Mind Hacks: “Cannabis smokers often report that when stoned, their thoughts have a free-wheeling quality and concepts seem connected in unusual and playful ways. A study just published online in Psychiatry Research suggests that this effect may be due to the drug causing ‘fast and loose’ patterns of spreading activity in memory, something known as ‘hyper-priming’.”
Skin Up With Shakespeare: “However, using marijuana seeds to uncover under-lying inspiration is certainly nothing new in the world of literature. Francois Rabelais, who died about ten years before the birth of William Shakespeare, made many cryptic references to cannabis. His book, Pantagruel, describes the drug as the herb Pantagruelion, a term used to escape persecution from the Church. For a long time the book was banned from the Catholic Church and in many modern versions of the book the coded references to marijuana seeds are omitted.”
ScienceBlogs:An interesting paper in the Journal of Experimental Botany published back in December discusses the discovery of 2,700-year-old Cannabis sativa. The discovery was made in the Yanghai tombs in China.
Journal of Experimental Botany: The Yanghai Tombs near Turpan, Xinjiang-Uighur Autonomous Region, China have recently been excavated to reveal the 2700-year-old grave of a Caucasoid shaman whose accoutrements included a large cache of cannabis, superbly preserved by climatic and burial conditions.
Science Blog: Claims that a large increase in the strength of cannabis over the last decade is driving the occurrence of mental health and other problems for users are not borne out by a study of the worldwide literature, say researchers at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC) and the National Drug Research Institute (NDRI), both from Australia.
Modern Mechanix: Charles F. Kettering, known as ‘Boss Ket’ to his fellow workers, is chiefly interested in finding the answers to unanswered questions.
National Defence Canada: “At first light, soldiers from Alpha Company conduct operations in the Panjwaii District of Kandahar Province as part of Operation MEDUSA.
CNN.com: Canadian troops fighting Taliban militants in Afghanistan have stumbled across an unexpected and potent enemy — almost impenetrable forests of marijuana plants 10 feet tall. General Rick Hillier, chief of the Canadian defense staff, said Thursday that Taliban fighters were using the forests as cover. In response, the crew of at least one armored car had camouflaged their vehicle with marijuana. “The challenge is that marijuana plants absorb energy, heat very readily. It’s very difficult to penetrate with thermal devices. … And as a result you really have to be careful that the Taliban don’t dodge in and out of those marijuana forests.”
Yahoo! News: The active ingredient of marijuana could be considerably better at suppressing the abnormal clumping of malformed proteins that is a hallmark of Alzheimer’s than any currently approved drugs prescribed for the treatment of the disease. Scientists report the finding in the Oct. 2 issue of the journal Molecular Pharmaceutics.
Science Blog: People who smoke marijuana — even heavy, long-term marijuana users — do not appear to be at increased risk of developing lung cancer, according to a study to be presented at the American Thoracic Society International Conference. Marijuana smoking also did not appear to increase the risk of head and neck cancers, such as cancer of the tongue, mouth, throat, or esophagus, the study found.