ALS essays

ALS essays Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), also known as Motor Neuron Disease (MND), Mal Charcot, or Lou Gehrigs Disease, is a life threatening neurodegenerative disease. ALS causes the progressive loss of nervous system control of voluntary muscle systems by breaking down of motor neurons in the nerve cells in the brain and spinal core. It affects one in every 100,000 people, more men than woman, and symptoms dont usually develop until sufferers are in their fifties. The symptoms of ALS include muscle weakness, decrease in muscle coordination and mass, loss of tissue due to a lack of nervous stimulation, possible paralysis, muscle cramps, voice impairment like hoarseness, slow or abnormal speech, difficulty swallowing and breathing, urinary urgency, leg ankle and feet swelling. Additionally, the nerves controlling muscles in which use is lost, shrink and disappear. This disease has a gradual onset that progressively worsens until death, which usually occurs within three to five years. There are three types of ALS. In some cases it is known that people inherit ALS, but often there are sporadic or non-inherited cases too. The third kind is Guamanian, because there are so many cases in Guam. Nearly 30,000 people currently have the disease, and 95 percent of them are thought to have the sporadic form. Recently they have identified genetic mutations that appear to cause more than half or these cases. The newly identified mutations involve a protein called EAAT2 where some of the useless introns that are supposed to be cut out of the DNA, are kept, while exons are discarded. This produces defective RNA that leads to a defective EAAT2 protein or no protein at all. EAAT2, normally deactivates and recycles glutamate, a chemical certain nerve cells use to send messages to each other. Johns Hopkins researchers have previously shown that many ALS patients have little or no EAAT2 in certain areas of ...

Causes of the peloponnesian war resulting from differences essays

Causes of the peloponnesian war resulting from differences essays In the Greek city states of Athens and Sparta both had many social, cultural, economic, and governmental differences. These differences which were important to both societies way of life, served as reasoning to why these city states would go to war with each other. There were many reasons for both city states to go to war with each other, and would result in an overall weakening of ancient Greece. The Peloponnesian War would be the war that Athens and Sparta would fight and the winner being Sparta would not come out of the war without being as damaged as Athens. Athens had a free speaking democracy, and was allied with other smaller city states. Sparta had a tough and strong military, and conquered many lands. (Nosotro 1) These two far different ways of thinking and the somewhat close location of both to each other would obviously lead to confrontations between both of these cities. First the formation, and what the Greek states were made up of must be explained to lead into one of t he major Greek city states being Athens. Greece was a primitive nation before the city states that could barely produce enough crops for the Greek people. Before the city states people were more divide and it was harder to survive due to the rough climate and mountainous regions. When the Greek city states were formed, the family or a group of people were now more self sufficient and relied on different members of the household for duties or jobs. (Hatzfeld 42) The man of the house would typically have the job which brought in the money such as being a shoemaker or a stonemason. Since ancient Greece primarily traded within their country the Greek city states allowed Greece to trade more with other countries so now the country was becoming more and more influenced by other surrounding cultures. One example is how Greece would trade for a surplus of wheat and timber from near by Sicily. (Hatzfeld 42)Thi...