metabologies

bits and pieces on the looping effects of living (eating) together with nonhumans

[metabologies]

Conspiring Molecules

The real story of the pharmaceutical industry

Zita Bretka | Magyar Tudat

A gyógyszeripar valós története - Magyar Tudat

Az egész John D. Rockefellerrel (1839-1937) kezdődött, aki olajmágnásként és Amerika első milliárdosaként vonult be a történelembe.

[metabologies]

Stresszmentes lebegés

Havasréti József | Élet és Irodalom LXVI. évfolyam, 37. szám, 2022. szeptember 16.

Stresszmentes lebegés

A tulajdonos, úgy tűnik, paranoiás. Ilyet csak akkor művel valaki, ha távol óhajt tartani magától valami kétes kisugárzást. Idegen aurát. Ol

[metabologies]

Reproductive Metabologies

Keiko Kitabayashi, Shumpei Kitamura, Nobuko Tuno. 2022. Fungal spore transport by omnivorous mycophagous slug in temperate forest. Ecology and Evolution Vol.12, Issue 2, e8565, https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.8565

Image source: New Scientist

Slugs are important consumers of fungal fruiting bodies and expected to carry their spores. In this study, we examined whether slugs (Meghimatium fruhstorferi) can act as effective dispersers of spores of basidiomycetes. The microscopic observation confirmed the presence of basidiospores in feces of field-collected slugs, and the DNA metabarcoding study revealed that Ascomycota and Basidiomycota were major fungal taxa found in the feces. In Basidiomycota, the dominant order was Agaricales followed by Trichosporonales and Hymenochaetales. The laboratory experiments using Tylopilus vinosobrunneus showed that slugs carried a large number of spores in their digestive tracts. It was also observed that Pleurotus, Armillaria, and Gymnopilus spores excreted by slugs had a higher germination capacity than control spores collected from spore prints. The field experiments showed that slugs traveled 10.3 m in 5 h at most by wandering on the ground, litter layers, wood debris, and tree trunks. These results suggest that slugs could carry spores of ectomycorrhizal, saprophytic, and wood-decaying fungi to appropriate sites for these fungi to establish colonies.

[metabologies]

Public Health Parasite

Public Health Parasite - Anthropology News

Parasite-Host relations are asymmetrical. But what forms of parasitism has global health inherited? How to metabolize this relationship?

Parasite-Host relations are asymmetrical. But what forms of parasitism has global health inherited? How to metabolize this relationship?

Anthropology News | August 3, 2021

[metabologies]

Parasite vs. Malaria Test Kit

Parasite evolution is making it harder to detect and treat malaria

by Michael Le Page | New Scientist, 27 September 2021.

Cheap rapid tests for malaria have helped drive down the prevalence of the disease in many parts of Africa. But just 15 years or so after their introduction, “stealthy” malaria parasites have evolved that can no longer be detected by the standard rapid tests.

Parasite evolution is making it harder to detect and treat malaria

In parts of Africa up to 80 per cent of malaria parasites have evolved to evade detection by the rapid tests used to determine if people nee

[metabologies]

Tools of Chemical Regulation

Emmanuel Henry, Valentin Thomas, Sara Angeli Aguiton, Marc-Oliver Déplaude and Nathalie Jas, eds. 2021. Beyond the Production of Ignorance: The Pervasiveness of Industry Influence through the Tools of Chemical Regulation (Special Issue). Science, Technology, & Human Values 46(5).  

https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/sthd/46/5

Introduction: Beyond the Production of Ignorance: The Pervasiveness of Industry Influence through the Tools of Chemical Regulation (Emmanuel Henry, Valentin Thomas, Sara Angeli Aguiton, Marc-Olivier De´plaude, and Nathalie Jas) 

Creating Regulatory Harmony: The Participatory Politics of OECD Chemical Testing Standards in the Making 925 (Colleen Lanier-Christensen) 

Governing Occupational Exposure Using Thresholds: A Policy Biased Toward Industry 953 (Emmanuel Henry) 

To Test or Not to Test: Tools, Rules, and Corporate Data in US Chemicals Regulation 975 (Angela N. H. Creager) 

Defects in Doubt Manufacturing: The Trajectory of a Pro-industrial Argument in the Struggle for the Definition of Carcinogenic Substances 998 (Valentin Thomas)

[metabologies]

Vaccine results: doubts and methods

Do Oxford/AstraZeneca covid-19 vaccine results stand up to scrutiny?

by Graham Lawton

New Scientist | December 5, 2020

Have the full results been published in a peer-reviewed journal?

