utenzi

I am alive. I am also very sore and tired. It's amazing what a few days of fever will do to you. Sitting down I feel fairly normal, but just walking up some stairs can tire me out a bit. And I've still got a lot of muscle ache from that fever. C'est la Vie. No doubt I should be back to normal in a few days. And since I was talking about sore muscles, that reminds me of a page in Wikipedia I was reading a few days ago regarding Rigor Mortis (I was reading it due to that post about opisthotonus a few days ago). This is the passage I mean: Rigor mortis is very important in meat technology. The onset of rigor mortis and its resolution partially determines the tenderness of meat. If the post-slaughter meat is immediately chilled to 15°C, a phenomenon known as cold shortening occurs, where the muscle shrinks to a third of its original size. This will lead to the loss of water from the meat along with many of the vitamins, minerals, and water soluble proteins. The loss of water...

Ever wonder why so many fossilized animals, particularly dinosaurs, look so twisted about when they're found? For much of my life the explanations been that ligament drying caused those seemingly agonized positions. That long held theory has recently been revisited by Cynthia Marshall Faux, a veterinarian and paleontologist from Museum of the Rockies, and her co-author Kevin Padian, a professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley. In the March issue of the quarterly journal Paleobiology the article so fetchingly titled " Agonized Death Throes Probable Cause Of Open-mouthed, Head-back Pose Of Many Dinosaur Fossils " explores the problems with the ligament drying theory. Rather, they postulate, the agonized looking positions are exactly what they seem. The result of an agonizing death. Hmmm. Common sense wins out in the end! Witness the Archaeopteryx over there on the left. Just by looking at the position of the bones you get the distinct imp...