Mattel’s Barbie Turns Women of Medicine, Including COVID Vaccine Developer, Into Dolls

in Biology, Gender, Science | August 20th, 2021

The multi­na­tion­al toy man­u­fac­tur­er Mat­tel is encour­ag­ing young­sters to play doc­tor — not a euphemism — and hon­or­ing first respon­ders with the recent release of three health­care-themed “Career Bar­bi­es.”

The com­pa­ny is putting its mon­ey where its mouth is by donat­ing $5 to the First Respon­ders Children’s Foun­da­tion for every doc­tor, para­medic, or nurse Bar­bie pur­chased at Tar­get through August 28.

Mat­tel has also iden­ti­fied six female health­care pio­neers whose efforts dur­ing the pan­dem­ic mer­it a one-of-a-kind Bar­bie who shares their like­ness.

Vac­ci­nol­o­gist Sarah Gilbert, who led the team that devel­oped the Oxford/AstraZeneca vac­cine, describes this unex­pect­ed hon­or as “a very strange con­cept” (pre­sum­ably as com­pared to being award­ed a dame­hood or receiv­ing a stand­ing ova­tion at Wim­ble­don.)

The 59-year-old Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor added that she hoped the char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly smooth plas­tic doll would be “part of mak­ing it more nor­mal for girls to think about careers in sci­ence, although, to be hon­est, when I was a young girl I nev­er believed that I would­n’t have a career in sci­ence.”

If the doll falls short of inspir­ing girls to con­sid­er a career in STEM, Women in Sci­ence & Engi­neer­ing (WISE), the non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion Pro­fes­sor Gilbert chose to receive a dona­tion from Mat­tel on her behalf, can take up the slack.

One of the most com­pelling of the six cus­tom-made Front Line Respon­der Bar­bi­es is based on vet­er­an nurse Amy O’Sullivan, a heav­i­ly tat­tooed, queer moth­er of three, who cared for the first COVID-19 patient (soon to become New York City’s first offi­cial COVID death) in Brooklyn’s Wycoff Hos­pi­tal.

Soon there­after, she sur­vived being put on a ven­ti­la­tor with COVID her­self, even­tu­al­ly wind­ing up on the cov­er of Time Mag­a­zine, in the same neck­er­chief, flo­ral socks, eye catch­ing sur­gi­cal cap and woven bracelets her tiny scrub-suit­ed dop­pel­ganger wears.

Sure­ly Amy O’Sullivan is a bet­ter all around role mod­el than the sim­i­lar­ly inked Toki­do­ki Bar­bie or Total­ly Tat­too Bar­bie, or for that mat­ter, the non-cus­tom made First Respon­der Nurse, whose descrip­tion on Target’s web­site seems a bit ret­ro­grade, giv­en the events of the last year and a half:

Wear­ing cute scrubs fea­tur­ing a med­ical-tool print top, pink pants and white shoes, Bar­bie nurse doll (12-in/30.40-cm) is ready make her rounds and check on patients!

The real life O’Sullivan, who was very involved in the cre­ation of her cus­tom doll, seems tick­led by Mattel’s faith­ful recre­ation, telling The New York Post:

When I was younger I always felt like an out­sider — nobody ever looked like me, talked like me, walked like me. I had no role mod­el at all when I was grow­ing up. So if I can be some lit­tle girl’s role mod­el that feels like this, I would love that. 

Nurse O’Sullivan had stronger words for those who have aged out of the demo­graph­ic, in a recent inter­view with Time:

I see these young peo­ple not wear­ing masks. And, you know, those are the peo­ple that COVID is affect­ing now, the younger gen­er­a­tion. They’re becom­ing very sick. And it’s nev­er going to go away until we get vac­ci­nat­ed and wear masks.

That might be a bit heavy for those on the younger end of Career Bar­bi­e’s rec­om­mend­ed 3 and up age group (“espe­cial­ly those inter­est­ed in care­tak­ing and help­ing oth­ers!”), but hope­ful­ly her words will car­ry some weight with those respon­si­ble for pro­tect­ing those chil­dren.

The oth­er cus­tom-made Bar­bi­es hon­or:

Dr. Audrey Cruz, who col­lab­o­rat­ed with oth­er Asian-Amer­i­can physi­cians to bat­tle anti-Asian-relat­ed bias spring­ing from the pan­dem­ic

Cana­di­an psy­chi­a­try res­i­dent at who bat­tled sys­temic racism in health­care a doc­tor in Las Vegas who is cam­paign­ing against racial bias against Asian-Amer­i­can physi­cians

Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to psy­chi­a­try res­i­dent, Chi­ka Sta­cy Ori­uwa, whose activism includes cre­at­ing ini­tia­tives to boost the num­ber of Black stu­dents apply­ing to med­ical school and cre­ate net­works of sup­port for schol­ar­ly and pro­fes­sion­al advance­ment with­in the Black com­mu­ni­ty.

