Palm surgery to change your future

People in Japan are having surgery on their hands to change their future. The Japanese are big believers in palm reading. They spend a lot of money on visiting palm readers. A cheaper palm reading costs around $70. Many people are unhappy with the lines on their palms. They think some of the lines mean a part of their future will be bad. They are having an operation to change the length and shape of the lines because they hope this will give them a brighter future. The operation takes just 15 minutes and costs about $1,000. The doctor uses an electric scalpel to burn a line on the palm of the hand. It leaves a scar that takes a month to heal. The line looks like a money-luck line, happiness line or love line.

There are many doctors who say changing the lines on your palm does not work. They say it cannot change your future because it isn't natural. Subodh Gupta, a palm reader from London, agrees. He said: "I read about this surgery and I was very surprised. Even by having surgery, the lines cannot be changed." He added: "If you want to improve your fortune, take physical actions. So if you want greater health, do some exercise." However, people who have had the surgery say it has changed their life. A Tokyo surgeon said he gave a female patient a wedding line and she got married soon after. He said two other patients won the lottery after he made their fortune line longer.

Do you believe in palm reading? If you do, would you like to 'improve your future?'

Surgery

Surgery (from the Greek and Latin words meaning "hand work") is a medical specialty that uses operative manual and instrumental techniques on a patient to investigate and/or treat a pathological condition such as disease or injury, to help improve bodily function or appearance, or sometimes for some other reason.

An act of performing surgery may be called a surgical procedure, operation, or simply surgery. In this context, the verb operating means performing surgery. The adjective surgical means pertaining to surgery; e.g. surgical instruments or surgical nurse.

The patient or subject on which the surgery is performed can be a person or an animal. A surgeon is a person who performs operations on patients.

Persons described as surgeons are commonly medical practitioners, but the term is also applied to podiatrists, dentists and veterinarians.

Surgery can last from minutes to hours, but is typically not an ongoing or periodic type of treatment. The term surgery can also refer to the place where surgery is performed, or simply the office of a physician, dentist, or veterinarian.

Definitions of surgery

Surgery is a medical technology consisting of a physical intervention on tissues. As a general rule, a procedure is considered surgical when it involves cutting of a patient's tissues or closure of a previously sustained wound.

Other procedures that do not necessarily fall under this rubric, such as angioplasty or endoscopy, may be considered surgery if they involve "common" surgical procedure or settings, such as use of a sterile environment, anesthesia, antiseptic conditions, typical surgical instruments, and suturing or stapling.

All forms of surgery are considered invasive procedures; so-called "noninvasive surgery" usually refers to an excision that does not penetrate the structure being excised (e.g. laser ablation of the cornea) or to a radiosurgical procedure (e.g. irradiation of a tumor).

10,000 Germ Species In/On Our Body

Did you know your body is teeming with an incredible variety of bacterial wildlife? 

A new study from the Washington University School of Medicine in the USA reports there to be around 10,000 different species of germs living on or in our body. Researcher Dr George Weinstock said: "Our bodies are part of a microbial world." He claims there is hardly a space or area that is not home to some form of bacteria – mostly good ones. However, the report says we all accommodate low levels of harmful microbes that can cause disease or infections. Scientists say these bugs generally do no harm and live together with their friendlier counterparts who help protect our body and keep us in good health.

Dr Weinstock said our bodies were smaller versions of another world: "You can think of our ecosystems like you do rainforests and oceans - very different environments with communities of organisms that possess incredible, rich diversity." He believes that studying the germs within us offer many clues to our health and why we get ill. "It's not possible to understand human health and disease without exploring the massive community of microorganisms we carry around with us," he said. He added: "Knowing which microbes live in various ecological niches in healthy people allows us to better investigate what goes awry in diseases." Weinstock concludes that: "The future of microbiome research is very exciting."

Look at the picture below and do you agree with his words now?

Gregor Mendel

“My scientific studies have afforded me great gratification; and I am convinced that it will not be long before the whole world acknowledges the results of my work.”

