Sorcery accusation can have bad consequences for the defendant. Just remember the witch hunting era which was lead by the inquisition. But there are also more recent examples. For example, in east Java, there are reports about sorcerer-killing from the begin of the 21st century. How can it be that the belief in sorcery is still active? Recording to anthropologists, the modernity of the supernatural lies in an association of evil spirits with capitalism. Therefore, “instead of declining in the modern period, beliefs and practices associated with evil spirits and magic are regularly invoked to explain the experience of capitalism.” For example, in the religion of Java, there are spirits called tuyul which are “spirit familiars who appear like children and can be ‘sent out to steal money’ for their owners.” In order to obtain a tuyul, the sorcerer has to sacrifice ‘either a close relative or a friend’ (Geertz 1960: 21–22). That means that the sorcerer let people suffer for his own gain. He takes advantage of a miserable situation of somebody else which he created by himself and sacrifices relationships in order to benefit from it. That concept is an intense simplification of capitalism. However, as Nicholas Herriman points out in a paper from 2015, capitalism is just one reason for sorcery accusation. Sorcery accusation is also based on conflicts about reciprocity. The connection between evil magic and reciprocity can be seen for example in the Maori concept of hau: “When I receive a gift, I also receive a spirit or hau along with it. If I reciprocate the gift, the hau will return to the original giver. If I do not reciprocate the gift, the hau will stay with me and ‘serious harm might befall me, even death’ (Mauss 1990: 14)”. Indeed, many cases of sorcery which Nicolas Herriman reports from his excursion to Java, include conflicts about reciprocity which don’t have to be connected to capitalism. In many cases the sorcerer wanted something from the person and his request was denied before the affected person got ill because of “evil magic”. So maybe the focus for finding the “sorcerer” who is responsible for the illness is not the question “who benefits from that” but more “who was in a reciprocity relationship with the affected person”. This is maybe why the most “sorcerers” are relatives or neighbours of the affected person. "The Morbid Nexus: Reciprocity and Sorcery in Rural East Java.”
Nicholas Herriman, 2015 The Australian Journal of Anthropology 26.2 (2015): 255-275.
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As you may noticed I missed my Paper of the Day (PoD) in the last days. I am ill. Please await the next PoD "article" on Monday the 31.October.
The paper of (this) day was a meeting report about methods in protein crystallography. A perfect chance to repeat/learn some facts about X-Ray crystallography. X-ray crystallography is a method for determining the atomic structure of crystals. That helps to understand metals and minerals as well as organic and biological molecules. Every molecule which can be crystallised can be analysed by X-ray crystallography. The x-Rays diffract (change direction) because of the electric fields of the atoms in the crystal. By measuring the angles and intensities of the diffracted x-rays, the-dimensional electron-density models can be calculated. As the meeting report points out: the X-ray crystallography has two known bottlenecks: “the determination and refinement of three-dimensional structures subsequent to the wet-lab stage of obtaining suitable crystals of biological macromolecules.” The analysis of the diffraction pattern just works for pure crystalls with defined structure of the stable molecules. That is e.g. the problem with membrane proteins. Normally included in the phospho-lipid-bilayer, membrane proteins have hydrophil and hydrophob parts. That makes solvation and purification problematic. Moreover, the structure and stability is influenced by the surrounded lipids which may differ in the detergent compared to the original biological membrane. Therefore, the creation of pure crystals can be difficult. The second bottleneck refers to the problems in calculating a 3D electron density model based on the diffraction pattern. The diffraction pattern gives information about the angle and amplitude (intensity) of the diffraction. However, the phase information of the X-ray waves is lost. This is called the phase problem (see for example wikipedia article). Therefore a concrete model based on a single diffraction model is impossible, as different models would result in the same pattern of amplitudes and angles. However, comparing the diffraction pattern with the pattern of crystals made of similar molecule is one method to solve this problem. In this case computation models just have to explain the differences between both patterns instead of creating a 3d model from scratch. Unfortunately, the meeting report has no concrete conclusion. So I have to invent a message of the day: The next time you see the 3d structure of a molecule, especially membrane proteins, please respect the hard work which was spend in the progress of getting this knowledge. "Apotheosis, not apocalypse: methods in protein crystallography."
