Do You Know You Can Die From Drinking Too Much Water?

You've heard of the benefits of drinking water. But do you know you can die from drinking too much water? Most people won't believe this, but it's true.

In January 2007, Jennifer Strange was one of about 18 contestants who tried to win a Nintendo Wii gaming console by determining how much water they could drink without going to the bathroom. She guzzled almost 2 gallons (about 7.58 liters) of water. Several hours into the contest, Strange was interviewed on the air and complained that her head hurt. Several hours later, Strange was found dead in her home. The county coroner said preliminary autopsy findings indicate Strange, a 28-year-old mother of three, died of water intoxication.

Water intoxication occurs when a person drinks so much water that the other nutrients in the body become diluted to the point that they can no longer do their jobs. It is also known as hyponatremia.

Sodium is an important electrolyte that helps regulates the body’s fluids. When the body’s sodium level is changed rapidly by drinking a lot of water, the extra water then causes the cells in the body to swell and malfunction. If it's caught early, treatment with IV fluids containing electrolytes can lead to a complete recovery; but untreated, hyponatremia can be fatal.

When somebody dies of water intoxication, it is usually caused by the combination of a very large amount of water (often 5 liters or more) over a relatively short period of time (minutes to hours).

Several high risk factors include:

• Gastroenteritis, particularly in infants and children: The severe diarrhea and vommiting associated with gastroenteritis can result in very large electrolyte losses. Drinking water will replace lost water and avoid dehydration, but if the person is unable to take any other drink or food then lost electrolytes will not be replaced, which can result in water intoxication.
  
  
• Endurance sports: Some of the most famous cases of water intoxication have involved athletes. They got in trouble because they were losing larges amounts of both water and sodium in their sweat but they were replacing their fluid loses with water only. The use of electrolyte solutions instead of water to prevent dehydration reduces the risk substantially.

• Binge Drinking: There have been at least two reported cases of people dying from binge drinking as part of drinking contests and fraternity hazing.
  
• Drug Use: Water intoxication has occurred in people trying to dilute their urine to pass a drug test. There have been at least two cases of teenagers dying after using Ecstasy and then drinking excessive water. Impairment of the kidney’s ability to remove the extra fluid by the drugs (particularly Ecstasy) was an important factor in their deaths.
  
  
• Low Body Mass (infants): It can be very easy for children under a year old to absorb too much water – especially if the child is under nine months old, because with their small body mass, it is easy to take in a large amount of water relative to body mass.
  

Water intoxication can be prevented if a person's intake of water and electrolytes closely matches his or her losses. Avoid situations that provoke extreme or prolonged perspiration. Drinking fluids that are specially balanced to replace lost electrolytes can also help to prevent intoxication. Eating regularly can provide needed electrolytes if only normal water is available for rehydration.

For additional reading:

• Wikipedia - Water Intoxication
• HowStuffWorks - How can someone die from drinking too much water
• FoxNews - Authorities investigate case of woman dying after water-drinking contest
  

Do You Know What is the Aurora?

The aurora is a beautiful atmospheric phenomenon appearing as bands of coloured light sometimes visible in the night sky in the polar regions of the earth. In the northern region, it is known as the aurora borealis or the Northern Lights. In the southern region, it is known as the aurora australis or the Southern Lights.

Auroras take on different appearances. They can look like an orange or red glow on the horizon - much like a sunrise or sunset. They may also look like curtains or ribbons and move and undulate during the night.

Auroras can be green, red or blue. Often they will be a combination of colors, with each color visible at a different altitude in the atmosphere.

• Blue and violet: less than 120 kilometers (72 miles)
• Green: 120 to 180 km (72 to 108 miles)
• Red: more than 180 km (108 miles)

Aurora over Bear Lake, Alaska

Red aurora above Pioneer Peak, Alaska

How do auroras happen? The solar wind from the Sun can bring fast-moving particles towards the Earth. Some of them are then guided by the Earth's magnetic field towards the north and south magnetic poles. As they approach the Earth, the particles interact with the atmosphere making it glow in many different colours and causing the effect we call an aurora.

Illustration of how the aurora is formed

Auroras are like neon lights. Neon lights work by exciting gases inside of a tube with electricity. The resulting colors that you see are a result of the different gases used to make neon lights. In an aurora, the neon colors you see are the different wavelengths of light from gases high in the atmosphere.

A photograph of an aurora borealis taken aboard the International Space Station (ISS)

The following YouTube video shows the aurora australis captured by NASA's IMAGE satellite and overlaid onto NASA's satellite-based Blue Marble image.

