Interrelationship Between Systems of the Human Body

Interrelationship Between Systems of the Human Body Introduction This essay will consider the structure and function of the 11 systems within the human body. It will detail the interrelationship between the nervous system and the musculoskeletal system and between the circulatory system and the lymphatic system. It will then explain the roles of the circulatory and lymphatic systems in the immune response and the role of hormones in metabolism. Human Body Systems The human body is made up of 11 separate but interconnected systems (Sherwood, 2007). These are the skeletal, muscular, circulatory, respiratory, digestive, excretory, nervous, integumentary, immune, endocrine and reproductive systems. The success and survival of the human body is dependent on the ability of separate body systems to work together. The skeletal system provides structure for the human body, stores minerals, produces blood cells and provides protection for delicate organs (Kelly, 2004). 206 bones are connected with ligaments, muscles and tendons, with cartilage, a softer cushion like material, providing protection in jointed areas. Body movements are controlled by the muscular system, with these muscles being connected to bones via tendons (Adams, 2004). Stimulation of these muscles by the nervous system causes contraction and the resulting movement of bones to which they are attached. A number of involuntary muscles ensure the respiratory and circulatory systems continue with contraction of the heart and lungs (Adams, 2004). The heart is central to the circulatory system and acts as to pump blood through arteries, veins and capillaries. The circulatory system is responsible for delivering nutrients and oxygen to cells as well as removing waste products and aiding the immune system through the circulation of whit e blood cells (Jacab, 2006). The immune system is comprised of lymph organs, such as the spleen and thymus, and the skin, all of which are responsible for protecting the body against invading pathogens (Parham, 2005). The circulatory system and the respiratory system are closely interconnected with the latter bringing fresh oxygen into the body through the alveoli of the lungs (Johnson, 2004). The respiratory system is closely connected with the excretory system as it is responsible for the removal of carbon dioxide and other waste gases through exhalation. The excretory system eliminates both solid and liquid wastes in addition to these gaseous products, and is made up of a number of specialist tissues along with the large intestine, bladder, kidneys, rectum, lungs and skin (Sherwood, 2007). The physical and chemical breakdown of food into energy is carried out by the digestive system. This system commences with the mouth, teeth and salivary glands then passes through the oesophagus to the stomach and small intestine for digestion. The liver, pancreas and large intestine are also involved, through the production of digestive enzymes and bile and the processing of nutrients (Windelspecht, 2004). The nervous system is responsible for sending messages to and from the brain through neurons. The nervous system controls all bodily functions by sending electrochemical signals through the neural network (Llamas, 1998). The endocrine system acts as a communication network but uses hormones as chemical messengers which travel through the bloodstream (Klosterman, 2009). The hormones have specific target organs and carry signals to start or stop performing a specific function. Finally, the reproductive system is responsible for the production of children and reproductive hormones cause our bodies to develop into sexual maturity. Relationship between the nervous and musculoskeletal system Muscle is a contractile tissue that can be histologically divided into three types. These are: striated or skeletal muscle, which are under direct nervous control; cardiac muscle, which is also striated but is a specialist form that is confined specifically to the heart; and smooth or visceral muscle, which is not under direct nervous control (Nair and Peate, 2013). This latter form can be found in the walls of blood vessels and the alimentary tract and in arrector pili. Smooth muscle is usually in the form of flat sheets and forms circular and longitudinal layers, or can be arranged as a sphincter in order to control passage through a tube, for example the anus (Ikebe, 1996). Skeletal muscle is usually attached to two separate bones via tendon, fleshy or aponeurosis connections. Muscle action control is carried out by the nervous system (Stein, 1982). Contact between nerves and muscles often occurs through chemical stimulus conveyed by motor end plates, which instruct muscles to contract. Signals can also be sent through tendons via specific receptors that are able to measure the stretch of the tendon (Stein, 1982). Messages from nerves are referred to as efferent when they take a message to a specific tissue and afferent when they are taking the message to the spinal cord and brain (Craig, 2005). As such the nervous system comprises two separate but combined systems. These are the central and peripheral nervous systems, with the former being made up of the brain and spinal cord, and the latter comprising the remaining neural network (Cervero, 1988). This neural network comprises 12 pairs of head nerves connected to the brain and 31 pairs of spinal nerves connected to the spinal cord. Nerves which transfer information from receptors within the body to the ce ntral nervous system are sensoric nerves, whilst nerves that transport information from the CNS to muscle fibres are motoric nerves (Cervero, 1988). As such, the peripheral nervous system comprises collections of nerves, their insulating myelin sheaths, Schwann cells and connective tissue. The majority of these nerve cells are able to carry out efferent and afferent cell processes (Craig, 2005). Figure 1 shows the organisation of a neuron, with the body being the axon and the smaller projections being known as dendrites. The neuron uses the dendrites to obtain and pass information from and to other neurons (Spruston, 2008). The axon passes the information to other cells particularly muscle cells. The information is then passed along the neuron through voltage changes within the cell membrane. This is known as the action potential (Bean, 2007). Information transfer between individual nerve cells occurs through chemical agents which are released when the action potential has reached the end of an axon.

