Sunday, September 22, 2024

Study shows psychedelic drug psilocybin gives comparable long-term antidepressant effects to standard antidepressants, but may offer additional benefits

Psilocybin as good as SSRI for depression, but doesn’t lower sex drive, gives better sense of well-being and psychosocial functioning

European College of Neuropsychopharmacology

A direct comparison between the experimental psychedelic drug psilocybin and a standard SSRI antidepressant shows similar improvement of depressive symptoms, but that psilocybin offers additional longer-term benefits.

The comparison, between psilocybin (the active ingredient in “magic mushrooms”) and the SSRI escitalopram gave similar long-term improvements in depressive symptoms over a 6-month period, however patients taking psilocybin also reported better psychosocial functioning including experiencing a greater sense of meaning in life and psychological connectedness.

The work is presented for the first time at the ECNP Congress in Milan. A related paper will appear in the peer-reviewed journal Lancet eClinicalMedicine1 to coincide with the conference presentation (see details below). Lead researcher Mr Tommaso Barba (PhD candidate from Imperial College, London) said:

“This is the first work to compare the long-term effects of these two drugs in the context of overall well-being, not just freedom from depression. In previous work we had found that both treatments led to comparable improvements in alleviating symptoms of depression at the 6-week mark, such as sadness and negative emotions. However, this work shows that psilocybin outperformed escitalopram in several measures of well-being, meaning in life, work and social functioning. These results appeared to be maintained over a 6-month follow-up period. In addition, in previous work* we had found that psilocybin also improves sexual drive, in contrast to SSRIs which tend to lower libido in many patients. So overall it seems psilocybin might give additional positive mental health benefits.”

SSRI drugs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors), such as Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft, are one of the main types of drugs used to treat depression. However, around a third of patients don’t respond to SSRI treatment, so for them psilocybin may offer an alternative, although this was not studied in this trial.

Tommaso Barba continued:

“SSRIs work well, but not for everyone. They are also associated with some side effects. However this work implies that psilocybin generally seems to offer a real alternative, and perhaps additional benefits, to people who are worried about taking conventional antidepressants”.

The researchers, from Imperial College in London, undertook a 6-month study (phase 2, double-blind, randomised controlled trial) with 59 patients with moderate to severe depression. 30 were treated with a single dose of psilocybin, 29 patients were given a six-week course of escitalopram. Each group received similar psychological support of around 20 hours in total. Both groups showed significant improvement in depressive symptoms, even up to 6 months after treatment (the researchers stopped monitoring at 6 months). However those given psilocybin reported greater improvements in social functioning and psychological connectedness, with large effect sizes.

Co-first author Dr David Erritzoe, Clinical Director and Deputy Head of the Centre for Psychedelic Research, Imperial College, London, commented:

“This is important because improving connectedness and having greater meaning in life can significantly enhance a person's quality of life and long-term mental health. The study suggests that psilocybin therapy might be a more holistic treatment option for depression, addressing both the symptoms of depression and overall well-being. This could make a substantial difference in the overall happiness and daily activities of those suffering from depression, providing a more joined-up approach to mental health treatment”.

The researchers note that the patients were only treated for 6 weeks, and that many of the patients received additional treatments over the 6-month follow up.

Dr Erritzoe cautioned:

“Psilocybin is still an experimental drug; it has not yet been approved for general use. It is administered in highly controlled and protected environments: these precautions are not found in recreational psychedelic use, which is known for having unpredictable and potentially harmful effects, especially for vulnerable people struggling with mental health issues”.

Commenting, Johan Lundberg (Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry at the

Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm) said:

“This report is an important attempt to compare the clinical value of psilocybin compared to a state-of-the-art treatment of major depressive disorder. The results come with several caveats, including the lack of a non-inferiority analysis and failure to report other interventions given during the follow-up period. That said, as a hypothesis generating piece it may benefit the field substantially. For now, we don’t know if psilocybin will be approved for the treatment of major depression, but if so, it won’t be for everyone. Some future patients might prefer psychedelic treatment over SSRI, but some patients may be intimidated by the dramatic alterations in perception and confrontations with challenging emotions that psychedelic drugs promote”.

This is an independent comment, Professor Lundberg was not involved in this work.

Notes:

Publication details: Effect of psilocybin versus escitalopram on depression symptom severity in patients with moderate-to-severe major depressive disorder: observational 6-month follow-up of a phase 2, double-blind, randomised, controlled trial. In press at Lancet eClinicalMedicine. Authors: David Erritzoe, Tommaso Barba, Kyle T. Greenway, Roberta Murphy, Jonny Martell, Bruna Giribaldi, Christopher Timmermann, Ashleigh Murphy-Beiner, Michelle Baker Jones, David Nutt, Brandon Weiss, and Robin Carhart-Harris. Paper reference 10.1016/j.eclinm.2024.102799
See Psychedelic experiences linked with improved sexual function | Imperial News | Imperial College London

Method of Research

Randomized controlled/clinical trial

UK study shows there is less stigma against LGBTQ people than you might think, but people with mental health problems continue to experience higher levels of stigma

European College of Neuropsychopharmacology

A study of stigma against LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) people in British Society has shown that there is less stigma against these groups that might be expected from social and media perceptions. The same study looked at stigma against people with mental health problems and discovered that they continue to experience higher levels of stigma. This work will be presented at the ECNP conference in Milan. This is an advance press release see note below.

