Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related FFQs: Just Some Assorted Questions....

Hello, FoLCs! School's almost over, and I'm feeling Muse-ical! (Plus it's late, and my brain's usual inhibitors are doooowwwnnn!)
So, I got a few questions, for anybody who knows answers:

1. How much blood is in a cow?

2. Can anybody get into the Vatican to see the Pope? Or is security too tight? How about in the early 90s, if things were different then? Would it help if this person was a preist or a nun?

3. Can brain damage/scarring cause increased risk of fever?

4. Why do some animals drink blood, anyway? Is there a specific chemical in blood, or is it simply the way everything's formatted?

5. What year did John Lenon die? And when did he start wearing glasses?

6. How many of you assume these questions are all related, and are frightened?


EDITED To Add:

7. How much older is Clark Than Lois?


Okay...That ought to be enough for now.

1. I can't really answer that question, but humans usually have 80ml blood per kg body weight. A cow weighs about 600 kg, which would mean that she has about 48 l blood. I first thought this was unlikely, but I found that they really have about 50 l. So how much does your cow weigh? Btw, 50 l are about 12 gallons.

2. Well, you can't just go and see him. Or it rather depends on where you want to see him. Parts of St. Peter are open for public and sometimes the Pope shows his face. Benedikt surely more often than John Paul II in the last years of his life. Other than this you can ask for an audience. How easy you would get it is another question. But as far as I know not even nuns or priests can get there so easily, not even back in the 90'.

3. I would think so. But I'm not entirely sure.

4. Well, blood transports everything you eat all day, so I guess it's a rather good meal, if you depend on fluid.

5. John Lennon died on December, 8th in 1980. I don't know anything about his glasses. I start wearing mine much later ( for I wasn't even born in 1980)

6. Yes, I'm scared.

Interesting questions, Mary. Very... interesting.

1. By the time the kosher butcher is done... none. It's the law.

While it's still alive? Uhm... a lot. Let's see...

According to this page , "A cow's heart weighs about 5lbs and pumps 400 pints of blood through the udder to produce 1 pint of milk. That means nearly 10,000 pints of blood are pumped through a cow's udder daily to produce 3 gallons of milk." Not quite what we were looking for, though.

The same page says that "A cow weighs about 1400lbs."

And according to this page , a cow's body is 5-6% blood by weight. 5% of 1400 is 70lbs.

According to this page , the density of blood is about 1060 kg/m^3. 70lbs are about 32kg. Divide that. Convert from m^3 to gallons (thank you, onlineconversion.com). And you get... about 8 gallons.

2. The pope is an important figure and a very busy man. With a schedule that's often timed to the minute. To get in to see him, you'd need to fight through an entire city's worth of red tape to get an appointment. He also has very tight security.

3. I'm not sure. I don't think so. I guess it would depend on where the damage was. Offhand, I'd say possible, but not likely. It's not on this list of common causes of fever . Unfortunately, most hits involving "brain damage" and "fever" are about potential damage caused by high fever rather than the other way around.

4. Blood is high in energy and rich in protein. It is one of the most nutritious substances in the body, including a lot of pre-digested material (all the good stuff extracted from your food goes directly into the bloodstream from the digestive tract). Everything important to feed your cells is right there. It's also liquid (easy to rapidly consume) and can be found pretty much anywhere in the body. Also, those proteins (such as hemoglobin) can be hard to make, and to make right, yet they're vital to survival. That makes them attractive targets for theft.

5. John Lennon was shot Dec 8, 1980.

He wore these specific glasses from 1970-1973. I'm not sure if they were his first pair, but I don't think he had them much earlier than that.

6. I know you. Of course I'm frightened.

About your 3rd and 4th questions...

3.) The brain has its special area for just about everything. I think I've heard of one that's responsible for setting the body's temperature - normal or feverish. If you simply assume that's true, and that particular area is scarred... Well, why not? Maybe only the control over the sweating is gone so that the person suffering from the scar developes a fever whenever in a warm climate or doing sports...

