetence and or a combination of these is often found in most walks of life.
With medicine, we've a terribly complicated field, and like any profession, there is a range of competencies. I recall decades ago knowing a state director of health (the state's top doctor) and he said to me 'if you ever get really sick come to me and I'll put you in contact with the best advice available, as there are too many in this profession that I wouldn't give you a quarter for'.
As I said, this is a problem with all professions, finding the best advice available, can, at times, be a daunting experience.
Re: Researchers discover new salivary glands in the human head
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> Feedback circuits are vital to biological systems and prove my point.
Yes they are. Consciousness is a result of an electric feedback loop, and aging is apparently a result of a chemical feedback loop but that wasn't proven completely yet (that's the feedback loop I'd very much like disrupted).
But again, that's not what I'm talking about. You're missing my point entirely. I'm talking about connections that aren't obvious so no one looks for them in the first place and performs no experiments to reveal them. Example: sleep-deprived fruit flies accumulate active oxygen in their gut[1] and eventually die because of it. Is this an obvious connection to look for? Hell no. And there are many more examples of such unexpected and perplexing connections in the inner workings of living things. Nature doesn't always choose the most optimal implementations either. Life is a fascinatingly complex Rube Goldberg machine.