Alabaster is great for building statues, artworks and monuments. That is a fact which did not change since medieval times. The question is, where the medieval and Renaissance sculptors in Europe got their alabaster from? W. Kloppmann et al. (2017) show that isotope fingerprints of the alabaster can link artworks to their source areas. The method benefits i.a. “from the strong variations of isotope ratios of S, O, Sr in seawater and the associated evaporites through the Mesozoic”. That means that, although optically there is no difference between different alabster peices, every alabaster quarry (“mine”) differs in its mixture of S, O and Sr isotopes. In order to test this new method for finding the origin of alabaster, W. Kloppmann et al. analyzed 66 alabster artworks from different museums and collections. They were able to show that besides the known alabaster quarries in the English Midlands and in northern Spain, there was also a long-lived but little-documented alabaster trade radiating from the French Alps.
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The today’s paper is an “Aha” paper: not an “I finally found the answer to an urgent question- Aha” but more a “There are papers about that? - Aha”. The paper from Shuying Wei et al. (2017) deals with the question how different cooking/baking methods change the chemical composition in sweet potatoes. Call me stubborn traditional German but I still favour normal potatoes over sweet potatoes, although the latter became more and more famous in Germany over the last year. However, I know many people who like the starchy, sweet-tasting, nutrient rich storage roots which are native to the tropical regions in America. So maybe these people always wondered how cooking change the starch and sugar content in the potato? If so, the paper today gives a detailed answer. Shuying Wei et al. tested four different sweet potato cultivates ( two yellow flesh and two purple flesh cultivars) with three different cooking methods (boiling, steaming, baking) and analyzed the change in dry weight, starch content, sugar composition, sweetness and α-amylase activity (α-amylase is an enzyme which transforms starch to sugar). In general, yellow fleh cultivars seem to contain more sugar that the purple flesh cultivars. The effect of the different cooking methods (boiling, steaming, baking) depend on the cultivate type, but all three cooking methods reduce starch content and create maltose (which can not be found in the raw potato). All in all, cooking increased total sugar content especially reducing sugars which explains why cooked sweet potatoes taste sweeter as raw ones. This is because in the begin of the cooking process the amylase activity is increased (and more starch is concerted to sugar) before the high temperatures stop any amylase activity in the end. “Aha”. "Effects of cooking methods on starch and sugar composition of sweetpotato storage roots."
S. Wei, G. Lu, H. Cao (2017) PLoS ONE 12(8): e0182604. Who else loves the TV-Show Bones? I am a big fan of this TV series. So no wonder that I liked the paper of Stian Suppersberger Hamre et al. (PLOS One, July, 2017). Like "Bones" they used human bones to reconstract the life-story of the individual. The only difference to the TV show is that they don't do this in order to catch a murder. Stian Suppersberger Hamre et al. do this for Sience. They analysed the skeletons of three individuals who lived in Trondheim (Norway) during the 13th century. They used different methods (skeletal examinations, genetic and stable oxygen isotope analyses) to analyse where and when they may were born, when they moved to Trondheim, how they looked like and if they had any illnesses. The result is a really interesting paper with three life-stories which show the variety of Trondheim citizens in the 13th century. They all had different birth places... one maybe even came from the Alps in Germany. They all died "young" in their 20s-30s. One even had a head surgery and survived it, which was not so common at this time. Great paper... a little bit like a story book! "Three individuals, three stories, three burials from medieval Trondheim, Norway."
Stian Suppersberger Hamre, et al. PLoS One 12.7 (2017): e0180277. Medieval music: when I read that word, immediately I hear lutes, pipes and drums in my head and pictures of singing bards, dancing noblewomen and royal parties are popping up. But how was this music perceived by the medieval people? Sensual or intellectual? The enthusiasm of humans to music is old. Already Aristotle considered music as one of the four diciplines (grammar, drawing, gymnastics and music) which was worth to spend free time in. The purpose of music was always the same: providing pleasure (hedone — delectatio). “Delectation that accompanies leisure is understood as the antithesis of sadness caused by work.” Work? What has work to do with music? Does it refer to playing music instead of listening to it? No. It is the other way around.“Play [music] should be a remedy for sadness and should provide pleasure in periods of leisure and recreation. On the other hand, the purpose of deductio (listening) is to give rise to noble and worthy thought as well as speculation or contemplation of things divine.” So listening to music is sort of intellectual work which can result in pleasure (delectatio). The base of this “listening is mental work” idea, is the Pythagorean tradition, which was a “major force in medieval music theory — the relationship between sounds can be expressed numerically, it may therefore be considered in terms of the relationship of two numbers, apart from actual sound and beyond physical time.” Therefore, besides the sensual level, there is also an intellectual level of music. And this is why the medieval philosopher “Peter of Auvergne considered deductio (listening) an intellectual activity dictated by the mind that led through delectatio (pleasure) to happiness”. But of course that doesn’t mean, that medieval people were all mind working people which couldn’t enjoy music just by listening, as the most of us are doing it normally. Also in the medieval times, according to Peter von Auvergne, there were two categories of listeners: “in the first category are free and educated persons prepared for intellectual pursuits, while the second category included uneducated and hard working persons who in moments of ease derive pleasure from games and spectacles”. Referring to the fact how I use music in my free time, I definitely belong to the second category. What about you? "The Medieval Concept of Music Perception. Hearing, Calculating and Contemplating."