4.) Blood contains everything the body needs since it is the body's infrastructure. It contains all the minerlas (especially ferrum in large quantities), amino acids, fatty acids... even most cells of the working immune system. And thee cells can be taken into the body of the animal licking the blood, I suppose. At least the same trick works for babies who're breastfed. Although I doubt that the hemoglobine is taken into the body as a whole. Every Mammal (reptile, amphibian, fish, bird...) can produce hemoglobine perfectly well - or it would die. It's that simple. But the amino acids needed for the hemoglobine - well, they can be used for sure. And (since I don't know which ones are involved) there might be a few rare ones involved.

I'm gonna answer 6 first...
Quite frightened, but intrigued - I'm gonna stick with the intrigued, it'll be more fun.

1. Well, a normal adult human has about 5L of blood, so how many humans can we fit in a cow? I guess that depending on the size of the cow somewhere around 35-40L sounds reasonable to me.

2. Skipping cuz I know nothing about the Pope or the Vatican beyond what I've read in novels.

3. Yes, brain damage can result in temperature instability. It does depend on what parts of the brain are affected. The hypothalamus is part of the brain involved in normal temperature regulation. The brain stem itself also plays important roles in maintaining the body's temperature (along with breathing, heart rate, all that good stuff). So if these areas are injured by lack of blood flow, severe infections, actual traumatic damage; or if the parts of the brain responsible for relaying signals between these parts and the rest of the brain are damaged, then there can definitely be high (or low) temperatures that are not related to actual infections and are just because the brain is not working right.

4. The blood is very rich in nutrients and pretty much all the essential elements of life. The proteins, amino acids, fatty acids, sugars, minerals etc... Hemoglobin is also in there, of course...quite important. Not all animals do make hemoglobin perfectly well - as species baselines, yes. But just like in humans, other species do have the occasional disease/disorder that prevents them from producing "good" hemoglobin. Humans have thalassemias, anemias from dietary deficiencies, sicke-cell anemia, and a really cool one called porphyria - which is a disorder caused by abnormalities in the chemical steps leading to the production of heme. This disorder is hypothesized to be the original origin of vampire legends. These individuals are often pale, sensitive to sunlight (with resulting rashes and blistering) and also known to occasionally drink blood to supplement some of the key elements they are missing. There was a European royal family that had this running in their gene pool at one point - can't remember which ones though...

Jill

2.
So long as you make an appointment, it is technically possible to have a meeting with the pope (I know several people who have, and they are neither nuns nor priests-but are Catholic). I do not know how hard it is to get approval for this appointment though, and do not know the protocol either

3.
I am going to differentiate between general fever (raised body temperature), and infections of the brain (encephalitis).

Normally, there are cells in your brain (glial cells: mainly astrocytes) that enshroud the capillaries and create an extra layer of protection between the brain and the external environment, including infectious agents (in particular bacteria and viruses) and toxic chemicals (not specifically, but you get the idea). This barrier is commonly known as the Blood Brain Barrier and abbreviated to the BBB.

The formation of the BBB is a complex interaction between the astrocytes and the capillaries... where the astrocytes force the capillaries to close off their "normal leakage points", where the substances would leave the blood stream and enter the rest of the body's interstitial fluid (between cells). extra proteins are found to increase the absorption of some chemicals (glucose and the essential amino acids for example). Pharmacologists utilise the chemical specificity of the BBB to either increase the crossing of wanted drugs and substances(psychological medicines), or prohibit the crossing of unwanted substances (as in chemo therapy for cancers).

to quote Wikipedia

there are lots of ways that the BBB can have its integrity compromised. the stress of any surgery (not only brain surgery) is known to do this, as are certain infectious agents, and a few drugs (would have to find a reference for specific drugs, but can do this in a few days for you).

