Francis Heber Gonzalez's blog

A pilgrimage through Puerto Rican Science

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To be in a cold, inhospitable climate, with your colleagues telling you stories of people disappearing under the snow in winter storms makes anyone second guess his decision to leave the beaches of my homeland for the cold winters of Boston.

After moving to that inspiring and musical city, somehow I learned of an initiative called Ciencia Puerto Rico, and they  had created a website. I thought: "More boricua nerds, good! What a great idea!" So I went to the site, created a profile and invited all my friends from the Chemistry Department at UPR-Mayaguez to join.

What happens during a seizure?

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Written by Eduard H. Valdés Valderrama, a student at the School of Medicine of the Medical Sciences Campus of the University of Puerto Rico. 

Imagine that you are doing something routine, like walking back to the dining table after getting a glass of water from the fridge.  Now imagine that a strange feeling overcomes you and you feel as if something bad is about to happen.  Suddenly you feel a strange stomach pain that creeps along with a dizziness that stops you in your tracks. No matter how much you want and try to keep moving and back to your chair, you can’t, and everything goes dark, as if you were falling into deep sleep.

What is the Zika virus?

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By Natalia Rodríguez Jockovich.

Zika is a mosquito-borne virus that is known to circulate in tropical climates and has caused disease outbreaks in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, and most recently in the Americas. The symptoms of Zika are similar to those of dengue and chikungunya, diseases spread through the same mosquitoes that transmit Zika, and usually include low fever or rash, conjunctivitis, muscle and joint pain, appearing a few days after a person has been infected by an infected mosquito or after sexual intercourse with an infected person. Zika is generally a mild disease and most people with the virus will not even experience symptoms.

How does alcohol affect your brain?

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Alcohol consumption has some benefits: helps us relax and generally makes us have a good time. But not everyone has the same relationship with alcohol. There are some people who are more affected by alcohol consumption than others, either because of genetic predispositions, the environment they grew up in or behaviors they observed. Although for some, the two or three drinks on a Friday is no more than an escape without much consequence, for others it can be a sentence to constant suffering.

"A liver of steel"

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Some will feel the like their chest is going to pop out because someone has told them that they have a “liver of steel” during their career as professional drinkers. What you haven’t been told is that the origin of this saying is because the liver hardens and loses its function for those who abuse alcohol.  Because we only have one liver, once you damage it, there’s no plan B, YOU lost the game. It’s not like the kidneys which if you remove one, there’s still another one and you can receive dialysis to ameliorate the symptoms.  But many people take the comment a joke. Now I’ll explain what happens to your liver every time you go drinking and abuse alcohol.  

Educational program Déjala brillar/Let it glow is successfully launched

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Written by Xavier Valcárcel

Turn off the lights, turn on the lights: three children they appear developing interpretations through movements thinking of zooplankton.  Turn off the lights, turn on the lights: three girls appear interpreting phytoplankton.  Turn off the lights, turn on the lights: three girls appear, developing movements representative of ocean food chain; specifically about the relationship between humans and fish.  Then the lights go out one last time and the audience bursts into applause.

 

One more beer and then we go...

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Today, April 7th, is Alcohol Screening Day. "Ugh!  Don’t sign me up for that one!  Alcoholism. What an ugly word!"  Yes, it is.  But the reality of life as an alcoholic or having a friend or family member suffering from this health condition is even uglier.  

Why does alcohol cause so much trouble and why is taboo to talk about alcoholism? After all, alcohol is a legal product and in Puerto Rico consumption often is glorified.

Knowledge: To your Health!

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They say it's better to prevent than to deal with an issue after it’s too late.  In no other aspect of our daily life is this more true and important than when it comes to our health. Every day we make decisions that sooner or later will affect us. As time goes on, if we haven’t paid attention to these decisions nor taken care of our physical and emotional health, the body and the mind are going to pass the bill.

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