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Two specialized muscles give them a range of expression that wolves eyes’ lack.

HALEY WEISS
3:13 PM ET

Dogs, more so than almost any other domesticated species, are desperate for human eye contact. When raised around people, they begin fighting for our attention when they’re as young as four weeks old. It’s hard for most people to resist a petulant flash of puppy-dog eyes—and according to a new study, that pull on the heartstrings might be exactly why dogs can give us those looks at all.

A paper published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that dogs’ faces are structured for complex expression in a way that wolves’ aren’t, thanks to a special pair of muscles framing their eyes. These muscles are responsible for that “adopt me” look that dogs can pull by raising their inner eyebrows. It’s the first biological evidence scientists have found that domesticated dogs might have evolved a specialized ability used expressly to communicate better with humans.

For the study, a team at the University of Portsmouth’s Dog Cognition Centre looked at two muscles that work together to widen and open a dog’s eyes, causing them to appear bigger, droopier, and objectively cuter. The retractor anguli oculi lateralis muscle and the levator anguli oculi medialis muscle (mercifully known as RAOL and LAOM) form two short, straight lines, which connect the ring of muscle around a dog’s eye to either end of the brow above.

More:

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/06/domestication-gave-dogs-two-new-eye-muscles/591868/?fbclid=IwAR18Z8kp8K9iLNcfYmFUlzg6I6_9V9nTpY99onuCPxnb2_EaHkDn-8D9L8w

Some of the graphics are missing. 2019 is in red. 2018 is orange. Black is the median since 1979.




Earlier this year, we saw the unprecedented disappearance of sea ice from the Bering Sea during a time of year when it should be gaining ice. This trend toward plummeting sea ice in the Alaskan and Canadian Arctic continues, this time centered in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas.

Why it matters: Sea ice loss is disrupting the balance of heat in the Northern Hemisphere, and it is reverberating throughout ecosystems, causing everything from plankton blooms near the Arctic Ocean surface to mass haul-outs of walruses in Russia and Alaska. It may also be disrupting weather patterns across the Northern Hemisphere.

The big picture: Across the entire Arctic, sea ice extent is at a record low for this point in the year, and depending on weather conditions during the summer, it's possible that 2019 could set a new record low ice extent.

The all-time record low sea ice extent was set in 2012, although subsequent years have nearly beaten that mark.
So far, weather conditions have favored an early start to the Greenland ice melt season, too, and ice melt there, unlike disappearing sea ice, contributes to global sea level rise.
The portion of Greenland experiencing melting ice hit a record high for the date on June 13, with temperatures rising to near freezing at Summit Station, in the center of the ice sheet.
The Arctic is warming at more than twice the rate of the rest of the world.

More: https://www.axios.com/arctic-melt-climate-change-canada-e83ec6a3-6061-402f-92c5-4c887aa603fb.html

(TMU) — According to researchers from the world’s first psychedelic research center, Centre for Psychedelic Research at London’s Imperial College, psilocybin—or “magic mushrooms”—could replace prescribed antidepressants within five years. The assertion follows similar research from John Hopkins University, which suggests victims of emotional trauma may experience more long-term relief when using natural psilocybin fungi instead of chemical drugs.

Dr. Robin Earhart-Harris, head of the research center, is leading one of the first trials to determine how therapy involving the mushrooms—which are currently illegal in the UK—compares to leading antidepressants. While he won’t pre-judge the study, he did share that the trials have resulted in a cathartic emotional “release.” He compared this to the dulled, “blunted” effect of prescribed antidepressants. It is the first of many studies planned at London’s Imperial College.

For the trial, 60 participants with moderate to severe depression will be given psilocybin treatment. They will be accompanied by a therapy session with a clinical psychologist. Participants will be randomly allocated to receive either the fungi or the placebo. Neither the researchers nor the participants will know who is in each group.

The effects of taking psilocybin will be compared with the antidepressant escitalopram. The drug is a type of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). It accounts for the largest percent of the antidepressant market.

More: https://themindunleashed.com/2019/06/magic-mushrooms-replace-antidepressants-5-years.html?fbclid=IwAR244P9PD7oNbzQdZGrwnZlgdhb2EJTCEZV2rGx-50c_QEbxZIRe0CQ2VdY

We believe my Mom died early because she drank grapefruit juice every day with her medications. Grapefruit juice causes your body to take in a lot more of the drug than you normally would naturally. Evidently, it sounds like CBD may have the same issue so if you are taking a anxiety medication, blood thinners or even using pain relievers you may want to be careful to not do it too much together and I would for sure talk to your doctor about any such combinations.

This is probably more of an issue if you used CBD regularly.

xperts share how cannabidiol can impact anxiety medication, blood thinners and even pain relievers

Snip: Other experts seem to agree. Nearly 60 percent of the medications on the market are metabolized through a set of liver enzymes — called cytochrome P450, or CYP450 — that are, coincidentally, the same enzymes that break down CBD, Henry explained. Previous research suggests that CBD is a very strong inhibitor of the CYP450 enzymes. This means that if you take CBD while on another medication, it could block these critical enzymes, allowing more of the medication to get into your system.

“So, let’s say you’re on a medication like warfarin or Coumadin, a really common medication we give to a lot of patients to thin their blood,” Henry said. “If [CBD] is blocking the metabolism of warfarin, that warfarin is now higher and more active and can either become toxic or cause other problems.” In the case of a blood thinner like warfarin, “other problems” could entail a traumatic bleed or a dangerous hemorrhage, she added.

The same goes for benzodiazepines (or benzos) like Xanax or Ativan, which are used to treat anxiety. If CBD is taken in conjunction with one of these drugs, it could increase the side effects and potentially cause you to feel more sedated or drowsy. In some rare cases, the drug combo may become toxic or even interfere with your respiratory system, according to Henry. Doctors suspect that certain antibiotics and even NSAIDs (think Aleve or Advil) are altered by CBD consumption as well, Hurd said.

More: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cbd-medication-interaction_l_5c9271efe4b08c4fec336ff2

There are plenty of horror stories about the U.S. healthcare system; for a supposedly advanced nation, the inability to provide basic, affordable care to ordinary Americans is baffling to Europeans, especially.

Sometimes U.S. citizens need to travel abroad to see exactly what they are missing; a visit to the emergency room is traumatic enough, it seems ridiculously unfair to saddle someone with years of debt too.

Back in 2006, Nashville, Tennessee-based author Mary Robinette Kowal was in Iceland working as a puppeteer on a children’s television show called Lazytown. One day, while doing a regular check, she found a lump. “This wasn’t the first time I’d found a lump, but there’s always a sense of dread, Mary Robinette told Bored Panda. “Even though I knew it was probably nothing, because there’s no history of breast cancer in my family, there’s still a chance that it is going to be a problem.”

“I was dreading the process of having to navigate a healthcare system in a foreign language. I assumed that it would be as complicated as it was here, with the added challenge of not speaking much Icelandic.”

More: https://www.boredpanda.com/lump-referral-cancer-center-iceland-american-healthcare-mary-robinette-kowal/?afterlogin=savevote&post=1745270&score=1&fbclid=IwAR3crdZJhwY32TyW3jGFq5CUmOEIIJFdNwx0OEkMsinIGWr9RHhEO0APH1I&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=organic