Category Archives: Physiology

From Africa to the Roman Empire: New Study Reveals 7,000 Years of Donkey Domestication – Horse Network

Be they ever so humble, theres no creature quite like the donkey.

Though these hairy, hardy decedents of the Equidae family are often thought of as the horses slightly quirky cousins from Albuquerque, they have earned their place as our counterparts in civilizationfrom their role in Biblical tales to modern DreamWorks classics (hello,Shrek!).

As turns out, though, donkeys may be far more than that. And thanks to new research from the University of Florida, we now know humans wouldnt have gotten very far without them. Literally.

Donkeys have been important to humans for thousands of years, being the primary source of work and transport for many cultures. Unlike horses, little was known about the origin and domestication of donkeys, the study says. Understanding their genetic makeup is not only key to assessing their contribution to human history but also to improving their local management in the future.

To that end, a global team of 49 researchers managed to sequence the genome of the donkey from multiple regions around the world, comparing the makeup of more than 200 modern and more than 30 ancient donkeys, along with 15 wild horses.

Using both DNA analysis and fossilized remains, the team discovered that donkeys were likely first domesticated around 5000 BCE in Africa by herding peoples, spurred by the large-scale aridification of the Sahara Desert. This is in direct contrast to horses, which were actually domesticated by humans on two occasions after the first try failed. (We assume early man was attempting to work exclusively with small ponies at the time).

Domestication is a really neat natural experiment, said Samantha Brooks, an associate professor of equine physiology at the University of Florida. How we use animals in our day-to-day lives changes the physiology of these animals. Watching this across thousands of years of genetic history was really fascinating. These changes illustrate how the unique physiology of the domesticated donkey gave them the tools needed to survive and thrive as they worked and lived alongside humans.

Whats more, by understanding the movement of donkeys throughout history, the study also reflects human movement and activities, including the transport of goods, animal husbandry methods, and how donkeys were selected for unique traits to pass down. A primary example: A group of donkey genomes pulled from the remains of a Roman settlement in Boinville-en-Wovre, in northeastern France, which showed that donkeys in that region may have been selectively bred to produce certain coat colors, including dun.

This is an exception from the rest of Roman France, however, where mules were the dominant animal species used. According to the study,during this period,the Romans may have imported additional, larger-stature donkeys from Western Africa to breed mules of greater size, which they could then use to fuel transportation networks throughout the Empire.

Donkeys have fueled human agriculture throughout early history, and they continue to do so across the globe, especially in developing nations, Brooks explained. Donkeys are extremely hearty animals, theyre real survivors, and were excited to learn more about the adaptations [that] gave them what it takes to survive.

And, according to Brooks, the evolutionary trajectory of the donkey may also hold the key to thriving in our own, quickly changing world. A better understanding of how [donkeys] got their toughness [teaches] us a lot about animal physiology and gives us new ideas on what it might take to adapt our livestock populations to survive in a warming climate, she said.

You can access the full study hee-haw!

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From Africa to the Roman Empire: New Study Reveals 7,000 Years of Donkey Domestication - Horse Network

Examining stress and the human body – News Center – The University of Texas at Arlington – uta.edu

Friday, Sep 23, 2022 Neph Rivera : Contact

Ashley Darling (left) and Jody Greaney

Youre stuck in traffic. Youve spilled coffee on yourself. Youve forgotten your phone at home.

These may seem like small annoyances by themselves. But the stress they can cause on the body has the potential to accumulate. A team of University of Texas at Arlington researchers is exploring how those day-to-day stresses of life may impact ones health.

Ashley Darling, doctoral student and graduate research assistant at UTAs Neurovascular Physiology Laboratory, under the supervision of Jody Greaney, assistant professor of kinesiology and lab director, is studying how daily stress can play a role in ones risk of cardiovascular disease.

Daily stress is universally experienced. Its part of life and elicits an emotional response. Typically, people get into a worse mood as a result of these daily stressors, Darling said. What weve seen is that a greater increase in negative mood is correlated with biological outcomes that may lead to an increased risk of future cardiovascular disease.

Darlings project is The moderating influence of physical activity on the link between daily stress vulnerability and blood pressure reactivity. It received grant funding from the American College of Sports Medicine Foundation.

