Puberty

• When you think of a kraken you probably think of a sea monster of enormous size, lashing out to sink ships that sail too close to it.
• Hans Egede, a Norwegian missionary, described a kraken as covering the whole sea when it surfaced and capturing victims with its claws.
• Even though the production crew of the original film knew that the kraken was Norwegian, they decided that “as a name for a sea monster, it was too good to miss”.
• Ruby Gillman’s approach to the kraken upends these representations, showing us a softer side to the beast.

Not so scary

• They try to blend in with humans and explain away any peculiarities by claiming that they are originally from Canada.
• The Gillman family take on human appearance, colourful skin tone not withstanding, and only transform into their gigantic form when in salt water.
• Their roots can be traced back to the sirens of ancient Greece, who lured sailors onto rocks with their songs.
• By making krakens protectors and mermaids destroyers, the film continues a wider cultural trend of questioning who the monsters really are.

Beastly biology

• Pixar’s Turning Red used its heroine’s transformation into a giant red panda, sometimes cute but also monstrous, as a metaphor for beginning adolescence.
• For Ruby, discovering her body’s true potential when she first encounters salt water leads her to question everything in her life she has previously taken for granted.

• The 76-year-old singer certainly delivered all his characteristic showmanship.
• Equally, it’s not all down to the process of ageing.

The sound of your voice

• The vocal cords are what produce the sound of your voice.
• When air passes out of the lungs and through the larynx, it causes the vocal cords to vibrate – producing sound.
• There are also approximately 17 other muscles in the larynx that can alter vocal cord position and tension – thus changing the sound produced.
• For instance, a woman’s voice may sound different depending on the stage of her menstrual cycle – with the best voice quality being in the ovulatory phase.

Everything ages

• As we get older, the larynx begins increasing its mineral content, making it stiffer and more like bone than cartilage.
• The muscles that allow the vocal cords to move also begin wasting (as do our other muscles) as we age.
• The ligaments and tissues that support the vocal cords also lose elasticity, becoming less flexible.

Lifestyle is a factor

• Smoking, for example, causes localised inflammation, increased mucous production, but can also dry out the mucosal surfaces.
• Blood thinners may also damage the vocal cords and can cause polyps to form, making the voice sound raspy or hoarse.
• One other lifestyle factor can be overuse, which is typically seen in singers and other people who use their voice a lot during work, such as teachers and fitness instructors.

Maintaining our vocal quality

• While we can’t help some of the age-related changes that happen to our vocal cords, we can maintain some of our vocal quality and ability through continued use.
• Singing or reading out loud daily can give the vocal cords sufficient exercise to slow their decline.

• Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) and OPKO Health Inc. (NASDAQ: OPK) announced today that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved NGENLA (somatrogon-ghla), a once-weekly, human growth hormone analog indicated for treatment of pediatric patients aged three years and older who have growth failure due to inadequate secretion of endogenous growth hormone.
• The study met its primary endpoint of NGENLA non-inferiority compared to somatropin, as measured by annual height velocity at 12 months.
• “The approval of NGENLA will be significant for children with growth hormone deficiency in the U.S.
• It holds potential to reduce the treatment burden that can come with daily growth hormone injections,” said Joel Steelman, M.D., Pediatric Endocrinologist, Cook Children’s Health Care System.

• Although unicorns in different cultures have little to do with one another, they have multiple associations in European thought.
• In southern Africa, colonial European ideas encountered older indigenous beliefs about one-horned creatures.

Unicorns in Africa?

• In the age of natural science, unicorns were gradually dismissed as mythical rather than biological creatures.
• A famous search for such evidence was carried out by the English traveller, writer and politician Sir John Barrow (1764-1848).
• One of those rumours was that unicorns were depicted in the rock paintings made by the indigenous San (Bushman) inhabitants of the region.

Multiple rock art depictions

• I draw attention to additional examples of rock paintings of one-horned creatures (Figures 2 and 3).
• Collectively, these show that rock paintings of one-horned creatures can’t be dismissed as naturalistic profile views of two-horned creatures, one horn covering the other.

Rain-animals

• The evidence suggests that the “unicorns” in indigenous mythical beliefs and rock art are actually animal-like forms of rain, known as rain-animals.
• They were ritually captured and slaughtered by San rainmakers to cause rain to fall in specific places.
• After a few times she struggles to catch another one: unlike the others, this last creature is “a grown-up water”.
• We know what made it recognisably grown-up: unlike the others, it had a single horn that poked out of the water.

An intersection of beliefs

• In one of the recorded instances, indigenous people at the Cape saw the British royal coat of arms and commented on the unicorn in it.
• Indigenous beliefs help us to explain that the uncanny resemblance between European unicorns and South African “unicorns” was pure chance.
• The mixing of foreign beliefs with local ones in colonial South Africa has hidden the independent, indigenous creature.