Vanished arm of Nile helped ancient Egyptians transport pyramids materials

When the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids of Giza around 4,500 years ago, the Nile River had an arm — one that has long since vanished — with high water levels that helped laborers ship materials to their construction site, a new study finds.

The discovery builds on previous archaeological and historical findings that the Nile had an extra arm flowing by the pyramids. But now, by analyzing ancient pollen samples taken from earthen cores, it's clear that "the former waterscapes and higher river levels" gave the Giza Pyramid's builders a leg up, a team of researchers wrote in a paper published Aug. 29 in the journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences(opens in new tab).

The research sheds light on how the pyramids — royal tombs for the pharaohs Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure — rose to monumental heights. Their towering stature was achieved, in large part, thanks to the Nile's now-defunct Khufu branch, which "remained at a high-water level during the reigns of Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure, facilitating the transportation of construction materials to the Giza Pyramid Complex," the team wrote in their paper.

Researchers have known for decades that the long-gone Khufu branch extended up to the Giza plateau in ancient times, but the new project aimed to find exactly how the water levels had changed over the past 8,000 years.

To reconstruct the Nile's past, in May 2019 the team drilled five cores into the Giza floodplain. The researchers measured the amount of pollen found in different parts of the cores to determine how pollen levels had changed over time. Time periods when water was plentiful should have more pollen than periods that were arid, the study authors wrote.

The pollen analysis revealed that at the time the ancient Egyptians built the Giza pyramids, water was plentiful enough that the Khufu branch would have flowed near the Giza pyramids. "It was a natural canal in the time of the fourth dynasty [when the pyramids were built]," study lead author Hader Sheisha, a physical geographer at Aix-Marseille University in France, told Live Science in an email.

Sheisha noted that the water level was important for pyramid construction. "It would be very difficult if not impossible to build the pyramids without the Khufu branch and without it having a good level, which provides enough accommodation space for the boats carrying such heavy blocks of stone," she said. When exactly the branch went extinct is not certain, but the research shows that by 2,400 years ago the water level of the branch was very low.

The finds fit well with previous archaeological finds, which revealed a harbor close to the pyramids, as well as ancient papyri records that detailed workers bringing limestone to Giza via boat, the team noted in their paper.

Live Science contacted several experts not involved with the research to get their thoughts. Most were unable to comment at press time, but one who did, Judith Bunbury, a geo-archaeologist at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, praised the research.

"The paper is an exciting contribution to our understanding of the dialogue between humans and their environment in Egypt within the context of changing climate," Bunbury told Live Science in an email.

https://www.livescience.com/giza-pyramids-built-nile-high-water

Did Nero really fiddle while Rome burned?

 
The Roman emperor Nero ranks among the most infamous rulers of the Roman Empire for supposedly fiddling while Rome burned. But did that really happen? And does Nero really deserve his bad reputation?

As with all stories, we have to consider the source.

Born on Dec. 15, A.D. 37, Nero became the fifth emperor of Rome and the last of the Julio-Claudians, the dynasty that founded the empire, according to archaeologist Francesca Bologna, who curated the Nero Project at the British Museum(opens in new tab) in London.

Nero was only 2 years old when his mother, Agrippina the Younger — whose great-grandfather was Augustus, the empire's first emperor — was exiled by Emperor Caligula. At age 3, Nero's father, Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, died, leaving him in the care of his aunt. When Caligula was murdered in A.D. 41 and succeeded by Emperor Claudius, Nero was reunited with Agrippina, who later married her uncle Claudius, Bologna noted.

Despite having a biological son, Claudius designated Nero, his great nephew and stepson, as his heir, and Nero ascended to power in A.D. 54 at the age of 16. But his reign was short: Nero died in A.D. 68 at age 30 after taking his own life.

Roman historians have contended that Nero killed Agrippina and two of his wives, only cared about his art, and had very little interest in ruling the empire, Bologna said. However, "our sources for Nero are people that hated him," Harold Drake, a research professor emeritus of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told Live Science. One always has to keep in mind that much of his reputation "was written for us by his adversaries," he said. Bologna agreed, noting in her post for the British Museum that accounts of Nero "were keen on representing him in the worst possible light."