Researcher Professor Karen Ersche (University of Cambridge) said, “Our aim was to look at the level of stigma against LGBTQ people in British society, and also to look at stigma against people with mental health problems. This is the first such survey to compare what society thinks to what individuals think about minority groups, the results surprised us”.

The researchers carried out 2 separate studies, measuring stigma via the Perceived Discrimination and Devaluation Scale*. They first questioned 264 people about how mental health problems are perceived by society. The researchers also broke down the answers according to whether or not the respondents had experienced close contact with people with mental health problems or not. They then asked how they personally felt about people with mental health problems.

For the second part of the study, the researchers asked 124 people similar questions about how they felt society would perceive LGBTQ people, and how they themselves felt about them.

Researcher Mr Charlie Evans (University of Cambridge), who conducted the study, said, “It’s difficult for people to admit to any prejudice against a particular group, so we first asked participants what levels of stigma exists in society- this gave them a reference point In each case, we found that respondents perceived society to be less accepting of LGBTQ orientation or mental health problems than they themselves were.

We found that the societal level of stigma against LGBTQ people was less than we might have expected. Personal and societal stigma against LGBTQ people is less than the level perceived against people with mental health problems.

I think this throws up two questions. Why is societal mental health stigma perceived more strongly than LGBTQ stigma? And why do people with mental health problems self-stigmatise more than LGBTQ people? Perhaps this has something to do with the idea that a mental health problem is experienced as a personal deficit rather than an identity; there are no ‘mental health pride” celebrations for example.

Our work may suggest that different approaches are needed to reduce stigma. It seems awareness campaigns have helped reduce LGBTQ stigma, given that prior contact with LGBTQ people tends to reduce stigma, but this effect is less marked with mental health stigma. We need to be open in looking for what works with overcoming mental health stigma. It may also be useful to undertake similar studies throughout Europe, to understand what level of stigma exists in different countries.”

Commenting, Professor Pedro Morgado (School of Medicine, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal).said:

“The most relevant finding of the study is the existence of significant stigma both against LGBTQ people and against people with mental illness. These are early results and should be interpreted with caution, considering the risk of minimizing the severe impacts (also on mental health) of stigma and discrimination against LGBTQ people. Of course, LGBTQ issues relate to a stable and defining characteristic of individuals, whereas mental illness refers to a pathology.

“Even though the results cannot be generalized beyond the UK, they show that the work being done in the fight against LGBTQ discrimination produces positive outcomes and should be continued and deepened. So, I would welcome studies on stigma from other countries. Regarding mental illness, interventions to reduce stigma should leverage some of the models used in LGBTQ issues, contributing to greater visibility of people with mental illness, increased knowledge about the diseases, and a better understanding of their nature and impacts”.

Dr Morgado (https://icvs.uminho.pt/member/pedro-morgado/) was not involved in this work, this is an independent comment.

Notes

*See Perceived Discrimination and Devaluation Scale: https://supp.apa.org/psycarticles/supplemental/prj0000142/prePRJ20141264Self.pdf

Norway now has more electric vehicles than petrol-powered cars

• FRANCE 24 English

Norway's road federation revealed on Tuesday that the number of electric vehicles on its roads was now larger than the number of petrol cars. Though diesel cars are still the most common type of vehicle in the country, EVs could overtake them in 2026. In this edition, we take a look at why Norway is leading the way in the transition to electric mobility. Also on the show, we discover the sweet Algerian spread that's creating a viral sensation in France and attracting the attention of regulators

How plastic pollution poses challenge for Canada marine conservation

Montreal (AFP) – One of the largest producers of plastic waste per capita, Canada is struggling to protect its designated marine protected areas from this pollution, experts warn.

Issued on: 20/09/2024 -

In 2020, more than 90 percent of plastic waste ended up in landfills or was incinerated, and only seven percent was recycled, according to the Canadian environment ministry

Significant plastic pollution

With more than four million tonnes produced each year, Canada generates "two to four times more" plastic pollution per person than the global average, said Anthony Merante of the NGO Oceana.

In 2020, more than 90 percent of plastic waste ended up in landfills or was incinerated, and only seven percent was recycled, according to the Canadian environment ministry.

The remaining roughly two percent, or 90,000 tonnes, ended up in the environment.

