Intensive Care Network Podcasts

Basic Science Clinic by Steve Morgan & Sophie Connolly In the words of the 3rd greatest physicist of all time, James Clerk Maxwell: “It is of great advantage to the student of any subject to read the original memoirs on that subject, for science is always most completely assimilated when it is in the nascent state.” Welcome to Basic Science Clinic Raw Science 10. Not before time we are ready to approach the alveolar-capillary membrane to substantiate the factors that determine the reciprocal exchange of biologically operative respiratory gases. For all the demonstrable complexity of transport and signaling mechanisms in the human body, the energetically neutral transaction of simple passive diffusion is culpable for the cascading maintenance of gas exchange homeostasis and oxidative phosphorylation, with its explosive potential for driving the evolution of ostentatious biological complexity. The adaptive imperative to exploit diffusion for gas exchange imposes certain anatomical demands on the respiratory