Victor S. Lamzin et al. Acta Crystallographica Section D: Biological Crystallography56.11 (2000): 1510-1511. “My Summer Vacation”, “My Most Memorable Experience”, “What I want to be in X years”,… everybody had to write such texts in heir mother tongue and/or an foreign language. Everybody knows the conflict between, on the one hand, writing a “good” narrative story in order to improve the writing style and, on the one hand, protecting the own privat life from teachers and classmates on the other hand. As the motivation is the practise with the language, in my classes we were also allowed to invent something, but writing invented stuff in a text with the fixed title “my summer vacation” is (at least for me) much harder as if you were ask about a text with the title “what somebody experienced in his vacation”. So my German, English and Spanish teacher got to know everything… my family, my pets, my hobbies, my ideas of life, my hopes, my fears, my perception of myself. The question is why, and this question is asked by Anne E. Doyle in a paper from 1999. The problem is that narrative “became enshrined […] as a sort of base-line genre upon which other genres are built, and with which most students should be familiar long before college”. It is believed that narrative the most natural form of writing, as already children are beginning to narrate her day, aloud, to herself and to others. Reports, discussion, analysis,… are not as natural as narrative. Consequently, the production of an “authentically-voiced student writing” with “honest and authentic positions” are most easily to achieve by asking for stories of the student’s privat life. It can be assumed that, by writing about their own life, motivation/interest/an opinion about the written content is given in the student. “And so, despite its venerable age by the middle of this century, "My Summer Vacation" retained its place in the composition classroom”, even so it sometimes creates traps like “what would I like to be”… a question which can be quite confusing and terrifying in certain states of lives. "Dishing the personal narrative: Its present classroom ignominy, its classroom potential."
Anne E. Doyle Bridgewater Review 18.1 (1999): 20-23 Collagenous tissues which have different passive mechanical properties in response to different environmental and mechanical stimuli are called mutable collagenous tissues (MCTs). The rapid changes of their mechanical properties are nervously mediated. It is assumed that the tissue properties are regulated by certain molecules which secretion is controlled by nerve terminals connected to the secretory cells. The secretory cells associated with MCTs are called juxtaligamental cells. They are characterized “by the presence in their cytoplasm of numerous electron-dense, membrane-bound granules.” There is no known MCT that lacks these cells, whereas they are absent from the few definitely non-mutable collagenous structures examined. It has always been suggested that the tube feet of sea urchin and sea star are MCTs, but proof was missing until 2005. In 2005, Romana Santos et al. published a paper in which they showed that the tube feet tissue indeed (I) contains juxtaligamental cells and (II) shows differences in stiffness/elasticity in response to environmental stimuli. The mechanical properties of the tube feet from both species were influenced by the environmental calcium concentration. They both became more flexible in an low calcium environment. However, stiffness response to cell-disrupting treatments was more prominent in the sea urchin compared to the sea star. This may be based on their different function (and structure). The feet of the sea urchin are flexible. Their task is mainly “pulling” the sea urchin to the ground and even movement is based on a pulling process. Therefore, cell stress (e.g. because of waves pushing the sea urchin) induces the secretion of molecules which increase the stiffness of the feet which may be helpful for an energy-sparing maintenance of position. Sea stars have a different method of movement, compared to the sea urchin. Instead of pulling, their feet are like little columns which lift the body up. Therefore, they are already quite stiff and cell stress can not significantly increase this stiffness further. "The tube feet of sea urchins and sea stars contain functionally different mutable collagenous tissues."