For more information of the aurora, follow the links below:

• Wikipedia - Aurora (astronomy)
• Michigan Tech - The Aurora Page
• NASA - Aurora
• MSN Encarta - Aurora (phenomenon)
  

Do You Know Why Some Websites Have "www" in Their Address While Some Don't?

If you frequently surf the Internet, you may have realized by now that certain URLs have the "www" prefix in front of them, while certain others don't. For example http://www.google.com has it, while http://phfoong.googlepages.com doesn't. Why is this so, you may ask?

The reason for this happening is due to the usual practice of naming the Internet hosts according to the services they provide. For example:

• The host name of a Web server usually has the "www" prefix.
  
• The host name of an FTP server usually has the "ftp" prefix.
• The host name of a News server usually has the "nntp" or "news" prefix.

The use of the prefixes is in fact NOT required. That is why we can see many website today not having the "www" prefix in their URLs. The "www" is simply a choice in name, nothing more.

You can find out more from these articles:

• Wikipedia - World Wide Web
• Ask Leo! - Why do some website addresses have "www", and some don't? And why do some work with or without the "www"?
• HowStuffWorks - Why do some Web sites include www in the URL while others don't?

Do You Know What is a Googol?

Nope, I did not mis-spell THE search engine.

A googol is a very huge number. It is actually 10¹⁰⁰ (which is 1 followed by 100 zeroes).

The term was popularized by Edward Kasner. On a walk with his nephews, Milton and Edwin Sirotta, Kasner asked for their ideas for a name for a very large number. Nine-year-old Milton suggested "googol."

Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google, named their search engine after the term googol.

There is also googolplex - an even bigger number. A googolplex is equals to 10^googol (which is 1 followed by a googol zeroes).

Incidentally, the company headquarters for Google is known as the Googleplex (most likely a combination of Google and complex).

Do You Know What is Antibiotic Resistance?

In my previous post regarding bacterial vs. viral infection, I touched a little on the emergence of antibiotic resistance. So, what exactly is antibiotic resistance?

First, we need to establish what is an antibiotic. Antibiotics are medicines that fight (or prevent) infections caused by bacteria. Antibiotics cannot fight infections caused by viruses. Antibiotics have been used extensively in the fight against infectious diseases.

However, because it is used so much (and sometimes inappropriately), bacteria are quickly adapting and becoming resistant to antibiotics.

The following information from the website of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) describes how bacteria becomes resistant to antibiotics:

Antibiotics kill or inhibit the growth of susceptible bacteria. Sometimes one of the bacteria survives because it has the ability to neutralize or evade the effect of the antibiotic; that one bacterium can then multiply and replace all the bacteria that were killed off. Exposure to antibiotics therefore provides selective pressure, which makes the surviving bacteria more likely to be resistant. In addition, bacteria that were at one time susceptible to an antibiotic can acquire resistance through mutation of their genetic material or by acquiring pieces of DNA that code for the resistance properties from other bacteria.

Because of antibiotic resistance, diseases are becoming harder to treat using conventional antibiotics. Not only that, they are becoming more virulent, causing widespread infections. Newer and more expensive antibiotics have to be used to treat these resistant bacteria. In fact, the bacteria are adapting faster than we can develop new antibiotics! This graph clearly shows that we are slowing down in the discovery of new antibiotics.

So, what can we possibly do to help prevent this health care disaster? Here are some recommendations from the CDC:

• Do not take an antibiotic for a viral infection like a cold, a cough or the flu.
• Take an antibiotic exactly as the doctor tells you. Do not skip doses. Complete the prescribed course of treatment, even if you are feeling better.
• Do not save any antibiotics for the next time you get sick. Discard any leftover medication once you have completed your prescribed course of treatment.
• Do not take antibiotics prescribed for someone else. The antibiotic may not be appropriate for your illness. Taking the wrong medicine may delay correct treatment and allow bacteria to multiply.
• Antibiotic prescriptions in outpatient settings can be reduced dramatically - without adversely affecting patient health - by not prescribing antibiotics for viral illnesses, such as colds, most sore throats, coughs, bronchitis, and the flu.
• Do not demand antibiotics when a healthcare provider has determined they are not needed.
• Talk with your healthcare provider about antibiotic resistance.

You can read more about antibiotic resistance here:

• Wikipedia - Antibiotic Resistance
• CDC - About Antibiotic Resistance
• WHO - Antimicrobial Resistance
• Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics
• SciDev.Net - Antibiotic Resistance FAQs

You can also get a good brief description on the topic of antibiotic resistance from this YouTube video here:

Do You Know the Difference Between a Bacterial and a Viral Infection?

