My Science School

Read on to know how Albert Szent-Gyorgyi found a cure for scurvy, a disease caused by a lack of vitamin C.

In 1928, a Hungarian-born US biochemist, Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, isolated an unknown substance from the adrenal glands of an ox. He named it hexuronic acid.

He soon discovered that hexuronic acid could also be obtained from oranges, lemons and cabbages. One thing common to these three sources was that they were all believed to be rich in vitamin C, a substance no one had been able to isolate till then but which was known to cure scurvy.

It occurred to Szent-Gyorgyi that hexuronic acid and vitamin C might be one and the same thing. He injected hexuronic acid into some guinea pigs that had scurvy, and waited to see what would happen. If hexuronic acid were indeed the same as vitamin C, the guinea pigs would get cured. And that is exactly what happened. The animals recovered from the disease.

He wanted to repeat the experiment but he had run out of hexuronic acid. He had to get some more, but how? It was not easy to come by adrenal glands of oxen, the best source: getting it from lemons and oranges was a laborious process.

He was pondering over the problem at dinnertime when his wife served him freshly ground chilli (paprika) with his food. He had never been fond of paprika but now he looked at it with new interest. He had tested many fruits and vegetables for hexuronic acid, but not paprika. Could it give him the acid he was so desperate to get his hands on?

He took it to his laboratory and tested it for its contents - and it was then that he fell in love with the spice. It was loaded with hexuronic acid!

Within a few weeks, he produced three pounds of pure crystalline hexuronic acid. He fed it to vitamin C deficient guinea pigs and got the same results as earlier the animals recovered from scurvy. There was no difference between hexuronic acid and vitamin C.

 When Szent-Gyorgyi received the Nobel Prize for his work in 1937, ‘Time’ magazine dubbed it the ‘Paprika Prize’.

Picture Credit : Google

You might have used or seen your parents use Google Maps while travelling around the city. Have you ever wondered how it works? Find out...

Google Maps has revolutionised travel like never before. Travellers can chalk out their itineraries and find addresses at the dick of a button with the help of this free map service. You can virtually view the street your cousin lives on in the U.S. without even moving an inch from your seat!

Google bases its maps on information taken from a selection of databases. But the most crucial data is provided by the satellite images of cities, which is captured and converted into small image files. The data is then verified with a vast database of map references like longitude and latitude co-ordinates, addresses and postal codes.

When you type an address in the search field, Google sends the query to its global servers and searches for the closest location match. The search results in the corresponding map of the location being displayed on screen, When you ask for directions from Location A to B. Google sorts out the information in its map servers, which store millions of potential route combinations to find the fastest route between the two locations. This kind of system which deals with information related to location is called Geographical Geographical Information System (GIS).

Google Maps first started as a software application developed by the Danish-born Rasmussen brothers Lars and Jens for a company that was later acquired by Google.

Picture Credit : Google 

It occurs when a person is sleep deprived, tired, or suffering from a sleep disorder. Microsleep is a common cause of car accidents when an exhausted driver falls asleep at the wheel while driving.

It is a brief, involuntary episode of sleep lasting from a fraction of a second to several seconds. Microsleep occurs when a person is sleep deprived, mentally fatigued, depressed or suffering from a sleep disorder.

Microsleep can happen anytime, anywhere. Often, the person is so tired that he does not even realise that he has missed a few seconds of wakefulness. He may feel temporarily spaced out and not react to external factors like a traffic light.

Though it is a matter of a few seconds, microsleep is very dangerous if it occurs insituations when the person has to be constantly alert such as while driving, flying an aeroplane, or operating heavy machinery. Microsleep is a common cause of car accidents when an exhausted driver falls asleep at the wheel while driving and wakes up too late to avoid a collision or negotiate a curve on the road. Microsleep can affect your performance in school too. If you are sleep deprived, it is possible that microsleep could spell trouble while writing the exam paper.

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Barcodes- those simple labels with black stripes-have revolutionised the retail industry. The stripes printed on product packaging contain important information regarding the product. Each barcode is made of varying widths of bars and spaces between them. The barcodes can be decoded only through special devices such as a laser or optical scanner, the kind used at supermarkets. Barcodes enable easy and fast transaction as well as analysis of sales data stored in the computer.

The information contained in barcodes is called Symbology. As soon as a barcode is passed through a scanner, all information pertaining to the product is shown on a computer screen. Shopkeepers love this system because it enables easy and fast transaction as well as analysis of sales data (stored in the computer). This system has a very low margin of error during sale. Barcodes are also useful for manufacturers since a unique identity can be inserted for each box of products to help in packaging and transportation

These days other geometric patterns are used in place of the original parallel bars but they are all generally referred to as barcodes.

Picture Credit: Google