Gregor Mendel

Gregor Mendel was an Austrian monk who discovered the basic principles of heredity through experiments in his garden. Mendel's observations became the foundation of modern genetics and the study of heredity, and he is widely considered a pioneer in the field of genetics.

Read more: www.biography.com

How Mendel's pea plants helped us understand genetics

 Each father and mother pass down traits to their children, who inherit combinations of their dominant or recessive alleles. But how do we know so much about genetics today? Hortensia Jiménez Díaz explains how studying pea plants revealed why you may have blue eyes. 

Seed is the begining of life

Most naturalists believe that immeasurable ages ago life on our earth existed  only in the primary form of a sort of seed or germ. This beginning of life on our planet was what biologists call protoplasm: basic life-substance, containing potentialities of growth and development, but at first so little organized  as to contain only a hint of what  we mean now when we speak  of living creatures in their  present variety.

Over long ages, under  countries influences and  agencies which can only  partly  understand, the life-stuff developed and grew  in complexity, becoming organized  in variously shaped structures of pattern. Multiplying increasing, unfolding, it “opened up” as a plant-seed sprout, thrusts up its stem, puts forth branches and leaves, until it achieves a form that in the seed was only hidden promise.

Naturalists sometimes speak of the “tree of life”. This is one way of saying that it is all one united growth. Under all the differences of life forms there is unity, a vital relation among them, for they go back together to a common source and an hour when the seed of life began growing, long ago.

All animal life  in our world is a single  great organization: animation. This whole  living entity – now vast, multiformed, comprising thousands of interrelated species functioning with  an intricacy of parts  united  into a  whole, but once  only  protoplasm – in a sense  had a birth. It grew  through seasons  of increase, adaptation, trial-experience, the drawing out  of capacities and potential. When human eyes and mind first  looked upon  animation, man found it richly differentiated, complex, a teeming integration of inter-working parts. Once it was only  foreshadowing protoplasm, only  a seed of all this.

Joseph Lister (1827-1912)

Joseph Lister is the surgeon who introduced new principles of cleanliness which transformed surgical practice in the late 1800s. We take it for granted that a surgeon will guard a patient's safety by using aseptic methods. But this was not always the case, and until Lister introduced sterile surgery, a patient could undergo a procedure successfully only to die from a postoperative infection known as ‘ward fever’.

Born in Essex, Lister was interested in surgery from an early stage - he was present at the first surgical procedure carried out under anaesthetic in 1846. Lister continued his studies in London and passed his examinations, becoming a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1852. He was recommended to visit Professor of Clinical Surgery James Syme (1799-1870) in Edinburgh and became his dresser, then house surgeon and then his son-in-law.

Lister moved to Glasgow in 1860 and became a Professor of Surgery. He read Pasteur'swork on micro-organisms and decided to experiment with using one of Pasteur's proposed techniques, that of exposing the wound to chemicals. He chose dressings soaked with carbolic acid (phenol) to cover the wound and the rate of infection was vastly reduced. Lister then experimented with hand-washing, sterilising instruments and spraying carbolic in the theatre while operating, in order to limit infection. His lowered infection rate was very good and Listerian principles were adopted throughout many countries by a number of surgeons. Lister is now known as the ‘father of antiseptic surgery’.

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek – known as the father of microbiology

1632–1723

Leeuwenhoek is well known for his contributions to microscopy, and how he applied this to the field of biology. He revolutionised a technique for creating powerful lenses, which some speculate were able to magnify up to 500 times. Leeuwenhoek used the microscopes to find out more about the living world – his discoveries include bacteria, the vacuole of the cell, and the banded pattern of muscle fibres.

The wacky history of cell theory

Scientific discovery isn't as simple as one good experiment. The weird and wonderful history of cell theory illuminates the twists and turns that came together to build the foundations of biology.
Here ther is a story by Lauren Royal-Woods.

View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/the-wacky-h...

White Blood cells

White blood cells (WBCs), or leukocytes, are a part of the immune system and help our bodies fight infection. They circulate in the blood so that they can be transported to an area where an infection has developed. In a normal adult body there are 4,000 to 10,000 (average 7,000) WBCs per microliter of blood. When the number of WBCs in your blood increases, this is a sign of an infection somewhere in your body.

