Sali's Easily Forgotten Info

Aspartame is a sugar substitute found in sweeteners such as NutraSweet, Equal, Spoonful, and Equal-Measure. It is also found in many diet drinks: Diet Pepsi, Diet Coke etc.,which hits closer to home, because I drink Diet Pepsi almost everyday.

I used to think it is better to drink Diet Pepsi than regular sugar containing Pepsi for a few big reasons, number one being the fact that a can of Pepsi contains 10 spoons of sugar. Too much sugar equals to FAT and eventually very possibly Diabetes. One can of Pepsi is about the Recommended Daily Intake, and considering that most of what people eat has some sort of simple sugars in their diets, 10 spoons of sugar in one can is ALOT.

So why is it better to drink Pepsi vs Diet Pepsi? Because of the sugar substitute Aspartame. If you really can’t stay away from diet drinks then Diet Pepsi containing SPLENDA (sugar alcohol) would be a better choice.

A few of the documented symptoms listed as being caused by aspartame include: headaches/migraines, dizziness, seizures, nausea, numbness, muscle spasms, weight gain, rashes, depression, fatigue, irritability, tachycardia, insomnia, vision problems, hearing loss, heart palpitations, breathing difficulties, anxiety attacks, slurred speech, loss of taste, tinnitus, vertigo, memory loss, and joint pain.

Is that about enough?

Read more if you want the details.

Read the rest of this entry »

Largest Cargo Planes: Aircraft are usually ranked by weight, the maximum takeoff weight in particular. The world’s largest plane is the Antonov An-225 Mriya built in Ukraine when it was part of the Soviet Union. It’s maximum takeoff weight is over 1.3 million pounds (600,000 kg). It is commercially available for carrying ultra-heavy and oversize freight, up to 250,000 kg (550,000 lb) internally or 200,000 kg (440,000 lb) on the upper fuselage. Cargo on the upper fuselage can be 70 m long. A second An-225 was partially built during the late 1980s for use by the Soviet space program. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990 and the cancellation of the Buran space program, the second An-225 was placed in storage.

Largest Commercial Plane: The Boeing 747, it can carry about 400 passengers on intercontinental flights. The 747 will not retain its title for long, however, since the new Airbus A380 will carry over 550 passengers and have a takeoff weight over 1.23 million pounds (560,000 kg).

First Fastest Airplane: The Tupolev Tu-144 was the first commercial airplane to exceed Mach 2. In 1969, July 15th, this supersonic transport aircraft became the fastest commercial airline ever.  In the sixties the engineers of the British/French “Concorde” and the Russian Tupolev TU-144 were competing for first place in getting a supersonic commercial plane airborne. On December 31, 1968 the first prototype of the Tupolev TU-144 took flight, before the Concorde did.  After two severe crashes the flights were discontinued. The last regular flight of a Tu-144 took place on June 1, 1978. Tupolev Tu-144 was nicknamed Concordski, which sounds like a Russian surname, but very similar to Concorde.  The only Tu-144 on display outside the former Soviet Union was acquired by the Auto & Tech Museum in Sinsheim, Germany, in 2001 and that’s where it now stands, in its original Aeroflot livery, on display next to an Air France Concorde.

Extreme Aircraft To be continued ….

“The eighth annual Back-to-School Campaign is underway. Get involved to help demonstrate demand for the State Children?s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and get eligible, uninsured kids enrolled!”

See What’s Happening To date, more than 4,000 events and activities have been planned in all 50 states and the District of Columbia as part of the eighth annual Back-to-School Campaign. Check out our events map to see what?s happening near you.

Yes, sleep.  How often have you tried to stay awake for nearly 24 hours? Maybe to work, study for an exam, to finish a project, or just having fun partying with friends. No matter the reason sleep deprivation is a big risk, both for your health and your environment. 

Twenty-four hours without sleep can produce as much impairment as being legally drunk.

As I was looking through www.howstuffworks.com I came across an interesting article. How Can Someone Stay Awake for 11 Hours?  A man in Cornwall, England, actually went 11 consecutive days without a wink of sleep.

