Thursday Things: Mice, Murder, and Butter Edition
19 January 2023. Vol 5 No 3. By Dan McGirt. #180
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“Research to help mice live longer? We’ll see about that.” Photo by Walid Elmarkou on Unsplash
Mice get all the good stuff first
As we have seen again and again at Thursday Things, mice seem to get all the new biomedical advances before the rest of us. And here we go again:
Two research teams reverse signs of aging in mice
A decade after Kyoto University biologist Shinya Yamanaka won a share of a Nobel Prize for discovering a cocktail of proteins that reprogram adult cells into versatile stem cells, two teams argue the proteins can turn back the clock for entire organisms—perhaps one day humans. One group at a biotech used gene therapy to deliver some of the so-called Yamanaka factors into old mice, and modestly extended their life span. And a separate team followed a similar strategy to reverse aging-like changes in genetically engineered mice.
In both cases, the Yamanaka factors appear to have restored part of the animals’ epigenome, chemical modifications on DNA and proteins that help regulate gene activity, to a more youthful state.
Will this technique work to reverse aging in humans? Unclear. But I hope scientists can clear that up soon. In the meantime, lucky mice!
Better know your butter
There was some kind of Twitter tempest in a tea pot about Irish butter last week. I neither know nor care about the details, but it did lead me to this interesting article about the different kinds of butter.
Your Complete Guide to the Different Types of Butter
There is a buttery chart that shows the difference in butter fat composition, taste, and best use for various kinds of butter. Is American butter the best? Normally I’d say yes from reflex. But I have to admit that in the butter arena, America may not be the best. The contenders include Irish butter, European butter, clarified butter, Amish butter (which I think should count in the US column!), and cultured butter (which seems to be some strange butter-yogurt hybrid.)
Whatever type you’re serving, just pass the butter, please!
The best butter is the butter near you. Photo by Sorin Gheorghita on Unsplash
Dueling Damsels
We occasionally hear some idealistic bright spark opine that the world would be so much more peaceful and harmonious if only women were in charge. There would be no more war or violence, we’d all get along and resolve our differences peacefully and — yeah, right.
We previously featured the topless duel at rapiers between the Princess Pauline Pauline Metternich-Sándor and Countess Kilmannsegg that was precipitated by a dispute over flower arrangements at the Vienna opera. In case you thought that was a one-off here are several more examples from history of women facing off in a duel
Women Scrapping with Swords and Pistols: Famous Female Duels
However common the practice may have been amongst aristocratic men, women generally used other means to decide their quarrels and disagreements. But history does record the odd “petticoat duel” when two ladies decided to settle it out with swords or pistols. There were many reasons, some trivial, which led to female duels: contemporary actresses challenged each other over which of them was the superior artiste; society ladies fought over their standing at a social event; and one woman even fought another after an unpleasant remark was made about her age. But most often the cause behind female dueling was jealousy over a man.
It happens.
The article recaps the topless duel and also gives us these gems:
The Earliest Female Duel on Record: “One of the earliest known duels between women was fought between two Neapolitan noblewomen - Diambra de Pettinella and Isabella de Carazzi - in 1552. An intriguing inversion of the medieval trope of shining knights in armor jousting for the hand of a fair damsel, it involved winning the affections of a man named Fabio de Zeresola.” Lucky Fabio. Or maybe not — I’d be a more than a little afraid of the winner. (This showdown was immortalized in the painting ‘Combate de Mujeres’ seen below.)
A Patriotic Duel: “In 1886, a bizarre quarrel erupted between two lady doctors of different nationalities. Fiery French feminist and doctor Madame Marie-Rose Astie de Valsayre got into a heated exchange with fellow feminist and American doctor named Miss Shelby over the relative superiority of French and American female medics.” USA! USA! Actually, France won this one, which is probably why I’ve never heard of the incident. Next time, France. Next time.
There is also a bloody sword duel between two Mexican senoritas and a possibly fictional 1792 confrontation in Hyde Park between Lady Almeria Braddock and Mrs. Elphinstone which involved both pistols and swords. Allegedly.
Read the article for all the juicy details.
“Fabio is mine!” Image: ‘Combate de Mujeres’ by José de Ribera showing a female duel. Source: Public Domain
Kipling wasn’t kidding about the deadlier of the species.
Murder in the Rue Morgue revisited
Edgar Allan Poe’s classic detective story “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” continues to delight (if that’s the right word for a story about a throat-slashing killer) readers and also fascinate scholars.
JSTOR Daily shares links to some of the many free to download scholarly articles about Poe and his fictional detective. If that’s the kind of rabbit hole you’re tempted to go down, here it is:
“The Murders in the Rue Morgue” by Edgar Allan Poe: Annotated
[Poe’s] three stories of Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin of Paris, and his investigations of crimes in the city (which Poe never visited) were arguably the first works of detective fiction. The first story in the series, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841), already contained many of the tropes now seen as standard: murder in a “locked room”, a brilliant, unconventional amateur detective, and a slightly less intelligent companion/sidekick, the collection and analysis of “clews”, the wrong suspect taken up by police, and the eventual revelation of the truth through “ratiocination” for Dupin, “deduction” for Sherlock Holmes.
Click on over to read “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” annotated with links to various articles and other resources from the JSTOR archives.
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