Here are the six main types of WBCs and the average percentage of each type in the blood:

• Neutrophils - 58 percent
• Eosinophils - 2 percent
• Basophils - 1 percent
• Bands - 3 percent
• Monocytes - 4 percent
• Lymphocytes - 4 percent

Most WBCs (neutrophils, eosinophils, basophils and monocytes) are formed in the bone marrow.

Cell theory.Introduction

This is the Video which tells the story of discovery of cell as a functional and structural unit of organism. The characters in the video are acting as Robert Hook, and other scientists....

Bernard Bolzano: Philosophy of Mathematical Knowledge

Bernard Placidus Johann Nepomuk Bolzano was born on 5 October 1781 in Prague. He was the son of an Italian art merchant and of a German-speaking Czech mother. His early schooling was unexceptional: private tutors and education at the lyceum. In the second half of the 1790s, he studied philosophy and mathematics at the Charles-Ferdinand University. He began his theology studies in the Fall of 1800 and simultaneously wrote his first mathematical treatise. When he completed his studies in 1804, two university positions were open in Prague, one in mathematics, the other one in the “Sciences of the Catholic Religion.” 

In Bernard Bolzano’s theory of mathematical knowledge, properties such as analyticity and logical consequence are defined on the basis of a substitutional procedure that comes with a conception of logical form that prefigured contemporary treatments such as those of Quine and Tarski. Three results are particularly interesting: the elaboration of a calculus of probability, the definition of (narrow and broad) analyticity, and the definition of what it is for a set of propositions to stand in a relation of deducibility (Ableitbarkeit) with another. 

The main problem with assessing Bolzano's notions of analyticity and deducibility is that, although they offer a genuinely original treatment of certain kinds of semantic regularities, contrary to what one might expect they do not deliver an account of either epistemic or modal necessity. This failure suggests that Bolzano does not have a workable account of either deductive knowledge or demonstration. Yet, Bolzano’s views on deductive knowledge rest on a theory of grounding (Abfolge) and justification whose role in his theory is to provide the basis for a theory of mathematical demonstration and explanation whose historical interest is undeniable. 

The importance of Bolzano’s contribution to semantics can hardly be overestimated. The same holds for his contribution to the theoretical basis of mathematical practice. Far from ignoring epistemic and pragmatic constraint, Bolzano discusses them in detail, thus providing a comprehensive basis for a theory of mathematical knowledge that was aimed at supporting work in the discipline. As a mathematician, Bolzano was attuned to philosophical concerns that escaped the attention of most of his contemporaries and many of his successors. His theory is historically and philosophically interesting, and it deserves to be investigated further.

17TH CENTURY MATHEMATICS. FERMAT

Another Frenchman of the 17th Century, Pierre de Fermat, effectively invented modern number theory virtually single-handedly, despite being a small-town amateur mathematician. Stimulated and inspired by the “Arithmetica” of the Hellenistic mathematician Diophantus, he went on to discover several new patterns in numbers which had defeated mathematicians for centuries, and throughout his life he devised a wide range of conjectures and theorems. He is also given credit for early developments that led to modern calculus, and for early progress in probability theory.

Although he showed an early interest in mathematics, he went on study law and received the title of councillor at the High Court of Judicature in Toulouse in 1631, which he held for the rest of his life. He was fluent in Latin, Greek, Italian and Spanish, and was praised for his written verse in several languages, and eagerly sought for advice on the emendation of Greek texts.

Fermat's mathematical work was communicated mainly in letters to friends, often with little or no proof of his theorems. Although he himself claimed to have proved all his arithmetic theorems, few records of his proofs have survived, and many mathematicians have doubted some of his claims, especially given the difficulty of some of the problems and the limited mathematical tools available to Fermat.

One example of his many theorems is the Two Square Theorem, which shows that any prime number which, when divided by 4, leaves a remainder of 1 (i.e. can be written in the form 4n + 1), can always be re-written as the sum of two square numbers.

