Red blood cell
Red blood cells known as RBCs, red cells, red blood corpuscles, erythroid cells or erythrocytes, are the most common type of blood cell and the vertebrate's principal means of delivering oxygen to the body tissues—via blood flow through the circulatory system. RBCs take up oxygen in the lungs, or gills of fish, release it into tissues while squeezing through the body's capillaries; the cytoplasm of erythrocytes is rich in hemoglobin, an iron-containing biomolecule that can bind oxygen and is responsible for the red color of the cells and the blood. The cell membrane is composed of proteins and lipids, this structure provides properties essential for physiological cell function such as deformability and stability while traversing the circulatory system and the capillary network. In humans, mature red blood cells are oval biconcave disks, they lack most organelles, in order to accommodate maximum space for hemoglobin. 2.4 million new erythrocytes are produced per second in human adults. The cells develop in the bone marrow and circulate for about 100–120 days in the body before their components are recycled by macrophages.
Each circulation takes about 60 seconds. A quarter of the cells in the human body are red blood cells. Nearly half of the blood's volume is red blood cells. Packed red blood cells are red blood cells that have been donated and stored in a blood bank for blood transfusion. All vertebrates, including all mammals and humans, have red blood cells. Red blood cells are cells present in blood; the only known vertebrates without red blood cells are the crocodile icefish. While they no longer use hemoglobin, remnants of hemoglobin genes can be found in their genome. Vertebrate red blood cells consist of hemoglobin, a complex metalloprotein containing heme groups whose iron atoms temporarily bind to oxygen molecules in the lungs or gills and release them throughout the body. Oxygen can diffuse through the red blood cell's cell membrane. Hemoglobin in the red blood cells carries some of the waste product carbon dioxide back from the tissues. Myoglobin, a compound related to hemoglobin, acts to store oxygen in muscle cells.
The color of red blood cells is due to the heme group of hemoglobin. The blood plasma alone is straw-colored, but the red blood cells change color depending on the state of the hemoglobin: when combined with oxygen the resulting oxyhemoglobin is scarlet, when oxygen has been released the resulting deoxyhemoglobin is of a dark red burgundy color. However, blood can appear bluish when seen through skin. Pulse oximetry takes advantage of the hemoglobin color change to directly measure the arterial blood oxygen saturation using colorimetric techniques. Hemoglobin has a high affinity for carbon monoxide, forming carboxyhemoglobin, a bright red in color. Flushed, confused patients with a saturation reading of 100% on pulse oximetry are sometimes found to be suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning. Having oxygen-carrying proteins inside specialized cells was an important step in the evolution of vertebrates as it allows for less viscous blood, higher concentrations of oxygen, better diffusion of oxygen from the blood to the tissues.
The size of red blood cells varies among vertebrate species. The red blood cells of mammals are shaped as biconcave disks: flattened and depressed in the center, with a dumbbell-shaped cross section, a torus-shaped rim on the edge of the disk; this shape allows for a high surface-area-to-volume ratio to facilitate diffusion of gases. However, there are some exceptions concerning shape in the artiodactyl order, which displays a wide variety of bizarre red blood cell morphologies: small and ovaloid cells in llamas and camels, tiny spherical cells in mouse deer, cells which assume fusiform, lanceolate and irregularly polygonal and other angular forms in red deer and wapiti. Members of this order have evolved a mode of red blood cell development different from the mammalian norm. Overall, mammalian red blood cells are remarkably flexible and deformable so as to squeeze through tiny capillaries, as well as to maximize their apposing surface by assuming a cigar shape, where they efficiently release their oxygen load.
Red blood cells in mammals are unique amongst vertebrates. Red blood cells of mammals cells have nuclei during early phases of erythropoiesis, but extrude them during development as they mature; the red blood cells without nuclei, called reticulocytes, subsequently lose all other cellular organelles such as their mitochondria, Golgi apparatus and endoplasmic reticulum. The spleen acts as a reservoir of red blood cells. In some other mammals such as dogs and horses, the spl
Microbiology
Microbiology is the study of microorganisms, those being unicellular, multicellular, or acellular. Microbiology encompasses numerous sub-disciplines including virology, parasitology and bacteriology. Eukaryotic microorganisms possess membrane-bound cell organelles and include fungi and protists, whereas prokaryotic organisms—all of which are microorganisms—are conventionally classified as lacking membrane-bound organelles and include Bacteria and Archaea. Microbiologists traditionally relied on culture and microscopy. However, less than 1% of the microorganisms present in common environments can be cultured in isolation using current means. Microbiologists rely on molecular biology tools such as DNA sequence based identification, for example 16s rRNA gene sequence used for bacteria identification. Viruses have been variably classified as organisms, as they have been considered either as simple microorganisms or complex molecules. Prions, never considered as microorganisms, have been investigated by virologists, however, as the clinical effects traced to them were presumed due to chronic viral infections, virologists took search—discovering "infectious proteins".