Darling said stress activates the sympathetic nervous system, which drives the bodys fight or flight response. With that activation comes an increase in blood pressure and heart rate. The blood pressure spike from that acute stress previously has been linked to a higher risk of cardiovascular disease.

But Darling says there is a way to fight back: by being active. She and her team are investigating whether physical activity can help lower the bodys reaction to acute stress, thereby decreasing the bodys disease risk.

We are always interested in physical activity and sedentary time. It is such an accessible and very powerful intervention, Darling said. Trying to understand how public health initiatives could be created to promote exercise went into the decision to pursue this study.

Participants will wear a small accelerometer on their hip for a week that will record their physical activity and sedentary time. They will also document their exposure to daily stress and their emotional response to that stress. On the studys final day, participants will visit the lab and undergo exposure to acute laboratory-applied stressful tasks, like submerging their hand in a bucket of ice water, to see how their blood pressure levels react.

Darling said she is grateful for research experience at UTA and the mentorship of Greaney.

I moved here from Virginia specifically for UTA and to work with Jody, just because I think the University really does offer a great amount of resources, Darling said. The department and the people whom I am able to work with give me a unique set of skills that I cant really get from other places.

Greaney said that Darlings research approach is unique.

Very few investigators are working at merging psychology and psychological-related outcomes with physiology, Greaney said. Ashley has done a really nice job of building a team of investigators that is going to help her be successful in completing this study.

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Examining stress and the human body - News Center - The University of Texas at Arlington - uta.edu

Study sheds light on how heat stress affects kidney function – News-Medical.Net

Acute kidney injury-; defined as an abrupt decline in glomerular filtration rate (GFR)-;is among the top causes of hospitalization during a heat wave. New research published ahead of print in the American Journal of Physiology-Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology sheds light on how heat stress affects kidney function. The study was chosen as an APSselect article for September.

The findings of the present study support that GFR reserve is utilized to maintain GFR during mild passive heat stress in young healthy adults.

Under normal conditions, the kidneys have a reserve of untapped function they can draw on in the event of greater physiological need. The capacity to increase function is called the GFR reserve. One way to study GFR reserve is to monitor levels of a waste product called creatinine for a few hours after eating a high-protein meal.

For the current study, 16 healthy adults completed two versions of such a trial, one under normal heat conditions and the other under mild heat stress. After collecting baseline readings of kidney function, researchers gave each participant a whey protein shake and monitored them for two and a half hours.

The research team found that creatinine levels were elevated after drinking the shake in the normal temperature trial but not in the heat stress trial. This indicates that the participants' kidneys were not able to increase their filtration rate to the same degree when faced with mild heat stress as they did at a normal temperature. They likely used their reserve to maintain a reduced degree of function.

This study sheds light on a likely mechanism for the increase in kidney injury during heat waves. The authors note that those known to be at greater risk for kidney damage during heat waves tend to also be populations known to have reduced GFR reserves, such as older adults.

Source:

Journal reference:

Freemas, J.A., et al. (2022) Glomerular filtration rate reserve is reduced during mild passive heat stress in healthy young adults. American Journal of Physiology-Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology. doi.org/10.1152/ajpregu.00090.2022.

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Study sheds light on how heat stress affects kidney function - News-Medical.Net

Breakthrough prize recognizes discovery at MBL of new organizing principle in cells – EurekAlert

image:Clifford Brangwynne at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, Mass., on August 2 2022. Brangwynne and Anthony Hyman made the initial dsicovery of condensate formation in the MBL Physiology course in 2008. They have received the 2023 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for this research. view more

Credit: Dee Sullivan

WOODS HOLE, Mass. The discovery of a fundamental way for cells to organize internally, first recognized in the 2008 Physiology course at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), has been honored by the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences awarded to Anthony Hyman and Clifford Brangwynne, then instructors in the course.

The Breakthrough Prize, renowned as the Oscars of Science, are presented annually in the fields of life sciences, fundamental physics, and mathematics to recognize the worlds top scientists working in the fundamental sciences the disciplines that ask the biggest questions and find the deepest explanations. Laureates receive a $3 million prize and are honored at a globally broadcast awards ceremony (date to be announced).

