Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

Excessive fear of embarrassment in social situations that is extremely intrusive and can have debilitating effects on personal and professional relationships. Also called social phobia. Phobias are persistent, irrational fears of certain objects or situations. They recognize that their fear may be excessive or unreasonable, but are unable to overcome it. The symptoms and signs…

Tobacco in the form of a powder that is inhaled into the nose, not smoked. Snuff and chewing tobacco are the two main forms of smokeless tobacco in use in the United States. Cancers of the oral cavity (i.e., the mouth, lip, and tongue) have been associated with the use of chewing tobacco as well as…

A popular and pejorative, term for nasal mucus (mucus produced in the nose).

Take in a drug by nasal inhalation. For example, snorting cocaine is inhaling cocaine powder through the nose where it is absorbed through the nasal tissues into the bloodstream.

A rough rattling noise made on inspiration during sleep by vibration of the soft palate (the back of the roof of the mouth) and the uvula (the prominent structure dangling down at the back of the mouth). On inspiration, air on its way to the lungs travels by the tongue, the soft palate, the uvula, and the tonsils. When…

Along with skeletal and cardiac muscle, one of the types of muscle tissue in the body. Smooth muscle generally forms the supporting tissue of blood vessels and hollow internal organs, such as the stomach, intestine, and bladder. It is considered smooth because it does not have the microscopic lines (the striations) seen in the other two types of…

The sense that provides information about an object’s scent, often giving clues to the palatability of food, the safety of air, and other matters. The organs of smell are made up of patches of tissue called the olfactory membranes that are each about the size of a postage stamp. These membranes are located in a pair of clefts just…

Small round blue cell tumor: a group of childhood tumors that is characterized by a similar appearance under the microscope. The appearance is that of small, round, primitive cells that stain blue with conventional staining techniques for biopsy analysis. The small round blue cell tumors include neuroblastoma, rhabdomyosarcoma, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and the Ewing’s family of tumors. Sometimes other tumor types…

The part of the digestive tract that extends from the stomach to the large intestine.

SGA infants weigh 2500 g or less at birth and are considered to have intrauterine growth retardation (IUGR), given their gestational age. By contrast, an infant may weighs 2500 g or less simply because of prematurity.