Hi - Bear - Nation

Now that winter is here for what could be another six months, I have noticed I see less of my neighbors than I do during the summer months. This is no doubt because we all spend more time keeping warm inside than playing in the cold outside. It is almost as if we are, in a way, hibernating. The more I thought about it, the more the idea of me eating enough to sustain a long winter’s nap intrigued me.

After some initial research I found the idea of hibernation even more compelling. Take, for example, the American black bear, which can go up to 100 days with out eating, drinking, urinating, defecating or exercising.

Black bears are able to accomplish this for a couple of reasons. First, they start preparing for winter in early summer by eating a mostly carbohydrate diet to gain about 30 pounds a week. Second, they are also able to slow their metabolism, which aids in conserving energy and helps explain why they can, well, “hold it,” for three months.

Bears are one of the most famous animals that hibernate, and because of this I seldom thought of other animals going through the same process. I soon discovered that many other animals hunker down through the winter and some, like bats, hunker down much more than the most famous hibernators.

I do not know a lot about bats, but what I do know I really enjoy. They use echolocation — a kind of natural nighttime navigation system —  to find and eat miserable mosquitoes. In researching, I learned bats not only hibernate, but they do it with style. Bats, along with ground squirrels, are in a category I like to call hardcore hibernators because of the drastic body changes they are able to endure while hibernating.

Bats and ground squirrels can slow their heartbeats from 80 to about five beats per minute and their internal temperature can drop from 97 degrees to 38 degrees. This is quite a difference from the famous hibernating black bears that maintain an internal temperature of around 88, only about a dozen ticks lower that their summertime body temperature of 100 degrrees.

I have a close connection with fish. I focused on fisheries in college, my dad worked most of his life with fish, and I spend as much time as possible fishing. One would think I had a good idea of what happens to fish in winter, and one would be wrong.

To my surprise, fish, in a way, also hibernate. They, too, lower their metabolism and hunker down in rocks and deep ponds. One major difference with “cold-blooded” fish, when compared to “warm-blooded” mammals, is their blood temperature mirrors that of the water. If the water is 35 degrees, then the fish’s blood temperature is 35, too.

Now that there is finally snow on the ground, I remember there’s a lot to enjoy outside in winter. If I slept through the winter or stayed inside just to keep warm, I would miss out on all the skiing I plan to do with my daughter this year. So bundle up and wear a hat so you don’t sleep through this year’s winter and enjoy everything Montana has to offer!

Oh baby!

My wife, Cory, just gave birth to our new daughter, Isla. I was not planning on writing about it, but as I sit here, all I can think about is how cool it is and how much info there is. Now my problem is deciding on what to write about.

The biggest question leading up to the birth was how much Isla would resemble the rest of our family.

Marley, now a big sister, has my eyes and dimpled chin, Cory’s nose and hair color, and a feisty personality that seems more like my sister McKenzie’s.

Genetics are responsible for all this variation and while some traits can be predicted, others cannot.

DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, makes us who we are. Our entire DNA comes from our parents in the form of chromosomes — 23 from our mom and 23 from our dad for a grand total of 46. Of these 46 chromosomes, two determine our sex. We can only get an X chromosome from our mom, but our dad can give us either an X or a Y. If we get Y, we are male. If we get X, we are female.

We are all different but we are also all the same. To explain this, let’s consider DNA in a little more detail. DNA is made up of four chemical bases: adenine (A), thymine (T), guanine (G) and cytosine (C).

A’s always pair with T’s and C’s always pair with G’s, and when they do, they are called a base pair. In humans, we have over 3 billion, yes, billion, base pairs to make us who we are.

With all this, you would expect differences; actually, more than 99 percent of bases in humans are the same. It is when they are not the same that we run into mutations that can lead to serious issues.

After all the genetic speculation about what Isla was going to look like, it turned out that something quite invisible — her blood type — mattered most.

