TO SLEEP
Is there a little trick to prevent my PC from going to sleep while I’m away for a few minutes?
A. It happens to all of us that when we have to get away from the computer for a few minutes, it is frustrating to come back and find that it has gone to sleep. While we could just type the password or shake the mouse to turn it back on, some people would prefer it to stay unlocked no matter what.
When you need to put your computer down for a few minutes, hover your mouse over an analog wristwatch. The ticking of the clock will keep your computer active until you return. Of course, you can also change the settings to keep it awake all the time.
BLUE EYES
How common are blue eyes?
A. Let’s start with the fact that even though blue eyes appear to be, well, blue, they’re actually not blue at all. It sounds crazy, but here there is no such thing as blue pigment when it comes to our peepers: you are melancholic or you are not very melancholic at all. And if you’re melanated in every layer of the iris, like most of the human race, then you’d have brown eyes that are actually brown (via Gizmodo), no optical illusions there!
So if there is no pigment in the front layers of the iris of blue-eyed people (there is some melanin in the back layer), what mechanism is at work to make them look blue?
According to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, blue eyes appear blue for the same reason that both the ocean and the sky appear to be blue: it’s simply a trick of the light. This is called the Tyndall effect, which is the way in which light is scattered in blue eyes, giving rise to the blue appearance. Fascinating, isn’t it?
HEAT WITH A COLD
Don Alfredo, isn’t it a contradiction that we get cold when we have a temperature, that is, if we get a COLD, our temperature rises, shouldn’t it be the other way around?
R. Don Marcos, we have all been there: burning with fever and trembling with chills at the same time. It turns out that what you feel and question as a strange internal thermostat malfunction is actually a sign that your body is fighting an infection.
The first thing to understand is that most viruses and bacteria have a hard time surviving above normal human body temperature, which can vary by age, activity, and time of day, but is generally accepted as 36.5 a 37.6°C.
In fact, even a degree or two rise in temperature can stop many invading microorganisms in their tracks. So it’s no wonder that, over millions of years, fevers have evolved as a means of helping the body defend itself. A kind friend and expert collaborator tells us that: “Part of our immune system’s response against infection includes increasing the body’s temperature to decrease the ability of microbes to reproduce.”
Ultimately, this is a normal physiological response. As soon as your brain shifts its internal thermostat to a higher set point to fight an infection, the rest of your body goes to work trying to generate additional heat to meet that higher temperature goal. Suddenly, technically, you’re below your new “ideal” core temperature, so you feel cold.
Feeling cold then leads you to start shivering (shivering), which happens as your body tries to generate heat to increase your temperature, causing your muscles to contract.