Bio­med­ical researcher Dr Jaque­line Goes de Jesus whose team sequenced the SARS-CoV­‑2 genome with­in 48 hours of receiv­ing sam­ples from the first infect­ed Brazil­ian patient, dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing the vari­ant from the one that caused infec­tions ear­li­er in the pan­dem­ic.

Dr Kir­by White, founder of Gowns for Doc­tors,  an Aus­tralian ini­tia­tive that addressed a nation­wide short­age of per­son­al PPE by deliv­er­ing free, wash­able, vol­un­teer-made reusable gowns to front­line staff.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Women Sci­en­tists Launch a Data­base Fea­tur­ing the Work of 9,000 Women Work­ing in the Sci­ences

How Zora Neale Hurston & Eleanor Roo­sevelt Helped Cre­ate the First Real­is­tic African Amer­i­can Baby Doll (1951)

The New David Bowie Bar­bie Doll Released to Com­mem­o­rate the 50th Anniver­sary of “Space Odd­i­ty”

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.Follow her@AyunHalliday

 

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Watch Beautiful Footage of the Rarely Seen Glass Octopus

in Biology, Science | August 3rd, 2021

First things first: the plur­al of octo­pus is not “octopi,” it’s octo­pus­es.

Now, drop every­thing and watch the video above. It’s an extreme­ly rare sight­ing of a glass octo­pus, “a near­ly trans­par­ent species, whose only vis­i­ble fea­tures are its optic nerve, eye­balls and diges­tive tract” notes the Schmidt Ocean Insti­tute. “Before this expe­di­tion, there has been lim­it­ed live footage of the glass octo­pus, forc­ing sci­en­tists to learn about the ani­mal by study­ing spec­i­mens found in the gut con­tents of preda­tors.”

Lim­it­ed sight­ings did not stop the poet Mar­i­anne Moore from see­ing some­thing like this won­drous crea­ture in her mind’s eye:

it lies “in grandeur and in mass”
beneath a sea of shift­ing snow-dunes;
dots of cycla­men-red and maroon on its clear­ly defined
pseu­do-podia
made of glass that will bend‑a much need­ed inven­tion-
com­pris­ing twen­ty-eight ice-fields from fifty to five hun­dred
feet thick,
of unimag­ined del­i­ca­cy.

Glass octo­pus­es have green dots and do not live under “snow-dunes” but in the warm Pacif­ic waters beneath the Phoenix Islands Pro­tect­ed Area (PIPA) near Samoa, and else­where Schmidt Ocean Insti­tute sci­en­tists cap­tured rare footage and “iden­ti­fied new marine organ­isms,” writes Colos­sal, while record­ing “the sought-after whale shark swim­ming through the Pacif­ic Ocean.”

We must admit, Moore got the sense of awe just right….

Marine sci­en­tists from around the world embarked on the 34-day expe­di­tion on the ship Falkor. Using “high-res­o­lu­tion map­ping tools,” Ocean Con­ser­van­cy writes, they sur­veyed “more than 11,500 square miles of sea floor” and observed “not one but two glass octo­pus­es,” with a remote oper­at­ed vehi­cle (ROV) called SuB­as­t­ian.

See sev­er­al views of the glass octo­pus­es — the stars of the show — and dozens more rare and beau­ti­ful crea­tures (such as peren­ni­al inter­net favorite the Dum­bo octo­pus, below, from a 2020 expe­di­tion) at the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s Insta­gram. “We’re at the begin­ning of the UN Decade of Ocean Sci­ence for Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment,” remarked chief sci­en­tist of the Falkor expe­di­tion Dr. Ran­di Rot­jan of Boston Uni­ver­si­ty. “[N]ow is the time to think about con­ser­va­tion broad­ly across all ocean­scapes, and the maps, footage, and data we have col­lect­ed will hope­ful­ly help to inform pol­i­cy and man­age­ment in deci­sion mak­ing around new high seas pro­tect­ed areas.” Learn more at the Schmidt Ocean Insti­tute here.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A Rad­i­cal Map Puts the Oceans–Not Land–at the Cen­ter of Plan­et Earth (1942)

The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library Makes 150,000 High-Res Illus­tra­tions of the Nat­ur­al World Free to Down­load

When an Octo­pus Caused the Great Stat­en Island Fer­ry Dis­as­ter (Novem­ber 22, 1963)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Cicadas Return After 17 Years: Stunning Footage of the Brood X Cicadas

in Biology, Environment, Nature, Science | May 17th, 2021

Sing, fly, mate, die.

