Snooping Around

If I ask you a definition of love, what would you say? Well, this is an unanswerable question without a doubt. We can give plenty of descriptions about this, and one I personally like is the quote/struck phrase: Love is like a butterfly, the more you chase it, the more it will elude you. But if you turn your attention towards other things it will come and softly sit on your shoulder. And be careful when you get it: hold it too much and you’ll squeeze it, don’t hold it enough and it’ll fly away. Pretty mawkish, isn't it? We can say that love is just a way to complicate our lives. But we can also talk about love like a philosopher would do, just like the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann, who said this about love: Love is a social code in which two people exchange expectations for the future. In a relationship you need to show your unique and irreplaceable self to the other. And If the other loves you, he recognize this self in your eyes. Just like a mirror. And the meanin...

Welcome back to all my Snoopers. This time I'll be giving you discoveries, mainly scientific ones. This new collection of articles called "Discovery Central" will be your link to the origins of the most common and used chemicals around. And the one I'm going to talk about this time is probably one of the most effective painkiller ever used. To be properly clear, Morphine (formula on the right) is an analgesic drug derived from opium but far more reliable and powerful. Like other chemicals of the same family, called opioids, morphine acts directly on the central nervous system (CNS) to relieve pain. As everybody know, it's highly addictive and the abuse can reverse the effects fairly rapidly, worsening pain through Hyperalgesia. The discovery of Morphine changed pharmacology and pain relief. But to start talking about it, we have to begin with the origins and use of opium. Derived from the seedpods of the poppy, opium (scientifically called Papaver somnifer...