“
In my biology class, we'd talked about the definition of life: to be classified as a living creature, a thing needs to eat, breathe, reproduce, and grow. Dogs do, rocks don't, trees do, plastic doesn't. Fire, by that definition, is vibrantly alive. It eats everything from wood to flesh, excreting the waste as ash, and it breathes air just like a human, taking in oxygen and emitting carbon. Fire grows, and as it spreads, it creates new fires that spread out and make new fires of their own. Fire drinks gasoline and excretes cinders, it fights for territory, it loves and hates. Sometimes when I watch people trudging through their daily routines, I think that fire is more alive than we are–brighter, hotter, more sure of itself and where it wants to go. Fire doesn't settle; fire doesn't tolerate; fire doesn't 'get by.'
Fire does.
Fire is.
”
”
Dan Wells (I Am Not a Serial Killer (John Cleaver, #1))
“
You think man can destroy the planet? What intoxicating vanity. Let me tell you about our planet. Earth is four-and-a-half-billion-years-old. There's been life on it for nearly that long, 3.8 billion years. Bacteria first; later the first multicellular life, then the first complex creatures in the sea, on the land. Then finally the great sweeping ages of animals, the amphibians, the dinosaurs, at last the mammals, each one enduring millions on millions of years, great dynasties of creatures rising, flourishing, dying away -- all this against a background of continuous and violent upheaval. Mountain ranges thrust up, eroded away, cometary impacts, volcano eruptions, oceans rising and falling, whole continents moving, an endless, constant, violent change, colliding, buckling to make mountains over millions of years. Earth has survived everything in its time. It will certainly survive us. If all the nuclear weapons in the world went off at once and all the plants, all the animals died and the earth was sizzling hot for a hundred thousand years, life would survive, somewhere: under the soil, frozen in Arctic ice. Sooner or later, when the planet was no longer inhospitable, life would spread again. The evolutionary process would begin again. It might take a few billion years for life to regain its present variety. Of course, it would be very different from what it is now, but the earth would survive our folly, only we would not. If the ozone layer gets thinner, ultraviolet radiation sears the earth, so what? Ultraviolet radiation is good for life. It's powerful energy. It promotes mutation, change. Many forms of life will thrive with more UV radiation. Many others will die out. Do you think this is the first time that's happened? Think about oxygen. Necessary for life now, but oxygen is actually a metabolic poison, a corrosive glass, like fluorine. When oxygen was first produced as a waste product by certain plant cells some three billion years ago, it created a crisis for all other life on earth. Those plants were polluting the environment, exhaling a lethal gas. Earth eventually had an atmosphere incompatible with life. Nevertheless, life on earth took care of itself. In the thinking of the human being a hundred years is a long time. A hundred years ago we didn't have cars, airplanes, computers or vaccines. It was a whole different world, but to the earth, a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can't imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven't got the humility to try. We've been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we're gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us.
”
”
Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park / Congo)
“
Empathy is the ability to step outside of your own bubble and into the bubbles of other people. Empathy is the ability that allows us to be useful creatures on this planet; without empathy, we are a waste of oxygen in this world. Without empathy, we are lower than animals. Empathy is the ability that allows us the perception of things around us, outside of ourselves; so a person without empathy is a limited human being, someone who will only live half of a life.
”
”
C. JoyBell C.
“
This story is not for people who are good at living. In this world, there exist people who are so good at living that they do not need a "story" at all. They are the ones who think stories are, after all, just a pastime for your hobbies, that they are not necessary for life, and therefore it is a waste to spend money on such things. I did not assume such people to be my readers from the beginning. I cut them off. On the other hand, there are certainly people who need stories like oxygen still. I always hope that Bungo Stray Dogs will become the oxygen for such people. They are the "lost ones" that Dazai talked about.
”
”
Kafka Asagiri
“
You see, we can feed the stomach with concentrates, we can supply microfilm for reading, recreation, even movies of a sort, we can pump oxygen in, and waste material out, but there’s one thing we can’t simulate. That’s a very basic need. Man’s hunger for companionship. The barrier of loneliness, that’s one thing we haven’t licked yet.
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”
Rod Serling
“
A heart pulsating in harmony with the circulation of sap and the flow of rivers? A body with the rhythms of the earth in its movements? No. Instead: a mind, shut off from the oxygen of alert senses, that has wasted itself on 'treasons, stratagems and spoils'--of importance only within four walls. A tame animal--in whom the strength of the species has outspent itself, to no purpose.
”
”
Dag Hammarskjöld (Markings)
“
They put on fresh gloves and got back to business. Jazz wiped up the blood splatters in the freezer and tossed the tissues in with Howie’s waste. It bothered him that he was leaving evidence behind without some sort of oxygenated bleach, those blood splatters would still show up under Luminol. Of course, the odds of anyone deciding to spray down the morgue freezer and switch on an ultraviolet light were pretty minimal, so it’s not like it was evidence that anyone would ever find or use. Still: Billy Dent’s First Commandment was “Thou shalt not leave evidence.
”
”
Barry Lyga (I Hunt Killers (I Hunt Killers, #1))
“
You think this is the first time such a thing has happened? Don’t you know about oxygen?” “I know it’s necessary for life.” “It is now,” Malcolm said. “But oxygen is actually a metabolic poison. It’s a corrosive gas, like fluorine, which is used to etch glass. And when oxygen was first produced as a waste product by certain plant cells—say, around three billion years ago—it created a crisis for all other life on our planet. Those plant cells were polluting the environment with a deadly poison. They were exhaling a lethal gas, and building up its concentration. A planet like Venus has less than one percent oxygen. On earth, the concentration of oxygen was going up rapidly—five, ten, eventually twenty-one percent! Earth had an atmosphere of pure poison! Incompatible with life!” Hammond looked irritated. “So what is your point? That modern pollutants will be incorporated, too?” “No,” Malcolm said. “My point is that life on earth can take care of itself. In the thinking of a human being, a hundred years is a long time. A hundred years ago, we didn’t have cars and airplanes and computers and vaccines.… It was a whole different world. But to the earth, a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can’t imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven’t got the humility to try. We have been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we are gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us.
”
”
Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park (Jurassic Park, #1))
“
What do you need to bring to the lot in order to give oxygen and life back to your audience, which may be tired of the same old stuff or looking for that missing puzzle piece?