In July A.D. 64, Nero was vacationing in Antium (what is now the seaside town of Anzio, Italy) when he learned about what later became known as the Great Fire of Rome, Drake said. Before the conflagration burned itself out a week later, 10 of Rome's 14 districts had burned to the ground and thousands in a city of 500,000 to 1 million people had lost everything.

Nero raced back to Rome. He arranged emergency shelter and supplies of food and drink for the public, and opened his own palace and gardens for shelter, Drake noted(opens in new tab).

So, if Nero wasn't in Rome when the conflagration started, what's the origin of the rumor that "he fiddled" while the empire's capital burned?

Nero fancied himself a musician. At some point during the relief efforts, a rumor said he consoled himself by singing about another great fire — the fall of Troy, the Homeric tale that's the focus of the Roman poet Virgil's epic poem "The Aeneid," Drake said.

"He had done everything he could to deal with the fire, and he was exhausted," Drake said. "Being of an artistic bent, he consoled himself by comparing this disaster to the fall of Troy, which Romans liked to think they descended from, via the mythical ancestor Aeneas."

But even if Nero did play music while Rome was burning, he would not have used a fiddle, as bowed instruments would not become popular for another 1,000 years, Drake said. Instead, to accompany himself, Nero probably would have used a cithara, a portable harp-like instrument with seven strings, he explained.

There was precedent for Romans acting in such a manner. For example, the historian Polybius wrote that as the Roman general Scipio Aemelianus watched Carthage being destroyed, he quoted Homer's "The Iliad," saying, "'And a time will come when holy Ilium shall fall, and Priam, and Priam's folk of the good ashen spear,'" Drake said. "He was not thinking of Carthage but expressing fear that a like fate awaited the Romans."

In the aftermath of the Great Fire of Rome, Nero offered financial incentives to landlords to clear their property of debris and begin rebuilding, insisted that developers use stone instead of wood, straightened and widened streets, and ensured an adequate water supply for the city, Drake said. "Does that seem like the activity of a madman?" he asked.

So why might history remember Nero as a bad ruler? Almost everything the modern world knows about Nero comes from two sources: Roman senators and Christians. To both, Nero was an enemy.

"In general, senators loved to indulge their fantasy of a restored republic, sometimes by engaging in assassination plots, and then being outraged when the emperor reacted with hostility," Drake said.

As for the Christians, Roman senator and historian Tacitus suggested that because a rumor began circulating that Nero was responsible for the fire, he looked for a scapegoat in the Christians. The result was that many died from crucifixions, fires and other means. This often led Christians to blame Nero for the persecution they would endure from the Roman Empire, Drake said.

All that said, "I don't want to fall into the trap of justifying everything Nero did just because he has suffered from bad press," Drake said. "Nero was unquestionably pampered and overindulged by his tutors and, like other tyrants at other times, became much more arbitrary in his actions."

In the end, although Nero might not have been a madman, "there's little reason to doubt that he became increasingly unstable" over the course of his reign, Drake said. After the Great Fire of Rome, a group of nobles tried to assassinate him, and Nero grew increasingly paranoid, according to Hareth Al Bustani, author of "Nero and the Art of Tyranny(opens in new tab)" (Independently published, 2021).

Perhaps, given all that happened to Nero, any instability late in his life "should come as no surprise," Drake said.

https://www.livescience.com/did-nero-fiddle-while-rome-burned?utm_campaign=368B3745-DDE0-4A69-A2E8-62503D85375D

The old person's lament

The poem below is about Ulysses -- more accuratey rendered as Odysseus -- Homer's hero in ancient Greece and king of Ithaca. Its line "I cannot rest from travel" summarizes a lot of old people today

Ulysses
BY ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,—
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

East German revival picking up

East Germans make up 14% of the country’s overall population but remain underrepresented in elite positions in big German companies, universities and government. None of the 40 blue-chip businesses traded on the Frankfurt stock exchange are located in the five states that used to form the German Democratic Republic, where GDP per capita is about 22% lower than in the west.

But a boom in eastern German cities, and the clusters of industry that surround them, is changing the picture. After years of dragging behind the rest of the country, Berlin – divided during the cold war but geographically very much an eastern city – has seen its GDP rise above the national average since 2020. Surrounding Brandenburg has been lifted by the arrival of Tesla’s first factory for electronic cars in Europe.