The peri­od­i­cal cicadas in Brood X are emerg­ing from under­ground, where they have spent the last 17 years as nymphs. They are mak­ing the final climb of their lives, intent on escap­ing their cara­paces in order to make more cicadas. And as always they are doing it en masse.

Once free, they must quick­ly get the hang of their brand new wings, and make for the trees, where the males will sing (some say scream) in a bid for females with whom to mate.

The preg­nant females drill cav­i­ties into nar­row branch­es to receive their eggs.

By the time the lar­va emerge, some six weeks lat­er, their moth­ers and fathers are long dead.

Instinct pro­pels these babies to drop to the ground and bur­row in, thus begin­ning anoth­er 17 year cycle, a process Samuel Orr, a time lapse pho­tog­ra­ph­er and film­mak­er spe­cial­iz­ing in nature doc­u­men­tary, doc­u­ments in macro close up in Return of the Cicadas, above.

His adven­tures with Brood X date to their last emer­gence in 2004, when he was a stu­dent at Indi­ana Uni­ver­si­ty, work­ing in a lab with a pro­fes­sor whose area of exper­tise was cicadas.

While wait­ing around for Brood X’s next appear­ance, he trav­eled around the coun­try and as far as Aus­tralia, gath­er­ing over 200 hours of footage of oth­er peri­od­i­cal cicadas for an hour long, Kick­starter-fund­ed film that aired on PBS in 2012.

Brood X has a way of ensur­ing that we humans will also observe a 17 year cycle, at least those of us who live in the states the Great East­ern Brood calls home.

Some cel­e­brate with com­mem­o­ra­tive merch. This year, that means face masks as well as an ever bur­geon­ing assort­ment of t‑shirts, mugs, and oth­er para­pher­na­lia.

Also new this year, Cica­da Safari, ento­mol­o­gist Dr. Gene Kritsky’s smart­phone app for cit­i­zen sci­en­tists eager to help map the 2021 emer­gence with pho­tos and loca­tion.

There are some among us who com­plain about the males’ lusty cho­rus, which can rival garbage dis­pos­als, lawn mow­ers, and jack­ham­mers in terms of deci­bels.

Those con­cerned with the planet’s health can use the data from this and past emer­gences to dis­cuss the impact of cli­mate change and defor­esta­tion. Brood X is list­ed as “Near Threat­ened” on the Inter­na­tion­al Union for Con­ser­va­tion of Nature’s Red List.

Some of us are moved to write poet­ry and songs, though we don’t always get the species right — wit­ness Ogden Nash’s Locust-Lovers, Atten­tion! (1936) and Bob Dylan’s Day of the Locusts (1970).

Inevitably, there will be arti­cles about eat­ing them. It’s true that they’re a hyper­local source of sus­tain­able pro­tein, albeit one that’s rarely on the menu. (The Ononda­ga Nation cel­e­brates — and cer­e­mo­ni­al­ly sam­ples — Brood VII every 17 years, cred­it­ing the insects with sav­ing their ances­tors from star­va­tion after the Con­ti­nen­tal Army destroyed their vil­lages and food sources in 1779.)

Human nature is such that we can’t help but reflect on the twists and turns our lives have tak­en over the last 17 years.

A woman in Mary­land planned a cica­da themed wed­ding to coin­cide with Brood X’s 1987 emer­gence, hav­ing been born two emer­gences before, and grad­u­at­ed from Bryn Mawr dur­ing the 1970 emer­gence, as 50 miles away, Bob Dylan was hav­ing his fate­ful encounter on the cam­pus of Prince­ton.

Most of us will find that our mile­stones have been a bit more acci­den­tal in nature.

Brood X’s emer­gence also serves as a lens through which to view 17 years in the life of our coun­try. The Onion took this to the edge sev­er­al years ago with an arti­cle from the point of view of Brood II, but it’ll be hard to top the 17-year chunk of recent his­to­ry Brood X and the humans who have been liv­ing atop them since 2004 will have to digest.

Speak­ing of his­to­ry, Brood X Mania has been around much longer than any of us have been alive, and prob­a­bly pre­dates a Philadel­phia pastor’s descrip­tion of the 1715 emer­gence in his jour­nal (though we’ll give him FIRST!!! since no ear­li­er accounts have sur­faced).

