Forensics Quiz

The leading differential diagnosis is that the vascular trauma was the reason of death that resulted from the bullet injuring the heart and/or the man arteries to the heart. Another possible cause of death is that the bullet could have punctured the lungs, not allowing the man to breathe. This could be ruled out through an autopsy and examination of lungs. The liver could have also been injured by a puncture from the fracture 8th rib which would lead to bleeding and death. This could be ruled out by an autopsy and examination of the liver. The last possible cause of death could be that when the bullet exited the body that it hit the stomach and killed the man. This also can be ruled out by autopsy, and examination of the stomach. By examining the body, having an X-ray of the body to see the path of the bullet and its fragments. Also the amount of blood the man loss will help rule out the diagnoses, but the final diagnosis will be determined by a full body autopsy.


Bullet would enter above the third rib and hit the lungs and heart an exit 5 cm above the belly button and damage the stomach

Anthony Atala: Growing New Organs

       In Anthony Atala's TedTalk, he talked about how the human body can regenerate itself but only for short distance of 1 centimeter. Also, he talked about regenerative medicine and how they create organs, to replace injured or diseased ones. This is to help the shortage in organ donations, since a patient dies every 30 seconds, but could have been saved by tissue regeneration. There are many ways to create organs. One way is to use a standard printer and instead of ink use cells, this is called 3D printing. You can also take an organ and was all the cells off of it with bio-soaps or detergents and infuse it with the patients cells and replant it into the patient.  It is easier to create organs that consist of one type of cell , but it is more difficult to create organs made of two cells or more like a blood vessel or urethra. But there is still a need for stem cells for complex organs like the heart, liver, kidneys, and pancreas. For physicians, the regenerated organ is good enough to be planted if they can use it for their own families and loved ones.

Your Inner Healers

iPSC’s or induction of pluripotent stem cells are embryonic-like cells which can take the form of any of the 220 forms of human cells. It has the potential to cure cell-related diseases such as Diabetes and Parkinson’s disease. Scientists found that by injecting 4 reprogramming hormones found in pluripotent embryonic cells, into mice skin cells through retroviruses. By doing so, skin cells change to iPSC cells which can be used to form any other kind of cells. Some problems associated with iPSC’s are that the retroviruses used to introduce the hormones to the cell, linger and cause cancers in the adult mice, but the problem can be fixed by replacing the retroviruses with the adenovirus.  Also, there are ethical concerns because iPSC’s can be used to create human embryos.  iPSC’s have a huge potential to cure diseases and fight aging, but there still is a lot more research needed before it can be tried on humans. Some ethical concerns are that if iPSC's do cure diseases like Diabetes and Parkinson's Disease, that it will only be available to the rich who can afford it and not to those who need it.

Practice Cancer Quiz

• During which phases of mitosis are chromosomes composed of two chromatids?

                   
                      From the G2 of interphase through metaphase

• Which of the following is true concerning cancer cells?

                       They do not exhibit density-dependent inhibition when growing in culture.

                       When they stop dividing , they do so at random points in the cell cycle.

                       They are not subject to cell controls.

• Which of these is  a carcinogen?

                        Testosterone

                        Cigarette smoke

                         UV light

                        Fat

• One difference between a cancer cell and a normal cell is that

                        Cancer cells continue to divide even when they are tightly packed together

• Which of the following is p53?

                        Tumor suppressor gene