What is a cross current pertaining in biology?

Question

What is a cross current pertaining in biology?

Answer 1

I'm not familiar with this term in biology, but did a web search where I found this website that defines this as "Cross-currents are areas of conflicting opinion and unresolved standards of practice and performance."  http://fwie.fw.vt.edu/rhgiles/CrossCurre...

I'm wondering if this is the actual term you're looking for or if it's actually "counter-current" which I've seen used frequently to describe temperature and dissolved gas content in blood vessels.  The idea here is that when blood vessels travel in the same direction and heat and gasees are exchanged between them, the system is more inefficient.  The gas exchange (by diffusion) can only pass on 50% of the content, as if the concentration were higher, it would reverse:

100%____>___50%

0%______>____50%

If the vessels have the flow going in the opposite direction, the exchange can be much greater:

100%____>____2%

0% _____<____98%

Here's a diagram from the web illustrating this with blood flow so that heat is conserved in cold water - the heat is transferred from the blood vessel leaving the body to the same vessel as it returns so the cold blood doesn't shock major organs:  http://people.eku.edu/ritchisong/counter...

And one showing this with blood oxygen content:  http://science.kennesaw.edu/~jdirnber/Bi...

So go by the context of what you've been studying, and you should be able to decide which of these best fits.