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Human Hibernation on the Horizon?
Mincemeat.net writes "The BBC is reporting that scientists at University of Washington have successfully induced a state of extreme hibernation in mice. The mice suffered no ill effects. Naturally, testing in larger animals will ensue. Humans wouldn't necessarily appreciate the smell of hydrogen sulfide while being placed into suspended animation. However, the applications are numerous if the usage of similar techniques can be applied to us. Cancer treatment, delaying death from injuries, interplanetary expeditions top the lists of possibilities. While it's not a quick freeze, maybe Fry will be able to meet Bender after all."
Funny, Hydrogen Sulfide is a common enough contaminant in ground (well) water systems as well as a byproduct of oil refineries. It deprives the brain of oxygen and causes what IIRC is called "blowdown" or "knockdown" in oil refineries when people momentarily pass out.
6x9=42
Fry and Bender are the names of characters from Futurama; Fry is a 20th century human who winds up being frozen and wakes up in the future. Bender is an alcoholic robot.
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
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One of the effects of hydrogen sulphide exposure is that is "paralyses" the sense of smell before a fatal dose is reached. This is normally very dangerous as people can think they have left the contaminated area while continuing in fact to breathe in more of the toxic gas.
So chances are you wouldn't have to put up with the smell too long, before you either stop smelling, die horribly or maybe just go into suspended animation.
Bender isn't really an alchoholic in the sense a human would be. In Futurama alcohol is fuel for robots, and they consider not drinking to be like alcoholism.
Many organisms respond to changes in environmental conditions by entering into a suspended animation-like state in which a decrease in metabolic rate (MR) is followed by a reduction in core body temperature (CBT) (1). Regulated induction of a hypometabolic state is hypothesized to have great medical benefit for a variety of conditions, including ischemia and reperfusion injury, pyrexia, and other trauma (2). Suspended animation-like states may also be useful for creating beneficial hypothermia in surgical situations and for improving organ preservation (1). Inhibiting oxidative phosphorylation reversibly induces states of profound hypometabolism in several model organisms (3-5). Because hydrogen sulfide (H2S) is a specific, potent, and reversible inhibitor of complex IV (cytochrome c oxidase), the terminal enzyme complex in the electron transport chain (6), we hypothesized that it could reduce MR and CBT in mammals. When mice were exposed to 80 ppm of H2S, their oxygen (O2) consumption dropped by È50% and their carbon dioxide (CO2) output dropped by È60% within the first 5 minutes (Fig. 1A) (7). If left in this environment for 6 hours, their MR dropped by È90% (Fig. 1A). The MR of control mice, as judged from O2 consumption and CO2 output increases (8). This drop in MR was followed by a drop in CBT to È2-C above ambient temperature (Fig. 1B). The average CBT of these mice reached a minimum of 15-C in an ambient temperature of 13-C (Fig. 1B). At this minimum CBT, both CO2 output and O2 consumption was È10% of normal (Fig. 1A), and the breathing rate of the mice decreased from È120 breaths per minute (BPM) to less than 10 BPM (8). After 6 hours of exposure to H2S, the mice were returned to room air and temperature, and their MR and CBT returned to normal (Fig. 1, A and B). Exposing mice to varying concentrations of H2S revealed a linear relationship between the concentration of H2S and CBT (Fig. 1C). CBT dropped faster and reached lower temperatures as concentrations of H2S increased from 0 to 80 ppm (8), suggesting that the effects of H2S are concentration-dependent. However, this MR reduction is not dependent on ambient temperature (fig. S1). Because H2S can be toxic in high doses, we conducted behavioral and functional tests, selected from the SHIRPA protocol (9), to assay for H2S-induced damage. No behavioral or functional differences in the mice were detected after exposure to 80 ppm of H2S for 6 hours (8). In the absence of H2S, no effect on CBT was observed (Fig. 1B, control atmosphere). In addition, others report no long-term health effects with these H2S concentrations (6). The sequential drop in MR and CBT observed in mice (Fig. 1D) exposed to 80 ppm of H2S is similar to that observed when animals initiate hibernation, daily torpor, or estivation (1). On-demand induction of a suspended animation-like state could provide insight into the mechanisms that govern natural states of reduced metabolism. Lowering metabolic demand in this way could be used to reduce physiological damage resulting from trauma and might improve outcomes after surgery.
As hibernation tech increases you can bet many will pay millions for it, and why not? All we need now is some megacorp to set up a freezing station on the moon to store all those human popsicles and they will be billionaires.
I doubt you would be so quick to condemn someone to death rather than hibernation if it was your life on the line.
The human ecosystem (body) is host to ~10e14 bacterial cells. A bit more than a couple of billion. Your dirty. Scrub till you bleed if you want, it won't make much of a difference. They are everywhere, on your eyes, in your ears, in your GI tract, in every little pore on your body, all over the skin, in your mouth. Many of your normal flora can be pretty nasty too, if their virulence genes get turned on. You have a lot of Stahpolococcus sp. in your mouth and on your skin. Under the right conditions, they will betray you.
As for sterilizing a human, even if it was possible, it would be a very bad idea. Your normal flora are adapted to live peacefully side by side with. They protect you by outcompeting invasive foreign species. They manufacture vitamins in your intestines. It would not be a good idea to get rid of them.