Brangwynne, Hyman, MBL Physiology course students, and colleagues solved a longstanding mystery of how cells create order in the millions of molecules that zip around within their boundaries. As they observed in nematode worms in the course, and later confirmed as a general principle, cells spontaneously form liquid-like droplets that concentrate some molecules in a membrane-free drop, while excluding others. These condensates, which usually contain protein and RNA, form by a phase separation process, similar to water vapor condensing into dew.

This observation ended up having major reverberations. Since 2008, evidence has mounted that condensates regulate many critical cellular processes, from cell division to gene expression, and are involved in the development of diseases that include cancer, neurodegenerative disease, Covid-19, and others. Several biotech companies have formed to pursue medical applications of condensate research.

The MBL is the birthplace of this field, because so much happened here, Brangwynne says, including foundational discoveries that issued from a collaborative, five-year initiative at the MBL (2013-2017) funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. (See timeline of phase separation discovery research at MBL here.)

The discovery of biomolecular condensates has fundamentally changed how we think about cellular processes and disease, said MBL Director Nipam Patel. It is a tribute to the tremendous value of the MBLs education and training programs that the original observation was in the Physiology course, and that in the decade to follow, many scientists associated with the MBL vastly extended the observation and pioneered a new field of study.

The Breakthrough Prize was founded in 2013 by Sergey Brin, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, Yuri and Julia Milner, and Anne Wojcicki.

The laureates honored today embody the remarkable power of fundamental science, said Yuri Milner, both to reveal deep truths about the Universe, and to improve human lives.

The 2023 laureates have produced absolutely stellar science, said Wojcicki. The creativity, ingenuity and sheer perseverance that went into this work is awe-inspiring.

###

The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is dedicated to scientific discovery exploring fundamental biology, understanding marine biodiversity and the environment, and informing the human condition through research and education. Founded in Woods Hole, Massachusetts in 1888, the MBL is a private, nonprofit institution and an affiliate of the University of Chicago.

Other resources:

Clifford Brangwynnes Friday Evening Lecture at MBL (2021)

Brangwynnes Research at the MBL, Summer of 2022

Description of the Original Discovery in the Physiology course

MBL Press Release on Physiology Course Discovery (2009)

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.

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Breakthrough prize recognizes discovery at MBL of new organizing principle in cells - EurekAlert

Why professional runners can be disqualified for starting a race after the gun – Vox.com

In July, TyNia Gaither lined up in the second lane for one of her biggest races of the year: the semifinals of the 100-meter dash at the World Athletics Championships in Eugene, Oregon.

The 29-year-old Bahamian sprinter crouched down into the starting blocks. The crowd grew quiet. She waited for the sound.

I heard the gun go off, and I took off, Gaither says. And then I heard the gun go off again.

That second bang meant officials had stopped the race. Someone had false-started, and Gaither was surprised to find out it was her.

I thought it was an error, she says. Ive never false-started ever in my life.

Per the rules, Gaither was immediately disqualified. When she tried to contest the call to the race official, he showed her a replay. It didnt show a visible false start. But then he pointed to a number, lit up in red: 0.093 seconds, the amount of time it took for Gaither to start after the gun fired.

Yes: She had started after the gun went off, and was still thrown out of the race.

Im mind-blown, she recalls thinking. Youre telling me Im penalized for something I did after the gun went off!?

Theres a peculiar rule in top-level running that says if a runner starts within 0.1 seconds of the gun, theyve broken the rules. The assumption made by World Athletics, the organization behind this championship, is that it is physiologically impossible to start that quickly.

What they were trying to tell us, Gaither says on Unexplainable Voxs podcast about unanswered questions is that no human can possibly move that fast.

Any racer who does is presumed to have anticipated the gun, meaning their brains gave the go signal to their bodies before they heard the sound.

But is that true? What is the fastest possible human reaction time to a sound?

The answer could vindicate Gaither, who feels unfairly labeled as a cheater there was no guessing in my start, she says emphatically and other athletes who have been similarly disqualified for starting too quickly.

But this question also leads to bigger ones near the heart of the sport. Competitions like track ought to reveal the limits of human abilities, to push through previously assumed boundaries. But, here, World Athletics seems to have set a limit that might actually be holding its athletes back.