Fermat’s correspondence with his friend Pascal also helped mathematicians grasp a very important concept in basic probability which, although perhaps intuitive to us now, was revolutionary in 1654, namely the idea of equally probable outcomes and expected values.

To know what Fermat's Little Theorem is about, what numbers are watch a video below:

Grammar for speaking

Follow the link http://www.grammarforspeaking.com/

17TH CENTURY MATHEMATICS. DESCARTES

Descartes has been dubbed the "Father of Modern Philosophy", but he was also one of the key figures in the Scientific Revolution of the 17th Century, and is sometimes considered the first of the modern school of mathematics.

As a young man, he found employment for a time as a soldier (essentially as a mercenary in the pay of various forces, both Catholic and Protestant). But, after a series of dreams or visions, and after meeting the Dutch philosopher and scientist Isaac Beeckman, who sparked his interest in mathematics and the New Physics, he concluded that his real path in life was the pursuit of true wisdom and science.

Back in France, the young Descartes soon came to the conclusion that the key to philosophy, with all its uncertainties and ambiguity, was to build it on the indisputable facts of mathematics. To pursue his rather heretical ideas further, though, he moved from the restrictions of Catholic France to the more liberal environment of the Netherlands, where he spent most of his adult life, and where he worked on his dream of merging algebra and geometry.

In 1637, he published his ground-breaking philosophical and mathematical treatise The “Discourse on Method” is now considered a landmark in the history of mathematics. Following on from early movements towards the use of symbolic expressions in mathematics this work introduced what has become known as the standard algebraic notation, using lowercase a, b and c for known quantities and x, y and z for unknown quantities. It was perhaps the first book to look like a modern mathematics textbook, full of a's and b's, x2's, etc.

Descartes is perhaps best known today as a philosopher who espoused rationalism and dualism. His philosophy consisted of a method of doubting everything, then rebuilding knowledge from the ground, and he is particularly known for the often-quoted statement “Cogito ergo sum”(“I think, therefore I am”).

17TH CENTURY MATHEMATICS. LEIBNIZ

The German polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz occupies a grand place in the history of philosophy. Like many great thinkers before and after him, Leibniz was a child prodigy and a contributor in many different fields of endeavour.

But, between his work on philosophy and logic and his day job as a politician and representative of the royal house of Hanover, Leibniz still found time to work on mathematics. He was perhaps the first to explicitly employ the mathematical notion of a function to denote geometric concepts derived from a curve, and he developed a system of infinitesimal calculus, independently of his contemporary Sir Isaac Newton. He also revived the ancient method of solving equations using matrices, invented a practical calculating machine and pioneered the use of the binary system.

Unlike Newton, however, he was more than happy to publish his work, and so Europe first heard about calculus from Leibniz in 1684, and not from Newton (who published nothing on the subject until 1693). When the Royal Society was asked to adjudicate between the rival claims of the two men over the development of the theory of calculus, they gave credit for the first discovery to Newton, and credit for the first publication to Leibniz.

You can watch a video  Newton vs. Leibniz - The Controversy Over the Discovery of the Calculus to know some facts:

Leibniz is also often considered the most important logician between Aristotle in Ancient Greece and George Boole and Augustus De Morgan in the19th Century. Even though he actually published nothing on formal logic in his lifetime, he enunciated in his working drafts the principal properties of what we now call conjunction, disjunction, negation, identity, set inclusion and the empty set.

SHAPES

Geometry is the branch of mathematics that describes shapes.

Geometry can be divided into:

Plane Geometry is about flat shapes like lines, circles and triangles ... shapes that can be drawn on a piece of paper.

Solid Geometry is about three dimensional objects like cubes, prisms, cylinders and spheres.

There are two main types of solids, "Polyhedra", and "Non-Polyhedra":

A polyhedron is a solid with flat faces (from Greek poly- meaning "many" and -edron meaning "face").

Non-Polyhedra is a solid, witch any surface is not flat

Sphere: A sphere is a perfectly round geometrical object in three-dimensional space, such as the shape of a round ball.

The shape of the Earth is very close to that of an oblate spheroid, a sphere flattened along the axis from pole to pole such that there is a bulge around the equator.

