Traditional magic or European occultism? Commercial fortune-telling and magic in post-Soviet Russia and their relationship to Russian tradition

The article examines the vibrant commercial magic and fortune-telling industry in Russia today. Based on fieldwork in Petersburg conducted in 2006, supplemented by printed and, in particular, web material, it seeks to show that, despite the many similarities with its counterparts in Europe and North America, Russian fortune-telling and magic are clearly shaped by local traditions. In the context of the article, tradition is taken to include not just rural folk magic and divination, but also urban traditions of the late imperial period as well as those resulting from Soviet policies and practices. It emerges that as far as magic services are concerned, the range of services offered are those demanded by the client, largely stemming from folk tradition. By contrast discourse, approach and ritual often owe much to Western esoteric literature, and perhaps also to pre-Revolutionary occultism and the Soviet interest in psychics. In the case of fortune-telling, today’s professionals (gypsies apart) have adopted more complex and sophisticated ways of telling the future (tarot and astrology). Old ways of fortune-telling are so widely known that they must offer something different to clients. Tradition survives in many ways, sometimes transmuted, sometimes partial, but it makes the Russian magic and fortune-telling scene distinctive

Preclinical Assessment of the Treatment of Second-Stage African Trypanosomiasis with Cordycepin and Deoxycoformycin

There is an urgent need to substitute the highly toxic arsenic compounds still in use for treatment of the encephalitic stage of African trypanosomiasis, a disease caused by infection with Trypanosoma brucei. We exploited the inability of trypanosomes to engage in de novo purine synthesis as a therapeutic target. Cordycepin was selected from a trypanocidal screen of a 2200-compound library. When administered together with the adenosine deaminase inhibitor deoxycoformycin, cordycepin cured mice inoculated with the human pathogenic subspecies T. brucei rhodesiense or T. brucei gambiense even after parasites had penetrated into the brain. Successful treatment was achieved by intraperitoneal, oral or subcutaneous administration of the compounds. Treatment with the doublet also diminished infection-induced cerebral inflammation. Cordycepin induced programmed cell death of the parasites. Although parasites grown in vitro with low doses of cordycepin gradually developed resistance, the resistant parasites lost virulence and showed no cross-resistance to trypanocidal drugs in clinical use. Our data strongly support testing cordycepin and deoxycoformycin as an alternative for treatment of second-stage and/or melarsoprol-resistant HAT

An early history of T cell-mediated cytotoxicity.

After 60 years of intense fundamental research into T cell-mediated cytotoxicity, we have gained a detailed knowledge of the cells involved, specific recognition mechanisms and post-recognition perforin-granzyme-based and FAS-based molecular mechanisms. What could not be anticipated at the outset was how discovery of the mechanisms regulating the activation and function of cytotoxic T cells would lead to new developments in cancer immunotherapy. Given the profound recent interest in therapeutic manipulation of cytotoxic T cell responses, it is an opportune time to look back on the early history of the field. This Timeline describes how the early findings occurred and eventually led to current therapeutic applications

Catalytic upgrading of refinery cracked products by trans-hydrogenation: a review

The production of high premium fuel is an issue of priority to every refinery. The trans-hydrogenation process is devised to convert two low valued refinery cracked products to premium products; the conversion processes involve the combination of dehydrogenation and hydrogenation reaction as a single step process. The paper reviews the recent literature on the use of catalysts to convert low value refinery products (i.e. alkanes and alkynes or alkadienes) to alkenes (olefins) by trans-hydrogenation. Catalysts based on VOx, CrOx and Pt all supported on alumina have been used for the process. However, further studies are still required to ascertain the actual reaction mechanism, mitigating carbon deposition and catalyst deactivation, and the role of different catalysts to optimize the reaction desired products

Immune responses in spleen colonies. I. Clonal distribution of haemolytic plaque-forming cells.

Antibody-forming cells were found in autochthonous spleen colonies, repopulating the spleens of mice which had been exposed to mid-lethal doses of radiation and inoculation of sheep red blood cells. This was true only for the secondary response, where a proportion of colonies contained haemolytic plaque-forming cells in variable numbers, ranging from 1/10(3) to 1/10(6) nucleated cells within a given spleen. The frequency distribution of antibody-forming cells in colonies suggests a clonal growth at an exponential rate, with a generation time of about 7 hours. It is therefore possible to cultivate and study single clones of competent cells in readily accessible, anatomically distinct regions of the mouse spleen. The present data do not discriminate between the derivation of the antibody-forming clones from the original colony-forming cells, or from a cell seeded-in from the spleen tissue outside the colony

Immune responses in spleen colonies: II. Clonal assortment of 19S- and 7S-producing cells in mice reacting against two antigens

Spleen colonies arising in irradiated mice pre-immunized with sheep and chicken erythrocytes were assayed for the content of 19S- and 7S-producing cells. This was done by applying to each isolated colony a direct (19S) and an indirect (7S) plaque test for each antigen. In both tests, the positive anti-sheep or anti-chicken reactivity of cells was found to be completely independent of each other. The plaque forming capacity for 19S- and 7S-producing cells showed a marginally significant association in the anti-sheep response only. The numbers of plaque forming cells were distributed exponentially, suggesting that 19S- and 7S-producing cells have similar growth kinetics. These results confirm the clonal nature of antibody response within spleen colonies, thus making the system amenable for genetic studies of antibody production. They document a strictly vertical transmission of antibody specificity, and possibly of immunoglobulin class. The incomplete independence of 19S and 7S distribution is interpreted as due to local or technical conditions rather than to a production `shift' of the clones