”
”
Pat Flynn (Will It Fly?: How to Test Your Next Business Idea So You Don't Waste Your Time and Money)
“
What a waste of oxygen, this generation. “How’d
”
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Lauren Gilley (Secondhand Smoke (Dartmoor, #4))
“
Viruses are themselves an enigma that exist on the edges of life. They are not simply small bacteria. Bacteria consist of only one cell, but they are fully alive. Each has a metabolism, requires food, produces waste, and reproduces by division. Viruses do not eat or burn oxygen for energy. They do not engage in any process that could be considered metabolic. They do not produce waste. They do not have sex. They make no side products, by accident or design. They do not even reproduce independently. They are less than a fully living organism but more than an inert collection of chemicals.
”
”
John M. Barry (The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History)
“
Since the idea of packaging is to protect food from bacteria,” Andrady observes, “wrapping leftovers in plastic that encourages microbes to eat it may not be the smartest thing to do.” But even if it worked, or even if humans were gone and never produced another nurdle, all the plastic already produced would remain— how long? “Egyptian pyramids have preserved corn, seeds, and even human parts such as hair because they were sealed away from sunlight with little oxygen or moisture,” says Andrady, a mild, precise man with a broad face and a clipped, persuasively reasonable voice. “Our waste dumps are somewhat like that. Plastic buried where there’s little water, sun, or oxygen will stay intact a long time. That is also true if it is sunk in the ocean, covered with sediment. At the bottom of the sea, there’s no oxygen, and it’s very cold.” He gives a clipped little laugh. “Of course,” he adds, “we don’t know much about microbiology at those depths. Possibly anaerobic organisms there can biodegrade it. It’s not inconceivable. But no one’s taken a submersible down to check. Based on our observations, it’s unlikely. So we expect much-slower degradation at the sea bottom. Many times longer. Even an order of magnitude longer.” An order of magnitude—that’s 10 times—longer than what? One thousand years? Ten thousand?
”
”
Alan Weisman (The World Without Us)
“
We live in a time that's too late. It's too late. It's too late to say that what doesn't involve you personally, doesn't bother you in your heart. It's too late for that. You are either bothered, or you are a waste of oxygen on this planet. Be bothered. Be bothered by lots of things. Be bothered by many things. Let your heart shake from the things of this world that are too much or that are too little. We are not here to live a life unshaken.
”
”
C. JoyBell C.
“
What has Capitalism resolved? It has solved no problems. It has looted the world. It has left us with all this poverty. It has created lifestyles and models of consumerism that are incompatible with reality. It has poisoned the waterways. Oceans, Rivers, Lakes, Seas, the Atmosphere, the Earth. It has produced an incredible waste of resources.
I always cite one example; imagine every person in China owned a Car, or aspired to own a Car. Everyone of the 1.1 Billion people in China, or that everyone of the 800 million people in India wished to own a Car, this method, this lifestyle, and Africa did the same, and nearly 450 million Latin Americans did the same. How long would Oil last? How long would Natural Gas last? How long would natural resources last? What would be left of the Ozone layer? What would be left of Oxygen on Earth? What would happen with Carbon Dioxide? And all these phenomenon that are changing the ecology of our world, they are changing Earth, they are making life on our Planet more and more difficult all the time.
What model has Capitalism given the world to follow? An example for societies to emulate? Shouldn’t we focus on more rational things, like the education of the whole population? Nutrition, health, a respectable lodging, an elevated culture? Would you say capitalism, with it’s blind laws, it’s selfishness as a fundamental principle, has given us something to emulate? Has it shown us a path forward? Is humanity going to travel on the course charted thus far? There may be talk of a crisis in socialism, but, today, there is an even greater crises in capitalism, with no end in sight.
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”
Fidel Castro
“
But I wouldn’t be alive. Not really. I would be wasting oxygen, space, and resources, going back to not-so-secretly wishing I’d die. The realization dawned on me like a cold shower. I didn’t want to die when I was with Grace. I wanted to live. To laugh. To love. To date her and nibble on her neck and listen to her talking about plays and nineties movies and defending fanny packs vehemently. I’d been relishing life—actively enjoying it, even—for months, and I didn’t even realize it. I didn’t want to die anymore. Somewhere along the road, the idea of veering my bike off the road when I picked up speed stopped appealing to me. I no longer imagined what it would feel like to hurl myself off a cliff. I stopped walking into the ring wanting the asshole in front of me to throw a punch that would send me into cardiac arrest. And it was all because of Grace ‘Texas’ Shaw.
”
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L.J. Shen (Playing with Fire)
“
I am in love with Darcy Vega, heir to the throne of Solaria, daughter of the Savage King – who by the way was tricked by Lionel Acrux into being an evil sonuvabitch. And I know you all think I’m a complete waste of oxygen.” He kicked a bread roll into Justin Masters’ face and it bounced off his forehead as he tried not to react. “That my shame is infectious and you don’t want it anywhere near you, let alone your precious princess.” He leapt from one table to another, making his way towards us and I got up, a smile nearly splitting my cheeks open. “But it turns out she wants me anyway. And I’m done making decisions for a girl who has always made better ones than I do. So if this is what she wants, then she can have it. Because she owns me right down to my black heart.” He leapt forward again, a round of cursing and outrage sounding as he landed on my table, looking down at me and holding out his hand with a piece of paper folded inside it.
”
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Caroline Peckham (Heartless Sky (Zodiac Academy, #7))
“
If the cultural standing of excrement doesn't convince them, I say that the material itself is as rich as oil and probably more useful. It contains nitrogen and phosphates that can make plants grow and also suck the life from water because its nutrients absorb available oxygen. It can be both food and poison. It can contaminate and cultivate. Millions of people cook with gas made by fermenting it. I tell them that I don't like to call it "waste," when it can be turned into bricks, when it can make roads or jewelry, and when in a dried powdered form known as poudrette it was sniffed like snuff by the grandest ladies of the eighteenth-century French court. Medical men of not too long ago thought stool examination a vital diagnostic tool (London's Wellcome Library holds a 150-year0old engraving of a doctor examining a bedpan and a sarcastic maid asking him if he'd like a fork). They were also fond of prescribing it: excrement could be eaten, drunk, or liberally applied to the skin. Martin Luther was convinced: he reportedly ate a spoonful of his own excrement daily and wrote that he couldn't understand the generosity of a God who freely gave such important and useful remedies.