Pri­or to the Inter­net, ento­mol­o­gist Charles L. Marlatt’s The Peri­od­i­cal Cica­da: An Account of Cica­da Sep­ten­dec­im, Its Nat­ur­al Ene­mies and the Means of Pre­vent­ing Its Injury (1907) was the go to source for all things cica­da relat­ed, and it remains a fas­ci­nat­ing read.

In addi­tion to lots of nit­ty grit­ty on the insects’ anato­my, habits, diet, and habi­tat, he quotes lib­er­al­ly from oth­er cica­da experts, from both his own era and before. The anec­do­tal evi­dence sug­gests our obses­sion is far from new.

These days, any­one armed with a smart­phone can make a record­ing of Brood X’s cacoph­o­ny, but back then, experts in the field were tasked with try­ing to cap­ture it in print.

Pro­fes­sor Charles Valen­tine Riley com­pared the sound ear­ly in the sea­son, when the first males were emerg­ing to the “whistling of a train pass­ing through a short tun­nel” and also, “the croak­ing of cer­tain frogs.” (For those need­ing help with pro­nun­ci­a­tion, he ren­dered it pho­net­i­cal­ly as “Pha-r-r-r-aoh.”)

Pro­fes­sor Asa Fitch’s described high sea­son in New York state, when a max­i­mum of males sing simul­ta­ne­ous­ly:

tsh-e-e-E-E-E-E-e-ou, uttered con­tin­u­ous­ly and pro­longed to a quar­ter or half minute in length, the mid­dle note deaf­en­ing­ly shrill, loud and pierc­ing to the ear

Mar­latt him­self wor­ried, pre­ma­ture­ly but not with­out rea­son, that the march of civ­i­liza­tion would bring about extinc­tion by over-clear­ing the dense­ly wood­ed areas that are essen­tial to the cicadas’ repro­duc­tive rit­u­als while offer­ing a bit of pro­tec­tion from preda­tors.

Dr. Samuel P. Hil­dreth of Mari­et­ta, Ohio not­ed in 1830 that “hogs eat them in pref­er­ence to any oth­er food” and that birds were such fans “that very few birds were seen around our gar­dens dur­ing their con­tin­u­ance and our cher­ries, etc, remained unmo­lest­ed.”

Dr. Leland Oss­ian Howard was erro­neous­ly cred­it­ed with con­duct­ing “the first exper­i­ments of cica­da as an arti­cle of human food” in ear­ly sum­mer 1885. Mar­latt repro­duces the account of an eye­wit­ness who seemed to fan­cy them­selves a bit of a restau­rant crit­ic:

With the aid of the Doctor’s cook, he had pre­pared a plain stew, a milk stew, and a broil. The Cicadae were col­lect­ed just as they emerged from pupae and were thrown into cold water, in which they remained overnight. They were cooked the next morn­ing, and served at break­fast time. They impart­ed a dis­tinct and not unpleas­ant fla­vor to the stew, but they were not at all palat­able them­selves, as they were reduced to noth­ing but bits of flab­by skin. The broil lacked sub­stance. The most palat­able method of cook­ing is to fry in bat­ter, when they remind one of shrimps. They will nev­er prove a del­i­ca­cy.

We leave you with the thoughts of Dr Gideon B. Smith of Bal­ti­more, whose attempt to cap­ture a mer­cu­r­ial month turns bit­ter­sweet, and all too relat­able:

The music or song pro­duced by the myr­i­ads of these insects in a warm day from about the 25th of May to the mid­dle of June is won­der­ful. It is not deaf­en­ing, as many describe it; even at its height it does not inter­rupt con­ver­sa­tion. It seems like an atmos­phere of wild, monot­o­nous sound, in which all oth­er sounds float with per­fect dis­tinct­ness. After a day or two this music becomes tire­some and dole­ful, and to many very dis­agree­able. To me, it was oth­er­wise, and when I heard the last note on the 25th of June the melan­choly reflec­tion occurred. Shall I live to hear it yet again?

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Sounds of the For­est: A Free Audio Archive Gath­ers the Sounds of Forests from All Over the World

Tune Into Tree.fm: An Online Radio Sta­tion That Streams the Sooth­ing Sounds of Forests from Around the World

How Sounds Are Faked For Nature Doc­u­men­taries: Meet the Artists Who Cre­ate the Sounds of Fish, Spi­ders, Orang­utans, Mush­rooms & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Wel­come back, Brood X Over­lords! Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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How Vaccines Improved Our World In One Graphic

in Biology, Science | February 3rd, 2021

In 1796, the British doc­tor Edward Jen­ner devel­oped the first vac­cine to fight a con­ta­gious disease–in this par­tic­u­lar case, the small­pox virus. Since then vac­cines have helped erad­i­cate, or firm­ly con­trol, a long list of diseases–everything from diph­the­ria and the measles, to rubel­la and polio. Designed by Leon Far­rant in 2011, the info­graph­ic above reminds us of the mir­a­cles brought by vac­cines, show­ing the degree to which they’ve tamed 14 crip­pling dis­eases. Before too long, we hope COVID-19 will be added to the list.

