http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-...line-news_rss20
'The Milanese are partial to a line or two of cocaine. The same goes for many drug users in London, although they dabble in heroin more than their Italian counterparts. Both cities like ecstasy at the weekends and cannabis pretty much every day. Welcome to the results from a new branch of public health: sewage epidemiology.
The Italian scientists behind the idea first attracted attention in 2005, when they detected the residues of several illegal drugs in the water of the Po, which flows through Milan.
Now they've shown that the idea is more than just a gimmick. According to their latest paper, sewage sampling can provide a quick, cheap and reliable way to monitor a city's stimulants of choice.
The team, headed by Ettore Zuccato and based at the Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research in Milan, looked at samples collected from sewage works in London, Lugano and their hometown. They showed that the results are reproducible – samples taken on the same day in different weeks give similar results – and roughly in line with other estimates of drug use.
But unlike surveys of drug use, the sewage samples can be taken at short notice and analysed a day or two after being taken.'
Haves
Note - I've just moved, so some of this stuff I have less available than usual, and it might take me longer to get my act together than I'd like.
Seeds:
M.G. Heavenly Blue - have plenty of these
Hemia salicifolia (and who doesn't?) Shitloads!
The rest I only have a small amount of each:
Delosperma bosseranum
Salvia splendens
Withania somniferum
L.williamsii
T. spach cuts - about 48cm tip and 40cm (I think) center cuts, some scarring and sunburn.
Other stuff I'll have for trade in spring will (hopefully) include:
Artemnisia verlotiorum plantlets
D.bosseranum plants
Sceletium tortuosum plants/cuttings
Salvia elegans - Pinapple Sage
Salvia involucrata (?)
Erythrina sp seeds and plant material
Plants/cuttings:
Bramhi
Aptenia cordifolia
Wants
Fittonia sp especial albivenis or verschaffeltii
Geogenanthus sp
M.hostilis
Any Cacti!
I was thinking about the ions that migrate towards electrodes in solution. Two thoughts occur to me:
1. Will wiring a plant up with the anode on the aerial parts and the cathode in the soil cause an increased amount of negative ions to migrate out of the soil and into (and up) the plant? (Or the other way around if I have this arse-backwards, I haven't done any physics/electronics for years). If this is the case, then the direction of the current would be an important factor and should produce different results if varied, something that could be put to good use. There should be existing research on this and I'll post links as I find them.
2. If you run current through a solution (aqueous obviously) of an alkaloid salt, will the positive ions, in this case the alkaloid, migrate to the cathode? I think they would. If it forms crystals in its freebase form, then it should literally grow on that electrode! Of course in a dirty solution there would be all sorts of other crud attracted. I don't expect that you can throw a couple of wires into some pedro tea and pull them out with glistening crystals attached a few hours later. But I do wonder if it is worth a try. Surely this is something other people have tried before?
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/05/01/2233186.htm
'Instead, they say, the drink's reputation is down to nothing more exotic than its high alcohol content.
German researcher Dr Dirk Lachenmeier of the Chemisches und Veterinaruntersuchungsamt Karlsruhe and colleagues publish their study online in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
Absinthe has been dubbed 'the green fairy' or 'the green muse' and was once widely used by 19th century Parisian bohemians, many of whom believed it could expand consciousness.
Australian drug expert Dr Rodney Irvine of the University of Adelaide, who was not involved in the research, says there have always been many rituals surrounding its use.
For example, the drink is sometimes poured through a sugar cube, goes cloudy, and some people set it on fire.
But in its heyday many drinkers developed 'absinthe madness' or 'absinthism', a collection of symptoms including hallucinations, facial contractions, numbness and dementia.
Absinthe soon gained a reputation as a dangerous psychedelic drink and was banned after growing reports of illness and violence.
Some say artist Vincent van Gogh chopped off his ear and later shot himself in the chest after drinking it.'
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1381...allucinate.html
'Hospital intensive care is a traumatic experience, especially for a child. It can cause post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in adults, but nothing has been known about it in children.
"No-one asks the children," says Gillian Colville, at St George's Hospital in London.
Now Colville and colleagues have asked the children, and they have found that any long-term stress in children may result more from the drugs the children were given than their memories of actual illness and treatment.
PTSD can follow life-threatening situations – the sufferer experiences flashbacks or unstoppable memories of the stressful event, shuts it out and can become hyper-irritable. The disorder can also cause further illness.'
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=invent...trip&sc=rss
'Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann, inventor of LSD, died yesterday at the age of 102, just 10 days after the 55th anniversary of his notorious bicycle trip while tripping on "acid". Hofmann, who suffered a heart attack at home in Basel, Switzerland, was the first person to synthesize lysergic acid diethylamide, better known as LSD, and the first human known to experience its mind-bending effects.