As supply chains fray around the globe, branches of industry are choosing Germany’s east for their return to Europe. Chipmaker Intel announced in March it would build two semiconductor factories in the city of Magdeburg, while a Canadian clean tech company is building Europe’s first lithium converter in Guben, Brandenburg.

Ample space, locally sourced renewable energy and federal subsidies exclusive to the eastern states are proving incentives, as is a high-speed rail network completed in 2017, connecting Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia to Berlin in the north and Munich in the south.

A feeling of being “left behind” in a transforming economy, one analysis by the left-liberal thinktank Progressives Zentrum found, was now as likely to be found in western regions such as the Ruhr valley or the Saarland. “East versus west, that’s a story of the past,” said Andrä Gärber, of the Social Democratic party (SPD)-tied Friedrich Ebert Foundation.

A newfound swagger was also on display when Schneider last week hosted a delegation of UK Labour party delegates searching for lessons to be drawn for England’s north, which has been economically outperformed by eastern Germany for over a decade.

“Their challenges are in a different league,” said one SPD delegate in the Thuringian state parliament after a lunchtime discussion in the spa town of Bad Tabarz with Lisa Nandy, the British shadow minister for levelling up, housing and communities.

At last September’s vote, Scholz’s SPD swept to victory in part due to massive gains in the north-east, where it fought back the conservative Christian Democratic Union and the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) mainly by focusing on economic issues such as wages and leaving culture wars to one side.

Identity politics, Schneider said, were toxic to voters in the east: “Because the East German state invested so much effort in telling its people how to speak, people are absolutely allergic here to being educated through language.”

Yet eastern Germany’s economic success stories remain fragile. Half a year into its job, Scholz’s government has moved quickly to pass a new minimum wage increase to €12 (£10.20) an hour, which comes fully into effect as of 1 October and will benefit every third or fourth worker in low-income regions such as Brandenburg or Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. But as Russia’s war in Ukraine is massively driving up the cost of living with rising gas prices and spiralling inflation, such political victories may soon barely register with voters as vows on wages are put to the test over the coming months.

One instrument through which the SPD and its Green and liberal coalition partners have vowed to drive up wages and union memberships is the Tariftreuegesetz – a law to make sure public contracts are only awarded to companies that are party to collective bargaining agreements.

While similar laws are already in place in 14 out of 16 German states, they are not always enforceable. “If we can only find companies that aren’t bound by collective bargaining agreements, then we have to go with them,” said Diana Lehmann, an SPD delegate in the Thuringian parliament.

Near Erfurt, where Schneider gained a direct mandate at least year’s federal elections, the Chinese battery manufacturer CATL is now building its first non-Chinese production facility for €1.8m, which it says will offer about 2,000 jobs in the area in the long run. But, for now, the Chinese company has mainly brought in Chinese workers, with rumours that the management is put off from hiring locally by German labour laws requiring eight-hour working days. Wages are said to be lower than hoped for.

With public attention focused on gas pipelines and arms deliveries, the government has also barely started to make the politically sensitive case that Germany needs to find political answers not just to a shortage of gas to power its industry, but also of workers.

“We have a massive labour shortage in all areas,” said Schneider. “Germany will need 7 million more workers by 2030. For this reason we are going to introduce one of the most liberal immigration laws in the world. And we will do it in such a way that it won’t lead to wage dumping.”

https://www.msn.com/en-au/money/markets/a-new-confidence-the-east-german-economy-finally-gets-a-boom/ar-AAZLVNG?li=AAgfYrC

Insomnia breakthrough as scientists discover the two most effective drugs yet

Oxford University experts examined more than 150 studies that tested the effects of 30 different drugs on thousands of adults suffering from sleeping problems.

Eszopiclone, sold under the brand Lunesta, and lemborexant, marketed as Dayvigo, were best for easing insomnia symptoms.

They worked better than benzodiazepines and Z-drugs, two powerful sleeping pills NHS bosses are trying to phase out.

Both pills are already used across Europe and the US. They are hypnotics which work by calming the brain to get someone to sleep very quickly.