The existence of microorganisms was predicted many centuries before they were first observed, for example by the Jains in India and by Marcus Terentius Varro in ancient Rome. The first recorded microscope observation was of the fruiting bodies of moulds, by Robert Hooke in 1666, but the Jesuit priest Athanasius Kircher was the first to see microbes, which he mentioned observing in milk and putrid material in 1658. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek is considered a father of microbiology as he observed and experimented with microscopic organisms in 1676, using simple microscopes of his own design. Scientific microbiology developed in the 19th century through the work of Louis Pasteur and in medical microbiology Robert Koch; the existence of microorganisms was hypothesized for many centuries before their actual discovery. The existence of unseen microbiological life was postulated by Jainism, based on Mahavira’s teachings as early as 6th century BCE. Paul Dundas notes that Mahavira asserted the existence of unseen microbiological creatures living in earth, water and fire.
Jain scriptures describe nigodas which are sub-microscopic creatures living in large clusters and having a short life, said to pervade every part of the universe in tissues of plants and flesh of animals. The Roman Marcus Terentius Varro made references to microbes when he warned against locating a homestead in the vicinity of swamps "because there are bred certain minute creatures which cannot be seen by the eyes, which float in the air and enter the body through the mouth and nose and thereby cause serious diseases."In the golden age of Islamic civilization, Iranian scientists hypothesized the existence of microorganisms, such as Avicenna in his book The Canon of Medicine, Ibn Zuhr who discovered scabies mites, Al-Razi who gave the earliest known description of smallpox in his book The Virtuous Life. In 1546, Girolamo Fracastoro proposed that epidemic diseases were caused by transferable seedlike entities that could transmit infection by direct or indirect contact, or vehicle transmission.
In 1676, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, who lived most of his life in Delft, observed bacteria and other microorganisms using a single-lens microscope of his own design. He is considered a father of microbiology as he pioneered the use of simple single-lensed microscopes of his own design. While Van Leeuwenhoek is cited as the first to observe microbes, Robert Hooke made his first recorded microscopic observation, of the fruiting bodies of moulds, in 1665, it has, been suggested that a Jesuit priest called Athanasius Kircher was the first to observe microorganisms. Kircher was among the first to design magic lanterns for projection purposes, so he must have been well acquainted with the properties of lenses, he wrote "Concerning the wonderful structure of things in nature, investigated by Microscope" in 1646, stating "who would believe that vinegar and milk abound with an innumerable multitude of worms." He noted that putrid material is full of innumerable creeping animalcules. He published his Scrutinium Pestis in 1658, stating that the disease was caused by microbes, though what he saw was most red or white blood cells rather than the plague agent itself.
The field of bacteriology was founded in the 19th century by Ferdinand Cohn, a botanist whose studies on algae and photosynthetic bacteria led him to describe several bacteria including Bacillus and Beggiatoa. Cohn was the first to formulate a scheme for the taxonomic classification of bacteria, to discover endospores. Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch were contemporaries of Cohn, are considered to be the father of microbiology and medical microbiology, respectively. Pasteur is most famous for his series of experiments designed to disprove the widely held theory of spontaneous generation, thereby solidifying microbiology's identity as a biological science. One of his students, Adrien Certes, is considered the founder of marine microbiology. Pasteur designed methods for food preservation and vaccines against several diseases such as anthrax, fowl cholera and rabies. Koch is best known for his contributions to the germ theory of disease, proving that specific diseases were caused by specific pathogenic microorganisms.