Hexagons: Hexagons are six-sided polygons, closed, 2-dimensional, many-sided figures with straight edges.

For a beehive, close packing is important to maximise the use of space. Hexagons fit most closely together without any gaps; so hexagonal wax cells are what bees create to store their eggs and larvae. 

Cones: A cone is a three-dimensional geometric shape that tapers smoothly from a flat, usually circular base to a point called the apex or vertex.

Volcanoes form cones, the steepness and height of which depends on the runniness (viscosity) of the lava. Fast, runny lava forms flatter cones; thick, viscous lava forms steep-sided cones.

Parallel lines: In mathematics, parallel lines stretch to infinity, neither converging nor diverging.

These parallel dunes in the Australian desert aren't perfect - the physical world rarely is.

Fibonacci spiral: If you construct a series of squares with lengths equal to the Fibonacci numbers (1,1,2,3,5, etc) and trace a line through the diagonals of each square, it forms a Fibonacci spiral.

Many examples of the Fibonacci spiral can be seen in nature, including in the chambers of a nautilus shell.

Watch the video to know how to draw

Fibonacci Spiral

MATHS AND NATURE

"The laws of nature are but the mathematical thoughts of God"

                                                                                      - Euclid

Mathematics is everywhere in this universe. We seldom note it. We enjoy nature and are not interested in going deep about what mathematical idea is in it. Here are a very few properties of mathematics that are depicted  in nature.

SYMMETRY

Symmetry is everywhere you look in nature.

Symmetry is when a figure has two sides that are mirror images of one another. It would then be possible to draw a line through a picture of the object and along either side the image would look exactly the same. This line would be called a line of symmetry. 

There are two kinds of symmetry.

One is bilateral symmetry in which an object has two sides that are mirror images of each other. 

The human body would be an excellent example of a living being that has bilateral symmetry.

The other kind of symmetry is radial symmetry. This is where there is a center point and numerous lines of symmetry could be drawn. 

The most obvious geometric example would be a circle.

Not all objects have symmetry; if an object is not symmetrical, it is called asymmetric.

Symmetry in mathematics

Symmetry occurs in many areas of mathematics. Symmetry comes from a Greek word meaning 'to measure together' and is widely used in the study of geometry. Mathematically, symmetry means that one shape becomes exactly like another when you move it in some way: turn, flip or slide. For two objects to be symmetrical, they must be the same size and shape, with one object having a different orientation from the first. 

The mathematical study of symmetry is systematized and formalized in the extremely powerful and beautiful area of mathematics called group theory.

Symmetry can be present in the form of coefficients of equations as well as in the physical arrangement of objects. By classifying the symmetry of polynomial equations using the machinery of group theory, for example, it is possible to prove the unsolvability of the general quintic equation.

You can see a video lesson about symmetry on ed.ted.com/lessons

ARCHIMEDES. FATHER OF MATHEMATICS

CONTRIBUTIONS TO MATHEMATICS

Archimedes, a Greek mathematician is considered one of the three great mathematicians along with Isaac Newton and Carl Fredrick Gauss. . His greatest contributions to mathematics were in the area of Geometry. Archimedes was also an accomplished engineer and an inventor. He discovered the method to determine the area and volumes of circles, spheres and cones. Archimedes invented the water screw, a machine for raising water to bring it to fields. His crane was reportedly used in warfare during the Roman siege of his home, Syracuse. Another invention was a miniature planetarium, a sphere whose motion imitated that of the earth, sun, moon, and the five planets that were then known to exist.

A FAMOUS STORY 

There are many stories about how Archimedes made his discoveries. A famous one tells how he uncovered an attempt to cheat King Hieron. 

The king ordered a golden crown and gave the crown's maker the exact amount of gold needed. The maker delivered a crown of the required weight, but Hieron suspected that some silver had been used instead of gold. He asked Archimedes to think about the matter. One day Archimedes was considering it while he was getting into a bathtub. He noticed that the amount of water overflowing the tub was proportional (related consistently) to the amount of his body that was being immersed (covered by water). This gave him an idea for solving the problem of the crown. He was so thrilled that he ran naked through the streets shouting, "Eureka!" (Greek for "I have discovered it!"). 