Sterile people can be made in theory. It's been done with mice. Scientists aseptically cut them out of the uterous and raised them in sterile environments. They lived twice as long as ordinary mice, but they were weak and sickly the entire time and died of strange nasty diseases. Some of these sterile mice were exposed to a normal environment. They died soon after of horrible nasty diseases.
In summary. Long term refridgeration will cause your little buddies to turn on you and sterilization will lead to a bubble life.
Nice Marmot
Hibernation is a misnomer for what bears do in the winter. Their body temp doesn't really drop all that much.
Aren't we already saving too many people who should be dead and thereby contributing greatly to world problems like overcrowding and world hunger and fun stuff?
No, the problems of world overcrowding and hunger are not problems of supply, they're problems of distribution. The world's food supply is perfectly adequate to feed everyone, and global food production has kept up with population growth. As for overcrowding, the entire population of the world could be housed in an area the size of Texas. This would give every family (or group) of four 5000 square feet of living space.
The problems of world hunger and overcrowding are not problems inherent with having too many people.
I agree with parent poster - the problem is one of distribution, not supply. And for those who don't believe the claim the entire world population would fit in Texas:
Size of Texas: 261,914 sq miles (land) = 7.30174326 × 10^12 square feet
Population of the world: 6,515,511,450 people
Area / people = 1120.67077 sq ft/person
Family/group of 4 = 4482.7 sq ft
Incredible, isn't it?
It will drop you for a little more than "momentarily". H2S has the capacity to kill at less than 100ppm, depending on how long your exposure is. Yes, it will make you pass out -- but you might never wake up.
It's nasty stuff and all refineries, pipelines, and other oil/gas installations are trained about H2S and it's risks. Where H2S is present in the lines, you will see many of the technicians wearing portable H2S monitors.
(BTW, I sell H2S detectors for natural gas custody transfer points. Not the portable ones I spoke about but large scale one for pipeline intersections)
If you do a little math, you'll see that neither killing people nor exploring space are solutions to overpopulation.
Never ever underestimate man's ability to kill other men.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I appreciate the dangers of this particular chemical, but we won't necessarily use this chemical to achieve its effects in humans. If researchers figure out the process the chemical induces in organisms, they can synthesize safer methods.
Bring on the hibernation! Jupiter, here we come.
Here's another calculation...
Check out this page about 'ghost acres'. It calculated that roughly 9.1 acres is needed to sustain one person.
1 acre is 42560 sqft... so each person needs 396396 sqft. Round it to 0.4 million sqft / person.
With 6,515,511,450 people, you will need roughly 2.6 billion million sqft for the world's population!!! A less confusing number: 2,600,000 billion.
The earth has roughly 57,500,000 sq miles of land surface... with 27,878,400 sq feet per sq miles, we have:
1,603,008,000,000,000 sqft of surface area on earth.... which is 1,603,008 billion.
Guess what? We don't have enough space to sustain everyone if everyone want to have the type of lifestyle as we have in the U.S.
If at all times the money you actually had in the bank was greater than the amounts withdrawn (was that $60 cash or a check? could be important) then they can't charge you for overdraft because it NEVER HAPPENED.a l/personal_cu.html> for contacts at US Bank. and try these for Kentucky's banking regulators:
IANAL, but I'm pretty shure deliberately failing to count a deposit when the funds were there (eigther imediately for cash, or as soon as the check clears for checks in most cases, check banking regs and/or a lawyer in the field for exact details) so they can then charge you shure looks like theft or fraud to me.
Also if they showed you a statement showing all the deposits and withdraws and still having a positive ballance then they go back re-do it to charge you I would expect that to be wrong as well.
I'd definately contact the governing body in your state and file a detailed complaint as well as climb as high up the chain of command with US Bank as you can, since they operate in multiple states I doubt they're doing that in many if any other branches and likely someone there is playing games (s)he can and would get fired for.
I once had a rent check bounce despite the banks own statement they issued me showing that I would have had $5.50 left after the check cleared, when I confronted them with that they could appologize fast enough and paid ALL the resulting fee's and wrote the management company I paid rent to a very sincere letter taking all the blame.
Banks are highly regulated and are not allowed to just willy nilly re-order the timing of deposits and withdraws to your detriment. Walk in and tell them you want it fixed post haste, do NOT show any doubt that you are in the right and make shure they know you know who to report thier misdeeds to.
You can try this page:<url:http://www.usbank.com/personal/sub_glob
Commissioner
Department of Financial Institutions
1025 Capitol Center Dr.
Suite 200
Frankfort KY 40601
502-573-3390
Toll free: 1-800-223-2579
Fax: 502-573-8787
Web site: www.dfi.state.ky.us
I suspect someone at that bank is telling you one thing and his out of town bosses another and pocketing the difference, or some other game that smells like embezzling. Just a hunch with no data other than what you've posted on moderngeek, but that is so screwed up I'd find gross incompetence the only other possible explanation.
Again if you confront them again be dead certain in your attitude, don't raise your voice, don't use fould language, just calmly and with total certaintity tell them they need to undoo all the innaproriate charges on your acount or you will have to notify thier superiors and the state banking regulators and possibly the federal athourities as you suspect a criminal activity.
Mycroft
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