"Plastic pollution is so ubiquitous at this point, we can't protect marine protected areas from plastic pollution unless we stop plastic pollution at the source," said Merante, head of Oceana Canada's plastics campaign.

Globally, annual plastic production has more than doubled in 20 years to reach 460 million tonnes.

Only nine percent is recycled, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

And more than half of it is single-use packaging -- "things that we use for a few moments and that end up lasting hundreds of years," said Merante.
New regulations

In June 2022, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's federal government banned six types of single-use plastics with the goal of achieving zero plastic waste by 2030.

The regulation is being challenged in court by Canadian and American plastics manufacturers, as well as petrochemical firms.

Several municipalities, including Montreal, Vancouver and Edmonton, have already banned certain single-use plastics.

More biodegradable utensils are being found on the banks near the island city of Montreal, said Anne-Marie Asselin, a marine biologist who has been carrying out collection campaigns along the Saint Lawrence River for five years.

This shows that people's "behaviors have not changed," but the kind of waste now generated has "much less impact on the environment," she noted.

Ottawa is also working on creating a federal plastics registry.

The goal is to hold manufacturers accountable by requiring them to report on the life cycle of the plastics they put into circulation.

In the case of federal marine protected areas, few measures have been put in place against plastic pollution.

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans maintains that it is, however, "taken into account" when creating new marine protected areas and that since 2019, it has been prohibited to dump waste in protected areas.

© 2024 AFP

Scientists track plastic waste in pristine Canada marine park

Petit-Saguenay (Canada) (AFP) – Old tires, discarded cups, and cigarette butts litter the magnificent Saguenay Fjord, a marine protected area in eastern Canada that attracts belugas and other whales seeking respite.

Issued on: 20/09/2024 -

Viridiana Jimenez, a marine biologist with Reseau Quebec Maritime, collects trash near L'Anse-Saint-Jean © Sebastien ST-JEAN / AFP

Cliffs sculpted by glaciers flank the fjord that connects to the Saint Lawrence River, far from any major city. The marine sanctuary was granted protected status 26 years ago.

"It's one thing to legislate to make it a protected area, but then how do we maintain it?" said Canadian biologist Anne-Marie Asselin before diving in search of trash.

With her team from the Blue Organization, she navigates the brackish waters of the fjord to document pollution in the area.

The objective is twofold: to identify the most common waste to target the plastics that should be banned from sale, and to predict the banks most at risk of being polluted, based in particular on currents, to better target cleaning campaigns.

Worrying trend

Members of the Blue Organization team remove a tire from the waters of the Saguenay Fjord © Sebastien ST-JEAN / AFP

By paddle board, on foot or freediving, Asselin and her crew collect all kinds of waste in the bay of the village of Petit-Saguenay.

Under a blazing hot sun, the group's Laurence Martel sorted the waste by more than 100 criteria, including by brand, to eventually seek to hold producers responsible for their products' entire lifecycle.

"The most popular find is the cigarette butt, it is omnipresent," Martel said.

She noted that a single cigarette butt can contaminate up to 500 liters of water due to the thousands of chemical compounds it contains.

In five years, the team's research has revealed a worrying trend: the concentration of plastic waste is increasing significantly closer to the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and the Atlantic, "suggesting a shift in waste from urban areas towards downstream parts of the river."

"Very often, the smallest plastics are the ones that pollute the most," Martel said.

Ecosystem health

Laurence Martel, plastic pollution project manager for the Blue Organization, sorts waste collected in the Saguenay Fjord © Sebastien ST-JEAN / AFP

Waste becomes microplastics as it disintegrates. Most often invisible to the naked eye, these particles are made of polymers and other toxic compounds that vary from five millimeters to one thousandth of a millimeter.

They are found throughout the food chain of marine life, particularly invertebrates.

The Blue Organization fishes and analyzes these "sentinel species" -- considered gauges of the health of their environment -- during each cleanup operation.

"If your mussels and your invertebrates are starting to suffer, that could be an indicator that the health of the ecosystem is also declining," said Miguel Felismino, of McGill University in Montreal.

Seated on a catamaran, Felismino measured, photographed and arranged the mussel specimens, which he will also analyze in a laboratory to study the effects of microplastics.

Using a homemade pump and a few pipes placed at the front of the boat, he also collected surface water and sediment from the seabed for his research

Behavioral changes

Miguel Felismino of McGill University analyzes mollusks © Sebastien ST-JEAN / AFP

The Blue Organization wants to produce a complete picture of the plastic lifecycle in protected areas such as the Saguenay-Saint Lawrence Marine Park.

But to protect these ecosystems, the solution is "also to trigger behavioral changes" in people, said the biologist Asselin, who called on artists to "raise awareness" of the situation.

This could involve making music from natural sounds or creating a "literary translation" of scientific research, Asselin said.

