Nerve gas or nerve agent is the name of a family of chemical poisons. Usually people call them "nerve agents" (they are not always gases). They work by changing the way the nerves work in the human body. They stop messages from the brain from getting sent to the muscles and organs.
Nerve agents are organic chemicals that have phosphorus in them (organophosphates). Many organophosphates are pesticides, and have the same effects as nerve agents if people are exposed to them. However, these pesticides are not used against people as weapons like nerve agents are.
Since they are chemical weapons, nerve agents are classified as weapons of mass destruction by the United Nations according to UN Resolution 687. Since 1993, making or stockpiling them has been against international law.
Nerve agents have long-lasting effects. People who survive nerve agent poisoning almost always have chronic damage to the brain and nerves. This damage can also cause mental health problems.
Nerve agents work by blocking communication between the brain and the body. Usually, a neurotransmitter (a chemical messenger) called acetylcholine gives the signal for the muscles to tighten up. It also keeps them from relaxing. However, when it is time for the muscles to relax, an enzyme called acetylcholinesterase destroys acetylcholine, and another neurotransmitter tells the muscles to relax.
Nerve agents work by blocking acetyl-cholinesterase. Too much acetylcholine builds up, because it is not getting destroyed by acetylcholinesterase. The muscles keep getting more and more signals to tighten up. Basically, the brain loses control over the body's muscles. It cannot make the muscles relax. This leads to many of the unique signs and symptoms of nerve agent poisoning.
Acetylcholine also signals the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) to kick in. Usually, the PNS balances out with the sympathetic nervous system to maintain homeostasis. However, when there is too much acetylcholine, the two systems cannot balance, and the sympathetic nervous system does not work correctly.
Nerve agent poisoning causes a very unique group of signs and symptoms. Some medical providers use the acronym "SLUDGE" to remember them:
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Some medical professionals use a different version of this acronym: "SLUDGE and the Killer B's." "The Killer B's" are three life-threatening symptoms:
As the person gets worse, they will have muscle twitches, then start having seizures and go into status epilepticus. People can die because their brain cannot control their breathing muscles, and they stop breathing.
These nerve gases are called "G series" because they were first created by German scientists. They were all discovered and made before or during World War II.
Nobody agrees on why these nerve gases are called "V series." Different people say the V stands for "Victory," "Venomous" (poisonous), or "Viscous" (thick liquid).
There have been two major international laws that relate to nerve agents:
Herbicide
A herbicide is a poison that kills plants. There are many kinds of herbicides, from weedkillers for gardens to Agent Orange which was used to destroy forests in the Vietnam War.
Hugh Hefner
Hugh Marston Hefner (April 9, 1926 – September 27, 2017) was the founder of "Playboy Magazine" and its Editor-in-Chief.
Hefner was born into a Methodist family, to Glenn Hefner, an accountant, and Grace (Swanson) Hefner, a teacher, on April 9, 1926 in Chicago, Illinois. He was raised in Woodlawn, Chicago. Hefner served in the US Army (1944 - 1946). He attended the Art Institute of Chicago (1946), the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, earning a BA in Psychology (1949), and Northwestern University, 1949.
Hefner married Mildred Williams (June 25, 1949 - 1959, divorced); Kimberley Conrad (July 1, 1989 - September 2009, divorced); and Crystal Harris (December 31, 2012 - 2017, his death).
Hefner has several children. With Mildred, he has David Paul (August 30, 1955) and Christie Ann (November 8, 1952). With Kimberley, he has Cooper Bradford (September 4, 1991) and Marston Glenn (April 9, 1990).
Hefner was a distant relative of George W. Bush and John Kerry.
Hefner owned a multi-million mansion called the Playboy Mansion. He was also the executive producer of Roman Polanski's 1971 movie version of Macbeth. Hefner also appeared in cameos of himself in some movies.
When nude photographs of Jayne Mansfield on the set of "Promises! Promises!" were published in the June 1963 issue of "Playboy", Hefner was brought into Chicago city court on obscenity charges.
In 2013, Hefner announced that his youngest son, Cooper, would succeed him and eventually help run the Playboy Empire.
Hefner supported legalizing same-sex marriage. He said that a fight for gay marriage is "a fight for all our rights. Without it, we will turn back the sexual revolution and return to an earlier, puritanical time."
Hefner owned a burial plot next to Marilyn Monroe's grave in Los Angeles.
Hefner died at his home in Beverly Hills, California on September 27, 2017 after suffering from a cardiac arrest and sepsis caused by respiratory failure and an e. coli infection the age of 91.
Urination
Urination (peeing) is how animals and humans remove urine from their bodies. Urine is the scientific term for "pee", the liquid bodily waste filtered out of the bloodstream by kidneys and from the liquids that a person drinks. The bladder temporarily holds the waste fluid.
Nyctalopia
Nyctalopia (Greek for Night blindness) is a disease of the human eyes.The eyes of people who are night-blind cannot adapt to situations where there is relatively little light; as a result, they have trouble seeing in such situations.
There are a number of conditions that can cause this; most commonly:
Martinique
Martinique is an island in the Caribbean Sea. It has an area of 1,128 km². Nearly 400,000 people live there.
Martinique was known by indigenous peoples of the Caribbean as Madiana or Madinina. It was colonized by the French in the 17th century, and they introduced racist slavery there as they spread it all around the world. France still claims to own the island today, even though there has been an independence movement.
The capital city is Fort-de-France. Other towns include Sainte-Anne and St. Pierre (which was destroyed by a volcano named Mont Pelée in 1902).
Martinique is well known for its zouk music. Artists such as Kassav' have made it famous over the years. Frantz Fanon, an important anti-colonial revolutionary, was born there.
The ethnic makeup of the country is: 90% African and Mixed African with anything from Chinese, East Indian or White. and 10% White, Amerindian, Chinese and East Indian.
PHP
PHP (PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a scripting language that helps people make web pages more interactive by allowing them to do more intelligent, complex things. PHP code is run on the web server.
A website programmed with PHP can have pages that are password protected. A website with no programming cannot do this without other complex things. Standard PHP file extensions are: .php .php3 or .phtml, but a web server can be set up to use any extension.
Its structure was influenced by many languages like C, Perl, Java, C++, and even Python. It is considered to be free software by the Free Software Foundation.
PHP was first created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1995. It is now developed and improved by a large team of people. Its name at first stood for Personal Home Page, but it was later changed to PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor; using its old acronym in the new name.
An example Hello World program:
<?php
echo "Hello, World!";
It is common to put PHP code inside a HTML document, for example:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
</html>
Hello world program
A Hello world program is usually a program made by computer programmers that are new to a programming languages, or to test if the compiler for this language is working correctly. It will simply put the text Hello, World! on the screen.