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Rose George (The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters)
“
But the bigger part of me remembers what my dad taught me about the undertow when he was trying to coax me into the water to teach me how to swim. "If you ever get caught in the undertow," he'd said, "just let it take you. Just let it pull you right out. Whatever you do, don't fight it and waste your energy and oxygen. That's how people die. The people who don't die wait it out. The undertow lets go eventually, right when you think you can't hold your breath any longer. You just have to be patient."
Because right now I'm caught in an undertow. And I've got to hold my breath, be patient, until it gives me my life back.
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”
Anna Banks (Of Triton (The Syrena Legacy, #2))
“
Let’s say we had a bad one, and all the plants and animals died, and the earth was clicking hot for a hundred thousand years. Life would survive somewhere—under the soil, or perhaps frozen in Arctic ice. And after all those years, when the planet was no longer inhospitable, life would again spread over the planet. The evolutionary process would begin again. It might take a few billion years for life to regain its present variety. And of course it would be very different from what it is now. But the earth would survive our folly. Life would survive our folly. Only we,” Malcolm said, “think it wouldn’t.” Hammond said, “Well, if the ozone layer gets thinner—” “There will be more ultraviolet radiation reaching the surface. So what?” “Well. It’ll cause skin cancer.” Malcolm shook his head. “Ultraviolet radiation is good for life. It’s powerful energy. It promotes mutation, change. Many forms of life will thrive with more UV radiation.” “And many others will die out,” Hammond said. Malcolm sighed. “You think this is the first time such a thing has happened? Don’t you know about oxygen?” “I know it’s necessary for life.” “It is now,” Malcolm said. “But oxygen is actually a metabolic poison. It’s a corrosive gas, like fluorine, which is used to etch glass. And when oxygen was first produced as a waste product by certain plant cells—say, around three billion years ago—it created a crisis for all other life on our planet. Those plant cells were polluting the environment with a deadly poison. They were exhaling a lethal gas, and building up its concentration. A planet like Venus has less than one percent oxygen. On earth, the concentration of oxygen was going up rapidly—five, ten, eventually twenty-one percent! Earth had an atmosphere of pure poison! Incompatible with life!
”
”
Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park (Jurassic Park, #1))
“
The flight to Reykjavik was proceeding uneventfully and the patient was stable and doing well, so I thought this was a good opportunity to have a little fun with the flight crew. I called the pilot on intercom. “Go ahead PJ.” the pilot responded. “I’ve been talking to this doctor back here and he seems to think it’s not looking good for this arm.” I explained. “What do you mean?” asked the pilot. “Well,” I said, “he says the arm was unattached for a long time, probably too long to sew it back on.” “That’s too bad.” The pilot sounded understandably disappointed. I waited a few minutes before giving the pilot further fictitious updates. “The doctor says he’s a hundred percent certain they won’t be able to sew on the arm now. It’s been detached too long. The patient also realizes they can’t sew his arm back on and has accepted the bad news. He’s a pretty tough character. Anyway, I talked to the doctor and patient about this whole situation. Since they can’t sew the arm back on, they said I could have it.” There was shocked silence on the intercom. “What?” asked the pilot. “They won’t be able to sew the arm back on because it’s been separated from his body for too long. The muscles and nerves have been without blood and oxygen for so long that cell death is irreversible. The hospital will just throw the arm away, so I asked them if I could have it, and they said yes.” Once again, there was an uncomfortable silence on the intercom. I could almost hear the gears whirring inside the pilots head. “Wha … what will you do with it?” stammered the pilot. I answered, “I’m not really sure. At first I’ll just keep it in my freezer. I just think it would be a waste to just throw a good arm away.” “Are you serious?” asked the pilot. “No.” I said, “I’m just messing with you.” But, the doctor told me that, ironically, right before the accident the man was heard to say, “I’d give my right arm to be ambidextrous.” Another crewmember chimed in, “That guys pretty tough. I think we should give him a hand!” I heard laughter over the intercom.
”
”
William F. Sine (Guardian Angel: Life and Death Adventures with Pararescue, the World's Most Powerful Commando Rescue Force)
“
Glaring, I snarled, “Kiss me. Give me one fracture of human company, and I’ll never say another word to you again. I’ll be whatever you want. Just kiss me!” His eyes narrowed. “You’re an idiot.” “So you keep telling me.” “You’re wasting your time.” “So you keep telling me.” “I don’t want to kiss you!” I lashed out. My arms came up. I opened my palm. And I slapped the self-righteous, egotistical arsehole on the cheek. The moment went from lust-heavy to stagnant with violence. We stared, caught dead centre in war. “You’re a fucking nightmare,” he snapped. “Kiss me.” “You’re ruining my life.” “Kiss me.” “You’re—” “Kiss me, Jethro. Kiss me. Just fucking kiss me and give me—” His body crashed against mine. His hands flew up, grabbing my cheeks and holding me firm. His lips, oh his lips, they bruised mine as his head tilted, and with pure anger, he gave me what I’d wanted for weeks. He kissed me. My lungs were empty—he’d stolen all my air, but I no longer survived on oxygen. I survived on his mouth, his taste, his unbridled energy pouring down my throat. His tongue tore past my lips, taking me savage and hungry. There was nothing sweet or gentle. This was a punishment. A reminder that I hadn’t won. He wasn’t kissing me. He was fighting me in every underhanded way. His hands dropped from my cheeks, cupping my breasts. The violence in his touch throbbed instantly. I arched my back, opening my mouth wider to scream, but he swallowed my cries, kissing me deeper, harder, stealing every inch of sanity I had left. I thought a kiss would put me on even ground—show him that he did care. That he was human—just like me. I hadn’t gambled on being detonated into a billion tiny pieces that had no notion of who I’d been before he’d stolen my soul. He backed me up, faster and faster to the bed. His breath saturated my lungs. His touch skated from my cheeks, to my breasts, to my waist, to my arse. Jerking me hard against the huge length of arousal in his jeans. The bed stopped our motion, tumbling us onto the sheets, but nothing, absolutely nothing could unweld our lips. We were joined, kissing, frantic, desperate. He groaned as I slid my hands beneath his t-shirt, needing to feel his skin against mine. He was blood and fire and heat. So different to the glacier he pretended to be. “Fuck,” he grunted
”
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Pepper Winters (First Debt (Indebted, #2))
“
In my biology class, we’d talked about the definition of life: to be classified as a living creature, a thing needs to eat, breathe, reproduce, and grow. Dogs do, rocks don’t; trees do, plastic doesn’t. Fire, by that definition, is vibrantly alive. It eats everything from wood to flesh, excreting the waste as ash, and it breathes air just like a human, taking in oxygen and emitting carbon.