For the data used to make the graph­ic, vis­it this doc­u­ment online.

via @NeilGaiman

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Roald Dahl, Who Lost His Daugh­ter to Measles, Writes a Heart­break­ing Let­ter about Vac­ci­na­tions: “It Real­ly Is Almost a Crime to Allow Your Child to Go Unim­mu­nised”

How Do Vac­cines (Includ­ing the COVID-19 Vac­cines) Work?: Watch Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tions

19th Cen­tu­ry Maps Visu­al­ize Measles in Amer­i­ca Before the Mir­a­cle of Vac­cines

How Fast Can a Vac­cine Be Made?: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

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Discover Tokyo’s Museum Dedicated to Parasites: A Unique and Disturbing Institution

in Biology, Museums | January 4th, 2021

Pho­to by Guil­hem Vel­lut

Weary as we are of hear­ing about not just the coro­n­avirus but virus­es in gen­er­al, shall we we turn our atten­tion to par­a­sites instead? The Meguro Par­a­sito­log­i­cal Muse­um has been con­cen­trat­ing its intel­lec­tu­al and edu­ca­tion­al ener­gies in that direc­tion since 1953. Locat­ed in the epony­mous neigh­bor­hood of Tokyo, it hous­es more than 60,000 species of par­a­site, with more than 300 on dis­play at any giv­en time. “On the first floor we present the ‘Diver­si­ty of Par­a­sites’ dis­play­ing var­i­ous types of par­a­site spec­i­mens with accom­pa­ny­ing edu­ca­tion­al movies,” write direc­tors Midori Kamegai and Kazuo Ogawa. “The sec­ond floor exhibits are ‘Human and Zoonot­ic Par­a­sites’ show­ing par­a­site life cycles and the symp­toms they cause dur­ing human infec­tion.”

Pho­to by Guil­hem Vel­lut

We’ve here includ­ed a few choice pic­tures from the muse­um, but as Cul­ture Trip’s India Irv­ing warns, “the real-life spec­i­mens are far worse than the pho­tographs; some of the dis­plays present pre­served par­a­sites actu­al­ly pop­ping out of their ani­mal hosts.”

She names as “the most repul­sive item on view” a tape­worm “rough­ly the size of a Lon­don bus — it is the longest tape­worm in world and is exhib­it­ed along­side a rope of the same length so vis­i­tors can get a phys­i­cal feel for just how enor­mous it actu­al­ly was.” What oth­er par­a­sito­log­i­cal muse­um could hope to com­pete with that? Not that any have tried: the Meguro Par­a­sito­log­i­cal Muse­um proud­ly describes itself as the only such insti­tu­tion in the world.

Pho­to by Guil­hem Vel­lut

“Some of the dis­plays are mere­ly dis­turb­ing, while oth­ers are slight­ly more ghast­ly,” writes Men­tal Floss’ Jake Rossen. “If you’ve ever want­ed to see a pho­to of a trop­i­cal bug prompt­ing a human tes­ti­cle to swell to the size of a gym bag, this is the place for you.” Like many oth­er muse­ums, it did shut down for a time ear­li­er in the pan­dem­ic, but has been open again since June. (If you hap­pen not to be a Japan­ese speak­er, guides in Eng­lish and oth­er lan­guages are avail­able in both text and app form.) If cur­rent con­di­tions have nev­er­the­less kept Japan itself out of your reach, you can have a look at the Meguro Par­a­sito­log­i­cal Muse­um’s unique offer­ings through this Flickr gallery — which gets many of us as close to these organ­isms as we care to be.

Pho­to by Steven L. John­son 

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er the Japan­ese Muse­um Ded­i­cat­ed to Col­lect­ing Rocks That Look Like Human Faces

The First Muse­um Ded­i­cat­ed to Japan­ese Folk­lore Mon­sters Is Now Open

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of the Müt­ter Muse­um and Its Many Anatom­i­cal­ly Pecu­liar Exhibits

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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The Golden Guide to Hallucinogenic Plants: Discover the 1977 Illustrated Guide Created by Harvard’s Groundbreaking Ethnobotanist Richard Evan Schultes

in Biology, Science | December 31st, 2020

I mean, the idea that you would give a psychedelic—in this case, mag­ic mush­rooms or the chem­i­cal called psilo­cy­bin that’s derived from mag­ic mushrooms—to peo­ple dying of can­cer, peo­ple with ter­mi­nal diag­noses, to help them deal with their — what’s called exis­ten­tial dis­tress. And this seemed like such a crazy idea that I began look­ing into it. Why should a drug from a mush­room help peo­ple deal with their mor­tal­i­ty?