What would be better? Does racing, along with other sports, need greater scientific precision, a better understanding of human physiology? Or does it just need to accept that there may not be a perfect way to define, and record, a race?

According to scientists, the basic idea behind the 0.1 second rule does make some sense.

Human beings cannot react instantaneously to a sound, says Matthieu Milloz, a biomechanics scientist at the University of Limerick in Ireland who is completing his PhD on recording race starts. A long chain of physical and physiological events have to occur, and each component takes time: The sound of the gun has to travel to a runners ears, the ears translate the sound into a neurological signal, the signal has to be recognized by the nervous system, the nervous system has to send a command to start down to the muscles, the muscles take time to contract, and so on.

A wily racer could get a jump on this process. You can anticipate the gun, Milloz says. Races can be won or lost by hundredths, even thousandths of a second. So an early start can give a runner an advantage.

What doesnt make much sense to scientists is the number World Athletics says is the neurophysiological limit. Currently, we dont know what this neurophysiological limit is, Milloz says. But what I can say is that the 100-millisecond [0.1 second] threshold is not science-based. We dont have the data.

Thats not to say there havent been any studies. The studies on sprint starts tend to be small, and they dont always use the most elite athletes as subjects. If scientists arent testing the very fastest sprint starters in the world, how would they know what the very edge of the limit is?

A 1990 Finnish study on eight non-elite sprinters is often cited, and this study did find evidence to support a 0.1 second limit. But other studies have recorded sprinters starting faster than that perhaps even faster than 0.085 seconds. Other scientists have done some back-of-the-napkin calculations accounting for how long it takes for a signal to traverse the ears, nerves, and muscles, and concluded that start times faster than 0.1 second are possible.

Im sure that you can react in less than 100 milliseconds, Milloz says, noting hes recorded it himself in unpublished work. Yet he doesnt know what the exact number ought to be.

World Athletics has maintained that the 0.1 second rule is based on the science on standard reaction times.

Other sources disagree. Sports historian PJ Vazel, who wrote a report on the history of reaction time for the IAAF (the former name of World Athletics), says this rule actually dates back to the 1960s, and a West German sprinter named Armin Hary.

Hary was known as the Thief of Starts, due to his suspiciously fast starting times in sprint races. Its unclear whether Hary anticipated the gun, or just had a very fast reaction time (some tests indicated the latter was the case). He was constantly starting faster than the others, Vazel says. There was controversy. Enough so that West Germany pushed for an automated system to be built into starting blocks themselves to measure false starts.

West Germany worked with the watch company Junghans, which developed the blocks. According to their patent, the company says they performed tests which found that sprinters were not starting faster than 0.1 seconds. That limit became a rough rule of thumb for the next few decades, Vazel explains, until it was officially codified in 1989. Its unfortunate, Vazel says, that people still think this rule was founded on a scientific basis. It was not.

Scientific in the purest sense of the word would mean allowing outside researchers to verify the findings in an open and consistent manner.

When Milloz says he doesnt know what the limit is, its because there is no gold standard, he says, on how to study this. Small changes to the experimental setup what type of sensors are used, how they are calibrated can yield different answers.

Scientists arent even sure how, precisely, the official recording systems are calibrated. According to Milloz and colleagues writing in the journal Sports Medicine, The precise details of event detection algorithms [i.e how the starting blocks record a start] are not made public by SIS [start information system] manufacturers.

On top of that, variables like how loud the sound of the gun is, and how long runners have to wait before the starting gun is fired can all influence their speed. (Both a louder gun, and a longer wait tend to result in faster starts.) Ideally, World Athletics and outside scientists could agree on how to control for all this.

Vazel says World Athletics needs to be more transparent around how the machines actually calculate their results. In fact, there is reason to believe that the sensors at the World Championships in Eugene may have been recording faster reaction times than normal.

Gaither wasnt the only runner at the World Championships to be disqualified for starting after the gun. Julien Alfred was disqualified for starting 0.095 seconds after the gun, and Devon Allen was disqualified for starting 0.099 seconds after the gun, just one thousandth of a second too quickly.

We reached out to World Athletics about why the 0.1 second rule has not been changed when scientific studies have shown runners can react more quickly.