Like many newborns, Isla started to look a little yellow soon after she was born. She had jaundice because her liver suddenly needed to start doing the work that Cory’s had been doing for her, and Isla has a different blood type than Cory. This meant Cory’s body was producing antibodies to try and destroy Isla’s red blood cells.

When the red blood cells get destroyed in large quantities, our liver is not able to keep up with the breakdown and thus we see the buildup of the yellow pigment bilirubin. For instance, when a bruise on our arm turns yellow, bilirubin is at work.

Luckily, we did not need to use a biliblanket to mimic the sun’s light for light therapy to help Islas liver break down the excess bilirubin. Isla was able to get rid of the excess bilirubin in her waste so we did not run into serious issues.

Genetics can give us some clues about what our children are going to be like. If we were able to know too much, though, we would miss out on the best part, seeing what your children become.

I love you, girls!

KABOOM!

I was skiing the other day and heard loud booms. The ski patrol was trying to trigger avalanches by detonating explosives.

I heard similar booms when I was younger but did not give them much thought. Now, however, maybe because I am surrounded by sound at work, I started paying more attention.

As the explosives went off I was surprised because it seemed like I could feel the sound while sitting on the chairlift.

How was this possible?

Sound travels in waves similar to waves we see at a beach. They have a top called a “peak,” and a bottom called a “trough.” A sound’s size is called “amplitude.” The pitch we hear is dependent on the frequency.

My little yappy dog has a high frequency and small amplitude, while the low booms from the ski patrol have a low frequency and large amplitude.

As a large amplitude sound wave travels through the air, it pushes the air forward. Think about seeing “the wave” at sporting events or watching dominoes fall. When we feel the blast we are feeling the force of air actually being pushed forward.

Other sound waves are subtler. For instance, take your hand, put it on your throat and read the next sentence out loud making your voice high and low pitched. The vibrations you feel are your vocal folds, or chords, vibrating due to air coming out of your throat and making sound waves.

If you think about music, there are many instruments with chords that vibrate.

But what about the instruments that do not have chords?

Wind instruments make sound by vibrating air inside them by using different mechanisms. Trombones have a mouthpiece that musicians blow into causing their lips to vibrate. The sound from the vibrating travels down the body and is amplified by the opening at the end. Other wind instruments like a saxophone rely on vibrations from reeds as air is blown past them.

When sound emerges from any item, it travels until it runs into something or has no more energy. If a sound wave hits something, it bounces back and travels in the opposite direction. That is why we can hear echoes so well in areas where there is a lot of room for the sound to bounce from place to place. It is no coincidence opera houses are shaped they way they are.

Try it yourself at the band shell at Memorial Park. You’ll discover that it is a lot easier to hear someone talking while they are inside the shell, than it is if they were talking over by the swings. This is because the sound is echoed out of the shell toward where you are standing in the grass.

This really is only the first note in your favorite song when it comes to sound. We did not even get to the ear, which has a canyon full of interesting scientific intricacies when it comes to hearing.

Tasty!

“I can’t like that,” is the response my daughter, Marley, gives us when we try to offer her new food. This behavior has made me do some pretty drastic things, like call my mom and dad to apologize for the deviled egg incident.

When I was a child, like Marley, I had my likes and dislikes. Deviled eggs were a big dislike. No matter how much my mom and dad assured me I would like them, I knew I would not. Finally, after screaming, negotiating, and even some tears, I succumbed and gave a deviled egg a shot. Awful!

Now that I have matured I have given them another chance. Much to my dismay, I actually like them now. I do not know how this could be possible thinking back to that tragic afternoon and how a simple deviled egg forever scared me.

There has to be an explanation.

Stick your tongue out and you will see little bumps all over the surface. I used to think those bumps were taste buds responsible for the sense of taste. It turns out, like most things left unexamined, I was wrong. The actual buds line those tiny little bumps, which are called “papillae,” and in each bud there are little hairs called “microvilli.”

