Category: Health

Brain, Drugs, Health, History, Media&Culture, PsychologyLeave a comment

Acid media

Fernando Kaskais

Courtesy the DEA . All other images supplied by the author. How perforated squares of trippy blotter paper allowed outlaw chemists and wizard-alchemists to dose the world with LSD Erik Davis is an author, award-winning journalist, sometimes podcaster, and popular speaker based in San Francisco, US. His books include Nomad Codes: Adventures in Modern Esoterica (2010), High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the 70s (2019) and Blotter: The Untold Story of an Acid Medium (2024). First synthesised in 1938 but not tasted until 1943, acid is essentially a creature of the postwar era. As such, it enters the human world alongside an explosion in consumer advertising, … Continue reading Acid media

Big Pharma, Health, Science, UnbelievableLeave a comment

Personalized cancer vaccines are having a moment

Fernando Kaskais

Vaccines targeting some of our deadliest cancers are showing promise in early trials. KEY TAKEAWAYS By Kristin Houser Promising personalized cancer vaccines were a recurring theme at the American Association for Cancer Research’s (AACR) Annual Meeting in San Diego, earlier this month. A multitude of companies are pushing forward with shots designed to help the immune system fight patients’ specific tumors. Personalized cancer vaccines: Cancer cells are covered in mutated proteins, called “neoantigens,” that are not found on healthy cells. Personalized cancer vaccines train the immune system to recognize a patient’s unique neoantigens and then find and destroy the cancer cells. Because researchers … Continue reading Personalized cancer vaccines are having a moment

Brain, Drugs, Health, PsychologyLeave a comment

Eyes wide shut: Why psychedelic trips intensify with eyes closed

Fernando Kaskais

Visual stimuli, like watching videos, can diminish the potentially therapeutic effects of psychedelics, recent research suggests. KEY TAKEAWAYS By Saga Briggs You’ve likely heard the phrase “set and setting” when it comes to psychedelics: The quality of a trip depends on the mindset you have and the environment you’re in when you kick off a trip. But while it’s a common claim, there hasn’t been much research on the effects of set and setting on the psychedelic experience.  To bridge that gap, a recent study systematically examined these kinds of effects, including those that result from keeping your eyes open or closed … Continue reading Eyes wide shut: Why psychedelic trips intensify with eyes closed

AI, Health, Psychology, Science, TechnologyLeave a comment

Opinion: Do ‘Griefbots’ Help Mourners Deal With Loss?

Fernando Kaskais

Visual: iStock/Getty Images Plus Bereaved people should temper their expectations when chatting with AI-driven simulations of their lost loved ones. BY TIM REINBOTH Various commercial products known as “griefbots” create a simulation of a lost loved one. Built on artificial intelligence that makes use of large language models, or LLMs, the bots imitate the particular way the deceased person talked by using their emails, text messages, voice recordings, and more. The technology is supposed to help the bereaved deal with grief by letting them chat with the bot as if they were talking to the person. But we’re missing evidence that … Continue reading Opinion: Do ‘Griefbots’ Help Mourners Deal With Loss?

Big Pharma, Drugs, Health, LivingLeave a comment

A Common Gene Test Could Save Lives From Chemo Drug Overdose

Fernando Kaskais

Top: Women receive intravenous chemotherapy. Visual: E+ via Getty Images Fluorouracil can be deadly for patients who slowly metabolize it. But U.S. doctors don’t often test for those at risk. BY ARTHUR ALLEN ONE JANUARY morning in 2021, Carol Rosen took a standard treatment for metastatic breast cancer. Three gruesome weeks later, she died in excruciating pain from the very drug meant to prolong her life. Rosen, a 70-year-old retired schoolteacher, passed her final days in anguish, enduring severe diarrhea and nausea and terrible sores in her mouth that kept her from eating, drinking, and, eventually, speaking. Skin peeled off her body. Her … Continue reading A Common Gene Test Could Save Lives From Chemo Drug Overdose

Health, Science, TechnologyLeave a comment

A 62-Year-Old Man Received a Kidney From an Unexpected Donor: a Pig

Fernando Kaskais

mi-viri//Getty Image The groundbreaking transplant could pave the way for a future without dialysis. BY TIM NEWCOMB Scientists genetically modified a pig kidney, doctors transplanted that kidney into a 62-year-old human, and that man is roughly one week beyond the transplant looking toward a release from Massachusetts General Hospital. “The success of this transplant is the culmination of efforts by thousands of scientists and physicians over several decades,” Tatsuo Kawai, Harvard Medical School professor of surgery and director of the Legorreta Center for Clinical Transplant Tolerance at Mass General, says in a statement. The world’s first-ever transplant of a pig kidney into … Continue reading A 62-Year-Old Man Received a Kidney From an Unexpected Donor: a Pig

AI, Future, Health, Science, TechnologyLeave a comment

A Digital Twin Might Just Save Your Life

Fernando Kaskais

Luis López (Mallet) for Noema Magazine Digital twins offer humankind the ability to command virtual replicas of forests, oil fields, cities, supply chains — and even, maybe one day, our very bodies. BY JOE ZADEH, a writer based in Newcastle. On the morning of June 24, 1993, Yale University Professor David Gelernter arrived at his office on the fifth floor of the computer science department. He had just returned from vacation and was carrying a large stack of unopened mail. One book-shaped package was in a plastic ziploc — he thought it looked like a PhD dissertation. As he unzipped it, … Continue reading A Digital Twin Might Just Save Your Life

Climate Change, Curiositys, Health, LivingLeave a comment

People Hate Daylight Saving. Science Tells Us Why.

Fernando Kaskais

Top: On March 9, 2017 — a few days before Daylight Saving Time began that year — the sun is low in the sky just after 5 pm in Mount Penn, Pennsylvania. Visual: Jeremy Drey/MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle via Getty Images Something is awry about the way we mark time. Can research and policy changes help us reset the clocks? BY TERESA CARR IN THE SUMMER of 2017, when communication professor Jeffery Gentry moved from Oklahoma to accept a position at Eastern New Mexico University, he was pleasantly surprised to find it easier to get up in the morning. The difference, he realized, … Continue reading People Hate Daylight Saving. Science Tells Us Why.

Big Pharma, Drugs, Health, ScienceLeave a comment

Your Child’s Medicine Probably Wasn’t Fully Vetted. Here’s Why.

Fernando Kaskais

Visual: Milos Dimic/E+ via Getty Images Most pharmaceuticals are developed and approved for use only in adults. Researchers are working to create change. BY FRIEDA KLOTZ MARK TURNER has worked in pediatrics for more than 30 years, and he’s tired of telling parents there’s nothing he can do for their children. Very few medicines are developed with young people in mind, he said. “It’s just very difficult, watching them be sick, watching babies die.” Turner is referring to the lack of research into how different medications perform in children. When drugs get approved, it’s usually on the basis of how they function … Continue reading Your Child’s Medicine Probably Wasn’t Fully Vetted. Here’s Why.