"With climate change, the soundscapes associated with certain territories are set to evolve," said one such artist, Emilie Danylewick, before plunging her hydrophone into the water to record the sounds.

Danylewick said her work is a "way to preserve the current soundscape memory of the territory."

© 2024 AFP

WAIT, WHAT?!

Two Uruguayans convicted for trafficking $3 mn in cow gallstones

Montevideo (AFP) – Two Uruguayan siblings were sentenced to prison this week for trafficking more than $3 million in bovine gallstones to Hong Kong for use in Chinese medicine, Uruguayan authorities and Interpol said.

Issued on: 20/09/2024 -

Gallstones found in the bladders of cattle during meat processing are highly prized in Asia, where they are used in alternative medicine

© Pablo PORCIUNCULA / AFP/File

A 50-year-old man was sentenced to two years and one month in prison for smuggling and money laundering, while his sister, aged 48, received an 18-month jail sentence for money laundering but was released on probation.

They acquired the gallstones from Uruguayan slaughterhouses, according to the Monday court ruling and Interpol.

Uruguay has more than three cows for each of the country's 3.5 million inhabitants -- the highest number per capita in the world.

It exports most of its production.

The charge sheet said the defendant paid between $198,000 and $200,000 a kilo -- more than the price of gold currently at around $83,000 a kilo -- for the gallstones, which were acquired from slaughterhouse owners or staff in five different Uruguayan departments.

He then sent them by DHL to two companies in Hong Kong identified in the investigation by the initials H.H.L. and H.T.B.T.C.

The investigation revealed he made a profit of about $8,000 per kilo.

Court documents showed he received a total of $3.2 million in bank transfers from his Hong Kong customers and deposited an additional $188,000 into his sister's account.

Uruguayan authorities seized a vehicle and a property in Montevideo belonging to the pair jointly valued at about $2.5 million.

Gallstones found in the bladders of cattle during meat processing are highly prized in Asia, where they are used in alternative medicine for their purported anti-inflammatory properties and to fight fever.

© 2024 AFP

MIGRANT LABOUR

Ohtani makes MLB history with first 50-homer, 50-steal season

Miami (AFP) – Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani made Major League Baseball history on Thursday, becoming the first player ever to record 50 home runs and 50 stolen bases in a single season.

Issued on: 20/09/2024 -

Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani hits a home run in the seventh inning against the Miami Marlins © Chris Arjoon / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP

Ohtani officially established MLB's 50-50 club with a seventh-inning homer in the Dodgers' 20-4 victory over the Marlins in Miami.

The win clinched the Dodgers' post-season berth -- a first for Ohtani, who never made the playoffs even as he earned two American League Most Valuable Player awards while with the Los Angles Angels.

The Dodgers had runners on the corners when Ohtani came to the plate with two outs in the seventh. He launched a curveball from Mike Baumann over the left centerfield wall.

His second home run of the contest gave him 50 for the season, after two stolen bases earlier in the game pushed his tally of steals to 51.

The Japanese standout had smashed his 49th home run of 2024 in the sixth, a 438-foot blast that tied Shawn Green's record for most by a Dodger in a single season, set in 2001.

And to cap a monster offensive performance, Ohtani added a third home run in the ninth inning, finishing the game with 51 homers and 51 steals so far this season.

He had six hits in six at-bats, including two doubles for a total of five extra-base hits.

He drove in 10 runs and scored four and could only laugh as he returned to the dugout after his final blast, the cheers of fans at LoanDepot Park ringing in his ears.

"To be honest, I'm the one probably most surprised," Ohtani said through a translator of the spectacular show. "I have no idea where this came from, but I'm glad I performed well today."

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, addressing his players in the clubhouse as they celebrated the victory, noted the achievement.

"This is a game that has been played for over 200 years," Roberts said. "And this is something that has never been done."
Something to cherish

But Ohtani himself tried to keep the focus on the team.

"I'm glad that the team won," he said, admitting that with so much attention focused on his 50-50 pursuit, it "was something I wanted to get over as quickly as possible.

"It's something that I'm going to cherish for a very long time."

Already the fastest player to reach 40 homers and 40 stolen bases in a season, Ohtani had nabbed his 50th steal in the first inning when he belted a leadoff double and stole third, his well-timed slide allowing him to evade a tag by Marlins third baseman Connor Norby.

Ohtani scored on a sacrifice fly and one inning later he notched his 51st steal, swiping second after a single.

Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani beats the tag by Miami Marlins third baseman Connor Norby to post his 50th stolen base of the MLB season © Megan Briggs / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP

With his 50th stolen base, Ohtani surpassed Roberts for the second most by a Japanese-born player in MLB history, a list led by Ichiro Suzuki, who stole 56 in 2001.

Ohtani had earlier this season become MLB's all-time leader in home runs among Japanese-born players when he surpassed the 175 of Hideki Matsui.

