Tarume - Untitled

Good News Network

Scientists Grow Tree from 1,000-year-old Seed Found in Cave–May Be Lost Medicinal Plant in the Bible

Dr. Sallon and her team thought it was an extinct species known from history as Judean Balsam, but it turned out to be something called Tsor

"During an archaeological dig in a desert area north of Jerusalem 40 years ago, a seed was discovered which was determined to be in pristine condition but had obviously seen many a year.

Now, despite falling from its parent 1,000 years ago, it has grown into a mature tree, and botanists examining it believe it may be an extinct species that was used for medicinal purposes for thousands of years—even receiving a nod in the Bible.

Neither Israeli botanists, nor Dr. Sarah Sallon, a physician who founded the Louis L. Borick Natural Medicine Research Center at Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem, could determine what species it was from simply from the seed covering. So they did what nature intended—they planted it.

Using a well-documented technique that saw 2,000-year-old date palm fruit pits germinate, Dr. Sallon soaked the seed in hormones, liquid fertilizer, and water, and then planted it in a pot of sterile seed; then waited.

Despite its genetic code being exposed to environmental stressors for over 1,000 years, the seed sprouted after 5 weeks. The shoot was protected by a caplike feature called an operculum. As the shoot grew, the operculum was shed—leaving something for the team to radiocarbon date. It narrowed down the age of the almost 10-centuries-old seed to between the years 993 an 1202.

Fast forward 14 years and the plant has become a 10-foot-tall tree. Dr. Sallon shared images of the tree, its bark, and its leaves with botanists around the world. One expert suggested it belonged to the genus Commiphora, found across the Arabian Peninsula and parts of Africa. A genetic analysis subsequently revealed this was the case, but a perfect match was lacking.

Pictured: The tree, now 14 years old.

Dr. Sallon and her team thought it was an extinct species known from history as Judean Balsam, but the best way to confirm that suspicion would be to have some aromatic traces similar to the resins of the myrrh tree to which it is related. However, no such fragrant compounds were detected.

Instead, the chemical analysis of the leaves identified a group of phytochemicals known as guggulterols which have been observed in a related species called Commiphora wightii that’s known to possess certain cancer-fighting properties in its resin.

A medicinal balm, the origin of which is not known, is mentioned in multiple historical texts including the Bible as ‘tsori,’ and rather than the fragrant Judean Balsam, it’s this tsori that Dr. Sallon and her team believe they have found.

They must wait until the tree, now 14 years old, produces flower or fruit to know for sure if it’s an extinct species, and if so, how to perhaps keep it alive.

Dr. Louise Colville, senior research leader in seed and stress biology at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in London who wasn’t involved in the research, told CNN that it was a major accomplishment to grow a seed that old and possibly lead to a resurrection of this Biblical botanical.

“What’s surprising in this story is it was just a single seed and to be able to have one chance for that to germinate is extremely lucky,” she said.

“Working in a seed bank, seeing the potential for that extreme longevity gives us hope that banking and storing seeds that some at least will survive for very long periods of time.”"

-via Good News Network, October 8, 2024

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Note: This is such a good demonstration of why seed banks are so important!! They give us such real and massive hope for deextinction and the revival of endangered species.

Speaking of Teba, tho 

Teba kind of falling into the role of a parental figure for Link and eventually, growing to see Link as his adopted son 

Teba respecting Link for the warrior that he is but, at the same time, still recognizing that he’s a young man without a father figure or really anyone there for him so he decides that he’ll at least attempt to be that in some way. He often offers advice, comfort (in his own way) and what not. It starts out simple, just him trying to be kind to a kid in a crappy situation but over time, the bond between him and Link grows until he thinks of the Hylian as his own

Teba flying over the plains of Hyrule, through the snowy winds of Tabantha, and sometimes even into the Hebra Mountains (or possibly even further), not really looking for Link but still using his keen bird eyes to try and pick out his familiar shape. It’s not conscious at first but after a few times of stumbling across him, he starts actively looking out of the corner of his eyes for the Hylian 

If he does seem him, he always takes the time to fly down and talk to him - helps him out with some monsters, makes sure he’s got food and medicine, makes sure he has warm clothes, always always ALWAYS offers him a safe place to sleep back in Rito Village. If Link takes him up on the offer of a warm, safe bed, Teba has no problem with the Hylian clambering up onto his back and him safely transporting him back

Link and Tulin being closer than peas in a pod - whenever Link visits Rito Village or the Flying Range (which he does often), he always wears little Tulin out by playing with him too much. A lot of the times, once night falls, they pass out together on Tulin’s bed with the little bird tucked close to Link’s side. Teba just kind of shakes his head but feels like his home is complete with everyone there

