I was at the Super Summer Shindig fundraiser for the Ronald McDonald House and I sent this, along with the one of me with the clown, to Jeff the Ex.
After all, I knew he would know this character had meaning for me and that place had meaning for him.
We had shared a few words and then signed off.
Two nights later, he sent me a photo of him with a Wonder Woman!
As I recall, he was at a beer festival or something, there in Rome.
I mentioned that he looked like he'd lost some weight. He replied that it must have been a flare-up of the pancreatitis he'd had two weeks earlier. (Yikes! That, and precancerous intestinal polyps, have been going for four years now.)
Naturally, our talk turned to him having a better diet. Just simple changes, nothing extreme: more fish and chicken, less sausage and beef.
He told me he had some tuna he should probably eat, as it had been in the freezer for at least six months.
I told him that it would probably taste okay, but the texture would be off.
Then, of course, I gave him a science lesson.
"I think the extended frozen state is to blame. Water takes up more space than ice, even when that water is in muscle. That's why I think cryogenics is not workable. The human body is made up of more than 70% water, with much of it within and around cells in all organs, blood vessels, and brain. That water expansion during the freezing process would burst many, if not all, of those cells. Consequently, the person would be dead, not just frozen."
Pretty cool, and gruesome, right?
Best of all, I hadn't even known I'd thought about the topic.
Not the first time I've done that!
I gave no more thought to the topic until this morning.
Over coffee, I was reading the "News of the Weird" and came upon this story.
"Russian scientists have revived two ancient, frozen roundworms, or nematodes, from samples collected in the Siberian permafrost, The Siberian Times reported on July 26. [Same date as our conversation above!] The worms, were found in cores taken from 30 meters and 3.5 meters deep, are believed to be female and 41,700 and 32,000 years old, respectively. After collecting the samples, scientists slowly thawed out the worms, which eventually started eating and moving. Scientists from the Institute of Physico-Chemical and Biological Problems of Soil Science in Moscow believe the nematodes have some adaptive mechanisms that may be of scientific importance."
Another article revealed that the nematodes were found after "more than 300 samples of frozen soil of different ages and locations throughout the Arctic" were thawed. The worms were found in two of those 300 samples.
Therefore, it's fair to say the scientists had no idea that the samples had any animal life forms when they harvested them. Nor did they have any idea the samples contained any animal life forms "until they had slowly thawed the samples". How they found the worms in the samples is not given.
The worms were placed into Petri dishes with a nutrient medium "for several weeks". That's when they were noticed to be moving.
Apparently, though, that as not quite correct. In the original scientific article, small samples of the frozen soil were placed in the Petri dishes, in a nutirent-rich medium, then monitored over several weeks for roundworm activity.
Two different species were found: Panagrolaimus aff. detritophagus (Rhabditida) and Plectus aff. parvus (Plectida). Bear in mind that both of these species are tiny, on the order of 0.4 to 0.7 millimeters in length. That equates to 0.04 to 0.07 centimeters - or, for those here in the USA, about 1/64th of an inch.
These tiny, near-microscopic bacteria-eaters basically consist of a digestive tube, with a mouth on one end and an anus on the other. That's fairly simple, compared to higher orders of fauna... like us. I would expect their water content to be quite low.
So, based on the reported data and my own research online, I hold with my argument: cryogenics is not viable for animals with high water content.
We'll have to see if science can disprove that hypothesis.
(smile)
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