He developed a series of criteria. Koch was one of the first scientists to focus on the i
Integrated Authority File
The Integrated Authority File or GND is an international authority file for the organisation of personal names, subject headings and corporate bodies from catalogues. It is used for documentation in libraries and also by archives and museums; the GND is managed by the German National Library in cooperation with various regional library networks in German-speaking Europe and other partners. The GND falls under the Creative Commons Zero licence; the GND specification provides a hierarchy of high-level entities and sub-classes, useful in library classification, an approach to unambiguous identification of single elements. It comprises an ontology intended for knowledge representation in the semantic web, available in the RDF format; the Integrated Authority File became operational in April 2012 and integrates the content of the following authority files, which have since been discontinued: Name Authority File Corporate Bodies Authority File Subject Headings Authority File Uniform Title File of the Deutsches Musikarchiv At the time of its introduction on 5 April 2012, the GND held 9,493,860 files, including 2,650,000 personalised names.
There are seven main types of GND entities: LIBRIS Virtual International Authority File Information pages about the GND from the German National Library Search via OGND Bereitstellung des ersten GND-Grundbestandes DNB, 19 April 2012 From Authority Control to Linked Authority Data Presentation given by Reinhold Heuvelmann to the ALA MARC Formats Interest Group, June 2012
Jurisprudence
Jurisprudence or legal theory is the theoretical study of law, principally by philosophers but, from the twentieth century by social scientists. Scholars of jurisprudence known as jurists or legal theorists, hope to obtain a deeper understanding of legal reasoning, legal systems, legal institutions, the role of law in society. Modern jurisprudence began in the 18th century and was focused on the first principles of natural law, civil law, the law of nations. General jurisprudence can be divided into categories both by the type of question scholars seek to answer and by the theories of jurisprudence, or schools of thought, regarding how those questions are best answered. Contemporary philosophy of law, which deals with general jurisprudence, addresses problems internal to law and legal systems and problems of law as a social institution that relates to the larger political and social context in which it exists; this article addresses three distinct branches of thought in general jurisprudence.
Ancient natural law is the idea that there are rational objective limits to the power of legislative rulers. The foundations of law are accessible through reason, it is from these laws of nature that human laws gain whatever force they have. Analytic jurisprudence rejects natural law's fusing of what it ought to be, it espouses the use of a neutral point of view and descriptive language when referring to aspects of legal systems. It encompasses such theories of jurisprudence as "legal positivism", which holds that there is no necessary connection between law and morality and that the force of law comes from basic social facts. Normative jurisprudence is concerned with "evaluative" theories of law, it deals with what the goal or purpose of law is, or what moral or political theories provide a foundation for the law. It not only addresses the question "What is law?", but tries to determine what the proper function of law should be, or what sorts of acts should be subject to legal sanctions, what sorts of punishment should be permitted.
The English word is derived from the Latin maxim jurisprudentia. Juris is the genitive form of jus meaning law, prudentia means prudence (also: discretion, forethought, circumspection, it refers to the exercise of good judgment, common sense, caution in the conduct of practical matters. The word first appeared in written English in 1628, at a time when the word prudence meant knowledge of, or skill in, a matter, it may have entered English via the French jurisprudence. Ancient Indian jurisprudence is mentioned in various Dharmaśāstra texts, starting with the Dharmasutra of Bhodhayana. Jurisprudence in Ancient Rome had its origins with the —experts in the jus mos maiorum, a body of oral laws and customs. Praetors established a working body of laws by judging whether or not singular cases were capable of being prosecuted either by the edicta, the annual pronunciation of prosecutable offense, or in extraordinary situations, additions made to the edicta. An iudex would prescribe a remedy according to the facts of the case.
The sentences of the iudex were supposed to be simple interpretations of the traditional customs, but—apart from considering what traditional customs applied in each case—soon developed a more equitable interpretation, coherently adapting the law to newer social exigencies. The law was adjusted with evolving institutiones, while remaining in the traditional mode. Praetors were replaced in the 3rd century BC by a laical body of prudentes. Admission to this body was conditional upon proof of experience. Under the Roman Empire, schools of law were created, practice of the law became more academic. From the early Roman Empire to the 3rd century, a relevant body of literature was produced by groups of scholars, including the Proculians and Sabinians; the scientific nature of the studies was unprecedented in ancient times. After the 3rd century, juris prudentia became a more bureaucratic activity, with few notable authors, it was during the Eastern Roman Empire that legal studies were once again undertaken in depth, it is from this cultural movement that Justinian's Corpus Juris Civilis was born.