Romana Santos, et al. Journal of experimental biology 208.12 (2005): 2277-2288. The Munchhausen syndrom is (simply speaking) when a person plays to be ill in order to get attention and sympathy. The Munchhausen syndrom by proxy is when e.g. parents manipulate medical history of their child simulate or exaggerates or induces health problems of their child by manipulating probes, lying about the medical history and giving damaging drugs. In 1977, the Munchhausen syndrom by proxy was quite unknown. Roy Meadow describes two cases of this form from child abuse and wonders that these cases “ [have] not been described in the medical literature.” The first case he describes is the little girl Kay. When she was 8 month old, urine infection was supposed the first time. Since then her life was full of antibiotics and “innumerable investigations and anaesthetic, surgical, and radiological procedures in three different [health care] centres.” Her mother which had had urinary-tract infections before, was a really caring and loving mother. However, later it was proven that she manipulated the urine probes of herself and the ones of her daughter. Maybe she did it because “she sometimes felt that her husband was more interested in the child than in her”. However, the brother of Kay was always healthy and no victim of the disordered psych of his mother. Fact is, as soon as the hospital controlled the contact between Kay and her mother, Kay was healthy again. So the story has a happy end. No happy end can be found in the second case of the Munchhausen syndrom by proxy which is described in Roy Meadow’s paper. Charles medical history began when he was 6 weeks old. He had attacks of vomiting and drowsiness. It was soon clear that his sodium concentration were too high but nobody was able to find out why this happened, especially as between the attacks he was normal and healthy. “By the age of 14 month it became clear that [the attacks] only happened at home” and that “the illness must be caused by sodium administration”. While he was in hospital no attacks occurred until the weekend when the mother visited her child. Unfortunately, this detection came too late. “During the period in which the local paediatrician, psychiatrist,and social services department were planning arrangements for the child”, Charles had to go to the hospital again and this time he died after he collapsed because of the extreme high sodium level in his blood. After this story I don’t feel like discussing Munchhausen sydrom and Munchhausen syndrom by proxy in a serious scientific manner. So let’s just sum up: we have to be aware that there is the possibility that the health status of a child is manipulated by its parents, even if the parents are friendly and lovely. That doesn’t mean that parents should not be asked for useful hints and that parents shouldn’t be allowed to visit their child in the hospital. Like Roy Meadow wrote: “We may teach, and I believe should teach, that mothers are always right; but at the same time we must recognise that when mothers are wrong they can be terribly wrong.” R.I.P. Charles "Munchausen syndrome by proxy: the hinterland of child abuse."
Roy Meadow The Lancet 310.8033 (1977): 343-345. I am quite happy that I belong to the persons who had to google endodontic therapy. I feel sorry for every person who knows details about that because of their own experience. Every tooth contains nerves and blood vessels. They are coming through the root and are filling the pulp (the “hole” below the hard surface of the crown). Tooth damage (e.g. by cavity) can damage of the tooth or bacterial infection can lead to an infection of the nerves in the then unprotected pulp. In order to protect the tooth, the dentist removes all nerve tissue and the blood vessels (and other organic material). Desinfection secures that no bacterial infection will occur (again) in this tooth and then the holed tooth is filled with some material and protected by a crown. Herbert Schilder published a paper in 2006, in which he describes the problem of the three dimensional filling of the holed tooth. Filling material can be e.g. solid cores of gutta percha or silver which are connected to the tooth by cementing material. The problem is the complete sealing of the whole hole. The solid core needs to be adapted to the hole form and even then it is hard to guarantee that besides the main root canals all lateral accessory canals are sealed and protected from infection. Therefore, in addition to a solid gutta percha core, gutta percha (according to wikipedia: “a natural polymer prepared from latex from the percha (Palaquium gutta) tree”) can heated up. While gutta percha is heated up its get softer and helps to fill the gap between the the solid core and the tooth and so reduces the amount of cement which is needed. Lets hope we will never need that knowledge. "Filling root canals in three dimensions."
