Functions
Sphincters prove effective in the mediation of the entrance or release of liquids and fluids; this is evident, for example, in the blowholes of numerous marine mammals.
Many sphincters are used every day in the normal course of digestion and vision. For example, the epiglottis is used to seal off the windpipe when swallowing, so as to ensure that no food or liquid enters the lungs. The function of the epiglottis is a typical example of an involuntary action by the body..
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Famous quotes containing the word functions:
“Let us stop being afraid. Of our own thoughts, our own minds. Of madness, our own or others’. Stop being afraid of the mind itself, its astonishing functions and fandangos, its complications and simplifications, the wonderful operation of its machinery—more wonderful because it is not machinery at all or predictable.”
—Kate Millett (b. 1934)
“When Western people train the mind, the focus is generally on the left hemisphere of the cortex, which is the portion of the brain that is concerned with words and numbers. We enhance the logical, bounded, linear functions of the mind. In the East, exercises of this sort are for the purpose of getting in tune with the unconscious—to get rid of boundaries, not to create them.”
—Edward T. Hall (b. 1914)
“Those things which now most engage the attention of men, as politics and the daily routine, are, it is true, vital functions of human society, but should be unconsciously performed, like the corresponding functions of the physical body.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)