In its general sense, natural law theory may be compared to both state-of-nature law and general law understood on the basis of being analogous to the laws of physical science. Natural law is contrasted to positive law which asserts law as the product of human activity and human volition. Another approach to natural-law jurisprudence asserts that human law must be in response to compelling reasons for action. There are two readings of the natural-law jurisprudential stance; the strong natural law thesis holds that if a human law fails to be in response to compelling reasons it is not properly a "law" at all. This is captured, imperfectly, in the famous maxim: lex iniusta non est lex; the weak natural law thesis holds that if a human law fails to be in response to compelling reasons it can still be called a "law", but it must be recognised as a defective law. Notions of an objective moral order, external to human legal systems, underlie natural law. What is right or wrong can vary according to the interests one is focused on.
John Finnis, one of the most important of modern natural lawyers, has argued that the maxim "an unjust law is no law at all" is a poor guide to the classical Thomist position. Related to theories of natural law are classical theories of justice, beginning in the West with P
Gram stain
Gram stain or Gram staining called Gram's method, is a method of staining used to distinguish and classify bacterial species into two large groups. The name comes from the Danish bacteriologist Hans Christian Gram. Gram staining differentiates bacteria by the chemical and physical properties of their cell walls by detecting peptidoglycan, present in the cell wall of Gram-positive bacteria. Gram-negative cells contain peptidoglycan, but a small layer of it, dissolved when the alcohol is added; this is. Gram-positive bacteria retain the crystal violet dye, thus are stained violet, while the Gram-negative bacteria do not. Both Gram-positive bacteria and Gram-negative bacteria pick up the counterstain; the counterstain, however, is unseen on Gram-positive bacteria because of the darker crystal violet stain. The Gram stain is always the first step in the preliminary identification of a bacterial organism. While Gram staining is a valuable diagnostic tool in both clinical and research settings, not all bacteria can be definitively classified by this technique.
This gives rise to Gram-indeterminate groups. The method is named after its inventor, the Danish scientist Hans Christian Gram, who developed the technique while working with Carl Friedländer in the morgue of the city hospital in Berlin in 1884. Gram devised his technique not for the purpose of distinguishing one type of bacterium from another but to make bacteria more visible in stained sections of lung tissue, he published his method in 1884, included in his short report the observation that the typhus bacillus did not retain the stain. Gram staining is a bacteriological laboratory technique used to differentiate bacterial species into two large groups based on the physical properties of their cell walls. Gram staining is not used to classify archaea archaeabacteria, since these microorganisms yield varying responses that do not follow their phylogenetic groups; the Gram stain is not an infallible tool for diagnosis, identification, or phylogeny, it is of limited use in environmental microbiology.
It is used to make a preliminary morphologic identification or to establish that there are significant numbers of bacteria in a clinical specimen. It cannot identify bacteria to the species level, for most medical conditions, it should not be used as the sole method of bacterial identification. In clinical microbiology laboratories, it is used in combination with other traditional and molecular techniques to identify bacteria; some organisms are Gram-variable. In a modern environmental or molecular microbiology lab, most identification is done using genetic sequences and other molecular techniques, which are far more specific and informative than differential staining. Gram staining has been suggested to be as effective a diagnostic tool as PCR in one primary research report regarding gonococcal urethritis. Gram stains are performed on body biopsy when infection is suspected. Gram stains yield results much more than culturing, is important when infection would make an important difference in the patient's treatment and prognosis.
Gram-positive bacteria have a thick mesh-like cell wall made of peptidoglycan, as a result are stained purple by crystal violet, whereas Gram-negative bacteria have a thinner layer, so do not retain the purple stain and are counter-stained pink by safranin. There are four basic steps of the Gram stain: Applying a primary stain to a heat-fixed smear of a bacterial culture. Heat fixation kills some bacteria but is used to affix the bacteria to the slide so that they don't rinse out during the staining procedure; the addition of iodide, which binds to crystal violet and traps it in the cell Rapid decolorization with ethanol or acetone Counterstaining with safranin. Carbol fuchsin is sometimes substituted for safranin since it more intensely stains anaerobic bacteria, but it is less used as a counterstain. Crystal violet dissociates in aqueous solutions into chloride ions; these ions penetrate through the cell wall and cell membrane of both Gram-positive and Gram-negative cells. The CV+ ion interacts with negatively charged components of bacterial cells and stains the cells purple.
Iodide interacts with CV+ and forms large complexes of crystal violet and iodine within the inner and outer layers of the cell. Iodine is referred to as a mordant, but is a trapping agent that prevents the removal of the CV–I complex and, colors the cell; when a decolorizer such as alcohol or acetone is added, it interacts with the lipids of the cell membrane. A Gram-negative cell loses its outer lipopolysaccharide membrane, the inner peptidoglycan layer is left exposed; the CV–I complexes are washed from the gram-negative cell along with the outer membrane. In contrast, a Gram-positive cell becomes dehydrated from an ethanol treatment; the large CV–I complexes become trapped within the Gram-positive cell due to the multilayered nature of its peptidoglycan. The decolorization step must be timed correctly.
