Divine Horsemen essays

Divine Horsemen essays After viewing Maya Derens film Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti, it is clear that Deren is depicting the beauty and power of the Haitian Voodoo ceremonies. We are able to experience this through narration explaining the different ceremonies, her focus on music of the ceremony, dance and her cinematography techniques giving you a better understanding of this practice. Any false perceptions that we have had about this mysterious religion in this traditional society she clearly clarifies. In American culture there are many false perceptions on the sociality of religion in other societies, the mere word conjures images of doll stuck with pins, evil zombies. This film completely shows that this way of life is exaggerated in Hollywood films. An example of a fiction film is The Serpent and the Rainbow. An anthropologist in the film goes to Haiti in search of a magic powder that will heal and make the dead walk. In his search he witnesses strange and bizarre incidents such as walking zombies, curses, live burial. Deren shows us the positive motivation behind the several ceremonies and the narration definitely helps understand that ceremonies are a way of communicating with the divine through several spirits or what they call Loa. In the film she shows a ceremony where a man dressed in white that is dancing to the drums being played by another man is surrounded by other persons who are singing. He then starts to gyrate as if he was having an epileptic seizure, swinging his hands and the camera continues to do a close-up on him to the point where you see how his eyes looked, as if something had hypnotized him or he was being controlled by a spirit. This was the ceremony for the Loa Legba. The narration explains that Legba is the god of the crossroads and is very important to the Haitians as he is given the ultimate respect that is displayed when the people all move back and give him space so that he can bring...

10 Facts About Ribonucleic Acid (RNA)

10 Facts About Ribonucleic Acid (RNA) RNA or ribonucleic acid is used to translate instructions from DNA to make proteins in your body. Here are 10 interesting and fun facts about RNA. Each RNA nucleotide consists of a nitrogenous base, a ribose sugar, and a phosphate.Each RNA molecule typically is a single strand, consisting of a relatively short chain of nucleotides. RNA can be shaped like a single helix, a straight molecule, or may be bet or twisted upon itself. DNA, in comparison, is double-stranded and consists of a very long chain of nucleotides.In RNA, the base adenine binds to uracil. In DNA, adenine binds to thymine. RNA does not contain thymine - a uracil is an unmethylated form of thymine capable of absorbing light. Guanine binds to cytosine in both DNA and RNA.There are several types of RNA, including transfer RNA (tRNA), messenger RNA (mRNA), and ribosomal RNA (rRNA). RNA performs many functions in an organism, such as coding, decoding, regulating, and expressing genes.About 5% of the weight of a human cell is RNA. Only about 1% of a cell consists of DNA.RNA is found in both the nucleus and cytoplasm of humans cells. DNA is only found in the cell nucl eus. RNA is the genetic material for some organisms which dont have DNA. Some viruses contain DNA; many only contain RNA.RNA is used in some cancer gene therapies to reduce the expression of cancer-causing genes.RNA technology is used to suppress the expression of fruit ripening genes so that fruits can remain on the vine longer, extending their season and availability for marketing.Friedrich Miescher discovered nucleic acids (nuclein) in 1868. After that time, scientists realized there were different types of nucleic acids and different types of RNA, so there is no single person or date for the discovery of RNA. In 1939, researchers determined RNA is responsible for protein synthesis. In 1959, Severo Ochoa won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for discovering how RNA is synthesized.