Study leader Professor Andrea Cipriani said he expects British regulators to consider approving both drugs in light of the findings.

However, he noted they can trigger side effects, such as headaches, dizziness and nausea — similar to addictive benzodiazepines.

Professor Cipriani said non-pharmaceutical treatments, such as therapy, should still be the first-line treatment.

The problem, which affects one in six Britons, can usually get better if sufferers change their sleeping habits.

Symptoms include finding it hard to sleep, waking up several times in the night, waking up early and struggling to get back to sleep.

It can be triggered by stress, anxiety or depression, noise, a room that is too hot or cold, an uncomfortable bed, shift work, alcohol, caffeine or nicotine, as well as recreational drugs.

Adults need seven to nine hours of sleep per night.

Insomnia a can be short term – lasting three months or less  or long-term if it persists for more than 12 weeks.

Treatments include cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) sessions with a therapist, which can help change thoughts and behaviours that stop people from sleeping.

GPs rarely prescribe sleeping pills over concerns about their side effects and drug dependency.

Insomnia — defined as regular sleeping difficulties — is thought to affect up to one in 10 people in Europe.

It can lead to reduced productivity, increased absence from work and a higher risk of accidents.

Insomnia is also heavily linked with mental health disorders like depression as well as alcohol dependence.

First-line treatment includes encouraging 'sleep hygiene', simple methods like going to bed at the same time every night, exercising and limiting caffeine before bed.

Some patients may be referred for cognitive behavioural therapy — talking therapy that aims to manage problems by changing the way a person thinks. Britons can also be prescribed an app that provides a six-week self-help programme.

GPs may also prescribe sleeping pills. But this is rarely done as the drugs can trigger serious side effects and addiction.

However, 300,000 people in England are thought to be long-term users of Z-drugs and benzodiazepines.

Some take the drugs for other reasons, such as anxiety.

Professor Cipriani told a briefing for health and science journalists today there is 'little evidence' about how effective sleeping pills are in comparison to each other.

This raised the question of whether doctors are 'prescribing the right medication' to those who need it, she said.

Their study, published in The Lancet, reviewed 154 published and unpublished trials — completed by November 2021.

Experiments assessed tested effectiveness of 30 different insomnia drugs, in 44,089 adults with sleeping difficulties.

They looked at patients who were given drugs for four weeks — as well as those who took medication for three months.

Three-quarters were given a sleeping pill, while a quarter were given a placebo drug.

Volunteers reported their quality of sleep, whether they stopped taking the pill and any adverse events — such as dizziness, nausea, fatigue, headache and drowsiness.

The findings showed that eszopiclone and lemborexant out-performed other drugs.

A quarter of short-term eszopiclone-users reported that their symptoms improved, while 38 per cent of those who took it for three months said they were able to sleep more easily.

Meanwhile, one in five volunteers on lemborexant said their symptoms improved at four weeks, while 35 per cent said they had eased after three months.

However, researchers warned that up to half of patients on the two drugs were left feeling unwell.

For comparison, benzodiazepines, which is offered to patients in the UK, were found to be effective in the short-term — easing up to three in 10 users' symptoms.

But the researchers noted that information on their long-term effects is not available and patients do not tolerate them well, with up to six in 10 reporting side effects.

Z-drugs, such as zaleplon, benefited as few as 16 per cent of patients and also lacked long-term data.

And melatonin, another drug offered on the NHS, failed to show any material benefits, with only 18 per cent noticing an improvement and four in 10 reporting side effects, the team said.

The researchers stated the safety data on lemborexant was inconclusive but there appeared to be a risk of headaches, while eszopiclone-users reported dizziness and nausea.

Further studies are needed to determine how safe the two drugs are over time, the researchers said.

Professor Cipriani, a psychiatrist at the University of Oxford, said the findings are 'the most transparent and comprehensive picture of all the data available' on insomnia drugs.

He said the results can help doctors identify the most appropriate drug for their insomnia patients and said regulators should take the findings into account when deciding whether to approve eszopiclone and lemborexant.

'Clearly, the need to treat insomnia as effectively as possible is very important, as it can have knock-on effects for a patient’s health, their home lives and the wider health system,' Professor Cipriani said.