Microscope
A microscope is an instrument used to see objects that are too small to be seen by the naked eye. Microscopy is the science of investigating small structures using such an instrument. Microscopic means invisible to the eye. There are many types of microscopes, they may be grouped in different ways. One way is to describe the way the instruments interact with a sample to create images, either by sending a beam of light or electrons to a sample in its optical path, or by scanning across, a short distance from the surface of a sample using a probe; the most common microscope is the optical microscope, which uses light to pass through a sample to produce an image. Other major types of microscopes are the fluorescence microscope, the electron microscope and the various types of scanning probe microscopes. Although objects resembling lenses date back 4000 years and there are Greek accounts of the optical properties of water-filled spheres followed by many centuries of writings on optics, the earliest known use of simple microscopes dates back to the widespread use of lenses in eyeglasses in the 13th century.
The earliest known examples of compound microscopes, which combine an objective lens near the specimen with an eyepiece to view a real image, appeared in Europe around 1620. The inventor is unknown. Several revolve around the spectacle-making centers in the Netherlands including claims it was invented in 1590 by Zacharias Janssen and/or Zacharias' father, Hans Martens, claims it was invented by their neighbor and rival spectacle maker, Hans Lippershey, claims it was invented by expatriate Cornelis Drebbel, noted to have a version in London in 1619. Galileo Galilei seems to have found after 1610 that he could close focus his telescope to view small objects and, after seeing a compound microscope built by Drebbel exhibited in Rome in 1624, built his own improved version. Giovanni Faber coined the name microscope for the compound microscope Galileo submitted to the Accademia dei Lincei in 1625; the first detailed account of the microscopic anatomy of organic tissue based on the use of a microscope did not appear until 1644, in Giambattista Odierna's L'occhio della mosca, or The Fly's Eye.
The microscope was still a novelty until the 1660s and 1670s when naturalists in Italy, the Netherlands and England began using them to study biology. Italian scientist Marcello Malpighi, called the father of histology by some historians of biology, began his analysis of biological structures with the lungs. Robert Hooke's Micrographia had a huge impact because of its impressive illustrations. A significant contribution came from Antonie van Leeuwenhoek who achieved up to 300 times magnification using a simple single lens microscope, he sandwiched a small glass ball lens between the holes in two metal plates riveted together, with an adjustable-by-screws needle attached to mount the specimen. Van Leeuwenhoek re-discovered red blood cells and spermatozoa, helped popularise the use of microscopes to view biological ultrastructure. On 9 October 1676, van Leeuwenhoek reported the discovery of micro-organisms; the performance of a light microscope depends on the quality and correct use of the condensor lens system to focus light on the specimen and the objective lens to capture the light from the specimen and form an image.
Early instruments were limited until this principle was appreciated and developed from the late 19th to early 20th century, until electric lamps were available as light sources. In 1893 August Köhler developed a key principle of sample illumination, Köhler illumination, central to achieving the theoretical limits of resolution for the light microscope; this method of sample illumination produces lighting and overcomes the limited contrast and resolution imposed by early techniques of sample illumination. Further developments in sample illumination came from the discovery of phase contrast by Frits Zernike in 1953, differential interference contrast illumination by Georges Nomarski in 1955. In the early 20th century a significant alternative to the light microscope was developed, an instrument that uses a beam of electrons rather than light to generate an image; the German physicist, Ernst Ruska, working with electrical engineer Max Knoll, developed the first prototype electron microscope in 1931, a transmission electron microscope.
The transmission electron microscope works on similar principles to an optical microscope but uses electrons in the place of light and electromagnets in the place of glass lenses. Use of electrons, instead of light, allows for much higher resolution. Development of the transmission electron microscope was followed in 1935 by the development of the scanning electron microscope by Max Knoll. Although TEMs were being used for research before WWII, became popular afterwards, the SEM was not commercially available until 1965. Transmission electron microscopes became popular following the Second World War. Ernst Ruska, working at Siemens, developed the first commercial transmission electron microscope and, in the 1950s, major scientific conferences on electron microscopy started being held. In 1965, the first commercial scanning electron microscope was developed by Profess
