The Brain Essay Essays - Emerging Technologies, Brain,

The Brain Essay The human body is divided into many different parts called organs. An organ called the brain, is the center of the nervous system and it is the center of all voluntary and involuntary activities. It is also responsible for other complexities such as thought, language, and emotion. The brain weighs merely three pounds in an adult but it contains thousands of millions of nerve cells that make up the nervous system. For years scientists have been studying the enigmas of the brain and still today, there are many aspects of the brain that remain a mystery. In order to comprehend the brain, it's necessary to understand the protection it has from injuries. It's also imperative to discover medical advances through tests and analysis to treat devastating neurological diseases. Twenty-eight bones make up the skull. Eight of these bones are interlocking plates. These plates form the cranium. The cranium provides maximum protection for the brain while the other twenty bones make up the face. Another way the brain is kept safe is by keeping itself in liquid. Nearly one fifth of the blood pumped by the heart is sent to the brain. The brain then sends the blood through an intricate network of blood vessels to where the blood is needed. Specialized blood vessels produce a protective fluid. This fluid is what the brain literally floats in. A third protective measure taken by the brain is called the blood brain barrier. This barrier consists of a network of unique capillaries. These capillaries are filters for harmful chemicals carried by the blood, but do allow oxygen, water, and glucose to enter the brain. By understanding the nature in which the brain is kept, a person can assume that it is the most important organ in the body. A person can then learn how to treat brain juries and many neurological diseases. Today, many experiments are being conducted that may be medical advances for the future. For instance, brain grafting is one procedure that may be used in the future. Brain grafting is transplanting a very thin layer of brain skin from one person to another. This would result in the treatment of Parkinson's disease and other seizure related disorders. Another radical idea that has already been successfully been tried on rhesus monkey's is, total body transplants. This would allow someone with total body cancer to live with another body. However, the spine can't be reattached and scientists are pondering ways on how to spark cell growth in the spinal column to grow back in the broken area of the spine. The ethics and legal problems for such a transplant would probably never let this operation be performed on humans. This is because the person would not be the same. The last idea of the future is called artificial seeing. Artificial seeing is achieved by planting small electrodes in fr ont of the visual cortex of the brain. The electrodes are connected to a small camera that is some where on the person's ear. A computer is attached to the camera. The computer sends the images from the camera directly to the implanted electrodes. They flash as the picture from the camera, thus enabling the person to see. But as of yet this procedure is not practical because of the size of the computer, and because of the cost of the package. After all of the work and research that we have done it is very evident to us that the brain is one of the most wondrous organs that humans could have. It guides us through almost every second of our life. Even after exploring the world and the universe, the brain has never ceased to amaze people, and probably never will. Science

Social Experiment Report Essays - McCarthyism, Talcott Parsons

Social Experiment Report Essays - McCarthyism, Talcott Parsons Social Experiment Report Introduction Our experiment was based on the sociological views of Talcott Parsons. Talcott Parsons believed that people reacted according to their values and the values of the people around them which created stability in society. He also believed people only cooperated together to achieve goals based on their shared values. We decided to challenge that concept by following through with a social experiment that required people to decide between either giving a helping hand or doing nothing at all. This is the Dropping a Wallet in Public Experiment. Research We conducted a survey with 50 different individuals all selected at random to help us observe a more accurate consensus on whether people agreed and cooperated only if they had something alike. 37 individuals proved Parsons Theory to be correct because the answers on these 37 resembled one anothers generally. The rest, 13 other individuals, had random answers which didnt correspond with a specific pattern. We can use the following question that we asked as an example to further investigate this theory: Rate the following from 1 being the first to 5 being the last. Who are you more inclined to assist first if they are ever in need? a)Teacher b)Parents c)Siblings d)Classmates e)Friends This specific question can deliver a lot of insight on Parsons Theory. The reason we worded the question so broad was because we didnt want people to understand what was being asked because then they might be inclined to change the answer to our liking. We hypothesized that people would choose answers based on their personal values and preferences and we were correct. Majority, specifically 43 people chose parents as their number 1 choice because they believed that if their parents were in this position, they would choose them. The other 7 individuals surprisingly chose siblings and friends as their number 1 choices. This we believed was due to a weak connection between the participants and their parents or because the connection with their siblings/friends was stronger. The participants believed that the values were similar with the options that were given. We also conducted a social experiment to further assess the theory. We had someone drop a wallet in front of a passerby and someone else attempt to steal that wallet. Some individuals reacted by doing absolutely nothing while others ran after the offender and demanded that he give back the stolen wallet. This we believe is due to the shared values that they think they have with the innocent person being robbed. Maybe the ones who helped out had been through a robbery before and knew how badly it affected them, so they didnt want someone else to deal with that? Whatever the case may have been, the good Samaritans outweighed the bad folk who didnt believe in helping out. Result (Video Analysis) Conclusion To conclude, we discovered that Talcott Parsons theory on sociological behavior was accurate in the scenario that we dealt with. We discovered that individuals assisted each other when they felt that their views resembled one anothers. We also learned that even within a basket full of good apples a few bad apples can still be present. At the end of the day we left our location and realized that out of the 62 different reactions we had with random strangers, 90% of those reactions were people helping a helpless person in need. I guess you can say that faith in humanity has been restored.