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Dan Wells (I Am Not a Serial Killer (John Cleaver, #1))
“
During puberty, my number one fantasy was killing the girls in my class. Marci for being such a stupid slut. Janna for wasting oxygen that could be better devoted to plants or slugs. Kelly for having a perfect smile and giving it to all the wrong people. All of them for being gorgeous
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Stylo Fantome (Church (Church, #1))
“
In this regard, the delicate cell bodies, dendrites, and axons are like the many other fluid-filled tubes within the body. The quality of their function is susceptible to changes in pressure, distortion, viscosity. Their need for constant irrigation is acute: If fresh oxygen is held back from a neuron for merely three to five seconds, it is rendered completely unexcitable.4 And necessary substances must circulate inside the cell as well as around it. If a long dendrite or axon is pinched, closing its length off from the rest of the cell’s fluid, the excitability of the isolated branch quickly decays and eventually the pinched axon or dendrite will atrophy. You can park a truck on top of an electrical wire and it will continue to work nicely. It will work, in fact, until it is completely severed. In contrast there are many intermediate stages of malfunction in a nerve short of this final breakage—or lesion—most of them having to do with the relative effectiveness of the delivery and circulation of nutritional fluids and the adequate flushing of toxins and wastes. These intermediate malfunctions do not normally stop the system; they just make it less efficient. They confuse sensations, cloud thoughts, disturb the precision of our muscular efforts, make us numb in some spots, unaccountably sensitive in others, eliminate responses, force compensations. Insofar as effective bodywork can be of direct benefit to the circulation of bodily fluids, it can help to support the actual metabolic bases of nerve function, and this benefit is above and beyond the question of the value of any actual sensations it may produce.
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Deane Juhan (Job's Body: A Handbook for Bodywork)
“
In my biology class, we’d talked about the definition of life: to be classified as a living creature, a thing needs to eat, breathe, reproduce, and grow. Dogs do, rocks don’t; trees do, plastic doesn’t. Fire, by that definition, is vibrantly alive. It eats everything from wood to flesh, excreting the waste as ash, and it breathes air just like a human, taking in oxygen and emitting carbon. Fire grows, and as it spreads, it creates new fires that spread out and make new fires of their own. Fire drinks gasoline and excretes cinders, it fights for territory, it loves and hates. Sometimes when I watch people trudging through their daily routines, I think that fire is more alive than we are—brighter, hotter, more sure of itself and where it wants to go. Fire doesn’t settle; fire doesn’t tolerate; fire doesn’t “get by.” Fire does. Fire is.
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Dan Wells (I Am Not a Serial Killer (John Cleaver, #1))
“
The Five Prana Vayus 1.Udana Vayu – The upward and outward movement of energy. This vayu governs enthusiasm, inspiration, expansion, and ascension. As prana enters the body, udana moves it upward toward the throat and face. With pranayama, udana vayu is affected by controlling the inhalation side of the breath and any retention of the breath after inhalation. 2.Prana Vayu – (Sometimes called “Pran” Vayu): The inward and upward movement of energy. This vayu governs the intake of prana into the body, as well as inhalation, eating, drinking, sensory impression, and mental experiences, and it is energizing and vitalizing. Prana vayu controls prana as it enters the body through the region of the chest and then ascends. With pranayama, prana vayu is affected by controlling the inhalation side of the breath and its capacity in the body. 3.Samana Vayu – The assimilating, inward-spiraling movement of energy. This vayu governs the assimilation of food, oxygen, and all experiences into the system. As prana enters the body, samana spirals it inward to coalesce around the navel center. With pranayama, samana vayu is affected by balancing the lengths and capacity of both the inhalation and exhalation. 4.Apana Vayu – The downward and outward movement of energy. This vayu governs the elimination of waste, as well as exhalation, energetic grounding, childbirth, and the removal of negative emotional and psychological experiences. Apana vayu moves prana downward toward the reproductive organs and out of the body, aiding with letting go. With pranayama, apana vayu is affected by controlling the exhalation side of the breath. 5.Vyana Vayu – The expanding and circulating movement of energy. This vayu governs the circulation of nutrients in the blood and bodily fluids, emotions and thoughts, and engagement in the wider world. Vyana vayu spirals from the center of the body and expands outward, integrating prana into the body and world. With pranayama, vyana vayu is affected by controlling the capacity of both the inhalation and exhalation.
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Jerry Givens (Essential Pranayama: Breathing Techniques for Balance, Healing, and Peace)
“
A reminder to exercise and drink plenty of water:
Cellular chemicals greedily tear the molecular structure of glucose apart to extract its sugary energy. This energy extraction is so violent that atoms are literally ripped asunder in the process. As in any manufacturing process, such fierce activity generates a fair amount of toxic waste. In the case of food, this waste consists of a nasty pile of excess electrons shredded from the atoms in the glucose molecules. Left alone, these electrons slam into other molecules within the cell transforming them into one of the most toxic substances known to humankind. They are called free radicals. If not quickly corralled, they will wreck havoc on the innards...causing mutations in your very DNA.
The reason you don't die of electron overdose is that the atmosphere is full of breathable oxygen. The main function of oxygen is to act like an efficient electron absorbing sponge. At the same time the blood is delivering foodstuffs to your tissues, it is also carrying those oxygen sponges. Any excess electrons are absorbed by the sponges, and after a bit of molecular alchemy, are transformed into equally hazardous but now fully transportable CO2. The blood is carried back to your lungs where the CO2 leaves the blood and you breathe it out... keeping the food you eat from killing you.
This is why blood has to be everywhere inside you serving as both wait staff and hazmat team. Any tissue without blood is going to starve to death, your brain included.
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John Medina (Brain Rules)
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More bad news for aerobic activity: Whether it’s running, cycling, or a step class, the main reason it gets easier the more you do it, is not because of improved cardiovascular conditioning, but because of improved economy of motion. For the most part, it doesn’t get easier because of muscular endurance, but because your body is becoming more efficient at that particular movement. You require less strength and oxygen than you did before, because your body’s nervous system is adapting. Wasted movements are eliminated, necessary movements are refined, and muscles that don’t need to be tensed are relaxed and eventually atrophied. This is why marathon runners will huff and puff if they cycle for the first time in years.