The scars seen in the brain are formed by the very same astrocytes that induce the barrier. Unfortunately I cannot give my reference for this BC it comes from my university of Sydney Lecture/lecturer's research, and copy-write etc. would be a problem...(but I am sure there are some out there, just am too tired now, maybe I will try to find one later).

physical scars should actually act to increase the barrier's integrity (imagine a piece of super-glue stuck in the brain...)

But depending on where the scars came from, then they may or may not be associated with increased risk of infection, depending on if it was during a current surgery/general head trauma or an old one,

Meeting the Pope is all about who you know. The last people I know who had an audience with the pope are incredibly tight with the archbishop in my mom's town, and I'd put money on the archbishop setting it up for them when they traveled to Rome with him.

JD

Huh. Guess you're not the only one asking about #1.

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=339118

Sadly, the page that they link doesn't exist.

I think I answered no. 6.....?????
Tempus goes back in time (to before 1980) and hypnotises John Lennon with a new set of glasses. JL, while under tempus' influence, then starts to drink the blood of a cow (all 40L). The cow doesn't like this, so JL gets kicked in the head, and the resultant brain damage and cow blood lead to a serious brain infection...

Yoko Ono then approaches the pope for some form of healing ceremony (presumably a mulit-faith 1, Not the traditional Catholic last rights)

This all takes place in a time where JL would otherwise be working on his music and peace activism, distracting the nation and preventing some major event from happening, thus changing the course of events so Clark never reaches metropolis


So, how did I go?
Please don't tell me I gave the whole game away so you cannot write it any more

It was ours. Porphyria has been cited by those in the know as the most probable reason for the afflictions of poor King George III, who was deemed to be mad at the time, but whose various symptoms do seem to point towards it. Although, as I understand it, there was never any firm diagnosis then or later.

Various of his descendants have also been considered as victims, with varying degrees of evidence and whether any of the present British Royals are afflicted is a subject still of much speculation.

BTW, the 1995 movie, The Madness of King George , which explores the theory that his madness was in fact the symptoms of porphyria, is a film worth checking out of the video library.

LabRat

Thanks a lot, guys!

Oh, ha ha. Very funny, Paul. :rolleyes:

...Cool!

Don't know about the first five, but as for number 6, I'm excited, cause it means maybe, just maybe, QotC will be writing another great fic. Am I close? Or was beethoven closer?

Hmmmm
well there is always Mad Cow disease
AKA Bovine Spongiform Encepalopathy

& its human equivalent Creutzfeld-Jakob disease (CJD), which we may develop from eating meat from infected cows...

if you are thinking about cow blood and humans with brain infections, then this disease may be of interest... particularly in Britain if I am not mistaken. .... but if there is no connection between the disease and the cows (or the disease came before the cows?) then maybe it doesn't really fit

As a part of our blood donor regulations in NSW (but really all over Australia, however health issues are state based regulations) if you lived in Britain for a period (I think in the 70's or 80's but cannot remember) then you are ineligible to give blood on the basis of risk of transmitting CJD


HA, re no 6. was only a joke lol.
I tried to add some sort of formula in order to understand what on earth you could turn these facts into...

actually CJD and cow blood would fit nicely into my scenario ...

hmmmmm?
if you aren't doing this story, I'll have to think up another combination...

hey
does that mean you think my story idea wasn't great
I take offence (not)

I just plugged Queenie's theories into my patented story generator and came up with that...

I want to see you guys getting a better story out of those 5 Q's
(but I expect QoC has more details and more variables to plug in, so as my generator works on the basis that the more combinations of events the better the story... hers is going to be the best....)

One more thing: How much older is Clark than Lois?

1-2 years

I think it is about a year and a half.

One year and a half, I think. Clark is born in the first half of February (Pisces). In one episode of season three, Lois states that she's Libra, so her birthday must be between September 24th and Oktober 23th (both dates included). And the difference was about one to two years.

Thank you.

I thought it was February 28, 1966? Still Pisces, though. Lois was born between September 24 and October 23rd, 1967. So they're one year and seven to eight months apart.