a sideblog for everything i love and find interesting: philosophy, literature, cultural anthropology, folk history, folk horror, neuroscience, medicine and medical science, neuropsychology/psychiatry, ethnomusicology, art, literature, academia and so on. i am an amateur in every subject! this is just for my own personal interest in each subject :)
277 posts
Latest Posts by culturalanthropologist - Page 3
Once maligned for their psychedelic properties, magic mushrooms are increasingly attracting attention for their same mind-altering potential as a therapy for a wide variety of mental health issues. Yet surprisingly little is known about the diverse neurological effects of the fungus's psychoactive compound, psilocybin, making it difficult to predict how the drug might ultimately benefit the community as a medicine. A study led by Washington University School of Medicine psychiatrist Joshua Siegel tracked brain changes in seven healthy adults before, during, and after taking a high dose of psilocybin, identifying disruptions in connectivity that persisted for weeks in some areas of the brain.
Continue Reading.
Jewellery & weaponry belonging to Queen Ahhotep II. An inscribed ceremonial axe blade made of copper, gold, electrum and wood was decorated with a Minoan style griffin. Three golden flies were included and were awards usually given to people who served and acquitted themselves well in the army. A couple of items bore the name of Kamose, but more were inscribed with the name of Ahmose I.
Karelian burials, known as “houses of the dead”, are remnants of the Karelian pagan culture. Yushkozersky cemetery, 1880s
Grave-house was the “eternal dwelling” of the deceased and therefore naturally reflected in itself the features of a real house. The house was slightly different depending on the place: the grave-house of north-western Karelia has the window for the “soul of the deceased”.
Libuse Safránková, Lenka Kolegarova, Libuse Geprtová, Magda Vásáryová
H'lulu - Butterfly Mask
Dean Hunt
Postmortem marbling occurs due to breakdown of hemoglobin within blood vessels. It’s caused by bacteria tracking though the superficial blood vessels causing pigment changes in the blood.
Wolf skeleton dressed as a warrior, found with an atlatl, gold disk, and shell necklace. Found in an offering at the Templo Mayor, Mexico City. Aztec. Late 15th century [1960x1065]
Source: https://reddit.com/r/ArtefactPorn/comments/e1lmwz/wolf_skeleton_dressed_as_a_warrior_found_with_an/
Watching Przewalski's horses run free on the Kazakhstan steppe for the first time in 200 years
mummies, oria in memento mori: the dead among us - paul koudounaris (2015)
Two doses of allergen-encapsulating nanoparticles delivered intravenously prevented anaphylaxis during a food allergy test in mice, according to a study led by University of Michigan researchers. The results, published in Advanced Healthcare Materials, offer a potential path to improving the ease of allergy immunotherapies in humans which currently require daily doses of the allergen. In addition to the research in mice, this allergen-encapsulating nanoparticle platform has completed a Phase II clinical trial for treating the autoimmune condition celiac disease.
Continue Reading.
New research with mice shows promising results that could lead to the development of a weight-loss drug that mimics exercise. As reported in the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, the compound led obese mice to lose weight by convincing the body’s muscles that they are exercising more than they really are, boosting metabolism. It also increased endurance, helping mice run nearly 50% further than they could before. All without the mice lifting a paw. The drug belongs to a class known as “exercise mimetics,” which provide some of the benefits of exercise without increasing physical activity. The new treatment, currently in the early stages of development, could one day be tested in people to treat diseases like obesity, diabetes, and age-related muscle loss. The research comes as drugs like Ozempic have provided a breakthrough in reducing appetite, helping treat these metabolic diseases. But the new drug, SLU-PP-332, doesn’t affect appetite or food intake. Nor does it cause mice to exercise more. Instead, the drug boosts a natural metabolic pathway that typically responds to exercise. In effect, the drug makes the body act like it is training for a marathon, leading to increased energy expenditure and faster metabolism of fat in the body.
Continue Reading.
A woman moving to another village takes with her the bones of her dead son, decorated with marigolds, the native mourning flower, Balkan Front, June 1916.
Wake up, babe, new religion just dropped
Life appears to require at least some instability. This fact should be considered a biological universality, proposes University of Southern California molecular biologist John Tower. Biological laws are thought to be rare and describe patterns or organizing principles that appear to be generally ubiquitous. While they can be squishier than the absolutes of math or physics, such rules in biology nevertheless help us better understand the complex processes that govern life. Most examples we've found so far seem to concern themselves with the conservation of materials or energy, and therefore life's tendency towards stability.