Herbert Schilder Journal of endodontics 32.4 (2006): 281-290. In order to explore the temporary representation of visual and spatial information, Adrian X. Ellis, Sergio Della Sala and Robert H. Logie (1995) published a paper in which they summed up all evidences for visuo-spatial working memory. Visual and spatial information about the environment are needed for planning interactions “and for predictions as to the outcome of external events and of our own actions”. Therefore it is somehow connected to the planning of movement and working memory. Indeed, there are studies based on dual task interference techniques showing that the control and/or production of movement is overlapping to some extent with the cognitive functions required for mental imaging task. Doing a movement task parallel to a mental imaging task decreases the performance of the mental imaging more as a comparable not-mental-imaging second task. That sounds all quite complicated. Lets just focus on the point that somehow planning movement and mental imaging are connected because “production of a movement to a target clearly requires some representation of where the target is in relation to the body or limb involved”. However, as the review paper of Ellis et al. points out: the visual-spatial representation does not have to be conscious. Unilateral spatial neglect is a neuropsychological condition in which a person fails to attend to the side opposite a brain lesion. Studies showed that people with the unilateral neglect fail to see differences between the picture of a chimeric animal (where front part of an animal is connected to a back part of a different animal… see example) and the picture of the same animal without any chimeric modulation, as long as the wrong “back” part is on the site they fail to attend to. In the example picture this means a person which neglect the left side will not be able to point out any difference between this picture and the picture of just a lying cat. However, if you ask the person which picture looks more like a fish, there is a large chance the person is showing to the chimeric picture. That shows that the visual-spatial representation does not have to be conscious in order to do a controlled (planned) movement like pointing to a certain picture. The conclusion of Ellis et al. is that “clearly the relationship between implicit processing, planning of action and the nature of the representation in working memory is an area that is ripe for further exploration.” Indeed, it seems like there was further exploration of this topic after this paper (in 1995). At least there was a book published about the visuo-spatial working memory in 2014 (Robert H. Logie, Psychology Press). So it seems like the visuo-spatial working memory theory still holds. "The Bailiwick of visuo-spatial working memory: evidence from unilateral spatial neglect"
Adrian X. Ellis, Sergio Della Sala and Robert H. Logie Cognitive Brain Research 3.2 (1996): 71-78. Today I had a really … interesting paper from 1913 published by the National Council of Teachers of English. It mainly deals with the question if it is fair to call Latin and Old Greek “dead” languages. As the author of the paper, Walter Alison Edwards, pointed out: Just because nobody is speaking them actively, a “dead” language can still be an active influence on modern languages. So the topic of adaptation of foreign words, which was topic in my high school German class (mainly adaptation of English words in German), was already a topic in 1913. There it was the increasing amount of Latin and Old Greek words in English: words like “dynamic”, “habitat", “sanitary", “altruist", “nihilist”, “cyclone", “pessimism", “cosmic”, “egoism” and “agnostic”. The reason for that? Mainly new inventions which need new names to describe them. However, Edwards also discuss the increasing number of people speaking English and the fact that these people are scattered over a large portion of the earth as possible triggers for the need of new words. Nevertheless, the most important source of new words is that “We live in a period of extraordinary industrial and intellectual activity. Discoveries and inventions follow thick after one another and new theories abound in every department of human thought. “ I love this quote because even though it is meant to describe a certain time area, it is still true, as we are still living in a time of continuous technical advancement and new science methods and results. And also still true: “Scientists by general agreement draw upon the resources of Greek and Latin for new words to designate their discoveries and inventions”. So the "airship" is called “aeroplane” the “horseless carriages” are called ”automobiles”, the "shorthand writer” is a “stenographer" and the "talking machine” is a “phonograph”. Today, “automobiles” and “aeroplanes” are normal words and, therefore, this summary sounds crazy. Nevertheless, this paper maybe shows us that inventions which promote the adaption of words from different languages, is an old phenomena. "A Legacy from the Dead Languages."
Walter Alison Edwards The English Journal 2.9 (1913): 567-574. Length and duration,… these are important parameters for sexual success. That refers not only to the sexual act itself but also to the sperm traits. Longer and faster spermatozoa with longer life-duration are expected to have an advantage in competitive interactions between ejaculates. However, there is little evidence for this sperm competition theory. The sperm competition theory claims that (I) increasing sperm competition leads to faster spermatozoa and (II) this increase of speed is related to an increase in sperm length. However, both, that sperm competition promotes evolution of faster-swimming sperm across species, and link between sperm morphology and swimming speed, is weakly supported by just a handful of studies and even neglected by other studies. For example: the only clear evidence for the length-speed correlation of sperm within a species comes from the roundworm C.elegans and its sperm has, unlike the sperm of the most animals, an amoeboid form (lacking a flagellum). In order to prove that theory, species are needed which relatedness are well studied and which show a high diversity of mating behaviour, like the cichlid fishes of the Lake Tanganyika. Therefore, John L. Fitzpatrick et al. (2009) tested the sperm competition theory in 29 closely related species of cichlid fishes from Lake Tanganyika. They proved both hypotheses of the sperm competition theory by slitting fish testes and comparing sperm traits across the species (inside a species proof of the hypotheses mainly failed). They showed that:
"Female promiscuity promotes the evolution of faster sperm in cichlid fishes".
John L. Fitzpatrick, et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106.4 (2009): 1128-1132. |
IdeaI love to increase my general science knowledge by reading papers from different fields of science. Here I share some of them. Archiv
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