Teba isn’t really one for physical affection but sometimes, he’ll stand by Link’s side and drap his wing over his head and shoulders, holding him close to his side and squeezing him in a one armed hug. Link always leans a little bit into him whenever he goes that and it reminds Teba of how Tulin does the same. He also ruffles his hair from time to time (which is always a little awkward given the whole wings thing) or pats him on the back 

Teba spending a lot of time worrying about Link when he doesn’t have him in his sights. He knows the kid is capable and talented but he can’t help but to worry what he might be getting himself into. Saki is the one who always talks him down from that place, though he can always tell she’s just as worried as he is. Despite him a warrior himself and knowing Link to be one as well, it always sends a shock of fear and anger through him whenever the kid shows up in Rito Village covered in bruises and scraps 

 Teba teaching both Tulin and Link how to make various kinds of arrows, how to repair their bows, what to do when caught in nasty flying conditions then looking on proudly as they grasp hold of everything with ease. Teba quietly teaching them powerful lessons of the warrior, guiding them with a patient, steady hand and encouraging them every step of the way 

Teba being a calm, quiet presence in Link’s life whenever things get too hectic. Link knows he can just show up in Rito Village without explanation, sit himself beside Teba wherever he may be and just stay by his side, working out whatever is bothering him by himself or hesitantly voicing it to Teba, who always responds in considerate, mature way 

Just…Teba being the father that Link never really had, Teba treating Link the same way he treats Tulin and adoring the both of them, Teba teaching Link everything he knows and encouraging him, praising him all the time, Teba just being Link’s stern but loving birb father, just <3 <3 <3 <3 

I really enjoy the linguistic anaylasis and this just enriches the story so much

I saw this post by @danosphere91 and I was going to reblog it and just ramble in the tags for a minute, but it got way too long for tag rambling very fast and I figured if I’m going to ramble I may as well just go ahead and let myself ramble for days. 

‘Cause, like, I’ve been thinking about One Piece having different languages since somewhere around Alabasta in my first watch, and I always kind of low-key headcanon it as being a thing going on in the background.

Like, there’s a standard language enforced by the World Government, but of course it gets tweaked a bit as the years go by and some islands don’t have much contact with other islands, and then there are places the World Government doesn’t control and it’s really anybody’s guess whether or not the people there will be able to speak a language anyone recognizes. While most of each individual sea speaks the same language, most islands in the Grand Line have their own languages, since going between islands can be so difficult. One of the most notable exceptions is the islands connected by the sea train, which have agreed upon a shared language to make trading easier. 

The Marines all speak the standard language, and officially that’s all they’re really supposed to speak, though most are aware that there are some circumstances that call for a language shift. A good early indicator of what sort of person any given marine is is how willing they are to cycle through languages and dialects until they find the one the person they’re talking to is most comfortable conversing in. (Akainu probably doesn’t speak anything but Standard.)

The East Blue group has a bunch of inside jokes that only work in the East Blue dialect, and sometimes they’ll try to make a new one and it just completely falls apart because the slang in Syrup Village is not at all compatible with the slang in Cocoyasi Village and then everyone is just speaking nonsense. 

Luffy’s language skills are just a fucking mess because he learned some from Garp, and some from the people in Windmill Village, and the entire time Shanks was in town and for like two weeks after Luffy just practiced talking the way Shanks did, and then he learned stuff from the mountain bandits and Ace and Sabo and people in the Grey Terminal so it’s all just a mashup of different grammar rules and slang terms and everything else until he’s almost speaking a different language altogether. You know how he does that thing where, after having something explained, he’ll go ‘ah, its a mystery (insert thing here)’? It’s partially because his standard isn’t very good and, rather than try to cross the language gap, he just lets it go. He usually understands a lot more than people think, he just doesn’t have the language skills to communicate it. 

Sanji isn’t much better; the fighting chefs come from all over the East Blue - to say nothing of all the language quirks Zeff picked up in the Grand Line and from his crew - and it shows. He’s a little more aware of it than Luffy though, and can usually at least pick one style and stick with it for the sake of consistency over the course of a conversation. His ability to do this slips when he gets mad, and he’ll also start adding in stuff from the language he spoke while living in the North Blue - his arguments with Zoro usually dissolve into physical fights around the time no one can tell what he’s saying anymore. It’s even worse against enemies - Black Leg Sanji is known as ‘that one Straw Hat who will scream nonsense at you while he kicks your face in’.  

All those verbal tics characters have? Heavy accents. Law, for instance, never really got the hang of speaking Standard and when he does it - as he usually does in the Grand Line - he does so with a heavy accent that’s a mix of the general North Blue accent and the Flevance-specific one. All of the Minks have accents because of the way their mouths are shaped. ‘Garchu’ is a general greeting and carries a strong sense of community because they can all say it with pretty much the same pronunciation. Bepo lost his accent as a child from trying to sound more like Law, Shachi, and Penguin.