These sensitive, microscopic hairs tell your brain if something is sweet, sour, salty, bitter or umami. Umami is specifically for the amino acid glutamate. If you are like me and don’t know what glutamate tastes like, you might have tasted it in the form of MSG.

Taste buds are not only more complex than I originally thought, they are much more numerous as well. The average person has nearly 10,000 taste buds and, amazingly, they get replaced about every two weeks. As we get older, not as many get replaced and some people may only have 5,000. So it would appear that my tastes are not refining with age, rather my taste is being diminished.

There is another key component to taste that you know if you have ever been sick or held your nose to impede your ability to taste something. When you chew on your food, chemicals are released. These chemicals move up your nose to olfactory receptors, which, like the microvilli, send signals to your brain about what you are eating. When you are sick, or pinching your nose to prevent a taste, the upper part of your nose does not receive the chemicals to trigger the taste.

Finally, taste is genetic. The genes you get from your parents determine the type and number of sensors you get. I would say this is some sort of retribution being able to blame my mom and dad for not liking that deviled egg but I know better. As soon as I do, Marley will blame me, but she has a few years until she understands what this means. In the meantime, I will just wait for her taste buds stop regenerating so quickly so we can get her off the mac and cheese diet.

The sniffles

We Montanans are a hardy bunch. We live in a state that seems to have three months of summer with nine months of winter. It is this short-lived summer that can sometimes lead us to not making the best choices when it comes to springtime clothing. As I lay in bed listening to my daughter, Marley, sniffle and cough I cannot help but think about earlier that day.

The sun was out, no wind and it was almost 50 degrees. Ideal weather for T-shirts, shorts and flip-flops, right? While this may be jumping the gun a bit for summer clothes, what you wear, surprisingly to many, does not affect your susceptibility to catching a cold.

One of the biggest factors that affect our vulnerability to catching colds is the quality of the air we breathe. In summer, we play outside breathing nice fresh air. In the short days of winter, we spend a lot more time inside breathing the germs that are contained in our homes, schools and anywhere else we hide from the cold.

Once we breathe in the germ that is the most common vector for the common cold, rhinovirus, we can expect a number of symptoms to show up over the days ahead. I do not know which symptom is worst when it comes to colds. I hate feeling like my head is going to explode in a giant eruption of snot. I would not willingly sign up for this, but now, with two little kids, it is the cough at night I dislike more. I try to hold my coughs in because I do not want to wake up the kids, and when they cough, again, I am worried it is going to wake them up. What causes these reactions when we have colds?

The appearance of snot or mucous is Marley’s first sign of a cold. We start producing excess amounts of mucous in an attempt to keep germs from getting to the lungs and the rest of our bodies. The excess in mucous is partially responsible for some of the other negative feelings we have—like the dreaded nighttime cough. The excess travels down the sinuses to the back of the throat which causes us to cough.

Mucous, however, is not the only unpleasant reaction our bodies produce to ward off the invaders. When Marley has a fever it is one of the most difficult times of the common-cold cycle. I want to do whatever I can to make her feel better. In actuality, her brain is doing a lot of the work for me. Her hypothalamus, an amazing automatic regulator of a number of metabolic processes, is turning up her temperature in hopes it will make it an uninhabitable place for the germs.

While all these symptoms are not fun to deal with on any level, it is important for them to be there to help us feel better. Next time, while I am lying in bed with Marley listening to our symphony of coughing, I will be grateful that the mucous is keeping worse things away.

Yaaaaaawwwwwwwwnnnnnn

With two little daughters in our house I have been tired lately, though, probably not as tired as my wife Cory. Due to this I have been thinking a lot about sleep, specifically why I always yawn and why my coffee consumption has risen.

When Cory and I are able to sit and have conversations, I have noticed myself yawning. Followed by Cory yawning. And then it comes back to me, which Cory sees, and yawns. And then, well, you get the idea.

This yawning is a way for us to actually try to stay awake. We are trying to keep our brains cool, thus keep us awake. It seems with our yawning conversations that yawning is contagious.