–Michael Pol­lan in an inter­view with Ter­ry Gross, “‘Reluc­tant Psy­cho­naut’ Michael Pol­lan Embraces ‘New Sci­ence’ Of Psy­che­delics”

Around the same time Albert Hoff­man syn­the­sized LSD in the ear­ly 1940s, a pio­neer­ing eth­nob­otanist, writer, and pho­tog­ra­ph­er named Richard Evan Schultes set out “on a mis­sion to study how indige­nous peo­ples” in the Ama­zon rain­for­est “used plants for med­i­c­i­nal, rit­u­al and prac­ti­cal pur­pos­es,” as an exten­sive his­to­ry of Schultes’ trav­els notes. “He went on to spend over a decade immersed in near-con­tin­u­ous field­work, col­lect­ing more than 24,000 species of plants includ­ing some 300 species new to sci­ence.”

Described by Jonathan Kan­dell as “swash­buck­ling” in a 2001 New York Times obit­u­ary, Schultes was “the last of the great plant explor­ers in the Vic­to­ri­an tra­di­tion.” Or so his stu­dent Wade Davis called him in his 1995 best­seller The Ser­pent and the Rain­bow. He was also “a pio­neer­ing con­ser­va­tion­ist,” writes Kan­dell, “who raised alarms in the 1960’s—long before envi­ron­men­tal­ism became a world­wide con­cern.” Schultes defied the stereo­type of the colo­nial adven­tur­er, once say­ing, “I do not believe in hos­tile Indi­ans. All that is required to bring out their gen­tle­man­li­ness is rec­i­p­ro­cal gen­tle­man­li­ness.”

Schultes returned to teach at Har­vard, where he remind­ed his stu­dents “that more than 90 tribes had become extinct in Brazil alone over the first three-quar­ters of the 20th cen­tu­ry.” While his research would have sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence on fig­ures like Aldous Hux­ley, William Bur­roughs, and Car­los Cas­tane­da, “writ­ers who con­sid­ered hal­lu­cino­gens as the gate­ways to self-dis­cov­ery,” Schultes was dis­mis­sive of the coun­ter­cul­ture and “dis­dained these self-appoint­ed prophets of an inner real­i­ty.”

Rather than pro­mot­ing recre­ation­al use, Schultes became known as “the father of a new branch of sci­ence called ‘eth­nob­otany,’ the field that explores the rela­tion­ship between indige­nous peo­ple and their use of plants,” writes Luis Sequeira in a bio­graph­i­cal note. One of Schultes’ pub­li­ca­tions, the Gold­en Guide to Hal­lu­cino­genic Plants, has sad­ly fall­en out of print, but you can find it online, in full, at the Vaults of Erowid. Pricey out-of-print copies can still be pur­chased.

Described on Ama­zon as “a non­tech­ni­cal exam­i­na­tion of the phys­i­o­log­i­cal effects and cul­tur­al sig­nif­i­cance of hal­lu­cino­genic plants used in ancient and mod­ern soci­eties,” the book cov­ers pey­ote, ayahuas­ca, cannabis, var­i­ous psy­choac­tive mush­rooms and oth­er fun­gi, and much more. In his intro­duc­tion, Schultes is care­ful to sep­a­rate his research from its appro­pri­a­tion, dis­miss­ing the term “psy­che­del­ic” as ety­mo­log­i­cal­ly incor­rect and “bio­log­i­cal­ly unsound.” Fur­ther­more, he writes, it “has acquired pop­u­lar mean­ings beyond the drugs or their effects.”

Schultes’ inter­ests are sci­en­tif­ic—and anthro­po­log­i­cal. “In the his­to­ry of mankind,” he writes, “hal­lu­cino­gens have prob­a­bly been the most impor­tant of all the nar­cotics. Their fan­tas­tic effects made them sacred to prim­i­tive man and may even have been respon­si­ble for sug­gest­ing to him the idea of deity.” He does not exag­ger­ate. Schultes’ research into the reli­gious and med­i­c­i­nal uses of nat­ur­al hal­lu­cino­gens led him to dub them “plants of the gods” in a book he wrote with Albert Hoff­man, dis­cov­er­er of LSD.