Elzbieta Witkowska-Zaremba Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis16 (2014): 369-376. 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. “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 The todays paper reads a little bit like an ad for alternative medicine. It is about “the clinical practices and perceptions of professional herbalists providing patient care concurrently with conventional medical practice in Australia.” (Mavourneen Casey, et al. , 2007). Back then, in 2007, “a total of 1.9 million consultations for herbal medicine and naturopathy have been reported to occur annually in Australia.” I first thought that this isn’t much but this was due to a lack of my geographic knowledge. In the surprisingly small population of Australia of 23 million people (compared to Germany with 80million people), 1.9 million is around 8%. Herbal medicine comprises oral medication of strong pharmacologically active compounds. In a former "paper of the day" I wrote about the health supporting effect of the traditional Maori diet which included e.g. plants with cancer suppressing effects. Also “common pharmaceutical medications such as aspirin, morphine, codeine, atropine and digoxin were originally derived from herbal medicines.” So herbal medicine is interesting, especially its position to conventional medicine. Therefore, Casey et al. sent a postal survey “to all full members of the only national association of Western herbal medicine practitioners in Australia, the National Herbalists’ Association of Australia (NHAA).” The questions covered educational qualification and years of working experience of the herbalists as well as the methods/workflow of their therapy and the interaction with conventional medicine. Moreover, the herbalists were asked about their perceptions of their role in patient care, including medical diagnosis and the understanding of herbal therapy/pharmaceutical drug interactions. The results of the survey show a tight connection between herbal and conventional medicine. On the one hand, the number of herbalists with university qualifications increases which supports the trend of the integration of orthodox medical knowledge into herbal practices like blood test, lever function test and hormone profiles for treatment decision. On the other hand, the patients themselves tend to seek treatment in both medicines parallel. “Most patients who visit professional herbalists tend to seek care for chronic conditions, already have a medical diagnosis, and continue with concurrent conventional medical treatment.” This increases the risk of drug interactions. Therefore, in order to guarantee the safety of the patients, a study of the active compounds of the herbal medicine is important as well as a closer collaboration and cooperation between the medical communities. “An understanding of the ways in which herbalists practice and prescribe may be invaluable in the debate about the safety and efficacy of herbal medicines and may help the planning of reliable and valid research in the future.“ "An examination of the clinical practices and perceptions of professional herbalists providing patient care concurrently with conventional medical practice in Australia"
Mavourneen Casey, Jon Adams, and David Sibbritt Complementary therapies in medicine 16.4 (2008): 228-232 Deleterious oral habits? That term summarizes all habits which are destructive for the teeth and supporting structures like lip/thumb sucking, lip/nail biting and buxism (teeth grinding). Based on previous studies, it its hypothesized that deleterious oral habits are connected to mouth breathing and the time interval a baby is breast fed: “Babies fed preferably with mother’s milk for a short interval or not breastfed at all have increased probability of developing mouth breathing and deleterious oral habits than babies breastfed for at least six months of age.” So does breast feeding prevent deleterious oral habits? In 2005, Trawitzki et al. published a study were they tested this hypothesis. They tested 62 children (3-6 years old) for their breathing and oral habits and sorted them in groups of mouth breathers and nose breathers. Statistic analysis of the feeding history of the study revealed that 100% of the nose breathing children were fed preferably with mother’s milk for intervals higher than three months. However, there were also breast fed children among the mouth breathers (37.5%). Moreover, the study showed that the feeding history of the children showed no significant difference in feeding by milk bottles between mouth and nose breathing children. Significant differences occurred in the presence of deleterious oral habits between mouth and nose breathers. Suction and biting habits were more common in mouth breathers compared to nose breathers. But what do we learn from these results? Does breast feeding prevent deleterious oral habits? No.
Breast-feeding and deleterious oral habits in mouth and nose breathers
L. V. V. Trawitzki et al. Brazilian journal of otorhinolaryngology 71.6 (2005): 747-751 Maori were the first settler of New Zealand. Richard C. Cambie and Lynnette R. Ferguson published a paper in 2003 in which they discuss if the rise of diabetes, cancer and vascular related diseases in Maori people lately may be related to change in the diet. Were there any protective chemical constituents in the food plants of the traditional Maori diet which are now missing? In the survey they listed the chemical components of food plants which were part of the traditional Maori diet. Indeed they found a lot of different chemical constituents with anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer, anti-coagulation, anti-ulcer, anti-hepatoxin and anti-viral activity and positive effects on capillary walls and eye sight. This medical properties of the traditional Maori diet may suppressed diseases like diabetes, cancer and vascular related diseases but more details about the changed diet would be needed for a more detailed discussion. However, the survey shows the medical potential of some native plants in New Zealand. Potential functional foods in the traditional Maori diet.
Richard C. Cambie and Lynnette R. Ferguson Mutation Research/Fundamental and Molecular Mechanisms of Mutagenesis 523, 109-117 (2003) PMID: 12628508 |
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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