Talks from the Bio lab desk

  Humanity’s Long Relationship With Psychoactive Substances Psychoactive substances, often alter brain function, which tend to affect mood, awareness, perception, cognition and behaviour by acting on the central nervous system. Humans have always maintained a complicated relationship with psychoactive substances. Long before modern neuroscience identified neurotransmitters or mapped neural pathways, communities across the world had already discovered that certain plants, chemicals, and fermented compounds could alter consciousness, reduce pain, induce euphoria, heighten spiritual experiences, or temporarily silence emotional suffering. From ceremonial ayahuasca practices in the Amazon, to opium use in ancient civilizations, to alcohol in religious rituals and social bonding, many psychoactive substances have existed at the intersection of medicine, spirituality, culture, and survival. Their meanings have constantly shifted depending on the era and the society interpreting them....

  From the start of prehistoric man being on earth, they had to scavenge and find food for the day, and also provide themselves with shelter from various environmental hazards. However, did they ever stop to wonder if they suffered stress if they felt hungry? Tired? Overwhelmed? Or simply doubtful over the next meal? Maybe not, and they treaded on to the next hunt. In today’s age, the modern worker is expected to perform like software, from being scalable, always-on and infinitely optimizable. Beneath the productivity systems, motivational rhetoric, and digital tools lies something far less flexible, which at times, is not given much attention, which involves, the working person, is yet another biological organism shaped by millions of years of evolution. The tension between these two realities, tend to put cultural expectations of constant output and the physiological limits of the human body, as quietly becoming one of the defining conflicts of the future of work. This isn’t ...

The idea of a “body type” feels deceptively simple. We use the term to describe physiques as if they are fixed categories, such as, lean, bulky, slender, plus-sized, athletic and many other labels that suggest permanence and clarity. Beneath that simplicity lies something far more dynamic and possibly interesting because, what we call a body type is not a static identity but a momentary expression of biology unfolding under specific conditions, shaped by development, behavior, and interpretation. To understand body types, and in specific the context of male and female, bodies, we have to move away from rigid classifications and toward a more fluid model. Biological differences between sexes, often framed under sexual dimorphism, do exist. On average, males tend to develop greater muscle mass and bone density, while females tend to store fat differently and exhibit distinct hormonal cycles. These patterns are real, but they are not absolutes. They form overlapping distributions rather...