The drug was the 25th he created from the basic chemical ingredients of ergot, a fungus that forms on rye, in his search for treatments for circulation and respiratory problems. He reports in his 1979 autobiography LSD, My Problem Child, that he became restless and dizzy when he accidentally ingested the compound while making it—and "perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors" for about two hours.
The very next day (April 19, 1943), he swallowed 0.25 milligram of the acid to confirm that it had caused his odd symptoms. Overcome by dizziness and anxiety, he asked an assistant to bicycle him home; once there, he writes that he was overcome by feelings that he might die (prompting a later call to his physician), along with delusions that included perceiving a kindly neighbor transformed into a malevolent witch.'
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health...line-news_rss20
'BILLIONS of people the world over drink alcohol to overcome shyness and animate their social lives - as people have done for millennia. For most drinkers, alcohol is associated above all with relaxation and conviviality, and people forget about its darker side. Yet doctors, governments and healthcare agencies are becoming so concerned about the effects of alcohol abuse that in January the executive board of the World Health Organization agreed a plan to develop a global strategy to combat the damage alcohol can do.
The harm drinkers are doing to themselves, such as liver and brain damage, is only part of the problem. The plan has been given extra momentum by a growing recognition of the number of people who, while not themselves drunk, suffer as a result of the reckless or aggressive behaviour of those who are. '
http://science-community.sciam.com/blog-en...Habit/580000713
'If you use cocaine and need a reason to quit—or one to avoid starting in the first place—think conservation. The national parks of Guatemala and other countries have become the preferred haven of drug traffickers who usurp protected areas and burn the forest to serve their own purposes and the demands of their customers, according to Roan McNab, Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) country director for Guatemala.
"They systematically destroy and sabotage forests so they can put in landing fields," McNab said at the WCS State of the Wild conference on April 15. The landing fields enable them to move drugs—particularly cocaine—north by plane to feed American habits.
Similar misuse of parklands has plagued Colombia since at least the 1990s, and the Sierra de la Macarena National Park there is home to some 13,000 hectares (32,100 acres) of coca plantations, according to field data compiled by the illegal-drug monitoring U.N. body the Sistema Integrado de Monitoreo de Cultivos Ilicitos. As a result, officials have targeted the park for herbicide spraying from airplanes. Of course, this indiscriminately kills both coca and forest vegetation as well as poses a risk to the area's frogs and other amphibians.'
http://www.clientcopia.com/quotes.php?id=3207
‘In my previous life as a fed agent I was often asked to assist with some “undercover” sting operations all over the Northeast US. One of the most memorable was a op in northern Maine. I was to play the brother-in-law of our source who’s co-worker had recently asked him if he knew of any good dealers of crack.
Long story short they brought me in to sell him crack. We met the “Client” as planned and you should have seen this kids eyes when I pulled out this giant bag of crack we had obtained from a previous bust. He looked like he was going to start crying, like he had just come to know Jesus or something… anyway he wanted to buy it all, every last gram of it, but he had only brought $150.00 bucks with him. I thought for a second and asked him if had his checkbook on him and he did. [..]’
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=new-dr...mage&sc=rss
'A new drug may protect healthy tissue during cancer-killing radiation treatments or other exposures. Molecular geneticist Andrei Gudkov and colleagues report in Science this week that they protected mice from the cell-damaging effects of radiation by injecting them with a compound that helps cells resist apoptosis, or self-destruction.
Previous studies have found that cancerous cells use nuclear factor kappa-betaa transcription factor, or protein that turns on or off a gene's protein-making abilityto outlive normal cells and grow out of control. But healthy cells in the gut switch on the same transcription factor when they interact with benign and beneficial bacteria that reside there. Specifically, the protein flagellin in some of the microorganisms' whiplike tails (which they use for propulsion) binds with a receptor on the gut cell and triggers the production of the transcription factor.'
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=can-th...d-to&sc=rss
'Scientists for the first time have identified long-term changes in mice brains that may shed light on why addicts get hooked on drugs—in this case methamphetamines—and have such a tough time kicking the habit. The findings, reported in the journal Neuron, could set the stage for new ways to block cravings—and help addicts dry out.
Researchers, using fluorescent tracer dye, discovered that mice given methamphetamines for 10 days (roughly equivalent to a human using it for two years) had suppressed activity in a certain area of their brains. Much to their surprise, normal function did not return even when the drug was stopped, but did when they administered a single dose of it again after the mice had been in withdrawal.
Study co-author Nigel Bamford, a pediatric neurologist at the University of Washington School of Medicine, says that if similar changes occur in humans, it will indicate that an effective way to fight addiction may be to design therapies that target the affected area—the striatum, a forebrain region that controls movement but also has been linked to habit-forming behavior.'
http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/2008/04/...ruise_camp.html
‘Tom Cruise isn’t getting any giggles from a new strain of medical marijuana being marketed as “Tom Cruise Purple.”