Speaking of Law. He rarely speaks Flevance’s language, but he writes all his notes in it. If people see them, they often assume he’s being paranoid or planning something, so he’s writing in code or something. Really, he’s just trying to make sure this last piece of Flevance doesn’t die before he does.

Big crews with people from lots of different backgrounds, like the Whitebeard Pirates, have to learn each other’s languages in order to communicate, and the crew ends up with a language that’s made up of all their different slang words and figures of speech. You’re really part of the crew when you can communicate fluently in it. Ace isn’t good at picking up new languages - Makino teaching him the proper dialect to be able to thank Shanks for saving Luffy was a nightmare - but the rest of the crew, especially the second division, helps him out where they can. Marco has a pretty heavy accent but he’s fluent in pretty much every language that’s ever come onboard. 

The language of the Celestial Dragons is holy and no one else is allowed to speak it. With the exception of a few slave commands and a handful of employees, no one else is even allowed to understand it (plenty of people pick up on parts of it, of course, but you’d better not let on that you can understand it where they can see you). Doflamingo still speaks it to himself or at other people sometimes, as a ‘fuck you’ to all of them. No one else understands it so no one realizes how he’s forgotten a lot of the grammar rules, how he’s lost the accent and now the words break on his tongue, how he’s never had - never will have - a vocabulary better than a ten year old child. 

Brook’s speech patterns range between ‘posh gentleman’ and ‘your embarrassing grandfather who thinks it’s still normal to say things like ‘groovy’ unironically’. 

Chopper had to learn how to speak human languages from scratch. He can read tons of different languages fluently, but he can’t really speak any but Standard - he can’t get the hang of pronunciation, slang words, or context clues. He’s also not very good at tonal indicators or facial expression cues, since they weren’t things little baby reindeer learn (this is part of why he never realizes when Usopp is lying about things like having 8,000 men - in addition to his naivety, he can’t pick up on the tone shift that Usopp takes on when he starts telling stories). 

Franky, in addition to whatever his biological parents spoke, Standard, and the language of Water Seven, can also speak some of Fishman Island’s language. Iceberg used to speak it better, but these days Iceberg is out of practice because the government doesn’t think much of people speaking it (yay, racism). Franky spoke it with Kokoro when she’d come to visit, and would help Chimney practice it too. 

And while we’re on the subject of Fishman Island, they probably don’t get access to very good education, especially for the lower class citizens (*coughracismagaincough*), so the lower class the citizen the less likely they are to be able to speak Standard well, if at all. This is one of the arguments used for keeping them out of world meetings, to justify enslaving them, and so on - ‘look, they can’t even speak the language’. Those who can speak Standard usually do it with a thick accent, partially because of the education system and partially because of their mouth shapes. 

Koala learned a decent amount of the Celestial Dragon language while a slave, and then the Fishman language from the Sun pirates. The latter is a comfort language; lots more positive associations with it than any other language. She relearns the Celestial Dragon language in the Revolutionary army to help translate things. 

Sabo and Koala have some difficulties at the beginning of their friendship because Sabo’s noble accent and some of the terms are ingrained in him and last past the amnesia and it reminds her too much of the Celestial Dragons and other nobles. He purposefully uses more slang and forces a more casual accent around her. He isn’t sure why he’s so much more comfortable talking like that than he is talking like a gentleman. 

So, yeah, I could go on for about a thousand years because I’m a linguistics nerd, but basically languages and the cultural and social implications thereof are super interesting and I like thinking about them, can you tell. 

don’t ever put ideas in my head or I will draw and ruin them… i wonder why anyone would wanna talk to me 

I am once more begging fic writers to stop using "orbs" and just fucking say eyes. Orbs does not make an attractive alternative at all and whoever told you it was, was lying.

December Art

telling myself that this time will be the time everyone waits for jojo to post the update on this app before sharing screenshots of it here

manifesting it, even

I don't care about the Republican strategy against either Biden or Harris, but doesn't it bother you that nobody voted for her? That she was installed by the powers that be? She wasn't an option during the primaries. When she tried running before nobody voted for her. It's a hole in the democratic process and concerning. Does that not bother anyone?

I usually try to stay out of politics of a country that's not my own, but can we for a moment admire the absolute ARTISTRY of Biden's dropout move?

Like, this is the check mate move of politics. He stayed as a nominee until the last possible second so the Republicans would waste all of theit anti-campaign money on him, let them make fools of themselves in their overconfidence, with Project 2025 and fucking Vance as vice nominee, let all of the slander and bad press be atributed to him, and then dropped out and let Kamala Harris step in as the squeaky clean candidate that the Republicans had no plan for? This had to have been planned, but they kept it quiet until the last minute so it could take their opponents completely off their guard, Republicans are scrambling and every Democrat voter is suddenly motivated to get her into the seat because they know she can do even better than Biden already did.

Shah mat indeed. The Republican king is helpless. And I think that's beautiful.