Starting In The Mid-seventh Century, The Japanese Government Placed A Ban On Eating Meat Which Lasted

No. 2 Construction Battalion

Fighting for a country that didn’t want them.

On March 25 1917, Canada’s first and only black military unit left Halifax harbor for the Western Front. Six hundred soldiers, mostly from Nova Scotia, formed up as No. 2 Construction Battalion. Many had been trying to enlist since 1914,  but winning this privilege had been an up-hill fight: for two years military authorities had turned down black recruits, telling them “This is a white man’s war.”

Finally, in 1916, Canada allowed black recruits entry into a segregated united of laborers. An additional 165 African-Americans crossed the border to join them, creating a full complement of 600 men. Winning the struggle to join up hardly ended discrimination. Except for the reverend, all officers were white, and even when they went to board their transport ship on March 25 the captain initially refused to let them on, saying that he would not let them travel on the same vessel as white soldiers.

The recruits hoped to be allowed to fight when they reached France, but instead the Canadian Expediotnary Force immediately downgraded them from a battalion to a company and assigned them to fell trees and prepare positions for white soldiers. They were not ever even issued with rifles. Their work was tedious and demoralizing, and many considered themselves failures even as they suffered casualties from artillery shells and poison gas.

The unit returned to Canada in 1919, but received no fanfare upon arrival. Much like America’s black soldiers, they returned to a country that did not value them or their sacrifice and actively oppressed their rights. Most of these veterans returned to poverty and unemployment. When they finally had their first reunion in 1982, only nine could attend from twenty known survivors. Their legacy and sacrifice has been revived since then. Although very few men were allowed the chance to serve, they began the first crack in the Canadian military’s institutionalized racism.

Tokyo Stock Exchange, circa 1910, on the right.

What was your favorite prop or costume from the “Harry Potter” films?

Molecule of the Day: Dopamine

Dopamine (C8H11NO2) is an important neurotransmitter involved in many signalling pathways in the body. At room temperature, it is a white powder that is freely soluble in water.

Dopamine plays a key role in the brain’s reward system and is associated with feelings of euphoria and pleasure. As a result, stimuli that cause greater amounts of dopamine to bind to the corresponding receptors on the post-synaptic membrane induce appetitive behaviour.

For example, drugs such as amphetamine bind to and inhibit dopamine reuptake transporters present on the pre-synaptic membrane, and can also inhibit monoamine oxidase, which normally metabolises dopamine. This causes the concentration of dopamine in the synaptic cleft to increase, and the resultant rise in binding of dopamine receptors leads to feelings of pleasure. However, in combination with the resultant tolerance, this can lead to addiction and dependence on such drugs.

Dopamine is biosynthesised from tyrosine in the human body, via the intermediacy of L-DOPA:

Low dopamine levels have been linked to Parkinson’s disease; this is because the main symptoms arise from the death of dopamine-producing cells in the brain. Consequently, one of the main methods of treating it is the injection of L-DOPA; while this does not recover the cells’ ability to produce dopamine, it can stimulate the remaining cells, and is also metabolised to form dopamine (see above).

Fuji-Ya Restaurant, Second to None

In 1968, Reiko Weston opened her new Fuji-Ya restaurant built atop the limestone foundation of a 19th-century flour mill overlooking the Mississippi River and the Stone Arch Bridge. The original Fuji-Ya restaurant operated near 8th St. and LaSalle beginning almost a decade earlier, in 1959, and served fine Japanese food including Charcoal-Broiled Teri-Yaki dinners, seafood dishes, soups, rice plates, and more. Fuji-Ya translates to “second to none” and the new restaurant offered a dining experience like no other in the Twin Cities.

Weston’s restaurant business expanded over the years with Taiga, a Chinese Szechwan restaurant in St. Anthony Main, and The Fuji International in Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, which featured Korean, Chinese, and East Indian food in addition to Japanese food. Her restaurants received numerous awards and Weston herself was named Minnesota Small Business Person of the Year in 1979.