The 30-year-old, who signed a record $700 million free agent deal with the Dodgers in the off-season, now has 222 career home runs.

Meanwhile, Ohtani is ramping up his rehabilitation from surgery on his throwing elbow. Unable to showcase his pitching prowess this year, he has been throwing bullpen sessions and could face hitters soon.

© 2024 AFP

A New Left Wing Party in the UK?

September 18, 2024 in Uncategorized by craig

Keir Starmer has left about 70% of the landscape of historic western political and economic thought vacant to his left. It is unsurprising that a new party will arrive to claim the unoccupied ground.

A meeting at the weekend discussed a new party provisionally called The Collective, which may be led by Jeremy Corbyn, who addressed the meeting. That was strangely secretive but seems to have been an adjunct of Corbyn’s Peace and Justice Movement international conference, which occurred simultaneously and featured many of the same cast.

The Collective is not new. This name was used for a loose coalition of independent candidates in the last general election, although it did not register as a political party so the name was not on the ballot paper. I had expected it to join forces with the Workers Party for which I stood, which did not happen. I think a non-aggression pact was broadly observed, though I recall grumbles.

My general attitude is positive – I think a new left party is urgently needed as it sinks in to people just how right wing Starmer is. He is also becoming massively unpopular very quickly, while the Tories still are.

But I believe these practical points are important on the detail of what needs to be done on the left in the UK today.

1) Corbyn and Galloway must come together.

The Workers’ Party got 210,000 votes at the General Election, which is a good start that cannot be ignored, and is building a membership and organisational base.

I count both men as friends and I know they get on fine on a personal basis. Jeremy remains the leader who gained three million more general election votes in 2017 than Keir Starmer did in 2024. George Galloway has a large base of dedicated support.

The failure to come together as a united left in the 2024 general election was a historic opportunity lost. The blame for this did not lie with Galloway, who in January 2024 himself put a motion to the Workers Party conference enabling such merging. I did not discuss it direct with Jeremy, but I believe he thought his best chance of election was as an Independent.

My own belief is that a Corbyn led party might have won several seats and this was a tactical mistake by Jeremy; whereas George needs to tone down his populist social conservatism, which alienated many around Jeremy, if the aim is for a united left.

The biggest mistake of all would be for the two parties to refuse to unite; which sadly is far from impossible. Initially any new party needs to be led by Jeremy to establish itself. George should be Deputy Leader. Neither man would wish to serve for an extended period.

I would like to see Andrew Feinstein eventually lead, not least because he most definitely would not want to do it.

2) The party must be anti-zionist.

The destruction of Jeremy’s very real prospects of being Prime Minister by the utterly ludicrous, Establishment organised slur of anti-semitism cannot simply be ignored.

The truth is, I am very sorry to say, that as Labour leader Jeremy was far too willing to attempt to appease the zionist lobby, by throwing people who would have walked through fire for him under the bus. Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker, Ken Livingstone and Chris Williamson are among the scores of people who come to mind.

A great many of the expelled activists were Jewish.

A new party of the left should make plain that these anti-genocide activists are positively welcome, and celebrated.

3) The party must avoid cliquishness

If the new party is essentially Jeremy’s project, this is a problem. He does tend to surround himself with a very tight and unchanging group. If you will allow me a moment of delusion of grandeur, the fact that they held a conference on forming a new party of the left and did not bother to contact Craig Murray is an indicator they are not reaching out widely.

According to the report in the Canary, the Director of the new party will be Pamela Featherstone, who is Director of Corbyn’s Peace and Justice Project, unelected to either position.

I exclude Ms Fetherstone from this next, because I simply do not know in her case. But one irony, and the reason so many decent activists were stabbed in the back when Corbyn was leader, is that many of the close Corbyn clique are in fact zionists.

They are “soft” zionists, you know, the ones who want to treat the natives kindly, pat Palestinians on the head and build them cultural centres in their reservations. But zionists they are. They support the continued existence of the terrorist entity in the Middle East.

The Peace and Justice Project has laudable aims and does advocacy and campaigning work worldwide, with a focus inter alia on South America, influenced by Jeremy’s impressive and underrated wife Laura. But I am obliged to say it is not the most transparent of organisations.

The Peace and Justice Project Ltd is a private company. I believe it has a very serious membership income but I am not entirely sure what it is. The published accounts tell you next to nothing, certainly not its income or membership figures.

There are a number of linked organisations – Progressive International is another – which appear to primarily exist to pay their staff to do stuff that other activists do for nothing, only with added layers of self-importance and entitlement.

Perhaps the paying bit is a good thing, and doubtless the abuse is much worse in the world of right wing think tanks. But there is just something about it all that does not quite sit right with me, and makes me think it is not a good basis for a mass political party.

So, in short, a genuine new party of the left cannot just automatically get run by the bunch around Jeremy Corbyn, as appears to be the presumption.