They stand by it. According to World Athletics, The 100ms rule was initially set as it was determined to be the minimum auditory reaction time.

We pointed out that World Athletics even commissioned its own study on reaction times in 2009, which determined that the limit should be lowered from 0.1 second.

When we asked why that didnt prompt a change, World Athletics replied, The Technical Committee felt that the study, which was carried out using only six non-elite athletes, was not sufficiently robust to warrant a change.

So round and round we go. Scientists say there isnt data to support keeping the 0.1 second rule. And here World Athletics is saying there isnt data to throw it out either.

At least one World Athletics council member has called for a rule change. It is standard procedure after each world championships for the World Athletics Competition Commission to review the championships and recommend any rule changes, World Athletics told us.

Basically: Theyre looking into it. Like they say they do every year.

In the meantime, one thing seems clear: We dont know how fast a runner can start, but it seems likely to be faster than 0.1 seconds.

Theres some evidence that the 0.1 second limit and the strict rules surrounding it might be holding racers back from starting as fast as possible. Over the years, the costs of false starting have increased. Its now the case that a single false start can get a runner disqualified from a race. As the rules have grown stricter, studies suggest racers have started more cautiously. One study found starts in international championships slowed down by 20 percent from 1997 to 2011.

So whats the answer here? Milloz thinks the sport could benefit from more science and standardization. He would like to bring the top athletes in the world to a lab to test their fastest possible starts on machines and with methods that all stakeholders can agree are the gold standard for the sport and science. Gather a lot of response times, Milloz says. And try to plot the distribution, to more clearly see what time would be an unacceptable outlier.

But even then, there could still be some questions about the start of a race. Often in sports, the more you zoom into a moment with technology, the more complicated calls become. When you look more closely at starts, Milloz says, youll find the first parts of the body to move after the gun goes off are not the feet on the starting blocks, but the hands, pushing off the ground. Might it be fairer to record starts from the hands, and not the feet? Milloz says the hands can start moving 50 milliseconds before the feet.

But why stop at the hands? Might a more perfect start detection system, in the future, actually tap into a racers brain to see when they first gave their body the motor command to run? Deciding how to record the start of a race comes with some choices to make about when and where it starts.

There is no perfect way to record something, Milloz says. Every estimate will come with some range of error, or with some careful choices to make. There is always some limitation.

Perhaps anticipating the gun could be a part of the sport. But from our reporting, this seems like an unpopular idea that would lead to more false starts, more race restarts, and messier races overall. Perhaps World Athletics could encourage officials to have more discretion to overrule the computerized start system when the margins are tiny. But then, with discretion, comes inconsistency.

Ultimately, even if a lower reaction time threshold is set depending on where and how its set its still possible someone could come along one day and break it.

Each choice here comes with a compromise.

The idea of perfect fairness in sports may simply be impossible. Theres no way to make sports perfectly fair, says sports writer Joe Posnanski. What you want to do is make it fair enough that people have faith in it.

At the very least, World Athletics can start by making the reaction time limit lower than 0.1 seconds. Given that race starts may always be a gray area, it may be impossible to prevent all false accusations of cheating. But hopefully it will at least be possible to lower the number of athletes unfairly disqualified.

Since the World Championships, Gaithers false start has weighed on her. Ive kind of been experiencing a little PTSD with it, she says, calling the incident embarrassing. Now, when I get to my blocks, the only thing that Im thinking about in my blocks is be patient. Thats literally the thing thats been engraved in my head since that moment. Be patient because you cant afford for that to happen again.

We told Gaither a synopsis of our reporting: That its scientifically plausible she started that quickly. I really appreciate that, she says.

Our sport, she says, is nowhere near perfect. But loving it means wanting to see it get better. Im one of the true lovers of this sport, she says. And, you know, as big of a blow as that was, it hasnt changed.

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Why professional runners can be disqualified for starting a race after the gun - Vox.com

Reply to: Revisiting life history and morphological proxies for early mammaliaform metabolic rates – Nature.com

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Reply to: Revisiting life history and morphological proxies for early mammaliaform metabolic rates - Nature.com

Is It Dangerous To Drink Beverages That Contain Sodium Benzoate? – Tasting Table

It sure is. Sodium benzoate is a powder that's made by combining benzoic acid with lye, also called sodium hydroxide. This combination does not occur in nature, but benzoic acid can be found in some fruits, plants, and fermented foods.