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Mark Lauren (You Are Your Own Gym: The Bible of Bodyweight Exercises)
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Aerobic training actually causes muscle wasting because the body is programmed to adapt to whatever demands we place on it. Long low-intensity aerobic training only requires the smallest and weakest, “slow-twitch” muscle fibers to fire off again and again. The other, stronger and larger, “fast-twitch” muscle fibers are not necessary for the task and become a burden to carry and supply with oxygen. The body has no demand for extra muscle beyond what is needed to perform a relatively easy movement over and over. So your body adapts by actually burning muscle. Even if you perform steady state training in conjunction with strength training, it will diminish any potential increase in lean body mass, especially in your legs. Aerobic training should only be used to develop movement proficiency when you are training for a specific sport or event, such as a 5k run, triathlon, or particular military fitness assessment. I address these needs on MarkLauren.com.
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Mark Lauren (You Are Your Own Gym: The Bible of Bodyweight Exercises)
“
When animals first evolved, they reproduced by laying eggs, and most creatures in the animal kingdom continue to give birth this way. Then, between 100 million and 200 million years ago, a shrew-like creature developed the capacity to gestate her young inside her own body—an extraordinary evolutionary advance because a fetus is much safer growing inside its mother’s body. It is only possible because of the placenta, a temporary organ that attaches to the uterus and allows nutrients and oxygen to pass from mother to baby, and carbon dioxide and waste to travel in the other direction, without provoking a devastating response from the mother’s immune system. There is nothing like this interface between the placenta and womb anywhere else in our bodies. When geneticists looked at the gene responsible for creating it, they realized that it was almost identical to those used by retroviruses to produce the proteins that attach to cells they are infecting without triggering an immune response.[24] The scientists concluded that a crucial function of the placenta didn’t emerge gradually as a result of evolution by natural selection but was suddenly acquired when a retrovirus inserted its DNA into our ancestor’s genome.
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Jonathan Kennedy (Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues)
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By far the greatest numbers of our class are called placental (or eutherian) mammals. Humans, tigers, mice, blue whales – we all nourish our young in the same way. Our offspring undergo a really long developmental phase inside the mother, in the uterus. During this developmental stage, the young get their nourishment via the placenta. This large, pancake-shaped structure acts as an interface between the blood system of the foetus and the blood system of the mother. Blood doesn’t actually flow from one to the other. Instead the two blood systems pass so closely to one another that nutrients such as sugars, vitamins, minerals and amino acids can pass from the mother to the foetus. Oxygen also passes from the mother’s blood to the foetal blood supply. In exchange, the foetus gets rid of waste gases and other potentially harmful toxins by passing them back into the mother’s circulation.
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Nessa Carey (The Epigenetics Revolution: How Modern Biology is Rewriting our Understanding of Genetics, Disease and Inheritance)
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In my biology class, we’d talked about the definition of life: to be classified as a living creature, a thing needs to eat, breathe, reproduce, and grow. Dogs do, rocks don’t; trees do, plastic doesn’t. Fire, by that definition, is vibrantly alive. It eats everything from wood to flesh, excreting the waste as ash, and it breathes air just like a human, taking in oxygen and emitting carbon. Fire grows, and as it spreads, it creates new fires that spread out and make new fires of their own. Fire drinks gasoline and excretes cinders, it fights for territory, it loves and hates. Sometimes when I watch people trudging through their daily routines, I think that fire is more alive than we are—brighter, hotter, more sure of itself and where it wants to go. Fire doesn’t settle; fire doesn’t tolerate; fire doesn’t “get by.” Fire does.
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Dan Wells (I Am Not a Serial Killer (John Cleaver, #1))
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But the bigger part of me remembers what my dad taught me about the undertow when he was trying to coax me into the water to teach me how to swim. "If you ever get caught in the undertow," he'd said, "just let it take you. Just let it pull you right out. Whatever you do, don't fight it and waste your energy and oxygen. That's how people die. The people who don't die wait it out. The undertow lets go eventually, right when you think you can't hold your breath any longer. You just have to be patient.
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Anna Banks (Of Triton (The Syrena Legacy, #2))
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Living beings wide and far are creatively enticed into the idea of living only on the substance of leafy greenery by alluring allegations that seem to make apparent sense. Some want to avoid the dying aspect of life and prolong the bodily functions of their organs within their potential corpses over time and reduce the waste products given off by our walking structures to lessen worldly contamination. Others want to avoid consuming Earth’s usual containing features from being overly exhumed, or because we have never not lovingly smothered Earth’s natural oxygen sucking creatures, and so we do not consume the things that are taking nutrients from us so that we can preserve them instead, because we find it morally dissatisfying.
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Ella Cooper
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If a decent rest can bring us back to reasonable condition, in which these fears and fancies just fade away, the answer should be simple. We must get more rest and do more to encourage proper nutrition, proper oxygenation and proper functioning of the blood-cleansing organs. In our dreams the connection between our state of health and our imagery is often striking. If our bloodstream is loaded with wastes - that is, in a morbid state - then our dreams tend to be distressful. In our waking hours, too, morbid blood makes for morbid thoughts.
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Anonymous
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people, the language you use to communicate with others. Your mental focus and your physiology together instantly put you into a particular state or emotion. Physiology absolutely matters. Exercising, or better yet, implementing a complete fitness program (in other words a regimen that safely works both your cardio and muscles—even yoga!) increases the effective use of oxygen and gets rid of waste throughout your brain and body, and helps soothe your soul. Emotional states of mind, which range from the worst (a suicidal state) to the best (a peak or flow state), are powerful. Your state drives actions, decisions, and even indecision, and is the direct predictor of results somewhere between the lowest
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Jason L. Ma (Young Leaders 3.0: Stories, Insights, and Tips for Next-Generation Achievers)
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First consider the human systems and mission objectives when planning human space exploration. Understand what the mission is trying to accomplish and the duration. Design from the inside-out! Select the suits, cockpit/seats, EVA equipment and rovers, airlock, crew survival equipment, ECLSS, non-toxic fluids/gases/materials, crew quarters/hygiene systems, exercise equipment, water/air/waste recycling, quantity of food/water/oxygen, radiation protection, power source; then back out the spacecraft and launch vehicle that fit the items with +15% mass margin +10% volume margin. Dominant minds have prevailed in past space exploration architectures where a launch vehicle and spacecraft were proudly chosen prematurely, then when reality sets in; the same minds complain too much mass, too little volume, too high cost, and too long a schedule exist to fit their vehicles!