There are several ways Archimedes may have determined the amount of silver in the crown. One likely method relies on an idea that is now called Archimedes's principle. It states that a body immersed in a fluid is buoyed up (pushed up) by a force that is equal to the weight of fluid that is displaced (pushed out of place) by the body. Using this method, he would have first taken two equal weights of gold and silver and compared their weights when immersed in water. Next he would have compared the weight of the crown and an equal weight of pure silver in water in the same way. The difference between these two comparisons would indicate that the crown was not pure gold.

 You can see his story on ed.ted.com/lessons

To see another story go ed.ted.com/lessons

Euclid. What's the point of Geometry?

Euclid (Greek Eukleides) was the most prominent mathematician of Greco-Roman antiquity. He was born c. 300 BCE in Alexandria, Egypt). Euclid best known for his treatise on geometry, his work 'the Elements'. Today we are going to know what some geometrical terms are ...

EUCLID’S FAMOUS QUOTES:

“The laws of nature are but the mathematical thoughts of God”

“ There is no other Royal path which leads to geometry”.

THE ELEMENTS:

The Elements is divided into 13 books.

• The first 6 books deals with plane geometry.
• Books  7to 9 deals with number theory.
• Book 10 deals with the theory of irrational numbers .
• Books 11 to 13 deals with three-dimensional geometry .

Euclid's Elements is remarkable for the clarity with which the theorems are stated and proved.

Study ed.ted.com/lessons to know How to prove a mathematical theory

EUCLID'S OTHER WORKS :       

• ON DIVISION deals with plane geometry.
• The book DATA discusses plane geometry and contains propositions.
• PHAENOMENA is a work by what we call today as applied mathematics, concerning the  geometry of spheres for use in astronomy. 
• THE OPTICS, corrects the belief held at the time that the sun and other heavenly bodies are actually the size they appear to be to the eye.
• CONICS was a work on conic sections.

GREEK MATHEMATICS. Pythagoras

Watch the short video about life of the one of the most important philosophers and great mathematicians of early Greece:

What Pythagoras's ideas are the most incredible to your mind? :)



It is sometimes claimed that we owe pure mathematics to Pythagoras, and he is often called the first "true" mathematician. But, although his contribution was clearly important, he nevertheless remains a controversial figure. He left no mathematical writings himself, and much of what we know about Pythagorean thought comes to us from the writings of Philolaus and other later Pythagorean scholars. Indeed, it is by no means clear whether many (or indeed any) of the theorems ascribed to him were in fact solved by Pythagoras personally or by his followers.

The school he established at Croton in southern Italy around 530 BCE was the nucleus of a rather bizarre Pythagorean sect. Although Pythagorean thought was largely dominated by mathematics, it was also profoundly mystical, and Pythagoras imposed his quasi-religious philosophies, strict vegetarianism, communal living, secret rites and odd rules on all the members of his school (including bizarre and apparently random edicts about never urinating towards the sun, never marrying a woman who wears gold jewellery, never passing an ass lying in the street, never eating or even touching black fava beans, etc) .

The members were divided into the "mathematikoi" (or "learners"), who extended and developed the more mathematical and scientific work that Pythagoras himself began, and the "akousmatikoi" (or "listeners"), who focused on the more religious and ritualistic aspects of his teachings. There was always a certain amount of friction between the two groups and eventually the sect became caught up in some fierce local fighting and ultimately dispersed. Resentment built up against the secrecy and exclusiveness of the Pythagoreans and, in 460 BCE, all their meeting places were burned and destroyed, with at least 50 members killed in Croton alone.

The over-riding dictum of Pythagoras's school was “All is number” or “God is number”, and the Pythagoreans effectively practised a kind of numerology or number-worship, and considered each number to have its own character and meaning. For example, the number one was the generator of all numbers; two represented opinion; three, harmony; four, justice; five, marriage; six, creation; seven, the seven planets or “wandering stars”; etc. Odd numbers were thought of as female and even numbers as male.