On its own, sodium benzoate is harmless. What causes trouble is when it's added to products containing vitamin C or ascorbic acid, as it's commonly called on food labels. When these two substances meet, they can turn into benzene, a known carcinogen. This combination is commonly found in soft drinks and is particularly a concern with diet sodas as sugar seems to blunt some of the negative effects of the duo. (via FBC Industries).

In addition to possibly forming a carcinogen, a 2016 study published in Physiology International linked the additive to tissue inflammation. A 2014 study published in Sage Journal found a correlation between sodium benzoate consumption and ADHD. A decrease in leptin, which controls appetite, was concluded in a 2011 study from the British Journal of Nutrition, and free radical formation resulted in a 2014 study via Scientific World Journal.

While deemed safe in specific amounts by the FDA, and more studies are needed to draw further conclusions on any purported dangers, it's always best to do your due diligence and read labels when your health is at stake.

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Is It Dangerous To Drink Beverages That Contain Sodium Benzoate? - Tasting Table

ExPath Grad Student Madeline Mayday Awarded Grant from the NIDDK Cooperative Centers of Excellence in Hematology – Yale School of Medicine

Madeline Mayday, BS, a fourth-year Experimental Pathology graduate student in the Laboratory of Diane Krause, MD, PhD, was recently awarded a 2022 National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases Hematology Centers Program Type B Pilot and Feasibility grant for her project entitled, Investigation of RBM15 and the m6A Epitranscriptome in Megakaryopoiesis.

The NIDDK is an institute within the National Institutes of Health. The NIDDK Hematology Centers Program provides a novel support mechanism for researchers to pursue new directions in benign hematology. The grants are designed to support innovative pilot research projects in benign hematology, including the generation of preliminary data for larger research grants.

Madeline is a PhD candidate in the Department of Pathology and is part of the Medical Research Scholars Program. She is originally from Muskoka, Ontario, and graduated with a BS in Cell and Molecular Biology from San Francisco State University. She then worked as a Research Associate at UCSF to develop a protocol for detection of pathogens causing respiratory failure in pediatric HSC transplant patients.

Madeline began her graduate studies in the Translational Molecular Medicine, Pharmacology and Physiology (TMMPP) program at Yale in Fall 2019 and joined the Krause Lab in May 2022 with an interest in translational research and hematopoiesis.

Submitted by Terence P. Corcoran on September 20, 2022

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ExPath Grad Student Madeline Mayday Awarded Grant from the NIDDK Cooperative Centers of Excellence in Hematology - Yale School of Medicine

You have so much to choose from: The Marvels Wont Adapt Monica Rambeaus Strongest Version For the Movie, Fans Claim They Are Depowering a Black Woman…

Monica Rambeau is the daughter of Maria Rambeau who was a dear friend of Carol Danvers aka Captain Marvel. Following the storyline ofWandaVision, the character of Monica Rambeau crossed the Hex 2 to 3 times which made her gain powers never before seen!

Announcing her return inThe Marvelsin 2023, it seems that Monica Rambeaus powers were nullified significantly to keep the focus on Captain Marvel more, the fans state Marvel is depowering a black woman is in the attempt.

Speaking at the D23 Expo, the director of the movie Nia DaCosta stated that the original character of Monica Rambeau will not be seen inThe Marvelsand only a part of her powers will be used. The director gave her statement as follows.

With Monica, we really got to talk about, Okay, like which of her thousands of powers in the comics do we want to make canon in the MCU? Well, you know theres a part in the comics where she realizes shes immortal.

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She continued,

She freaks out and then she goes intangible in water, and her atoms scatter across the ocean, and that takes her like forever to put herself back together. Like, shes insane so its like, you have so much to choose from Anyway, we didnt do that one.

While as awesome as this may sound, the director has stated that the audience will not be able to see the ultimate form of Monica Rambeau inThe Marvelsas fans claim that an attempt to depower a black woman is in progress.

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Taking to Twitter, the fans shared the news about the attempt to allegedly depowerize a black woman as Monica Rambeaus powers may overshadow Captain Marvels. Her powers include enhanced physiology, spectral vision, energy absorption, and, intangibility to name a few along with immortality and many other godly powers that compete with the powers of Captain Marvel herself!