However, he warned that the study is 'not a recommendation that drugs should always be used as the first line of support to treat insomnia', warning that some can have 'serious side effects'.

But Professor Cipriani noted that the research shows some drugs 'can also be effective, and should be used in clinical practice, when appropriate'.

'For example, where treatments such as improved sleep hygiene and CBT have not worked, or where a patient wants to consider taking medication as part of their treatment,' he added.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11013087/Insomnia-breakthrough-scientists-discover-two-effective-drugs-yet.html

Antidepressants Overprescribed, Linked to Suicide Risk

Cases of depression and anxiety increased by 25 percent in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic alone by some counts, up from 1 in 20 adults worldwide, and the use of antidepressants has become more common. However, studies have found that antidepressants have unexpected risks.

In the 1960s, it was discovered that depression could be due to a lack of serotonin in the brain. Back then, people believed that serotonin was the “happiness factor” in humans. Serotonin is actually a neurotransmitter. The presynaptic neurons release serotonin and can also reuptake it into the brain to maintain homeostasis.

Thus, drugs were designed with the crude understanding that if the “recycling” pathway for serotonin is blocked, serotonin levels in body fluids will increase, and the symptoms will be relieved.

The main mechanism of the most common classes of antidepressant drugs, which include selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), noradrenaline, and serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs), involves the regulation of serotonin and the uptake of other neurotransmitters.

Although there may seem to be many options available, all of these drugs actually work based on similar mechanisms.

The current antidepressants have a large flaw in their mechanisms, but they are still used in large quantities.

Antidepressants Are Being Used Heavily
People suffer from depression for various reasons, and the degree of depression also varies greatly, so there should be a more comprehensive consideration of medication use. However, many doctors may prescribe antidepressants in the same way as painkillers: in increasing dosages after the effectiveness of the drugs diminishes, resulting in drug abuse.

Currently, approximately 13 percent of adults and 18 percent of adult women in the United States have taken antidepressants in the past 30 days. This is an alarming number.

In addition, there has been a rapid increase in the number of young antidepressant users. While it used to be mostly adults taking these drugs, a significant number of adolescents aged 13 to 19 are now taking them as well. Adolescents are prone to emotional instability, and taking medication whenever they have emotional problems will cause them to develop a dependence on medications, instead of figuring out the problems they encounter as they grow up, getting mature emotionally or seeking help from their family, friends, and other sources.

Antidepressants May Raise Suicide Risk

So, is there a risk associated with the use of antidepressants in such a large population?

A study published in Frontiers in Psychiatry looked at the antidepressant prescription rates and suicide rates in Australia since 2012 and found a consistent upward trend in both data.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned in 2004 that children and adolescents taking antidepressants were at increased risk of suicide, including suicidal thoughts and behaviors.

At that time, the FDA used a “black-box warning” label for all classes of antidepressants, which is the highest warning level given by the FDA for an approved drug, and it can be seen on the drug packaging. The warning went into effect in 2005; and in 2006, the warning was expanded to include people 25 years of age.

The “black box warning” is used to warn the public and prescribers about serious, permanent, or fatal side effects—it thus requires evidence of significant risk, meaning that these warnings are generally added after drugs have already been on the market.

Although the warning was once taken seriously by the industry, it did not stop the social environment from encouraging the use of chemicals to control mental problems. As a result, the use of antidepressants declined only briefly and rose again after 2006.

Moreover, antidepressants have brought large profits to pharmaceutical companies worldwide. In 2020, the market for antidepressants reached $15 billion.

A research published in the British Medical Journal further confirms that the risk of suicide attempts is significantly higher in the 28 days after taking antidepressants than before. Moreover, symptoms may rebound severely in the short term after stopping the medication, so suicidal tendencies are also elevated during the withdrawal phase.

If a patient is suffering from severe depression and urgently needs help, it takes a long time to see the effects of the medication.  Under this circumstance, many doctors often prescribe a higher dose of antidepressant drugs for patients.   However, the higher dose of drugs may further worsen the patient’s symptoms.  This is also a major problem like a vicious cycle.

Our Understanding of Serotonin Was Wrong

A more critical issue is that our understanding of depression may have been wrong from the beginning.

Many are raising questions about this.

