Yūgen (幽玄) is an important concept in traditional Japanese aesthetics. The exact translation of the word depends on the context. In the Chinese philosophical texts the term was taken from, yūgen meant “dim”, “deep” or “mysterious”. In the criticism of Japanese waka poetry, it was used to describe the subtle profundity of things that are only vaguely suggested by the poems, and was also the name of a style of poetry (one of the ten orthodox styles delineated by Fujiwara no Teika in his treatises).
Yugen suggests that beyond what can be said but is not an allusion to another world.[12] It is about this world, this experience. All of these are portals to yugen:
“To watch the sun sink behind a flower clad hill. To wander on in a huge forest without thought of return. To stand upon the shore and gaze after a boat that disappears behind distant islands. To contemplate the flight of wild geese seen and lost among the clouds. And, subtle shadows of bamboo on bamboo.” Zeami Motokiyo
[video]
[video]
It sounds like science fiction, but researchers have discovered a single drug that they think can shrink, or even completely cure, all human tumors. But how does a drug like that work, and when will it be available?
An article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science explains that a new treatment—based on an antibody that blocks a “do not eat” signal normally displayed on tumor cells—helps persuade the immune system to destroy the cancer cells. To date, it’s been shown to shrink or cure human breast, ovary, colon, bladder, brain, liver, and prostate tumors that have been transplanted into mice.
The treatment targets and blocks a protein called CD47, a marker that tells the immune system to not kill healthy blood cells. But cancers use the same protein to avoid being destroyed by the body, too—so by strategically blocking the protein, it’s possible to use one antibody to kill all types of cancer tumors.
Over the past few years the technique has been applied to treating lymphomas and leukemias, but this latest research suggests it could be used on all types of cancers. Irving Weissman, one of the researchers, explains to Science:
“What we’ve shown is that CD47 isn’t just important on leukemias and lymphomas. It’s on every single human primary tumor that we tested… We showed that even after the tumor has taken hold, the antibody can either cure the tumor or slow its growth and prevent metastasis.”
Even though some normal, healthy cells are attacked as a result of blocking CD47, the researchers found this was short-lived, and negligible compared to the effects on the tumor.
Sadly, it will be some time before such a drug makes it to clinical practice. But with the researchers having just received a $20 million grant to move the findings from mouse studies to human safety tests, you can expect progress to be as quick as possible. [PNAS via Science]
(http://gizmodo.com/5896683/the-miracle-drug-that-kills-all-cancers)
The formal name for the process is “two-photon lithography”.
It involves focusing a laser beam onto liquid resin to harden it, leaving behind a line of solid polymer just a few nanometres wide.
Unlike traditional 3D-printing techniques which build up an object by adding layers to its surface, the laser can create solid material anywhere within the liquid material.
The process gets its name because the resin only sets if the molecules within it absorb two photons of the laser beam at once - which only happens at the very centre of the beam.
The team’s breakthrough involved improving the control mechanism for mirrors used to focus the laser, and developing the special type of resin involved in the process.
The researchers are now developing bio-compatible resins so that the objects they create can be used by doctors.
“We can also ‘write’ these structures in the presence of cells as we use an infrared laser which is completely harmless for biological tissue,” he added.
Initially, a number of stimulus cards are presented to the participant. The shapes on the cards are different in color, quantity, and design. The person administering the test decides whether the cards are to be matched by color, design or quantity. The participant is then given a stack of additional cards and asked to match each one to one of the stimulus cards, thereby forming separate piles of cards for each. The participant is not told how to match the cards; however, he or she is told whether a particular match is right or wrong. During the course of the test the matching rules are changed and the time taken for the participant to learn the new rules, and the mistakes made during this learning process are analysed to arrive at a score. The original WCST used paper cards and was carried out with the experimenter on one side of the desk facing the participant on the other.[2] Since the early 1990s, however, computerized versions of the task have been available, the most recent version being the Microsoft Windows-compatible version 4.0.[3] The latter has the advantage of automatically scoring the test, which was quite complex in the manual version. The test takes approximately 12–20 minutes to carry out.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_Card_Sorting_Task)
A typical onset of schizophrenia in early adult years correlates with poorly myelinated and thus inefficient connections between cells in the fore-brain.
Parkinson patients have occasionally been observed to show a phenomenon called kinesia paradoxica, in which a person who is otherwise immobile responds to an emergency in a coordinated and energetic way, then lapses back into immobility once the emergency has passed.
*
An animal with severe basal ganglia damage will not move toward food even if it is placed a few inches away, but, if the food is placed directly in the mouth, the animal will chew it and swallow it.
*
The basal ganglia form one of the basic components of the forebrain, and can be recognized in all species of vertebrates.[15] Even in the lamprey (generally considered one of the most primitive of vertebrates), striatal, pallidal, and nigral elements can be identified on the basis of anatomy and histochemistry.
*
Although cholinergic cells make up only a small fraction of the total population, the striatum (a part of the Basal Ganglia) has one of the highest acetylcholine concentrations of any brain structure.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basal_ganglia)
Moses ‘Daddy’ Wilkinson or Old Moses was an African American slave, and Methodist preacher in Nova Scotia, and Sierra Leone. Wilkinson was the main leader of the Methodists, and his congregation followed him to Sierra Leone where they established the first Methodist church in Settler Town, Sierra Leone. Wilkinson outlived all other religious leaders of the Nova Scotian settlers (Sierra Leone).
Moses Wilkinson was a blind and crippled slave from Nansemond County, Virginia and his master was Mills Wilkinson. After Lord Dunmore’s proclamation, Wilkinson led a band of runaway slaves to freedom in 1776. Moses was evacuated alongside other African Americans in 1783.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_Wilkinson)
[video]