The
beautiful act of vomiting Worksheet
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Even seeing another person vomit can make an otherwise well bystander start vomiting.
So why would a medical doctor work with biological scientists and
engineers in North Carolina to build a vomiting machine in fact, a projectile vomiting machine? They wanted to understand how Noroviruses spread through
the air.
Vomiting is an involuntary and forceful expulsion of whatever happens to
be in your stomach out through your mouth and sometimes your nose.
There seems to be a vomiting centre in your brain known as the Area
Postrema. Various nerves connect to it, such as Cranial Nerve VIII (which deals
with balance) and Cranial Nerve X (which among things, deals with your gut).
The vomiting centre also has receptors for chemicals such as dopamine,
serotonin, opiates and so on.
Believe it or not, vomiting is a beautifully choreographed act.
In the lead up to the actual act of vomiting, your lungs will take a
deep breath (which minimises the chances of getting vomit into your lungs) and
you'll start salivating (which helps protect your tooth enamel from the stomach
acids which can cause dental erosion).
You then generate higher pressure in the abdomen (as your tummy muscles
contract) and lower pressure in the chest (as you try to breathe in against a
closed larynx). These two effects combine to propel the contents of the stomach
into your oesophagus and through your mouth, and out. Sometimes, people can
vomit so forcefully and for so long that their tummy muscles get sore.
There are many causes of vomiting.
Looking at the gut, vomiting can be set off by gastritis, food poisoning, overeating, food allergies, lactose
intolerance in children and many other conditions.
Considering the sensory system and the brain, vomiting can be caused by
motion sickness, concussion, migraine, brain cancers and more. Other causes
include metabolic disturbances (altered levels of calcium, urea, glucose, etc),
pregnancy, drugs (such as opiates, alcohol, etc) and yes, infectious agents
such as "Norovirus".
Norovirus, which used to be called Norwalk Virus and Norwalk Agent, can
be nasty. Each year, it infects about a quarter of a billion people, and kills
200,000 of them. But in most cases, people recover fully within a few days,
even though the symptoms are unpleasant.
These symptoms include nausea, projectile vomiting, tummy pain, watery
diarrhea, headache and a low-grade fever. Norovirus is classically associated with gastroenteritis outbreaks on cruise
ships, aircraft, hotels, schools and public gatherings.
Norovirus can survive for up to 12 days on contaminated clothing, weeks
on hard surfaces, and months or perhaps years in contaminated still water.
It is spread by contaminated food or water, direct person-to-person
contact, and yes, through the air which is where vomiting comes in.
Here's a typical story: it involves 126 people at a function eating at a
restaurant, which had 6 tables.
One person had already been infected with Norovirus, and they quietly
vomited onto the floor. (Yes, nasty.) The staff quickly and efficiently cleaned
it up, and everybody continued eating.
But from that one vomit, the Norovirus particles travelled through the
air and over the next few days, 52 of the 126 people got sick.
The infection rate was related to the distance from the vomit epicentre. At the same table as the
unfortunate vomiter, over 90% got infected. At a nearby table, the infection
rate was 70%. And way on the other side of the restaurant, even there, 25% got
Norovirus.
The projective vomiting machine
Until the North Carolina team got together to build a projectile
vomiting machine, nobody really understood how much virus was released during a
typical vomiting episode. This was why they built a one-quarter scale Simulated
Vomiting Device, and loaded it up with a well-studied and relatively harmless
virus known as Bacteriophage MS2.
Their device had a simple hand pump to pressurize it, various valves to
let the pressure build up and be suddenly released, and a clay face mask
wrapped around the output pipe giving a suitable expression of misery.
In a full-scale human vomit, the maximum volume is around 800 ml,
including some 50-200 ml of air. This air contributes to turning some of the
wet vomit into tiny aerosols in the
air. Now vomit varies in consistency, so the experimenters used both watery
artificial saliva, and thick gluggy vanilla instant pudding.
They found that the number of virus particles released from the mouth of
their Simulated Vomiting Device ranged from 36, right up to 13,000.
And how many Norovirus particles do you need to get infected? Just 20.
That's a (w)retchedly
small amount that can set off a huge vomit
Comprehension
1. Why did the doctors and engineers in North Carolina
build a projectile vomiting machine?
2. What is vomiting?
3. What are three causes of vomiting?
4. What are symptoms of a norovirus infection?
5. How many people contracted norovirus from the vomit
in the restaurant?
6. How did distance relate to the infection rate from
the vomit epicentre?
7. Why did the
machine have two different kinds of vomit?
8. How is a (w)retchedly
small amount a pun?
Vocabulary; explain the meaning of the following
words and phrases as used in the passage.
Bystander
Projectile
Choreographed
Gastritis
Classically
Epicentre
Aerosols
Summary; in 300 to 500 words write a summary of the
passage.