A review by experts from Canada and the University of Virginia was published in the journal Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews. This article collected a large number of studies related to serotonin and found that the concept that the amount of serotonin determines changes in people’s mood is wrong.

It was first discovered that the association between the amount of serotonin and mental status is not a single one. When depressed, the amount of serotonin does not necessarily drop, and in many cases, it actually rises. This is because serotonin changes in the brain are difficult to measure, and previous testing techniques had its limitations.

Moreover, serotonin is not just a “happiness factor.” It is a complex system that is closely related to the energy regulation of many organ systems in the body.

In addition to the brain, serotonin also acts on many other organs throughout the body. And it affects the operation of many bodily functions, including mitochondrial energy production, which involves energy storage. Serotonin also directly affects the metabolism of sugar and the distribution and absorption of energy in different organs, as well as the immune system, the body’s growth and development, and fertility. SSRIs can actually disrupt the energy balance of many systems in the body, thus bringing many problems.

The review also pointed out that after some people took antidepressants for a period of time, their depression symptoms were alleviated, but the improvement might not actually be brought about by the medicines. Rather, the drugs disrupted the serotonin and energy balances, prompting the body to make self-protective and compensatory adjustments.

This is equivalent to a complete overturn of the antidepressant mechanism developed in the 1960s.

Unfortunately, this was not widely reported in the media, as it was a rather profound academic paper.

With further advancement in brain science and neuroscience research over the past few decades, scientists have continued to discover that the effects of serotonin on the brain are not as simple as we once thought, and that these concepts were unknown at the early time of antidepressant drug development.

For example, if there is a problem with the serotonin level in the hippocampus, it will cause memory loss and reduces the brain-derived neurotrophic factor signaling; if there is a problem with the serotonin level in the hypothalamus, it will affect the body’s ability to grow, reproduce, and do physical activities.

It can be seen that the brain is a complex system, and the effects of a substance on different parts of the brain are different. The use of drugs to directly disturb the balances of serotonin and other substances will cause greater disruptions in the body.

Side Effects of Antidepressants

The side effects of antidepressants also vary. Examples include severe insomnia, drowsiness, sexual dysfunction, and a higher probability of bleeding death after surgery, among others. In addition, antidepressants and many drugs, including hypertensive drugs, should not be taken together.

A study published in the Journal of Clinical Medicine found that many antidepressant drugs can cause sexual dysfunction, with the prevalence of some being as much as 20 percent to 30 percent.

In addition, the discontinuation of long-term use of antidepressant medications will also lead to numerous side effects, including sensory problems. This is because when people become accustomed to chemical dependency, their level of cognition is lowered, making them prone to numbness, sensory and cognitive disturbances, insomnia, nightmares, and other problems.

The body functions can also become dysfunctional when an antidepressant drug is discontinued. Since more than 90 percent of the serotonin acts on different organs of the body, the effects of the drugs are systemic. Diarrhea, nausea, muscle stiffness, problems with reflexes, hypothermia, and even shock may occur.

Therefore, it is still important to pay attention to the dosage when taking medication at home.

Conventional medicine focuses on using material changes to explain everything and using chemical changes to explain mental illnesses, and then developing drugs based on this “explanation.” However, with further research, it may be found that the initial “explanation” is wrong, and that the drugs developed can do more harm than good.

So, besides chemical drugs, what else can be used to treat depression and other mental illnesses?

Some psychologists will perform cognitive therapies for patients before prescribing medication, and one of them is cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). Psychologists talk to patients to understand their problems and help them find ways to relieve them. This type of communication is helpful to many people to a certain degree.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/antidepressants-overprescribed-linked-to-suicide-risk_4585634.html

Economic revival in Eastern Germany

 
Once a byword for economic decline, the region is being transformed into the centre of Europe’s electric car industry

Ten years ago, the small east German town of Guben was so desperate for new investors it was prepared to give them land for free. “Now I have no free space,” says mayor Fred Mahro.

The turning point came last year when a Canadian clean tech company selected the town to build Europe’s first lithium converter that makes a key component for electric car batteries. Guben won out over 60 other potential sites across the continent.