No. The results of the UK trial were published in The Lancet, but the full, combined results have only been revealed in a press release which didn’t include detailed numbers. The University of Oxford said that full results would be submitted to a journal. On Thursday, AstraZeneca announced plans for a new, global trial.

Is it unusual to press release results in this way?

Not for these kinds of trials, says Mark Toshner, a clinical trials doctor at the University of Cambridge. He is running one of the UK parts of the trial, but doesn’t work for or take funding from AstraZeneca or the University of Oxford and doesn’t have a stake in whether the vaccine works or not.

The suggestion that data has been withheld – which has been levelled at several covid-19 vaccine trials – is unfair, he says. In fact, the approach we have seen is a legal requirement intended to avoid insider trading. “The minute you have an interim analysis and a positive result, to prevent malfeasance you have to get that positive result out there,” says Toshner – hence press releases rather than detailed data and analysis, which takes time.

[metabologies]

Tokyo begins sewage study for signs of COVID-19 spread | The Japan Times

Similar research analyzing sewage for the virus has already started in the United States and France.

Tokyo begins sewage study for signs of COVID-19 spread

The Japan Times | May 13, 2020

on the mysterious metabolic-infrastructural pathways of living with covid-19

[metabologies]

Multispecies tinkering in the kitchen

Encouraging the growth of benign bacteria is a tasty way to preserve vegetables, such as with this easy kimchi recipe, says Sam Wong

Make kimchi at home by cultivating a friendly microbial ecosystem

New Scientist | 26 February 2020

“In this case, the microbes we want to cultivate are principally lactic acid bacteria (LAB). These are hardy – able to tolerate acidic, salty and low-oxygen conditions. They make lactic acid as a result of their metabolism and this, along with the salt used to make kimchi, kills most other bacteria and allows LAB to dominate.”

[metabologies]

How to survive a clinical trial?

Many cancer drugs can be co-opted to treat different types of tumour

Doctors often give people drugs that haven’t been approved for their particular cancer as a last resort. Now it seems it has some benefit ab

[metabologies]

Disease Multiple

Have we found the true cause of diabetes, stroke and Alzheimer's?

The diseases most people die of have been attributed to unhealthy lifestyles. But evidence now suggests bacteria are to blame, heralding a r

[metabologies]

Protein mania: The problem with the West’s latest diet obsession

Everything from breakfast cereal to ice cream and even water is now laced with extra protein. Is there any evidence that consuming more of i

[metabologies]

Prescriptions for UTIs may be making antibiotic resistance even worse

New evidence shows two thirds of urinary tract infections are treated wrongly. To fight back we must develop fast, accurate diagnostics, say

[metabologies]

Living together with pills

Will medicine ever recover from the perverse economics of drugs? | by Clayton Dalton, Aeon Essays, August 7, 2018

Will medicine ever recover from the perverse economics of drugs? | by Clayton Dalton, Aeon Essays, August 7, 2018

...

This landscape, wherein patients with chronic disease take dozens of pills daily in a kind of détente with their illness, isn’t the product of some conscious conspiracy by the pharmaceutical industry. Rather, it’s a landscape that follows naturally from the premise that healthcare should be an industry, not a service. Healthcare in the US is not likely to rid itself of its obeisance to the market any time soon. But what if financial incentives could be co-opted to address the lifestyle factors underlying chronic disease? What if we could make those interventions lucrative somehow?

[metabologies]

"Newly-discovered human organ may help explain how cancer spreads" | New Scientist, March 27, 2018

A newly discovered network of fluid-filled channels in the human body may be a previously-unknown organ, and it seems to help transport cancer cells around the body.

[metabologies]

Kolorlokál, Tilos Rádió, January 17, 2017 | Facebook

A Kolorlokál következő vendége Bognár Gergely morálfilozófus. Bioetikáról, egészségügyről, szűkös erőforrások elosztásáról fogunk beszélgetni.

[metabologies]

Harris Solomon 2016, Duke University Press

The popular narrative of "globesity" posits that the adoption of Western diets is intensifying obesity and diabetes in the Global South and that disordered metabolisms are the embodied consequence of globalization and excess. In Metabolic Living Harris Solomon recasts these narratives by examining how people in Mumbai, India, experience the porosity between food, fat, the body, and the city.