Humans accumulate porphyrins in the body mostly during the course of porphyrias, diseases caused by defects in the enzymes of the heme biosynthesis pathway and that produce acute attacks, skin lesions and liver cancer. In contrast, some wild mammals and birds are adapted to accumulate porphyrins without injurious consequences. Here we propose viewing such physiological adaptations as potential solutions to human porphyrias, and suggest certain wild animals as models. Given the enzymatic activity and/or the patterns of porphyrin excretion and (...) accumulation, the fox squirrel, the great bustard and the Eurasian eagle owl may constitute overlooked models for different porphyrias. The Harderian gland of rodents, where large amounts of porphyrins are synthesized, presents an underexplored potential for understanding the carcinogenic/toxic effect of porphyrin accumulation. Investigating how these animals avoid porphyrin pathogenicity may complement the use of laboratory models for porphyrias and provide new insights into the treatment of these disorders. (shrink)

This essay exposes several problems with reductionist approaches to art, placing some specific focus on ‘The Science of Art’ by Vilayanur S. Ramachandran and William Hirstein . Their article seems to be representative of this genre in general, though particularly egregious in certain dimensions. My approach will differ greatly from that of a neuroscientist, philosopher, or psychologist, since I primarily take a critical feminist, social-literary perspective. I will argue that reductionist approaches to art are an intoxicating composite of arrogance, insight, (...) confusion and precision, an amalgam that challenges the commentator to distinguish what is worth praising, what is worth attacking, and what is best left alone. In particular, I will demonstrate that Ramachandran and Hirstein confuse arousal with beauty, with the disastrous result of excluding most of what is usually taken to distinguish ‘high’ art from its ‘lower’ forms, such as advertising, industrial design, and pornography. (shrink)

Skin as cover: the discursive effects of 'covering' metaphors on wound care practicesThis paper outlines a Foucauldian analysis of interactions between nurses and patients during wound care procedures in a burns unit. It explores the use of Kristeva's psychoanalytic concepts of abjection and the abject body to illuminate the emotional affects of wounds on nurse and patient. In this process, I identify how cultural metaphoric understandings about skin influence and organise the care of burns patients. Such analysis suggests (...) the import of the complete skin, the medical scientific control over the definition of this work, and the emotional forces that resist such control. (shrink)