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Joe William Gensler
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Me: Fails at something trivial
boss: You should carry a plant around to replace the oxygen you waste.
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Anonymous
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Every time you move, muscle and joint systems circulate blood and oxygen and expel waste products.
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Scott H Hogan (Built from Broken: A Science-Based Guide to Healing Painful Joints, Preventing Injuries, and Rebuilding Your Body)
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Organ for exchange of food nutrients, oxygen and waste products between the mother and the foetus
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Kenyan Literature Bureau (Primary Science: Pupils' Book 8)
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Prospector Base was a cluster of five ten-meter-diameter inflatable domes, arranged in a tight pentagonal formation. Each dome touched two others on either side for mutual support against the fierce spring winds of the southern hemisphere. The void in the center of the pentagon was filled with a smaller dome, seven-and-a-half meters in diameter. The only equipment the central dome contained was the base water recycler unit. The recycler received wastewater from the galley, and from the shower and sink. Dubbed “the hall” by the EPSILON engineers, hatches connected the smaller central dome with each of the larger five domes that surrounded it. Each large dome was accessible to the others only via the hall. The larger dome closest to the landing party’s direction of travel possessed an airlock to the outside atmosphere. Known as the common room, it housed the main base computer, the communications equipment, the primary electrical supply panels, the CO2 scrubber, the oxygen generator and the backup oxygen supply tanks. The oxygen generator electrolyzed water collected from dehumidifiers located in all domes except the greenhouse and from the CO2 scrubber. It released molecular oxygen directly back into the air supply. The hydrogen it generated was directed to the carbon dioxide scrubber. By combining the Sabatier Reaction with the pyrolysis of waste product methane, the only reaction products were water—which was sent back to the oxygen generator—and graphite. The graphite was removed from a small steel reactor vessel once a week and stored in the shop where Dave and Luis intended to test the feasibility of carbon fiber manufacture. Excess heat generated by the water recycler, the oxygen generator, and the CO2 scrubber supplemented the heat output from the base heating system. The dome to the immediate left contained the crew sleeping quarters and a well-provisioned sick bay. The next dome housed the galley, food storage, and exercise equipment. The table in the galley doubled as the base conference table. The fourth large dome served as the greenhouse. It also housed the composting toilet and a shower. The final dome contained the shop, an assay bench, and a small smelter. The smelter was intended to develop proof-of-concept smelting processes for the various rare earth elements collected from the surrounding region. Subsequent Prospector missions would construct and operate a commercial smelter. A second manual airlock was attached to the shop dome to allow direct unloading of ore and loading of ingots for shipment to Earth.
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Brian H. Roberts (Crimson Lucre (EPSILON Sci-Fi Thriller #1))
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Someone to thank! There is no one there, and my involuntary ingratitude depresses me.
Feeling jealous about my discovery, I take no steps to make it known. In my modesty I turn neither to authorities nor to universities. While I continue my experiments, the cracked skin of my hands becomes worse, the fissures gape and become full of coal-dust; blood oozes out, and the pains become so intolerable that I can undertake nothing more. I am inclined to attribute these pains which drive me wild to the unknown powers which have persecuted me for years, and frustrate my endeavours. I avoid people, neglect society, refuse invitations, and make myself inaccessible to friends. I am surrounded by silence and loneliness. It is the solemn and terrible silence of the desert in which I defiantly challenge the unknown, in order to wrestle with him, body with body, and soul with soul. I have proved that sulphur contains carbon; now I intend to discover hydrogen and oxygen in it, for they must be also present. But my apparatus is insufficient, I need money, my hands are black and bleeding, black as misery, bleeding as my heart. For, during this time, I continue to correspond with my wife. I tell her of my successes in chemical experiments; she answers with news about the illness of our child, and here and there drops hints that my science is futile, and that it is foolish to waste money on it.
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August Strindberg (Inferno)
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open, looking for any flash of color, any sign of Meghan. It was dark down there, and mentally he scrambled for all of the possible spells he could use to help him in a situation like this, but he could think of none. Even his origami dragons would be of no use now to light up the night, for they were a sopping wet mess in his component vest pocket. Desperately he searched for Meghan, waving his hands around through the water. His lungs felt like they were going to burst. He came up for air and whipped his head around, looking for any sign of her, but there was nothing. Then down he went again. Please! he screamed in his mind, thinking of Lani and Samheed. I can’t lose everyone. That thought nearly made him break apart, but it also gave him the strength to dive deeper, to search harder. He surfaced once more, panting, and looked everywhere. Only the boat, upright again and drifting toward the shore, was visible. He knew there was no time to waste. He sucked in an enormous breath and down he went a third time, deeper, farther, until his ears ached and popped. He strained to reach anything he could touch in the murky water. Just when he was about to give up he kicked his feet, and his toes got tangled up in something. It was hair. He turned sharply and reached for her hair, grasping it with his hand, and yanked as hard as he could, rushing, kicking, with all of his might, pulling her up alongside him and then pushing her above him to the surface. When they broke through, Alex gasped and sucked in air, flipping on his back and holding Meghan tightly to his chest, trying to float, and unable to do another thing until he had replenished his oxygen stores. He squeezed Meghan’s stomach and started kicking toward the shore. “Breathe!” he cried. And then, between ragged breaths, he chanted to keep himself focused. “Breathe. Please breathe.” Meghan choked and silently coughed up water. She took a raking breath in and coughed some more. “Come on,” Alex said. “Breathe! That’s it!” Meghan struggled. The sharp thorns around her neck cut into Alex’s chest like lethal scatterclips hitting their mark, but he couldn’t do anything to adjust his pain or hers right now. Waves constantly washed over their faces, causing them to feel like they were drowning over and over again. “Come on, now,” Alex said again, barely whispering. “We’re going to make it. We’re going to make it.” He put
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Lisa McMann (Island of Silence (Unwanteds, #2))
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There is no more underrated and research-backed therapeutic tool than walking. It reduces back pain, and body pain in general, through dozens of mechanisms. Studies show that walking does the following: Increases circulation of natural opioids in the body175 Reduces pain sensitivity176 Stimulates production and circulation of synovial fluid within joints177 Improves lumbar (low back) function178 Strengthens foot muscles, creating a more stable and pliable base for the hips, back, and neck (especially in minimalist shoes)179 Reduces perceived pain levels, improves blood pressure, and strengthens feelings of personal power180 (if you walk with upright posture instead of slumped) Reduces bone density loss with age, helping to prevent osteoporosis and reduce osteoarthritis pain181 Is a surprisingly effective weight loss and weight management technique, which in turn keeps overall compression forces on joints down182 Increases blood flow to spinal muscles, improving oxygen and nutrient delivery required for cellular healing183 Speeds up elimination of cellular waste products through the repeated contractions of various muscle groups throughout the body183 Reduces the levels of the stress hormone, cortisol, which has a correlative relationship with subjective pain levels184 (Barefoot walking) Improves body awareness and wound healing, reduces inflammation, and helps prevent chronic inflammatory diseases185 Walking doesn’t just help relieve back pain—it targets the central causes of pain. And as you can see from the many studies on walking and pain relief, the benefits are not limited to the locomotion of walking. It’s movement in general that increases circulation of natural opioids, reduces pain sensitivity, stimulates synovial fluid production, and supports cellular health.