Humor and Irony in British Literature

The comic novel is a very English kind of fiction and does not always settles down in other national literatures well. Certainly the English novel tradition is remarkable for the number of comic novels among its classics from the work of Fielding, and Sterne and Smollett in the eighteenth century, through Jane Austen and Dickens in the nineteenth to Evelyn Waugh, Arnold Bennett and David Lodge in the twentieth.Even novelists whose primary intention is not to write funny novels such as George Eliot, Thomas Hardy and E.  M. Forster have scenes in their fiction which make us laugh aloud. In this work we will define on the example of literary texts of British literature the notion of humor and irony both of which are based on the comic element.Comedy in fiction would appear to have two primary sources, though they are intimately connected: situation (which entails character – a situation that is comic for one character wouldn’t necessarily be so for another) and style.Bot h dependent upon timing, that is to say, the order in which the words, and the information they carry, are arranged. The principle can be illustrated by a single sentence from Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall. At the beginning of the novel, the shy, unassuming hero, Paul Pennyfeather, an Oxford undergraduate, is divested of his trousers by a party of drunken aristocratic hearties, and with monstrous injustice is sent down from the University for indecent behavior.The first chapter concludes: â€Å"God damn and blast them all to hell,† and Paul Pennyfeather meekly to himself as he drove to the station, and then he felt rather ashamed, because he rarely swore. (Waugh, 1929) We laugh at this because of the delayed appearance of the word â€Å"meekly†: what appears, as the sentence begins, to be a long-overdue explosion of righteous anger by the victimized hero turns out to be no such thing but a further exemplification of his timidity and passiveness.Lucky Jim of Ki ngsley Amis exhibits all properties of comic fiction in a highly polished form. As a temporary assistant lecturer at a province university, Jim Dixon is totally dependent for the continuance of his employment on his absent-minded professor’s patronage, which itself requires that Jim should demonstrate his professional competence by publishing a scholarly article. Jim despises both his professor and the rituals of academic scholarship, but cannot afford to say so.His resentment is therefore interiorized, sometimes in fantasies of violence: â€Å"to tie Welch up in his chair and beat him about the head and shoulders with a bottle until he disclosed why, without being French himself, he’d given his sons French names† (Amis) and at the other times, as here, in satirical mental commentary upon the behavior, discourses and institutional codes which oppress him. The style of Lucky Jim is full of little surprises, qualifications and reversals which satirically deconstru ct cliches. Jim’s powerlessness is physically epitomized by his being a passenger in Welch’s car, and a helpless victim of his appalling driving.The banal and apparently superfluous sentence â€Å"Dixon looked out of the window at the fields wheeling past, bright green after a wet April† (Amis) in fact proves to have a function. Looking from the same window moments later, Jim is startled to find â€Å"a man’s face staring in his from about nine inches away† Surprise is combined with conformity to Welch’s incompetence. â€Å"The face, which filled with alarm as he gazed, belonged to the driver of a van which Welch had elected to pass on a sharp bend between two stone walls.† (Amis) A slow motion effect is created by the leisurely precision of the language: â€Å"about nine inches away†, â€Å"filled with alarm†, â€Å"had elected to pass† contrasting comically with the speed with which the imminent collision approa ches. The reader is not told immediately what is happening, but made to infer it, re-enacting the character’s surprise and alarm. Another stylistic device based on humorous effect it creates is irony. Irony consists in saying the opposite of what you mean or inviting an interpretation different from the surface meaning of your words. Unlike other figures of speech – metaphor, simile, metonymy, synecdoche etc.– irony is not distinguished from literal statement by any peculiarity of verbal form. An ironic statement is recognized as such in the act of interpretation. When, for example, the authorial narrator of Pride and Prejudice says â€Å"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a fortune, must be in want of a wife,† (Austen, Chapter I) the reader, alerted by the false logic of the proposition about single men with fortunes, interprets the â€Å"universal† generalization as an ironic comment on a particular social group obsessed with matchmaking.The same rule applies to action in narrative. When the reader is made aware of a disparity between the facts of a situation and the characters’ understanding of it, an effect called â€Å"dramatic irony† is generated. (Lodge, 179) Arnold Bennett in his The Old Wives’ Tale employs two different methods to put his characters’ behavior in an