Rock Tech Lithium’s €500mn investment will make Guben an important link in the battery supply chain and breathe new life into the town. “Guben was like Sleeping Beauty,” says Mahro. “Rock Tech kissed it awake.”

The arrival of the Canadians is emblematic of a massive influx of investment into the former communist east, which has become the home of Europe’s rapidly expanding electric car sector. A region that was once a byword for economic decline is turning into one of the continent’s hottest pieces of industrial real estate.

In the past couple of years, it has been deluged with new projects and investments. Most eye-catching of all was chipmaker Intel’s announcement in March that it would build at least two semiconductor factories worth €17bn in the eastern city of Magdeburg — the largest-ever foreign direct investment in Germany. It came in the same month that Tesla started production at its first European electric car factory in the eastern town of Grünheide. That comes on top of the two electric vehicle plants converted by Volkswagen in the cities of Zwickau and Dresden.

Eastern Germany is now “one of the most attractive economic regions of Europe”, Chancellor Olaf Scholz told a conference earlier this month. “And internationally, word is getting around.”

The investments could be the harbinger of a profound shift in Germany’s industrial geography. For decades, the country’s economic strength has been concentrated in the south and south-west, home to carmakers such as Mercedes and BMW and engineering giants such as Siemens. But that could change as the east re-industrialises.

“Germany’s economic map is being drawn anew,” says Carsten Schneider, the German government’s commissioner for the east.

Indeed, the new investments come at a time when Germany’s traditional car industry, based on the combustion engine, is coming under unprecedented pressure as governments around the world look to a future free of fossil fuels and the transition to electric cars gathers pace. The pressure was exemplified by the European Parliament’s vote earlier this month to ban the sale of new diesel and petrol cars and vans in the EU from 2035.

Across the south and south-west, traditional suppliers to the automotive industry — Bosch, Continental, Mahle, ZF Friedrichshafen — have announced job cuts amid falling demand and an uncertain outlook.

The reverse is true in the east, where Volkswagen opened its first dedicated EV production line in 2019, converting a plant in Zwickau, Saxony that once manufactured the Soviet-era Trabant car and was taken over by VW after Germany’s reunification. “The region and the people are familiar with upheavals, which was certainly no disadvantage,” says Karen Kutzner, chief financial officer of VW Saxony.

The company’s aim is to manufacture 300,000 electric cars a year at the site, and a few thousand more in nearby Dresden, adding roughly 1,000 jobs in the process. The Zwickau region now has almost full employment, thanks in part to companies such as cablemaker Leoni investing about €130mn in the area to supply the VW plants.

BMW is adding hundreds of roles to its plant in Leipzig, which will build battery modules.

Jörg Steinbach, economy minister of Brandenburg, the state surrounding Berlin that is Tesla’s new European home, says it has seen investments of €7bn since 2018 — “that scale is a far cry from previous years”. The regional authorities in eastern Germany are currently dealing with 28 expressions of interest representing €11.5bn in potential new investment.

“For a long time, the east German states were in the bottom half of the economic performance league,” says Steinbach. “I think that league is going to become a lot more skewed towards the east in the next five years.”

Lots of empty space

Take a trip to the Brandenburg countryside and it’s immediately obvious what makes it attractive to investors — the space. It has a lot more freely available land than other parts of Germany, especially the densely populated, highly industrialised south-west. Tesla’s Grünheide factory sits on 300 hectares of land and Intel’s in Magdeburg will take up 450 — the equivalent of 620 football pitches.

“Such space is a rarity in the heart of Europe and highly sought after,” Scholz said at the conference earlier this month. “And in east Germany it exists.”

The east has another key competitive advantage — a plentiful supply of renewable energy. Brandenburg generates more electricity from wind, solar and biomass per head of population than any other German state. Renewables cover 94 per cent of the state’s electricity demand, compared to Germany’s national average of 46 per cent.

“[Investors] say our business is producing batteries for environmentally friendly mobility,” economy minister Robert Habeck told the same conference Scholz spoke at this month. “And we want to produce our batteries in a sustainable way . . . [so] the availability of renewable energy is a crucial factor for energy-intensive companies setting up here.”

Eastern Germany is also benefiting massively from the move to greater European “sovereignty” — the EU’s strategy to boost its self-reliance in critical sectors such as batteries and semiconductors, the data cloud and pharmaceuticals.