4) The party must avoid British unionism

I have always found it very strange that there are those who support Irish unification but oppose Scottish Independence. The current support of the UK state for the genocide in Gaza is just one example of its malevolence, which is a feature and not a glitch.

In Scotland the large majority of the left wing are pro-Independence; while the right, including the Starmerite right, are overwhelmingly unionist. The space for a radical left unionist party is very small indeed.

The desire to break up the imperialist UK – whose continuing Imperial instincts have helped devastate Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and Palestine in recent times – is a perfectly decent left wing impulse.

The Alba Party in Scotland is already anti-NATO and anti-monarchy, among other left wing markers.

Ideally, a new left party should simply leave Scotland (and perhaps Wales) alone. If it does wish to campaign in Scotland, it should take the line that Independence is for the Scottish people alone to decide, and suppport the unfettered right of the Scottish people to choose, at a minimum.

But any genuine left wing party should wish to break up the rogue UK state.

The blog is in something of a financial crisis. Over half of subscriptions are now “suspended” by PayPal, which normally happens when your registered credit or debit card expires. The large majority of those whose accounts are “suspended” seem to have no idea it has happened. This is different from “cancellation” which is deliberate.

Please check if your subscription is still active. There is in fact no way to reactivate – you have to make a new subscription with a new card if your card expired.

The bank standing order method works very well for those who do not want to use PayPal.

Gorilla Dicks Are Absolutely Tiny. The Reason Why Is Fascinating

We knew all that chest beating was just overcompensating for something.

Dr. Katie Spalding

Freelance Writer

EditedbyFrancesca Benson

Gorillas talk a big game, what with all their chest thumping and basically continuous farting. But there’s one very specific, very human metric by which they come up humiliatingly short – literally. That’s right: it’s dic

Your basic silverback gorilla, whether Eastern or Western, will be up to 1.8 meters tall and 200 kilograms in weight. For Americans, that’s the equivalent of a 5.9-foot-tall, 441-pound dude, built of so much pure muscle that it can lift more than 800 kilos (1,763 pounds, or around two grand pianos) without breaking a sweat.

“It's hard to measure how strong a gorilla really is, but estimates range from around 4x – 10x stronger than your average human,” notes BBC Wildlife Magazine’s Gorilla Guide. “A silverback gorilla's strength is certainly formidable. All gorillas can tear down banana trees without trying too hard, they've escaped from cages by bending the iron bars, and they have a bite force of around 1300 psi [9 MPa], double that of a lion.”

It’s all very intimidating, and seemingly at odds with another fun gorilla fact that you may not be aware of: that gorillas, as mighty as they are, have the smallest penises in the entire ape family. In fact, it’s the smallest relative to body size of any mammal.

Now, we’re all about equal opportunity dick sizes here at IFLScience, but the miniature nature of the gorilla phallus really is noteworthy. At around 3 centimeters (1.1 inches) long, it’s shorter than the average for a newborn baby in humans, and far smaller than the cut-off for a human micro-penis.

Not only are they the least well-endowed of the family in terms of the, uh, length of their equipment, but they’re also pretty lacking in the ball department too. Their testes are small, their sperm count is low, and even those little swimmers they do shoot out are pretty poor at their actual job: “gorilla sperm [has] extremely low mitochondrial function[...] slow swimming speed and weak swimming force,” explained one study, published earlier this year in the journal eLife.

“Gorillas also have […] a large proportion of immotile and morphologically abnormal sperm,” the authors continued. “Gorilla sperm also bind the egg’s zona pellucida more weakly than other species.”

In fact, so baked-in to the gorilla genome are these underwhelming features that they could now helping our own species to multiply. In that same study, researchers were able to match up certain genes in gorillas with their equivalent in humans, finding that many were markedly enriched in men with low-to-no sperm counts.

Basically, gorillas are nature’s one-shot argument against “big dick energy” having anything to do with actual physiology – and a big “suck it, idiots” to the entire manosphere crowd.

Which is great and all, but it does make us wonder: why?

Why are gorilla penises so tiny?

It may strike you as odd that a silverback gorilla – literally the hugest, most powerful, most literally “alpha” primate there is – would have such minute genitalia. As counterintuitive as it may seem, though, the two facts are actually intrinsically linked: “the male gorilla’s huge stature is in fact the reason why he has such a small penis,” explained Suzanne Harvey, now Head of Schools, Impact, and National Partnerships at the Royal Institution, in a 2012 article for UCL.

Why? It’s simple, really: gorilla societies are both strictly hierarchical and almost always polygynous – that is, there is a single dominant male, and he has sole mating rights with all the females in the group. Basically, their genitals are small because they have no need to be big: “when competition between males occurs through physical aggression, an alpha male may fight off rivals and control his own mating success without the need for sperm competition,” Harvey wrote. “Other physically smaller males have little access to females in the group.”