ironic perspective. Sophia, the beautiful passionate but inexperienced daughter of a draper in the Potteries, is sufficiently dazzled by Gerald Scales, a handsome commercial traveler who has inherited a small fortune, to elope with him.The embrace described in the passage below is their first in the privacy of their London lodgings. Her face, view so close that he could see the almost imperceptible down on those fruit-like cheeks, was astonishingly beautiful; †¦[and] he could feel the secret loyalty of her soul ascending to him. She was very slightly taller than her lover; but somehow she hung from him, her body curved backwards, and her bosom pressed against his, so that instead of looking up at her gaze he looked down at it. He preferred that; perfectly proportioned though he was, his stature was a delicate point with him.(Bennett, 278) What should be a moment of erotic rapture and emotional unity is revealed as the physical conjunction of two people whose thoughts are running on quite different tacks. Gerald in fact intends to seduce Sophia, though in the event he lacks the self-assurance to carry out his plan. Even in this embrace he is at first nervous and tentative, â€Å"perceiving that her ardour was exceeding his. † (Bennett, 278) But as the intimate contact continues he becomes more confident and masterful: â€Å"His fears slipped away; he began to be very satisfied with himself† (Bennett, 278).There is probably a sexual pun hidden in â€Å"His spirits rose by the uplift of his senses†, for Bennett frequently hinted in this fashion at things he dared not describe explicitly. Gerald sexual arousal has nothing to do with love, or even lust. It is a function of his vanity and self-esteem. â€Å"Something in him had forced her to lay her modesty on the altar of his desire†. Like â€Å"the secret loyalty of her soul ascending to him† (Bennett, 279) earlier, this florid metaphor mocks the complacent thought it expresses.The use of the word â€Å"altar† carries an extra ironic charge since at this point Gerald has no intention of leading Sophia to the altar of marriage. Up to this point, Bennett keeps to Gerald’s point of view, and uses the kind of language appropriate to that perspective, thus implying an ironic assessment of Gerald’s character. â€Å"So he kissed her yet more ardently, and with the slightest touch of a victor’s condescension; and her burning response more than restored the self-confidence which he had been losing.† (Bennett, 279) The description of his timidity, vanity and complacency – so very different from what he ought to be feeling in this situation is enough to condemn him in reader’s eyes. In the next paragraph Bennett uses the convention of the omniscient intrusive author to switch to Sophia’s point of view, and to comment explicitly on her misconceptions, adding to the layers of irony in the scene. Sophia’s words are more creditable than Gerald’s, but her words, â€Å"I’ve got no on but you now† , are partly calculated to endear him to her.This merely reveals her naivety, however. â€Å"She fancied in her ignorance that the expression of this sentiment would please him. She was not aware that a man is usually rather chilled by it, because it proves to him that the other is thinking about his responsibilities and not about his privileges. †¦ [He] smiled vaguely. † (Bennett, 279) As the â€Å"burning† Sophia utters this sentiment in a â€Å"meltingâ₠¬  voice, Gerald is â€Å"chilled† by the reminder of his responsibilities.He responds with non-committal smile, which the infatuated Sophia finds charming, but which, the narrator assures us, was an index of his unreliability and a portent of disillusionment to come: â€Å"A less innocent girl than Sophia might have divined from that adorable half-feminine smile that she could do anything with Gerald except rely on him. But Sophia had to learn. † (Bennett, 279) The reader is supplied with knowledge that helps to feel pity for Sophia and contempt for Gerald. This type of irony leaves us with little work of inference or interpretation to do; on the contrary, we are the passive recipients of the author’s wisdom.To conclude it is necessary to note the main difference between humor and irony. These two devices while both based on comic element apply different approaches to their object. Irony the funny object is hidden beyond the mask of seriousness, and the negati ve, derisive attitude to the object is expressed. The different is humor, where the serious thing is hidden beyond the mask of ridiculous and the attitude to the object of derision is predominantly positive. Works Cited List: Amis, Kinsley. Lucky Jim. London: Gollancz, 1954.Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. Reissue edition, Bantam Classics, 1983. Bennett, Arnold. The Old Wives’ Tale. New York Hodder & Stoughton, 1909. Carens, James F. , The Satiric Art of Evelyn Waugh. Seattle and London, University of Washington Press, 1966. Lodge, David & Wood, Nigel Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader. Harlow: Pearson, 2000 Nilsen, Don L. F. Humor in Eighteenth-and Nineteenth-Century British Literature. A Reference Guide, 1998. Waugh, Evelyn. Decline and Fall. London: Chapman & Hall, 1928.

