Mix and Match
Hello lovely people, even though my number of hits on the blog has gone down I'm still going to write my blogs because I like doing it. Sorry I'm a few days late posting this week, I was home alone this week so the jobs in the house had to be done and I had a busy week at work so this wasn't my top priority. However late at night I did manage to scroll through some of the news articles on my Flipboard app which was very interesting. And I found a few articles that caught my attention and they were all on completely different things so that's why todays title is mix and match.
The first article I read was from the Mirror and it was about a vet called Hannah Capon who is trying to change the statistics on the number of dogs who get electively put down due to arthritis. She decided to do this after she put down a few dogs in a short space of time due to this reason, so she started doing house visits to try and educate people on how to keep their dogs healthier and reduce this painful condition of which 1/4 of dogs over the age of 8 years have. She said that she started doing house visits because it allows her to see the conditions that the dogs live in and helps her to advise the owners on what to change so that the dog has less of a chance of developing arthritis. The fact that most houses nowadays have laminate or tiled floors means that dogs can slip and injure themselves often an she says that because dogs express pain in a different way than the owners would expect they don't realise the suffering their dog is going through. She makes a simple suggestion of putting down rugs or mats on these hard floors so that the dogs will fall over less. She also explained to owners about how over-exercising their dogs could exacerbate arthritis. And how activities like ball throwers and running on beaches should be avoided. Also in order to try and help the dogs she showed the owners how to look for signs of pain. She emphasises about keeping your dog at a healthy weight to so that no extra stress is put on the joints. Hannah has helped hundreds of dogs and set up a group of vets, nurses and therapists on a campaign called #yourdogmoreyears.
Her 7 ways to help are;
Ok so my second article is extremely different it is about how the giant cuttlefish have the ability to be masters of camouflage due to their giant nerves. So for many years the ability of the cuttlefish to be able to change the colour of its skin and the texture of its skin has been a mystery to scientists. But marine biologists from Cambridge University have found that this master of camouflage controls the ability using a giant neural circuit similar to that of a squid controlling iridescence. The cuttlefish dates back a long way and has evolved to be one of the most intelligent molluscs it has eyes that are better than humans in some ways an has an internal shell to keep its shape. However the most notable ability of the cuttlefish is its ability to disappear from predators, it can blend into any background and considering it can't see colour this is pretty amazing. It has been found that they can do this disappearing act by tiny muscular organs called chromatophores that contain thousands of pigment granules and a folding membrane to hide and reveal them. These alone with similar organs allow the cuttlefish to control how it reflects light. Then it also has papillae which allow the cuttlefish to change the texture of their skin in 3D. According to the researchers the cuttlefish do this by sending nerve impulses through their peripheral nerve centre called the stellate ganglion, which goes through the axon system, for people who are reading this who aren't biologists the axon is the main section of a nerve cell they are long and thin and carry the nerve impulses the longest distance through the body. Normally the axons have diameters of 1 micrometre to 20 micrometres wide however cuttlefish have giant axons with a diameter of 1 millimetre which is large enough to be seen by the naked eye. This dramatically reduces the amount of time that it takes a nervous impulse to pass all the way through the body of the cuttlefish to the chromatophores so that it can change colour immediately. For the skin texture scientists thought that continuous energy would be being expended to control the texture of the skin however they found that the papillae worked on a catch-like mechanism similar to muscles when they snap closed but don't have to expend any more effort. Professor Roger Hanlon from the Marine Biological Laboratory says that " This research on neural control of flexible skin, combined with anatomical studies of the novel muscle groups that enable such shape-shifting skin, has applications for the development of new classes of soft materials that can be engineered for a wide array of uses in industry, society and medicine."
Well I hope you all enjoyed that I know they were both very different stories but I liked both of them and found them both very interesting. I hope that you are all well and have a wonderful week whatever you get up to. Don't forget to be kind and smile, I'll see you all next week, till then goodbye.
The first article I read was from the Mirror and it was about a vet called Hannah Capon who is trying to change the statistics on the number of dogs who get electively put down due to arthritis. She decided to do this after she put down a few dogs in a short space of time due to this reason, so she started doing house visits to try and educate people on how to keep their dogs healthier and reduce this painful condition of which 1/4 of dogs over the age of 8 years have. She said that she started doing house visits because it allows her to see the conditions that the dogs live in and helps her to advise the owners on what to change so that the dog has less of a chance of developing arthritis. The fact that most houses nowadays have laminate or tiled floors means that dogs can slip and injure themselves often an she says that because dogs express pain in a different way than the owners would expect they don't realise the suffering their dog is going through. She makes a simple suggestion of putting down rugs or mats on these hard floors so that the dogs will fall over less. She also explained to owners about how over-exercising their dogs could exacerbate arthritis. And how activities like ball throwers and running on beaches should be avoided. Also in order to try and help the dogs she showed the owners how to look for signs of pain. She emphasises about keeping your dog at a healthy weight to so that no extra stress is put on the joints. Hannah has helped hundreds of dogs and set up a group of vets, nurses and therapists on a campaign called #yourdogmoreyears.
Her 7 ways to help are;
- learn to read the signs of pain
- keep your dog at a healthy weight
- visit your vet regularly
- cover up slippery floors
- don't over-exercise
- make sure the dogs bed is accessible and supportive
- investigate the use of complimentary therapies
Ok so my second article is extremely different it is about how the giant cuttlefish have the ability to be masters of camouflage due to their giant nerves. So for many years the ability of the cuttlefish to be able to change the colour of its skin and the texture of its skin has been a mystery to scientists. But marine biologists from Cambridge University have found that this master of camouflage controls the ability using a giant neural circuit similar to that of a squid controlling iridescence. The cuttlefish dates back a long way and has evolved to be one of the most intelligent molluscs it has eyes that are better than humans in some ways an has an internal shell to keep its shape. However the most notable ability of the cuttlefish is its ability to disappear from predators, it can blend into any background and considering it can't see colour this is pretty amazing. It has been found that they can do this disappearing act by tiny muscular organs called chromatophores that contain thousands of pigment granules and a folding membrane to hide and reveal them. These alone with similar organs allow the cuttlefish to control how it reflects light. Then it also has papillae which allow the cuttlefish to change the texture of their skin in 3D. According to the researchers the cuttlefish do this by sending nerve impulses through their peripheral nerve centre called the stellate ganglion, which goes through the axon system, for people who are reading this who aren't biologists the axon is the main section of a nerve cell they are long and thin and carry the nerve impulses the longest distance through the body. Normally the axons have diameters of 1 micrometre to 20 micrometres wide however cuttlefish have giant axons with a diameter of 1 millimetre which is large enough to be seen by the naked eye. This dramatically reduces the amount of time that it takes a nervous impulse to pass all the way through the body of the cuttlefish to the chromatophores so that it can change colour immediately. For the skin texture scientists thought that continuous energy would be being expended to control the texture of the skin however they found that the papillae worked on a catch-like mechanism similar to muscles when they snap closed but don't have to expend any more effort. Professor Roger Hanlon from the Marine Biological Laboratory says that " This research on neural control of flexible skin, combined with anatomical studies of the novel muscle groups that enable such shape-shifting skin, has applications for the development of new classes of soft materials that can be engineered for a wide array of uses in industry, society and medicine."
Well I hope you all enjoyed that I know they were both very different stories but I liked both of them and found them both very interesting. I hope that you are all well and have a wonderful week whatever you get up to. Don't forget to be kind and smile, I'll see you all next week, till then goodbye.
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