The Guinness Book of World Records no longer acknowledges sleep deprivation attempts because they feel that they’re too dangerous. In 1964 the record  of 274 hours without sleep was set. This record was in the Guinness Book until they removed the category entirely in1989

Consequently, sleep deprivation is a major contributor to auto accidents and may have contributed to disasters such as the explosion at Chernobyl and the Exxon Valdez crash. Sleep deprivation is also a major concern for people working long hours (such as doctors and night shift employees) and for anyone suffering from sleep apnea, which causes high blood pressure, stress and low oxygen levels in the blood. Repeated sleep deprivation can increase your appetite and lead to weight gain. 

Long-term sleep deprivation can cause vision problems, hallucinations, paranoia, mood swings, difficulty communicating or understanding others, a compromised immune system and depression.

www.howstuffworks.cm article by Jacob Silverman.

Ever wake up in the middle of the night (or day) and see a ghost or monster sitting on you or next to you?     There maybe an explanation.

There are 5 stages of sleep, one of them is R.E.M. (rapid eye movement) stage.  During this stage people dream, and extensive physiological changes occur, such as increased brain activity, accelerated respiration, eye movement, and muscle relaxation. In order to keep us from acting out our dreams our bodies secrete hormones that paralyze us.  During most regular sleep cycles the hormones begin to wear off even before the dream is completed, that’s why people wake up with a perfectly functioning body. However, sometimes an individual awakens before the hormones  become inactive.  They are now completely awake but paralyzed.  On occasion, immediately after the person is awake, they are startled by a terrifying visual hallucination. Sometimes this hallucination takes on a stereotypical form. It is usually a vision of a creature sitting on their chest and possibly choking them. Some people say that Alien Abduction victims are nothing more than Sleep Paralysis victims.  I haven’t experiences either one of  those things so I can’t say whether or not it’s true.  I guess either one is a possibility. I do think that all the millions of people that reported alien abduction deserve a better explanation.

If you want to know more….

Not all people waking up with a sleep paralysis hallucinate.  There are two types of sleep paralysis.  The Common Sleep Paralysis and the Hallucinatory Sleep Paralysis (HSP) and the Hag phenomena. HSP is a lot less common.  The source of the hallucination has often been attributed to the hypnagogic state (the state between wakefulness and sleep.) 

 1) Whereas CSP is common and universal HSP is rare and seems to be geographically episodic.

2) CSP is of relatively short duration where HSP can last as long as seven or eight minutes.

3) The major difference of course is that CSP maybe unsettling for the sleeper but the HSP is accompanied by a nightmarish hallucination.”

Something to think about…..

“There is evidence that Hallucinatory Sleep Paralysis seems to affect an area (e.g. a village) much like an epidemic. A region that has had no HSP’s reported may all of a sudden be inundated by sleepers suffering from HSP. Though this is relatively new research it seems regions stay infected for upwards to three years, with the most common being only a few months. There is of yet no explanation for this.”

Still think it’s sleep Paralysis?  Maybe not

via:http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=004foe www.howstuffworks.com

In 1898, the famous neuroanatomist Camillo Golgi reported his discovery of a ribbon-like apparatus inside neurons of the cerebellum. This structure now bears his name as the “Golgi apparatus.” 

via: http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/cells.html

When you learn a new fact, there are physical changes happening in the structure of your brain. Our brain is full of vast synapses; these are tiny connections between neurons (brain cells). Memory storage depends on these synapses, but exactly how these synapses between neurons embody knowledge, or how memories get retrieved years later is a mystery at the moment.

Have you ever told yourself “That’s it-I forgot!” When trying to remember an interesting story or some fact that you know is inside your brain somewhere but you just can’t regurgitate it? Well there is actually a reason for this. The expression “Shoot! My brain cells are just not firing today” is very literal. When two cells are active at the same time, the connection between them strengthens, when one of them is not active, the connection weakens. Moreover, it turns out that the act of retrieval can destabilize the memory. When you recall a past event, the memory becomes temporarily susceptible to erasure. Moreover, it is actually possible to chemically block a memory during that time window. Now that’s a little scary especially when you know that the memory is not stable as it is.

Click here for some interactive videos that can help understand how neuron synapses work, and give a visual reference. I suggest to look at the last video first.

Source: Discover Magazine. August 2007. 10 Unsolved Mysteries of The Brain. Pg.56

What is easily forgotten info? Well…almost everything that you don’t use on daily basis.

Here I am going to put things that I would still like remember many years from now.   

Note: Just because I don’t have a lot of things written, does not mean I don’t know anything. I started this very recently.