After Reiko Weston passed away in 1988, her daughter Carol stepped in to manage. But in 1990, the City of Minneapolis bought out the historic restaurant in order to make way for the newly designed parkway. About a decade later, Fuji Ya was brought to life again in Uptown in the trendy Lyn-Lake area, where it remains today.

Recently, Fuji-Ya has gained renewed attention as the Park Board makes plans for a $12 million riverfront refresh. Plans include the teardown of the old Fuji-Ya building, expansion of green space, improved pedestrian crossings, and the addition of a new riverfront restaurant. It was announced last week that Sioux Chef owners Sean Sherman and Dana Thompson will open Owamni: An Indigenous Kitchen on the site.

Menu from the original Fuji-Ya restaurant at 814 LaSalle Ave. from the Minneapolis History Collection Menu Collection. Photos from the Star Tribune Photograph Collection at the James K. Hosmer Special Collections, Hennepin County Library.

For you military history enthusiasts out there!

World War II in Southeast Asia as shown by this map, titled Japanese Centrifugal Offensive (offense?) and its clashes with other European forces occupying the region, December 1941 - April 1942.

In blue are notable major battles such as the Battles of Sunda Strait (February 28), Java Sea (February 27), Balikpapan (January 23 - 24), Lombok Straits (February 18 - 19). After the surprising Pearl Harbor attack the Japanese managed to curb the European defense over Southeast Asia, also in a surprising manner due to unpreparedness. 

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初代「ゴジラ」俳優、中島春雄さん死去 http://www.bbc.com/japanese/40860452

Look! A scientist who says more scrutiny is needed! Yea!

AND - “Don’t try this at home!”

Cadaver study casts doubts on how zapping brain may boost mood, relieve pain

Earlier this month, György Buzsáki of New York University (NYU) in New York City showed a slide that sent a murmur through an audience in the Grand Ballroom of New York’s Midtown Hilton during the annual meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society. It wasn’t just the grisly image of a human cadaver with more than 200 electrodes inserted into its brain that set people whispering; it was what those electrodes detected—or rather, what they failed to detect.

When Buzsáki and his colleague, Antal Berényi, of the University of Szeged in Hungary, mimicked an increasingly popular form of brain stimulation by applying alternating electrical current to the outside of the cadaver’s skull, the electrodes inside registered little. Hardly any current entered the brain. On closer study, the pair discovered that up to 90% of the current had been redirected by the skin covering the skull, which acted as a “shunt,” Buzsáki said.

The new, unpublished cadaver data make dramatic effects on neurons unlikely, Buzsáki says. Most tDCS and tACS devices deliver about 1 to 2 milliamps of current. Yet based on measurements from electrodes inside multiple cadavers, Buzsaki calculated that at least 4 milliamps—roughly equivalent to the discharge of a stun gun—would be necessary to stimulate the firing of living neurons inside the skull. Buzsáki notes he got dizzy when he tried 5 milliamps on his own scalp. “It was alarming,” he says, warning people not to try such intense stimulation at home.

Buzsáki expects a living person’s skin would shunt even more current away from the brain because it is better hydrated than a cadaver’s scalp. He agrees, however, that low levels of stimulation may have subtle effects on the brain that fall short of triggering neurons to fire. Electrical stimulation might also affect glia, brain cells that provide neurons with nutrients, oxygen, and protection from pathogens, and also can influence the brain’s electrical activity. “Further questions should be asked” about whether 1- to 2-milliamp currents affect those cells, he says.

Buzsáki, who still hopes to use such techniques to enhance memory, is more restrained than some critics. The tDCS field is “a sea of bullshit and bad science—and I say that as someone who has contributed some of the papers that have put gas in the tDCS tank,” says neuroscientist Vincent Walsh of University College London. “It really needs to be put under scrutiny like this.”

1.8 M Width House by YUUA Architects and Associates