Comparing and Contrasting The Rocking Horse-Winner by...

An Explication of Passages in â€Å"The Rocking Horse Winner† By D.L. Hawthorne {It came whispering from the springs of the still-swaying rocking horse, and even the horse, bending his wooden, champing head, heard it. The big doll, sitting so pink and smirking in her new pram, could hear it quite plainly, and seemed to be smirking all the more self-consciously because of it. The foolish puppy, too, that took the place of the teddy-bear, he was looking so extraordinarily foolish for no other reason but that he heard the secret whisper all over the house: â€Å"There must be more money!† Yet no body ever said it out aloud. The whisper was everywhere, and therefore no one spoke it. Just as no one ever says: â€Å"We are breathing!† in spite of the†¦show more content†¦The dark and cynical writing that’s presented in both stories gives consequences of what is morally right even though it is clearly shows the cost of being selfish and wrong but it still have a price even if it means cheating someone out of their future. A noteworthy details Shirley Jackson’s â€Å"The Lottery† which was published on June 26, 1948. Her tone in this writing was cynical, and extreme delusion in her ideology of population control. For example, â€Å"The people had done it so many time that they only half listened to the directions; most of them were quiet, wetting their lips, not looking around†. However, if this were really a lottery gathering everyone wouldn’t be nervous or angry and scared. There would be festive theme with families celebrating the winner. Instead, there were terror, horror, and panic among the recipients that were gathered. The significance in D.H. Lawrence’s The Rocking-Horse Winner was published on September 11, 1885 in Harper’s Bazaar. His tone in writing was extremely deranged in a passive way. For case in point, â€Å"The foolish puppy, too, that took the place of the teddy-bear, he was looking so extraordinarily foolish for no other reason but that h e heard the secret whisper all over the house: â€Å"There must be more money!† Yet no body ever said it out aloud. The whisper was everywhere, and therefore no one spoke it†. All in all, if this were a true family

The Conquest Of The Americas - 1094 Words

The conquest of the Americas is one of the most important events in modern history. The invasion, which took centuries to complete, created a trans-atlantic world. The people that began the conquest were Spaniards, inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula, primarily from the Christian kingdoms of Castille and Aragon. Following the initial discovery By Cristobal Colon in 1492, Spaniards conquered most of modern South and Central America, as well as the Caribbean. They did this in the words of Bernal Diaz de Castillo, a conquistador that took part in the invasion of Mexico; â€Å"we came here to serve God and the king and also to get rich† . As the Spanish noblemen himself states, most colonists decided to engage in the conquest because of multiple reasons. Chiefly a devotion to the Catholic Church and its mission to convert all ‘heathens’ . A love of country, expressed in a desire to expand the empire, both materially and ideologically. And perhaps most importantly the se young men were guided by a desire for profit and social advancement, the like of which would of impossible in Motherland Spain . In this essay I will consider the motives that led to the conquest and destruction of the Aztec and Inca peoples of modern Mexico and Peru. In particular this paper will look at why the conquest was possible, both physically and idiotically. Also I will look at how the conquest received, both in distant Spain and by the conquered peoples themselves. Why 1492? Spain was jubilant, havingShow MoreRelatedConquest Of America Essay1078 Words   |  5 Pagescolonies in the Americas and the Spanish colonization of the Americas began with the so-called discovery of New World by Columbus in 1492 while he was searching for a new route to Asian Indies. As Columbus recounted in his letter to the king of Spain, Americas was a kind of heaven with its prosporous land which was full of trees of a thousand kinds. 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In your discussion include the initial reaction of the Taino and Maya to the presence of the Spanish and the rationalRead MoreThe Conquest Of America By Walter Ong And Goody s Claim1333 Words   |  6 PagesThroughout his text The Conquest of America, Todorov, a french sociologist, implements multiple theories written by Walter Ong and Jack Goody in regard to the contrasting effects living in an oral versus a literate society plays on its members. More specifically, Ong and Goody claim that the way one communicates, greatly affects their thought processes as well as their physical brain. To explore this, Todorov uses Cortes’ and Montezuma’s communication techniques throughout their battle to highlightRead MoreHistory: Spanish Colonization of the Americas and Spanish Conquest1021 Words   |  5 PagesThe Conquest and Colonization of the Caribbean and Yucatan by European, Resulted in significant cultural, biological environmental changes to both regions Maggie Jim Professor Ancient History [Date] 1. Briefly discuss (but in detail) the similarities/differences between the initial Spanish colonization of the Caribbean and the Yucatan. In your discussion include the initial reaction of the Taino and Maya to the presence of the Spanish and the rational