Nei­ther sci­en­tist sought to start a psy­che­del­ic rev­o­lu­tion, but it hap­pened nonethe­less. Now, anoth­er rev­o­lu­tion is under­way—one that is final­ly revis­it­ing the sci­ence of eth­nob­otany and tak­ing seri­ous­ly the heal­ing pow­ers of hal­lu­cino­genic plants. It is hard­ly a new sci­ence among schol­ars in the West, but the renewed legit­i­ma­cy of research into hal­lu­cino­gens has giv­en Schultes’ research new author­i­ty. Learn from him in his Gold­en Guide to Hal­lu­cino­genic Plants online here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How to Use Psy­che­del­ic Drugs to Improve Men­tal Health: Michael Pollan’s New Book, How to Change Your Mind, Makes the Case

New LSD Research Pro­vides the First Images of the Brain on Acid, and Hints at Its Poten­tial to Pro­mote Cre­ativ­i­ty

Artist Draws 9 Por­traits While on LSD: Inside the 1950s Exper­i­ments to Turn LSD into a “Cre­ativ­i­ty Pill”

Hofmann’s Potion: 2002 Doc­u­men­tary Revis­its the His­to­ry of LSD

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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A Biostatistician Uses Crochet to Visualize the Frightening Infection Rates of the Coronavirus

in Biology, Current Affairs, Health | December 9th, 2020

Chances are you’ve looked at more graphs this past year than you did over the pre­vi­ous decade — not just while work­ing at home, but while scrolling through cas­cades of often-trou­bling quan­ti­ta­tive infor­ma­tion dur­ing your “off” hours as well. This phe­nom­e­non has hard­ly been lim­it­ed to the Amer­i­cans who obsessed over the pre­dic­tions of and returns from their pres­i­den­tial elec­tion last month, an event turned prac­ti­cal­ly into a sideshow by the ongo­ing pan­dem­ic. Around the world, we’ve all want­ed to know: Where did the coro­n­avirus come from? What is it? Where is it going?

Apolo­gies to Paul Gau­guin, who did­n’t even live to see the Span­ish flu of 1918, a time when nobody could have imag­ined instan­ta­neous­ly and wide­ly shar­ing visu­al ren­der­ings of data about that dis­ease. The world of a cen­tu­ry ago may not have had dynam­ic ani­mat­ed maps and charts, updat­ed in real time, but it did have cro­chet. Whether or not it had then occurred to any­one as a viable medi­um for visu­al­iz­ing the spread of dis­ease, it can be con­vinc­ing today. This is demon­strat­ed by Nor­we­gian bio­sta­tis­ti­cian Kathrine Frey Frøs­lie, who in the video above shows us her cro­cheted rep­re­sen­ta­tions of var­i­ous “R num­bers.”

This now much-heard term, Frøs­lie’s explains, “denotes repro­duc­tion. If the R num­ber is one, this means that each infect­ed per­son will on aver­age infect one new per­son dur­ing the course of the dis­ease. If R equals two, each infect­ed per­son will infect two per­sons,” and so on. Her cro­cheted ver­sion of R=1, with a pop­u­la­tion of ten, is small and nar­row — it looks, in oth­er words, entire­ly man­age­able. Such a dis­ease “will always be always present, but the num­ber of infect­ed per­sons will be con­stant.” Her R=0.9, which steadi­ly nar­rows in a way that resem­bles an unfin­ished Christ­mas stock­ing, looks even less threat­en­ing.

Alas, “for the coro­n­avirus, the R is most­ly larg­er than one.” In cro­cheted form, even R=1.1 is pret­ty for­mi­da­ble; when she brings out her R=1.5, “it is evi­dent that we have a prob­lem. Even the cro­chet patch kind of crum­bles.” Then out comes R=2, which must have been quite a project: its ten orig­i­nal infec­tions bloom into 2,560 new cas­es, all rep­re­sent­ed in almost organ­i­cal­ly dense folds of yarn. As for R=2.5, when Frøs­lie even­tu­al­ly gets it hoist­ed onto her lap, you’ll have to see it to believe it. Through­out 2020, of course, many of our at-home hob­bies have grown to mon­strous pro­por­tions — even those tak­en up by med­ical sci­en­tists.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Inter­ac­tive Web Site Tracks the Glob­al Spread of the Coro­n­avirus: Cre­at­ed and Sup­port­ed by Johns Hop­kins

Sim­u­lat­ing an Epi­dem­ic: Using Data to Show How Dis­eases Like COVID-19 Spread

