Elephants are big, and they get hot. Especially in Africa. Thus, from the elephant’s point of view, there’s sometimes an urgent necessity to dissipate excess heat. Some investigators have suggested that flapping their large ears (strictly, their ‘pinnae’) could provide a significant heat-loss mechanism. (e.g. Buss, I. O., and Estes, J. A., 1971, ‘The Functional […]
Tag: air
Medical report: “A Real Airhead”
Some, alas not all, doctors strive for plain language. The headline of this medical report contains plain language: “A Real Airhead,” Declan McDonnell and Gillian Park, BMJ Case Reports, epub November 25, 2014. The authors, at Southampton General Hospital and Northwick Park Hospital, London, UK, report: “A 21-year-old man was taken to the emergency department after […]
Atmospheric things – especially balloons
Balloons : what do they mean to you? Harmless playthings? Medical devices? Educational tools? Or means for attending to the properties and spaces of air and geographies of atmosphere? For the latter, see the work of professor Derek McCormack, of the School of Geography and the Environment, Oxford, UK, who focusses on balloons as vehicles […]
Complex Medical Insights: “Indoor Air Pollution, Nighttime Heart Rate Variability and Coffee Consumption among Convenient Store Workers”
Medical researchers, seeking insight, sometimes try to make simple sense of complex, difficult conglomerations of things that may or may not have effects on each other and on many other things. Sometimes coffee is involved, as is the case here: “Indoor Air Pollution, Nighttime Heart Rate Variability and Coffee Consumption among Convenient Store Workers,” Kai-Jen […]