Compare gorillas to their big-balled chimpanzee cousins, and the picture becomes even clearer. Chimps, unlike gorillas, “live in large multi-male, multi-female groups, where females are able to mate with many males,” Harvey explained. “Sperm can live for up to four days after ejaculation, and consequently when females mate with two males in close succession, sperm from two males can be in direct competition.”

If you’re a male chimp hoping to spurt your DNA into the next generation, then, it’s in your best interest to produce powerful, efficient sperm – and lots of it. The result: a pair of massive testes, more than a third the weight of the chimp’s brain – humans’ come in at less than three percent, for comparison – capable of producing vast amounts of sperm, many times a day.

And yes, we know exactly what you’re thinking…

How do humans measure up?

So, on the scale from “gorilla” to “chimp”, where do humans come? Well, weirdly, it’s kind of a paradox.

“Humans have a much longer and wider penis than the other great apes,” wrote Mark Maslin, a professor of Palaeoclimatology at UCL (a hotspot for this area of research, apparently), in a 2017 article for The Conversation. However, "our testicles are rather small […] and produce a relatively small amount of sperm.”

Other mating characteristics are equally mismatched in our species. While the human penis may be big, Maslin noted, it’s also “extremely dull – it does not have lumps, ridges, flanges, kinks or any other exciting feature that other primates have.”

That’s not just empty negging: in primates, a boring dick usually a sign that a species is monogamous – and it’s therefore strange to find on humans, Maslin explained. “[It] clashes with the fact that men are significantly larger than women,” he wrote, since that “suggests our evolutionary background involved a significant degree of polygynous, rather than exclusively monogamous, mating.”

There have been many attempts to reconcile these two competing impressions of our species – perhaps men are bigger than women to help protect our laughably pathetic offspring; maybe the supposedly “dull” human penis has a secret weapon in its coronal ridge. But in the end, Maslin suggests, trying to explain humans’ weird genitalia through the lens of wider great ape biology may be the wrong tactic entirely.

“If we view the evolution of monogamy mating systems in humans through the lens of human society it is clear that it takes a huge amount of social effort to maintain and protect more than one mate at a time,” he wrote. “It is only when males have access to additional resources and power that they can protect multiple females, usually by ensuring other males protect them.”

Basically, he explained, it takes a lot of resources and prestige to be able to take on multiple partners as a human – so the solution for most on an individual level has become to simply not. Monogamy becomes culturally endorsed, save for a select few who can afford – or get away with – supporting more.

In other words, Maslin concluded, “in complex human societies the largest and most important sexual organ is the brain.” While gorillas may beat their chests to prove their dominance, male humans might flaunt their cash or wit or good looks; whereas chimps must rely on buckets of spunk to further their family, humans tend to couple up long-term based on personal or social factors.

“Somewhere in our evolutionary past how smart and social we are became the major control on our access to sexual partners,” Maslin wrote. “Not how big or fancy a male’s penis is.”

When Do Kids Start Playing Pretend?

It’s complicated.

By Elena Renken
September 18, 2024

When a kid imitates a cat, or pretends to fly a rocket ship through space, they’re doing something that’s pretty complex: acting as though one thing is actually something else. Learning to pretend is a critical skill and an important stage in a child’s development.

But new research suggests that pretend play comes in many distinct varieties that emerge at different ages. Elena Hoicka, a professor of education at the University of Bristol, divided play types into 18 different categories—such as pretending one object is another and having an imaginary friend—and then surveyed about 900 parents of kids aged 4 months to just under 4 years old (47 months) about when they noticed their kids engaging in these behaviors.

Hoicka wanted to know, do certain kinds of play emerge as we learn specific skills, such as representation, language, cultural knowledge, and socialization? Earlier theorists had suggested that children’s play may reflect their increasing ability to manipulate symbols, for instance. First, they might represent situations that are closely aligned with reality—such as pretending to sleep. Then they could move on to ones that treat inanimate objects as animate—pretending that a doll is sleeping. Older children would be able to make more abstract representations, such as imagining one object is another—a frisbee as a spaceship zooming through the cosmos. But most investigations of these hypotheses had been done in the lab, which can be cumbersome, and typically only addressed a fraction of the variety of play types.

Hoicka says her study was meant, in part, to provide a look at how children play in a natural environment, and to gather large-scale data on a comprehensive number of play types for the first time. Her analysis found that, by 13 months, half of kids will pretend with empty objects; by 15 months, they will pretend with their own bodies: to sleep, or sneeze, or be an animal. By 17 months, they move onto object substitution—the frisbee as a spaceship.

More complex pretend play, the kind that relies on advanced language skills, tends to start later. By the age of 2, she found, most kids will make up elaborate stories with characters and drama, and by the age of 3, they will begin to engage in complete make believe, inventing things that do not exist in the real world, such as Pegasus men who can fly. Hoicka also found that children may begin pretending as early as 4 months, whereas earlier studies suggested pretending does not begin until 8 months of age.