The fans took to Twitter to express their views and opinions with most of them unhappy with the power change.

The decision indeed rests with the people over at Marvel as to what the powers of Monica Rambeau should be.The Marvels will combine Iman Vellanis Ms. Marvel along with Brie Larsons Captain Marvel and Teyonah Parris Monica Rambeau with her newly acquired abilities.

The Marvelsis set for a release date on 28th July 2023 to be released in theaters worldwide.

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Source: Twitter

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You have so much to choose from: The Marvels Wont Adapt Monica Rambeaus Strongest Version For the Movie, Fans Claim They Are Depowering a Black Woman...

The US Is Measuring Extreme Heat Wrong – WIRED

In the late 1970s, a physicist and textiles engineer in Texas named Robert Steadman published a paper called The Assessment of Sultriness. The title reflected an unpleasant sort of steaminesshow temperature and humidity combine to make life hard on the body. To do it, he drew on a long history of experimentation. In the 18th century, people climbed into ovens warmed to 250 degrees Fahrenheit to see how long they could suffer, as they watched steaks cook beside them. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, researchers observed people sweat in Turkish baths and reported from mines where they measured the ambient conditions as workers collapsed from heat exhaustion. Later on, the military picked up more of the testing, deriving equations for how blood flow, sweat, and breathing respond to atmospheric extremes.

What was unique to Steadman was his intimate knowledge of clothes; he was known for projects like a universal sizing system for garments, and motors that could spin fine cotton yarn. After all, he theorized, people are rarely naked in the heat, so our perception of it must be mediated by a combination of physiology and clothing. His formulas assumed precise percentages of how much skin would be covered with fabric, and how specific mixes of air and fiber would transfer heat from the air.

Whats surprising is that, for a set of calculations developed by a textiles researcher, Steadmans measure of sultriness proved useful for weather forecasters, especially in the United States. In 1990, a scientist at the National Weather Service adapted them with Steadmans key features more or less intact. Henceforth, the sultriness index came to be known more (or perhaps less) pithily as the heat index," though it's also sometimes called the apparent temperature or real feel. If you have been caught in this summers heat waves, this is likely a number you have consulted to better understand the torturous outdoors. Its the measure thats supposed to include an overlooked factor in the human experience with heat: humidity. That wetness in the air slows the evaporation of sweat off your skina key way of staying cool.

What made Steadmans index successful was that the numbers felt right, in a literal sense. The heat index reads like a temperature, but its wobblier than that, a perception rooted in physiological reality. When two different combinations of heat and humidity result in the same heat indexsay, 96 degrees Fahrenheit/50 percent humidity and 86 degrees/95 percent humidity, which both have a heat index of 108this is meant to signal that the body in each scenario is under a similar level of stress as it tries to cool down. As the heat index rises, the miracle of internal thermoregulation that fixes our bodies at 98.6 degrees begins to crumble. Our core temperature rises, which starts off as unpleasant and then gets dangerous. Theres a roughly 10 degree window before all the chemistry that sustains life begins to fail. That means death.

But theres a problem with Steadmans calculations: They werent actually built to handle those sorts of extreme conditions. At a certain thresholdone that includes a plausibly steamy combination of 80 percent humidity and 88 degrees Fahrenheitthe heat index veers into predicting what David Romps, a physicist and climate scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, calls unphysical conditions that rarely happen in the lower parts of atmosphere. This includes supersaturated air making contact with the skinthat is, air thats more than 100 percent saturated with water.

Temperature and humidity conditions beyond that threshold are somewhat rareand when they do happen, its possible to extrapolate from Steadman's model to come up with an estimated heat index value. But estimates are estimates, and those kinds of heat waves are becoming more common as temperatures rise. So Romps and his graduate student, Yi-Chuan Lu, began taking a look at the models fundamentals. They quickly realized that, for the long list of assumptions in the equations, certain things were missing. For one thing, there is a natural solution to the supersaturation problem: When the air is too wet for human sweat to evaporate, it can still bead and drip off the skin, providing some relief.

See the article here:
The US Is Measuring Extreme Heat Wrong - WIRED