Entheogenesis and Entheogenic Employment of Harmal
Ephraim Shmaya Lansky, Shifra Lansky, Helena Maaria Paavilainen in Harmal, 2017
The imaginal associations begin with the multiplicity of seeds inside a Peganum capsule (Figure 3.11). The gross morphology of the Peganum fruit is similar to that of Punica. Further, the seeds within the pomegranate arils are of a shape reminiscent to the smaller seeds of Peganum—the seeds of both are very hard and have distinct surfaces like the facets of a jewel. Both the pomegranate seed and the harmal seed possess octadecatrienoic acids. Although the three double bonds in these 18 carbon fatty acids in Peganum are unconjugated, and those in Punica are conjugated (i.e., the double bonds alternate, in between which lies a single bond), their homology bespeaks just one more similarity between the seeds of these two (otherwise unrelated?) plants. The juice of the pomegranate arils is bright red, as is the ethanolic extract of harmal. By color, they appear surprisingly identical and could easily be misconstrued one for the other. The harmal fruits resemble miniature pomegranates. They clearly possess some of the spirit of their mother.
Plant Source Foods
Chuong Pham-Huy, Bruno Pham Huy in Food and Lifestyle in Health and Disease, 2022
To understand the role of plants in our health, it is important to know first their origin, morphology, biology, and physiology. Plants have been living on earth from millions of years and are everywhere on this earth, from land or mountains to fresh or marine waters. The kingdom Plantae includes a diverse group of complex photosynthetic organisms ranging from mosses to flowering plants such as algae (green algae, seaweeds), bryophytes (mosses, liverworts), pteridophytes (horsetails, ferns), gymnosperms (Cycas, Pinus, Ginkgo, etc.) and angiosperms, including the monocotyledons (cereals, crops, wolffian, etc.) and the dicotyledons (beans, oaks, teak, Eucalyptus, etc.) (1–2). Their life span can also vary enormously from a few months, like some mosses, grasses, to many centuries like teak, Ginkgo.
Hypersensitivity and Allergic Fungal Manifestations: Diagnostic Approaches
Johan A. Maertens, Kieren A. Marr in Diagnosis of Fungal Infections, 2007
The patients’ tissue specimen or lavage can be directly examined or may be transferred to relevant media for culture. Fungal identification is based frequently on spore morphology such as color, septation, and different methods of spore production. The distinct chemical compositions of the cell walls of different fungi are also helpful in their classification and determining their role in causing allergic responses in patients. The cell walls of yeasts are mostly composed of a chitin-glucan combination, in contrast to the predominantly chitin cell walls in mycelial fungi. Other aspects of vegetative morphology commonly used for identification purposes are color of colony, diffusible pigments, metabolites, and mycelial structures. Most of the spores produced by the imperfect fungi vary in shape, size, texture, color, number of cells, thickness of the cell wall, and methods by which they are attached to each other and to their conidiophores. However, the identification of the common fungi is at times difficult, as the fungal colony characteristics and even microscopic characteristics vary according to the medium in which the fungus is grown, temperature of incubation, and variation in strains and pleomorphic nature of the spores (17).
An automated image analysis platform for the study of weakly -adhered cells
Published in Biofouling, 2021
Zhijing Wan, Ben T. MacVicar, Shea Wyatt, Diana E. Varela, Rajkumar Padmawar, Dennis K. Hore
A morphological closing operation can be used after the Canny edge detection to ensure that the borders of all cells are as complete as possible (Soille 2004). Once the routine has smoothed out the noise and found the potential edges, the algorithm takes those edges and uses non-maximum suppression to find the pixels that have the sharpest gradient so that the edges become thin. This process removes all pixels which may not be part of an edge (Canny 1986). Finally, a hysteresis thresholding is performed. All pixels over a certain value (100 in the example) are considered to be edges and all pixels less than a lower threshold value (75) are rejected. Pixel values inside that range are classified by connectivity, i.e. they are determined to be edges if they are adjacent to a pixel that has been classified as an edge. The Canny parameters that control the degree of hysteresis are useful to adjust to modulate the thresholding when dealing with low contrast situations in which the cells are difficult to separate from the background. Mathematical morphology is a field that deals with the processing and analysis of geometric structures. In the case of images, these structures are formed on an integer grid. To form the grid, a structuring element which helps define the operation is used. For this report, the structuring element is a five-by-five square which is denoted by
Right atrial appendage thrombus in a patient with a left atrial appendage occlusion device
Published in Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings, 2022
Arindam Sharma, Akshay Machanahalli Balakrishna, Arunima Sharma, Terrence Slattery
The WATCHMAN is an LAA occlusion device used in patients who have contraindications to anticoagulation and can allow the discontinuation of anticoagulation in such patients. Right heart thrombi often develop on injured endothelium, foreign bodies such as tumors, and indwelling devices.5 Intrinsically, they can be seen in AF and pulmonary hypertension.6 They are classified based on morphology. Type A thrombi are highly mobile, worm-like, can cross the tricuspid valve, and originate from the deep veins of the pelvis/legs. Type B thrombi are small and attached to the chamber wall and originate in association with structurally abnormal chambers or foreign bodies.1 Among patients with AF, the reported range of incidence of RAA thrombus is 0.4% to 7.5%, and for LAA thrombus, 3% to 24%.7 Compared to the LAA, the RAA is shallower and does not exhibit remodeling with AF, which may explain the lower incidence of thrombus formation in the RAA.8 Type A thrombi have worse outcomes6 and are more likely to cause serious events like pulmonary embolism and cardiac dysfunction.
Image-based morphometric studies of human coronary artery bifurcations with/without coronary artery disease
Published in Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering, 2020
Xueping Chen, Jingxing Dai, Jiangguo Lin, Yueheng Wu, Jun Ouyang, Meiping Huang, Jian Zhuang, Ying Fang, Jianhua Wu
The present results indicated that morphology feature parameters, Figures 3(c, f), 4(b, d), and 5(a–d)). This finding suggests that morphological feature can be used as an independent variable to characterize the physiology and pathology status of the coronary arteries, and hence can be used to build a classifier for the prediction of CAD disease. By comparing the ability of these four indicators in the detection of the morphological feature differences between experimental group and control group (diseased vs. healthy), we found that Figures 3(e, f) and 4(c, d)). CAD is an evolving disease that may occur at a very young age and is not easily to be perceived. However, the morphological changes of coronary arteries may occur before the appearance of CAD symptoms (Feng et al. 2018). This suggests that
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