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Scott H Hogan (Built from Broken: A Science-Based Guide to Healing Painful Joints, Preventing Injuries, and Rebuilding Your Body)
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I remember when I first became a believer in Jesus. I somehow thought it was my duty to change people for the sake of spreading the gospel. I would rejoice when people would find hope in Christ but would feel like a failure when someone would decline the invitation to know Jesus as Lord and Savior. It was a little discouraging. But that’s because my understanding of how God works in my life was off. I say this because I believe many of today’s Christians put too much pressure on themselves to bring people to Jesus. It’s our job to love people, not change them. Only the Holy Spirit has the power and authority to do such a thing. Our calling is to simply share the gospel in love and truth, showing the character of Jesus through our everyday lives. When you let yourself off the hook for being solely responsible for somebody’s soul, you will find a totally new sense of freedom: the freedom to love. You don’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to know all the right things to say. You don’t have to have all the answers. And if your message is totally rejected . . . it’s not on you. It’s between that individual and God. Maybe you’ll get another opportunity to try, but it’s not your job to change him or her. Our job is to simply be available for those who are looking to know more about God, take opportunities to be vocal about our personal relationships with him, and continue to point people back to God with every question they may have. I didn’t understand this in the early years of my faith, and I put way too much pressure on myself when it came to people being transformed. Why? Because we live in a performance-based culture, and yes, even pastors have a tendency to fall captive to its pull. Like me, you probably feel pressured from multiple angles. We’re told by advertising that we need to be attractive, by parents that we need good jobs, by teachers that we need good grades, by friends that we need to give more time. Jesus isn’t like that. He doesn’t make irrational demands and point a finger at us for not living up to the expectation. The only thing Jesus wants from us is our love. And when we learn to offer him that love, we long to obey him and live in the better way he has for us as well. It’s a beautiful thing. As we learned from Jesus in Matthew 25, we can love God simply by loving others. Whether that love produces a change in their lives is up to God. We don’t have to stress about it. Only the Holy Spirit has the power and authority to change someone’s heart. Our calling is to simply share the gospel in love and truth, showing the character of Jesus through our everyday lives. This alone is the calling of a Christian. This alone is a weighty yet fulfilling purpose for all who choose to pick up their crosses daily. If we were to scour the Bible, we’d see there isn’t a single passage that states we are called to change people ourselves. Why? Because it’s not our job, and it was never intended to be. We must take a step back and realize that God’s job is to be God and our job is to lead people toward the door that is hope. Once we’ve done this, we must let go and allow the one who created the world to take care of the rest. If we had the power to change people, the transformative love of God wouldn’t be needed. Don’t waste your time trying to change people. Instead, focus on loving well.
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Jarrid Wilson (Love Is Oxygen: How God Can Give You Life and Change Your World)
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What causes people to get fat? Your body’s cells need three things to thrive and survive: 1) oxygen, 2) the proper nutrients and 3) The ability to eliminate waste. If any one of the three is lacking, your cells will mutate (into cancer cells, for example) in order to try to adapt and stay alive in the overly acidic environment. Normally when your body returns to an alkaline state, the mutated cells will devolve back into healthy red blood cells. This process is called pleomorphism. When your body does not have the energy or nutrients it needs to neutralize the acid, it cannot safely move these toxins and acids out of the body. So its only choice is to park them away from the
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Corey Wayne (Mastering Yourself, How To Align Your Life With Your True Calling & Reach Your Full Potential)
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Parts of the works were being demolished prior to privatisation. For as far as I could see, cutting torches fizzed and flared and sent up showers of sparks from among the buckled girders. Heaps of waste smouldered in the mud between the huge corrugated sheds, giving off an acrid, low-lying smoke through which I could make out gantries crawling with oxygen pipes; muddy yards where the Mercedes, Volvo and Magirus Deutz trucks were parked in rows; the venous curves of a disused railway line – a bright, almost luminous green moss grew between its dull rails. As we walked past the shed now directly below us, I had seen what I thought were huge steel wheels piled on top of one another. They were already beginning to rust. This reminded me of how, at the turn of the eighteenth century, stone from France became cheaper than Hathersage grit. The grindstone industry collapsed, and work stopped in a day. Half-finished millstones are still scattered around at the base of the Peak District edges, for tourists to eat their lunch off.
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M. John Harrison (Climbers)
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The circulation of the fluids within the long, thin tubes of the axons is equally important to the proper conditions of the nerves’ membranes and the propagation of action potentials, and inadequate pumping action of the surrounding muscles reduces this hydraulic flow as well. Chronically tense and constricted muscles can complicate things in an even worse fashion. Not only is fluid circulation in and around nerve cells curtailed, but the capillaries which supply the nutrition and carry off the waste products are squeezed tightly as well. At the same time, the contracting muscles are producing increased waste products and demanding increased nutrients from capillaries that are less able to supply them. This creates both an oxygen shortage and a waste build-up in the area, both of which are directly toxic to the nerve cells, irritate them, and contribute to even further muscular contractions.