Word is that the actor’s lawyers are taking a serious look at the strong brand of bud after we brought it to their attention.
One of Cruise’s friends found it “outrageous” that licensed cannabis clubs in Northern California are selling vials of pot featuring a picture of Cruise laughing hysterically. [..]
Staffers at several California clinics we called said they were forbidden to discuss any of the herbal varieties in their “inventory.”
But one weed devotee said, “I heard it’s the kind of pot that makes you hallucinate.”‘
I have been very busy in the garden, but this leaves me no time to post here. I have been sowing seed and grafting. I also made a new shelter/greenhouse for my cacti. Pics soon.
http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/08..._drug-evolution
'Why do people abuse drugs? It’s not only a question worried parents ask their wayward, substance-dabbling teenagers. It’s also a deeper question asked by biologists.
In general, nature has designed all creatures as exquisite machines for their own protection and propagation. Yet we’re easily and often drawn into self-destruction by nothing more than lifeless chemical lures. This weakness seems such a jarring exception, such a dismal Achilles’ heel, that it seems to demand explanation.
Scientists typically offer the following one. Drugs are chemicals that inappropriately trigger activity in brain circuits designed for very different purposes: to provide a sense of reward for having satisfied ordinary needs, healthfully.
The brain has few defenses against this chemical deception, the standard account goes, because drugs were unknown in the natural environment that shaped human evolution.
This traditional view, though, is coming under attack. A new study proposes the brain evolved to account for and even exploit drugs. Although their abuse is still unhealthy, the authors suggest it’s wrong to think they cheat the brain in the sense traditionally theorized.
“Evidence strongly indicates that humans and other animals have been exposed to drugs throughout their evolution,” wrote the scientists in the study. The research, by anthropologist Roger Sullivan of California State University and two colleagues, appeared March 19 online in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.'
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=monito...de-7&sc=rss
'This week's The Monitor: What's in a name (why we aren't changing ours), hobbit or human, the Vatican's seven social sins, and drugs in our water, should we be worried?'
http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnough...oddlyEnoughNews
'An American in Costa Rica was caught smuggling nearly a pound of cocaine (0.4 kg) in his stomach after he went into convulsions on a plane bound for Miami, police said on Friday.
The 22-year-old man swallowed dozens of capsules stuffed with the drug before boarding a plane on Thursday in the Costa Rican capital, San Jose.
Police said he started to vomit and convulse before the plane took off and was rushed to a hospital where he was still recovering on Friday.
"They had to open him up too remove the capsules," said police spokeswoman Marielos Barbosa.'
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=08...;show_article=1
‘High on Mount Sinai, Moses was on psychedelic drugs when he heard God deliver the Ten Commandments, an Israeli researcher claimed in a study published this week.
Such mind-altering substances formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times, Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem wrote in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy.
“As far Moses on Mount Sinai is concerned, it was either a supernatural cosmic event, which I don’t believe, or a legend, which I don’t believe either, or finally, and this is very probable, an event that joined Moses and the people of Israel under the effect of narcotics,” Shanon told Israeli public radio on Tuesday.
Moses was probably also on drugs when he saw the “burning bush,” suggested Shanon, who said he himself has dabbled with such substances.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/feb...medicalresearch
‘Prozac, the bestselling antidepressant taken by 40 million people worldwide, does not work and nor do similar drugs in the same class, according to a major review released today.
The study examined all available data on the drugs, including results from clinical trials that the manufacturers chose not to publish at the time. The trials compared the effect on patients taking the drugs with those given a placebo or sugar pill.
When all the data was pulled together, it appeared that patients had improved - but those on placebo improved just as much as those on the drugs.’
About nine months on, I took this photo because I thought I'd get around to removing a few of these pups to get them rooted before the dormant season. The additions are an E. peruvianus (thanks Stramonium!) to the immediate left of the ELM (TBM) and another E. peruvianus at the right end of the front row (which will go in the ground at a mates place). The scopulicola has copped a bit of black rot, the ELM (TBM) had a little and one of the Eileen pups has a bit. Appropriate measures have been taken and fingers are crossed. The pachanoi on it's side didn't root and was and those seedlings on the bottom left are scopulicola x lageniformis
Back Row: E. pachanoi (your were spot on Ace, she is pupping like a hydra ), E. lageniformis 'psycho0', E. lageniformis 'Eileen', E. pachanoi 'Kimuras Giant', E. pachanoi 'Kimuras Giant'
Front Row: E. peruvianus KK338, E. scopulicola, E. peruvianus, E. lageniformis monstrose (with a Cactus grandiflorus?? in the same pot), E. pachanoi 'Super Pedro', E. peruvianus