Continue Reading.
people who work/study in quantitative bio-adjacent fields, rise up. computational neuroscience where you get to see someone's thoughts in feelings in graph form??? so cool. biophysics where you can pass blood plasma through an electric field to determine whether a patient has cancer or not?? unbelievable. biomedical engineering where you can literally build a device to pump someone's heart and be the difference between their life and death??? oh my god. disease modelling, being able to predict AND prevent communities being affected by disease on a large scale through your analysis of data??? i love science
The H5N1 strain of avian flu has been around since 1996, but until now its been largely confined to animals. But it has now jumped to cattle in America and some think it means we are inching towards eventual human-to-human infection, with potentially serious consequences.
Since March, H5N1 has been confirmed in dairy cattle in nine US states. Scientists are still trying to establish how the virus is being spread.
“Right now it seems like the milking equipment may be one of the ways,” says Dr Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health
“Scientists are finding very high levels of virus in milk. And so that's why the milking equipment seems like it might be playing a role.”
early christian martyrs from the roman catacombs in memento mori: the dead among us - paul koudounaris (2015)
Extremely good paragraph from an article exploring the concept of sentience in invertebrates
Shuho Hananofu, Ikebana master
“My life work is flower offering. I always “do flowers” live, but am unfailing in making preparations by consistently following a commitment to determinate regularity. I often experience or witness surreal phenomena which surpass human conceivability, or events which appear to me as if the Mother Nature were favoring me. One day, when I was about to complete a flower presentation, the light of the setting sun suddenly reflected off a nearby building into our room, glided onto the presentation’s mizugiwa like a spotlight which then projected a dramatic silhouette of the flowers and vase on an alcove’s wall. I recall that those who were present at the site were profoundly moved by nature’s unexpected rendition. Flowers, light and shadow are all nature’s creations, and lest we may forget, humans are also part of this natural order as are all living creatures progressing toward the end of our lives. Harmony is the most crucial element of ikebana. One can only recognize light and shadow when, as flowers, you and I become one.”
Light and Shadow in “Doing Flowers”
Yekaterina, when she left all to follow Christ, remembered a common but very special kind of Russian believer: the poustinik. Every so often some peasant, and less frequently a wealthy person in Russia, like Pyotr, would get rid of his or her things and take to the poustinia. That word means desert. The poustinik however did not go to a literal desert. He only put on rough linen clothing and went to live in the barest, simplest house in the village. There, with no lock on the door, he lived with nothing but the Bible, his daily bread, and his clothes. The poustinik was no hermit. On call, day or night, he lived to help others. Whether that meant feeding the sick, counselling a distressed sinner at midnight, or quick helping a farmer get his hay in before it rained, did not matter. He lived in the “desert” of freedom from personal ambition and let Christ use him however it suited. All his free time he spent in his house or garden alone.
Peter Hoover with Serguei V. Petrov, The Russians' Secret: What Christians Today Would Survive Persecution?
Traditional Czech hair ribbon headdress. Each ribbon is supposed to denote a suitor she refused lol. Perhaps the natural evolution of the coquette ribbon craze?
A resident of Hamnavoe, Shetland Islands in Scotland, Anne Eunson decided to knit herself a beautiful lace fence using twine. The fence is fashioned from strong black twine - the same kind that is used to make fishing nets - and Anne knitted it on specially adapted curtain rods. It took her about three weeks to knit enough lace to surround her front garden, using a 23 stitch repeat of a familiar Shetland lace pattern.
*Photo via Laine Glover, Social History
Wedding in Azerbaijan, photo by Lev Borodulin (1959)
Published Sept 28, 2023
Last year, a case study in Frontiers in Pediatrics described what Covid did to the lives of two girls. Before getting sick, they made excellent grades. They had lots of friends. They played the piano.
They were healthy.
After a mild case of Covid, they started complaining about fatigue and joint pain. They forgot how to play their favorite songs. They couldn't do simple math. For six months, their parents and teachers didn't listen. They sent them to a psychologist. They assumed the girls were suffering from anxiety.
They weren't.
Huichol woman burns copal incense in preparation for Temazcal sweat bath.Guadalajara, Jalisco,
The Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence River superimposed on a map of Europe
A Komi pagan shrine in a spruce forest, probably Abjaćoj village, 1960s
