INTERESTING TIMES

Lots of great quotes from research articles (complete with pubmed links) here:
http://heracommunityclinic.wordpress.com/2012/01/20/just-quotes-about-probiotics/

They don't mention the fact that adipose tissue actually MAKES estrogen. Grow a gut and the moobs are soon to come.
( article )

I look up cocaine and find this impressive list of slang about it. My goodness. I have never tried it in any form. It was "discovered" in 1860 when someone happened to notice that tasting it numbs the tongue. Pretty soon everybody was using it for toothaches, and in 1894 doctors started using it as a local anesthetic for surgeries, especially to the nose, eyes (lacrimal ducts!), and sinuses. Freud didn't think it was addictive, but it is, because it activates the mesolimbic dopamine pathway, the reward and desire pathway, the addiction pathway. Cocaine is a dopamine reuptake inhibitor. It is also a serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor. But these effects should not happen if it is a tiny local dose. The local numbing effect occurs because cocaine blocks nerve permeability to sodium, preventing nerve transmission. The vasoconstrictive effect is due to the inhibition of norepi reuptake. Cocaine is the only anesthetic that is vasoconstrictive, the rest vasodilate necessitating the use of injected epinephrine to minimize bleeding and loss of the anesthetic into the systemic circulation. Can anybody tell me where the world's bounty of cocaine is coming from these days?

Current students using this study guide please send me a message if you find errors! Thanx.
( minor surgery study questions )

from Medscape
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/710808?src=mpnews&spon=12&uac=89474MT
( notes )

I am hanging out at a roadside pullout with lots of hippies, somewhere in the south. There is a river down below, but the crowd isn't interested in the river. Instead everybody is hanging out with the cars and smoking dope. They're a friendly crowd and I am right at home. I am doing something, and when I finish I decide to head north, but instead I drive south. I go south a few miles before checking the map, turning around, and heading back toward more familiar grounds.
( more )

Part of my method for keeping my boat afloat in this world is keeping a calendar, and I am currently going through September to make sure nothing fell through the cracks. Sometimes, when lacking other paper, I take notes in my calendar. On September 6 I took some notes during Orientation at NCNM on Zwickey's talk. Here's what I thought worth noting.
( for the record )