Every­thing You Need To Know About Virus­es: A Quick Visu­al Expla­na­tion of Virus­es in 9 Images

The His­to­ry of the Plague: Every Major Epi­dem­ic in an Ani­mat­ed Map

An Artist Cro­chets a Life-Size, Anatom­i­cal­ly-Cor­rect Skele­ton, Com­plete with Organs

The Beau­ti­ful Math of Coral & Cro­chet

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Why Humans Are Obsessed with Cats

in Biology, History, K-12, Life, Nature, Science | December 4th, 2020

A house cat is not real­ly a fur baby, but it is some­thing rather more remark­able: a tiny con­quis­ta­dor with the whole plan­et at its feet —Abi­gail Tuck­er

As part of its Annals of Obses­sion video series, The New York­er invit­ed sci­ence jour­nal­ist Abi­gail Tuck­er, author of The Lion in the Liv­ing Room, to reflect on “how felines took over the Inter­net, our homes, and our lives.”

It goes with­out say­ing that cats and humans have co-exist­ed for a very long time.

Most of us are acquaint­ed with the high regard in which Ancient Egyp­tians held Felis catus.

And we may know some­thing of their sea­far­ing his­to­ry, begin­ning with the Vikings and con­tin­u­ing on through Unsink­able Sam and oth­er cel­e­brat­ed ship’s cats.

An over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of us have spent the last decade or so glued to online exam­ples of their antics—rid­ing robot vac­u­ums, react­ing with ter­ror to cucum­bers, and pounc­ing on humans, some of whom have had the temer­i­ty to write and record voiceovers that sug­gest they have insight as to what goes on inside a cat’s hat. (As if!)

It’s grat­i­fy­ing to hear Tuck­er echo what cat lovers have long sus­pect­ed (and embla­zoned on t‑shirts, cof­fee mugs, and dec­o­ra­tive pillows)—the cats, not the own­ers, are the ones run­ning the show.

For­give us. Dogs have own­ers. Cats have staff.

Cats took a com­men­sal path to domes­ti­ca­tion, moti­vat­ed, then as now, by the food they knew to be stored in our set­tle­ments.

Tuck­er describes it as a series of cat con­trolled takeovers—a process of arti­fi­cial selec­tion, under­tak­en on the cats’ own ini­tia­tive:

House cats are supreme­ly adapt­able. They can live any­where and, while they must have plen­ty of pro­tein, they eat prac­ti­cal­ly any­thing that moves, from pel­i­cans to crick­ets, and many things that don’t, like hot dogs. (Some of their imper­iled feline rel­a­tives, by con­trast, are adapt­ed to hunt only a rare species of chin­chilla.) House cats can tweak their sleep­ing sched­ules and social lives. They can breed like crazy.

In cer­tain ways the house cat’s rise is trag­ic, for the same forces that favor them have destroyed many oth­er crea­tures. House cats are car­pet­bag­gers, arriv­istes, and they’re among the most trans­for­ma­tive invaders the world has ever seen—except for Homo sapi­ens, of course. It’s no coin­ci­dence that when they show up in ecosys­tems, lions and oth­er megafau­na are usu­al­ly on their way out.

Aloof as many of their num­ber may be, cats have engi­neered things in such a way as to be phys­i­cal­ly irre­sistible to most humans:

Their big heads and big eyes are so cute!

Their fur is so soft!

We can car­ry them around!

Dress them in doll clothes (some­times)!

Their cries mim­ic the cries of hun­gry human babies, and elic­it a sim­i­lar response from their human care­givers.

We may not love lit­ter box duty, but with 1 in 3 humans infect­ed by Tox­o­plas­ma gondii, we’ll like­ly be teth­ered to them for all eter­ni­ty.

For bet­ter or worse, we love them. And so do dog lovers. They just don’t know it yet.

But do not ever imag­ine that the feel­ing is rec­i­p­ro­cal.

They’re arch­car­ni­vores who can­not open their own cans. As Tuck­er wry­ly observes:

I think it’s fair to say that we are obsessed and they are not.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Cats: How Over 10,000 Years the Cat Went from Wild Preda­tor to Sofa Side­kick

GPS Track­ing Reveals the Secret Lives of Out­door Cats

In 1183, a Chi­nese Poet Describes Being Domes­ti­cat­ed by His Own Cats

How Humans Domes­ti­cat­ed Cats (Twice)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. She loves cats, but most recent­ly appeared as a French Cana­di­an bear who trav­els to New York City in search of food and mean­ing in Greg Kotis’ short film, L’Ourse.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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