Buried Alive: The Phenomenon of Apparent Death in Estonian Tradition

Hardly any other folklore subject or motif can offer a more colourful bouquet in genre than apparent death, ranging from fairy tales and romantic legends to rumours, ballads, and jokes. The historical origin of stories of apparent death extends back to antiquity, probably also relying on some true events; however, the formation and spread of folktales on this subject falls into the Enlightenment period in Europe. The emergence and development of this topic relate to medical and religious practices, journalism and literature. The article focuses on the traditional context of apparent death in eighteenth-nineteenth-century Europe, including Estonia.

Effect of tonic immobility induction on selected physiological parameters in Oryctolagus cuniculus f. Domesticus rabbits

Tonic immobility (TI) is a phenomenon known as thanatosis or apparent death. The phenomenon can be induced in many ways. It occurs, for example, in the presence of a hazard, as a result of coercion through an unnatural body position or as a result of administration of certain medicines. TI is sometimes used in veterinary practice to tame patients. The aim of the study was to determine the effect of tonic immobility induction on selected physiological parameters in Oryctolagus cuniculus f. Domesticus rabbits. The study included 20 healthy rabbits, patients of a veterinary clinic, divided into two groups of 10 individuals. In the study group, TI was induced to conduct a standard clinical trial, while the control group were subjected to a standard clinical trial without TI. Heart rate, respiratory rate, pupil diameter and blood glucose concentration were measured in all animals. The measurements were performed three times: after the patient’s arrival at the clinic, after a detailed clinical examination in a normal or tonic immobility position and 15 minutes after the end of the examination. Additionally, the blood cortisol concentration was measured twice: on arrival at the clinic and at the end of the clinical trial. The results of the experiment show that miniature rabbits feel less stress during tonic immobility testing than rabbits in the standing position, and therefore this phenomenon should be used for taming animals.

МИФЫ О СМЕРТИ Н. В. ГОГОЛЯ: ИСТОЧНИКИ, СТАНОВЛЕНИЕ, ПОЭТИКА

The article follows up the origin of the myth of the funeral of Gogol in the state of lethargy. The ideological roots of this myth, which still obscures the real history of the last days of Gogol’s life and the very content of his spiritual heritage, are studied. A wide range of problems related to the practice of professional treatment in the first half of the 19th century, including the phenomenon of mercantilism and lack of professionalism of some physicians of that time, the problem of frequent nondistincion of apparent death and lethargic state by the medicine of that time, as well as the question of the relationship between the physiological component of the disease and spiritual means of healing used by Gogol, are touched upon in the article. Attention is drawn to the unsuccessfulness of the writer’s long treatment in numerous European and domestic medical bodies. The identities of several reputable doctors who treated the writer are confirmed. The apocryphalness of some information reported in the memoirs about Gogol of the head physician A. T. Tarasenkov is noted. The distortion of Gogol’s image in these memoirs is explained by the pragmatic approach of the doctor in standing up for the corporate interests of the medical caste. The content of the last days of Gogol is put in the context of the writer’s ideas about the providential value of the ailments, regarded bu the writer as a kind of “road signs”, encouraging everyone to search for the right path, and the artist, in addition, to improve his writing. The study of biased opinions about Gogol as a religious fanatic, whose behavior before his death supposedly caused his premature death, allows us to conclude that the biographical myth has a deliberate and constructed character.

Genome Wide Analysis Points towards Subtype-Specific Diseases in Different Genetic Forms of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

Amyotropic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a lethally progressive and irreversible neurodegenerative disease marked by apparent death of motor neurons present in the spinal cord, brain stem and motor cortex. While more and more gene mutants being established for genetic ALS, the vast majority suffer from sporadic ALS (>90%). It has been challenging, thus, to model sporadic ALS which is one reason why the underlying pathophysiology remains elusive and has stalled the development of therapeutic strategies of this progressive motor neuron disease. To further unravel these pathological signaling pathways, human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSCs)-derived motor neurons (MNs) from FUS- and SOD1 ALS patients and healthy controls were systematically compared to independent published datasets. Here through this study we created a gene profile of ALS by analyzing the DEGs, the Kyoto encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathways, the interactome and the transcription factor profiles (TF) that would identify altered molecular/functional signatures and their interactions at both transcriptional (mRNAs) and translational levels (hub proteins and TFs). Our findings suggest that FUS and SOD1 may develop from dysregulation in several unique pathways and herpes simplex virus (HSV) infection was among the topmost predominant cellular pathways connected to FUS and not to SOD1. In contrast, SOD1 is mainly characterized by alterations in the metabolic pathways and alterations in the neuroactive-ligand–receptor interactions. This suggests that different genetic ALS forms are singular diseases rather than part of a common spectrum. This is important for patient stratification clearly pointing towards the need for individualized medicine approaches in ALS.

How lethal is the novel coronavirus, and how many undetected cases there are? The importance of being tested

There is big concern for estimating the lethality and the extent of undetected infections associated with the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV2 outbreak. While detailed epidemiological models are certainly needed, I suggest here an orthogonal approach based on a minimum number of parameters robustly fitted from the cumulative data easily accessible for all countries at the John Hopkins University database that became the worldwide reference for the pandemics. I show that, after few days from the beginning of the outbreak, the apparent death rate can be extrapolated to infinite time through regularized regression such as rescaled ridge regression. The variation from country to country of these extrapolated death rates appears to depend almost only (r2 = 0.91) on the ratio between performed tests and detected cases even when the apparent instantaneous lethality rates are as different as 9% in Italy and 0.4% in Germany. Extrapolating to the limit of infinite number of tests, I obtain a death rate of 0.012 ± 0.012, in agreement with other estimates. The inverse relationship between the extrapolated death rate and the intensity tests allows estimating that more than 50% of cases were undetected in most countries, with more than 90% undetected cases in countries severely hit by the epidemics such as Italy. Finally, I propose to adopt the ratio between the cumulative number of recovered and deceased persons as an indicator that can anticipate the halting of the epidemics.