While Cory and I are susceptible to each other’s yawns, researchers have found that only about half the population responds similarly. These same researchers say a respondent yawn was a way for early humans to communicate with one another. Such group yawns are believed to signify someone was tired and others in the group were acknowledging that.

Yawning is not the only mechanism I have employed to help keep me alert with the two little kids.

The chemical formula for caffeine is C8H10N4O2. My favorite type of caffeine is a nice, hot cup of coffee in the morning. Why does caffeine have ability to help keep us awake, maybe even twitchy, as in my case?

When we are tired, our bodies start to make a substance called “adenosine.” Adenosine binds to special parts in our brain causing drowsiness by slowing down nerve cell activity. To a nerve cell, caffeine looks like adenosine so caffeine binds to these receptors. This causes our neurons to fire more frequently, which causes our pituitary gland to think there is an emergency and helps to produce adrenaline.

There are negative effects of caffeine with one in particular that I am going to pay attention to. If you are not careful with your caffeine consumption, it will have a negative impact on your sleep.

If you drink a cup of high-test coffee or caffeinated pop with dinner, the caffeine will still be affecting the adenosine 12 hours later. This can impact your sleep and make your body feel like it needs the caffeine as soon as you get out of bed. There are two sides to every story, however, and researchers have found some benefits to caffeine consumption.

Adults who drink coffee on a regular basis appear less likely to get diabetes, colon cancer, Parkinson’s disease and even may have fewer cavities. Now, what you put in your coffee may not help with cavities, like my two tablespoons of honey.

My conclusion is moderation. I can still drink my coffee in the morning, but not my usual five cups. I can also drop that afternoon break at the coffee shop in favor of a brisk 15-minute walk. This will help to break the cycle and give me what started all this in the first place, the need for a good night’s sleep.

Hopefully this column has not made you need to find alternate ways to keep awake for the rest of your day.

The eyes have it!

Siblings have moments of jealousy, most of the time for minor things. Growing up I was I often jealous of my sister, McKenzie, who I thought was lucky enough to be nearsighted and had to get glasses in the fourth grade.

I am older now but still do not need glasses. Since both my mom and dad wear glasses, however, it seems inevitable that one day I will too.

Why do glasses help people see and when people have Lasik eye surgery, what exactly happens to their vision? In order to know this, we must first know more about how the eye works.

The iris, pupil and sclera are parts of the eye we all see when we look in the mirror. The iris (colored part) and pupil (black dot) work together to control how much light enters the eye. The sclera (white part), because it is made of the fibrous tissue, helps protect the eye.

Light travels to the back of the eye through the lens to the retina. The retina contains around 120 million rods and roughly 7 million cones. These specialized cells help to process the light and send it to the brain via the optic nerve. Once there the brain helps make sense of it all by interpreting the nerve signals and by flipping the upside down image the lens sees right side up.

Many of my students have dissected bovine eyeballs and they discover that the lens seems to be kind of like a buried treasure. A cow’s eyeball is about the size of a small marble and difficult to cut through because it is hard and slippery and has several layers like an onion. The lens is a part of the third layer.

The need for glasses is often directly related to the shape of one’s eye. McKenzie is nearsighted (myopia), which means she can see things that are close very clearly, but objects far away are blurry and out of focus. She either has too long an eyeball or her cornea has too much curvature that prevents the light entering her eye from focusing correctly. Her glasses are what are called a minus lens, which means it moves the focus of an object farther back.

Farsightedness, or hyperopia, is almost the opposite of myopia. People can see things far away clearly but not close up. These people either have too short of an eyeball or too little curvature in the cornea and use a plus lens in their glasses.

Some people after years of wearing glasses opt for Lasik surgery to help with their eyesight. For the surgery, doctors use a tool that actually burns the cornea into the correct shape.  

I am sorry, Mac, for my crazy jealousy with you and your glasses. It is only a matter of time until I too will need to get glasses. When I do, it will more than likely be for presbyopia, the “old eye,” and I will need to get bifocals.