Hoicka began the play-age project nine years ago, before she had her own children and watched them start to pretend. “I can categorize what they’re doing as they go,” she says. Hoicka’s 2-year-old likes pretending with dolls, for example, and her 5-year-old makes up real-world scenarios, like inventing a pretend store with pretend money.

“It’s a really nicely done study,” says Thalia Goldstein, who studies kids’ social and emotional development at George Mason University. She likes that the survey traced the development of so many different “fine-grained” pretend play behaviors. Researchers only began to take the study of child play behavior seriously during the 1950s and ’60s, Goldstein says. Ensuing decades of research have linked pretend play to creativity, social skills, emotional control, and imagining others’ thoughts, among other abilities.

Around age 9 or 10, kids typically let go of pretend play, says Sandra Russ, who researches play therapy at Case Western Reserve University. But the element of fantasy often reappears in hobbies like writing, art, and other creative pursuits, which extend into adulthood.

Hoicka wants her findings to help scientists answer questions about whether pretending actually helps us learn certain skills. One school of thought holds that it is a precursor to understanding that others can have different thoughts, or theory of mind, Hoicka says. Holding two ideas in your head—like that a plate can also be a hat!—could serve as practice for taking on different perspectives. Perhaps imagining another outcome, or different characters, could train that muscle in young kids.

Long-term outcomes good for face transplant recipients, study finds

by Ernie Mundell

There have been 50 face transplants performed in 11 countries since the surgery was pioneered back in 2005, and long-term outcomes have been favorable, a new review finds.

In total, 85% of people receiving these complex surgeries survived five years, and 74% were still alive a decade after transplant completion, researchers report.

When the numbers focused on deaths linked to transplants per se, five- and ten-year survival rose to 96% and 83%, respectively.

That's significantly better than survival for other types of transplant, said the team of Finnish researchers. For example, at 10 years post-surgery, survival for liver transplants reaches 61% and for heart transplants the number is 65%, they noted.

"The first 50 face transplants in the world during a period of 18 years demonstrate a promising survival rate of the grafts, exceeding several solid organ transplants," concluded a team led by Dr. Pauliina Homsy, from the department of plastic surgery at the University of Helsinki.

Her team published their report Sept. 18 in the journal JAMA Surgery.

Homsy's team collected data on all 50 face transplants conducted in 48 patients, carried out at 18 centers in 11 countries. Two of the patients required a second transplant, which in each case proved successful, the researchers noted.

Nineteen patients were operated on in North America (18 in the United States), 29 in Europe, 1 in China and 1 in Russia, the review found.

Most (81%) of patients were male. In 58% of cases, some kind of injury/trauma resulted in disfigurement that necessitated the face transplant. Burns were the cause of another 22% of face transplants.

In 52% of cases, a full-face transplant was required and in 48% the transplant restored only a part of the face.

As with every transplant, the body's immune system can attack the new tissue, and patients often must take anti-rejection medicines long-term.

Among the six face transplants deemed to have failed (over an average of about nine years of follow-up), immune system rejection was to blame in four cases.

Homsy's team stressed that there has been a lack of research into other outcomes. Those outcomes include how well the new face might function over time; whether there are long-term risks for illness (such as heart disease, diabetes or cancer) and the mental health implications of navigating the world with a new face.

Drs. Kristen Stephen and Scott Hollenbeck, plastic surgeons at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, wrote an editorial accompanying the new review. They note that the world's first face transplant was performed in 2005 in France, after a 46-year-old woman living in Lyon was severely injured in a dog attack.

Surgeons "re-established" her nose and mouth, which had been lost in the attack, and the patient went on to recover. She died in 2016 from lung cancer.

"The Lyon patient's remarkable recovery showcased the potential for restoring both form and function through such transplants," the experts said.

Face transplants have only gained in sophistication since then, Stephen and Hollenbeck noted.

"Most of these patients initially sustained a catastrophic trauma and have exhausted traditional reconstructive options," they wrote. "As this specialty has evolved, more patients have received bone constructs and larger skin surfaces within their transplants."

Indeed, there's been a kind of "global learning curve for face transplant," they say, with survival improving across all centers where these delicate operations are performed.

But the two experts also point to one barrier: the cost of these very expensive surgeries and their follow-up. They note that after a peak in facial transplants in 2011-2014, their numbers have dropped.

"In an era of value-based care and cost containment, starting or maintaining" programs that include face transplants is a challenge for many hospitals, Stephen and Hollenbeck concluded.

More information: Find out more about face transplants at Johns Hopkins Medicine.

Pauliina Homsy et al, An Update on the Survival of the First 50 Face Transplants Worldwide, JAMA Surgery (2024). DOI: 10.1001/jamasurg.2024.3748

Journal information:

JAMA Surgery