Most people do not know the difference between a viral infection and a bacterial infection. Heck, most people do not even know that there are different kinds of infections. To a lot of people, infection = "give me some antibiotics so I'll get better straight away!".

It's hard to blame them. Both bacterial and viral infections are usually very similar in their symptoms, for example, fevers and sore throats. However, they are caused by very different things.

Bacteria are single-celled "living" microorganisms that reproduce by dividing. Bacteria exist everywhere, inside and on our bodies. Most of them are completely harmless and some of them are very useful. But some bacteria can cause diseases.

Unlike bacteria, viruses are not "living" organisms but capsules of genetic material. They require living hosts — such as people, plants or animals — to multiply. Otherwise, they can't survive. When a virus enters your body, it invades some of your cells and takes over the cell machinery, redirecting it to produce the virus.

Despite their similarities, it is absolutely imperative that we distinguish between the 2 infections. This is because medications that are effective against one is not effective against the other. It can be difficult, even for a doctor to distinguish which is the cause of a specific infection. According to this Infection article found at Wikipedia, the following are the typical symptoms that you see when you're having a:

Viral infection - In general, viral infections are systemic. This means they involve many different parts of the body or more than one body system at the same time; i.e. a runny nose, sinus congestion, cough, fever, body aches etc.They can be local at times as in viral conjunctivitis or "pink eye" and herpes. Only a few viral infections are painful, like herpes. The pain of viral infections is often described as itchy or burning.

Bacterial infection - The classic symptoms of a bacterial infection are localized Redness, Heat, Swelling and Pain. One of the hallmarks of a bacterial infection is local pain, pain that is in a specific part of the body. For example,if you get cut and the cut gets infected with a bacterium, it will be painful right where the infection is. If you have a sore throat and the infection is bacterial, one side of the throat is often more sore than the other. An ear infection is usually bacterial if one ear hurts and the other doesn't. An infection that produces pus is always bacterial.

Treatment
Bacterial infections are usually treated with a special antibiotic that only kills the bacterium that has caused the disease. To make sure that you get the right treatment, your doctor may take a sample, for example a swab from the throat or a urine sample.

Treatment of a viral infection is usually left to the patient's own immune system. Doctors usually advise the patient to take lots of fluids and to rest at home. Painkillers are sometimes prescribed to bring down the temperature and alleviate some of the symptoms. Other than that, vaccines have also been developed against most viral diseases. The vaccine gives the body some help in quickly and effectively fighting off the virus.

Antibiotics have NO EFFECT upon viral infections such as colds or flu, and it is important that we limit antibiotic use only to bacterial infections that won't get better on their own.

Over-use of antibiotics reduces their effectiveness by encouraging the growth of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which is a serious and increasing problem globally.

Antibiotic resistance is another interesting and important health topic, which I'll explore the next time.

Do You Know What is a Tropical Cyclone?

This is an image of hurricane Isabel taken from space in the year 2003.

According to the Britannica Online Encylopedia, a tropical cyclone is an intense circular storm that originates over warm tropical oceans and is characterized by low atmospheric pressure, high winds, and heavy rain. Drawing energy from the sea surface and maintaining its strength as long as it remains over warm water, a tropical cyclone generates winds that exceed 119 km (74 miles) per hour. In extreme cases winds may exceed 240 km (150 miles) per hour, and gusts may surpass 320 km (200 miles) per hour. Accompanying these strong winds are torrential rains and a devastating phenomenon known as the storm surge, an elevation of the sea surface that can reach 6 metres (20 feet) above normal levels. Such a combination of high winds and water makes cyclones a serious hazard for coastal areas in tropical and subtropical areas of the world.

Depending on their location and strength, tropical cyclones are referred to by other names, such as hurricane, typhoon, tropical storm, cyclonic storm, tropical depression and simply cyclone.

The structure of a tropical cyclone. Click on the image to see a larger picture.

More recently, a devastating cyclone named Cyclone Nargis struck Myanmar and caused catastophic destruction. An estimated 100,000 people have died since Cyclone Nargis struck on the 2nd of May 2008. Experts warn that the death toll may very well rise with the onset of diseases like cholera and malaria, not to mention widespread hunger.

Read more about cyclones here:

• Wikipedia - Tropical Cyclones
• Tropical cyclone - Britannica Online Encyclopedia
• Met Office: Tropical Cyclones
• FAQ: Hurricanes, Typhoons and Tropical Cyclones
• Hong Kong Observatory - Tropical Cyclones