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Deane Juhan (Job's Body: A Handbook for Bodywork)
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composed of anywhere from 55% to 78% water depending on body type and size. Water is an essential nutrient involved in every chemical reaction within your body. Water helps protect vital organs, regulate and maintain body temperature, transports nutrients and oxygen, removes waste products; while keeping moist the eyes, nose, mouth, hair, skin, digestive tract, and joints (joints need water in order to remain strong and flexible).
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Arnel Ricafranca (Vitamin Water)
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To clean the 240,000-liter saltwater tank where reef sharks circle what is to become Germany's biggest living coral reef, a filter apparatus runs on the lower level, breaking down nitrates with an anaerobic medium. The bacteria living in this medium extract oxygen from the nitrates that result from excreted waste, and they feed on carbon obtained from alcohol. This is provided to them in the form of vodka, purchased wholesale in ten-liter containers. Pure alcohol is not necessary; the carbon content in vodka (roughly forty percent) is sufficient.
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Hanna Jurisch
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The extracellular fluid contains large amounts of sodium, chloride, and bicarbonate ions plus nutrients for the cells, such as oxygen, glucose, fatty acids, and amino acids. It also contains carbon dioxide that is being transported from the cells to the lungs to be excreted, plus other cellular waste products that are being transported to the kidneys for excretion.
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John E. Hall (Guyton and Hall Textbook of Medical Physiology)
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They drive planetary cycles of carbon, nitrogen, sulphur and phosphorus, by converting these elements into compounds that can be used by animals and plants and then returning them to the world by decomposing organic bodies. They were the first organisms to make their own food, by harnessing the sun’s energy in a process called photosynthesis. They released oxygen as a waste product, pumping out so much of the gas that they permanently changed the atmosphere of our planet. It is thanks to them that we live in an oxygenated world. Even now, the photosynthetic bacteria in the oceans produce the oxygen in half the breaths you take, and they lock away an equal amount of carbon dioxide.
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Ed Yong (I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life)
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This hypothesis had been promoted as far back as the 1780s, by the great French chemist Antoine Lavoisier, who pictured the lungs as a torpid fireplace where food burned: “Respiration is then a combustion, admittedly very slow, but nevertheless completely analogous to that of charcoal.” Food, in other words, was fuel that animals burned in oxygen and, in so doing, generated heat with carbon dioxide as the waste product.
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Paul Sen (Einstein's Fridge: How the Difference Between Hot and Cold Explains the Universe)
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However it formed, this little cluster of manganese atoms opened up a new world, not only for the bacteria that first trapped it, but for all life on our planet. Once it formed, this little cluster of atoms started to split water, the four oxidised manganese atoms combining their natural avidity to yank electrons from water, thereby releasing oxygen as waste. Stimulated by the steady oxidation of manganese by ultraviolet radiation, the splitting of water would have been slow at first. But as soon as the cluster became coupled to chlorophyll, electrons would have started to flow. Getting faster as chlorophyll became adapted to its task, water was sucked in, split open, its electrons drawn out, oxygen discarded. Once a trickle, ultimately a flood, this life-giving flow of electrons from water is behind all the exuberance of life on earth. We must thank it twice–once for being the ultimate source of all our food, and then again for all the oxygen we need to burn up that food to stay alive.
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Nick Lane (Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution)
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In order to get control of our emotional reactions so that we can respond instead, we must take two counterintuitive action steps: Choose not to take their behavior personally, even if it is. Don’t waste your emotional oxygen huffing and puffing about your kids’ behavior.
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Karis Kimmel Murray (Grace Based Discipline: How to Be at Your Best When Your Kids Are at Their Worst)
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Hello, ma’am. How are you today?” he asked one day with a grin on his face the size of Kansas. I turned around looked at him and asked him what will it be, sir?
“For starters,” he replied, “how about your name and phone number?”
Hmm, you know if you strap a ton to your ankles and dive head first into the Atlantic, I‘ll think about it when you come back up,” I replied and smiled.
My chances are that slim, eh?” he said, leaning up against the counter.
Well, actually a little slimmer than that if you want me to be honest. So are you going to help pay my bills or are you wasting my precious oxygen?
-Emerald Eyes Of The Sea
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Hazel Cartwright (Emerald Eyes of The Sea (Emerald Trilogy, part #1))
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cries stopped. Room 532 was the sixth one on the left, right across from the nurses’ station. As Hoss reached it, his breathing became heavy. He froze in the doorway, ashamed at his cowardice to enter. His mother, he saw, was as she had been the day before, resting peacefully in her bed. A heart-rate monitor was clipped to one finger. An oxygen tube was strapped under her nose. Overhead, the fluorescent lights captured what devastation cancer had done to her, a wasting disease that knew no mercy. She was a ghost of the woman she had once been. Emaciated. Bald from weeks of chemo. Her face, barely recognizable, had become a loose mask collapsed against the bone. A yellowish hue saturated her skin. The hollows of her eyes were in shadow. The hospital had called Hoss an hour earlier. The voice at the other end was soft, reluctant. An on-duty nurse. His mother had taken a turn for the worse. Family members were asked to be at her bedside. There wasn’t much time left. Listening to her, Hoss felt the words in the pit of his stomach. His eyes closed. A painful lump formed in his throat. He couldn’t speak. When he put down the phone, all he could think of with certain dread was this moment now. The final good-bye he’d have to face. Her bed was partitioned off from the others by a curtain. Looking around, Hoss was surprised at his father’s absence. At fifty-three, the man had become a withdrawn, brooding presence.
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Alex MacLean (Grave Situation (Allan Stanton, #1))
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And so Leo and Silver’s beautiful scheme for peacefully detaching the downsiders, hammered out through four secret planning sessions, was blown away on a breath. Wasted was the flattery, the oblique suggestion, that had gone into convincing Van Atta that it was his idea to gather, unusually, the entire Habitat downsider staff at once and make his announcement in a speech persuading them all they were being commended, not condemned . . . The shaped charges to cut the lecture module away from the Habitat at the touch of a button were all in place. The emergency breath masks to supply the nearly three hundred bodies with oxygen for the few hours necessary to push the module around the planet to the transfer station were carefully hidden within. The two pusher crews were drilled, their pushers fueled and ready. Fool
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Lois McMaster Bujold (Falling Free (Vorkosigan Saga #4))