Shocked by the disruptions to global trade seen during the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, countries are increasingly focused on ramping up domestic production of crucial components and shortening supply chains to make them less vulnerable to external shocks.

Those trends are particularly marked in the region around Berlin. “The [EV] industry will have everything it needs here, from our lithium processing to battery and cell production to the manufacturing of electric cars,” says Markus Brügmann, Rock Tech Lithium’s chief executive. “And our company is sitting right at the heart of this new value chain.”

State subsidies have played a key role in attracting investors. Berlin is providing €6.8bn in financial support to the Intel project by 2024, €2.7bn of it this year alone. It is also releasing €40bn in funds over the next few years to cushion the economic effects of its plan to phase out coal, and much of that will flow to east Germany, home to a clutch of lignite mines and coal-fired power stations that must be shut down. Roads, railways and research institutions could see a substantial windfall.

However, it is not just the promise of subsidies that is luring big tech companies to the east, it is the region’s long history as a centre of industry. Some of the recent revival is built on foundations laid during the communist GDR: the semiconductor cluster near Dresden in Saxony — Europe’s largest — sprung up on the site of Robotron, the former state-run GDR electronics manufacturer, after the likes of Bosch, Infineon and AMD realised that highly qualified personnel and production facilities could be snapped up at low cost.

That so-called semiconductor “ecosystem” continues to attract cutting-edge companies that are banking on becoming the new auto suppliers, such as Estonian supercapacitor start-up Skeleton Tech, which is investing €36mn in a Dresden site.

“We liked the industrial infrastructure but also the academia,” says co-founder Taavi Madiberk, whose company works closely with technical universities in Dresden and a network of sites run by Germany’s state-sponsored applied research organisation, Fraunhofer. Saxony has the highest concentration of such institutes, many of which were converted from GDR-era science academies.

“When you scale up normal manufacturing, you need competency in a really wide variety of areas, which for a tech company does not make sense to build in-house,” says Madiberk.

Reversing decades of decline

The arrival of companies like Tesla and Intel marks a big turnround for a region whose communist-era industrial base was virtually wiped out after reunification in 1990. Hundreds of factories closed in the ensuing decade, unemployment soared and young people headed westwards in search of work. “Some 70 per cent of East German industry disappeared,” says Steinbach.

The lack of economic prospects spawned frustration and anger that fuelled the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany and the anti-Muslim movement Pegida, whose mass protests during the 2015-16 refugee crisis made headlines.

Guben typifies the region’s highs and lows. The town gained fame in the 19th century as a centre of German hat production — one local notable, Carl Gottlob Wilke, is still remembered for inventing the weatherproof wool-felt hat, made from sheep’s wool rather than the traditional rabbit fur.

Under communism, the town became a big industrial centre, home to a synthetic fibre plant that employed hundreds. But after reunification much of the former GDR’s chemicals industry collapsed and took Guben with it.

“The cloth mill, the hat factory, the carpet yarn works — they all shut down,” recalls Mahro. “It was a wholesale bloodletting.” The town’s population more than halved, from 36,000 to 16,700 and by the end of the 1990s, unemployment stood at 27 per cent.

In the previous 30 years Guben had been able to attract just one new investor — a mattress maker called Megaflex. More trouble lay on the horizon — a nearby coal-fired power plant employing hundreds of people is among those due to be closed by 2038 under the planned coal phaseout.

It was not much better in other parts of eastern Germany. Though the prosperity gap with the west has narrowed in recent years, GDP per capita in the east was still just 77.9 per cent of the western level in 2020. Wages lag those in the west by 23 per cent.

But Guben fought hard to arrest the decline in its fortunes. The authorities upgraded the town’s now almost empty industrial zone and commissioned a €300,000 development plan that was finalised last year. Fred Mahro said he told Jörg Steinbach, the minister, “if an investor comes he can make a planning application straight away — we’re ready.” Six weeks later, Steinbach sent Rock Tech Lithium to Guben and talks began.

The plant they will build converts spodumene, a mineral containing lithium from its own mine in Canada, into pure lithium hydroxide — a crucial ingredient in electric car batteries. Rock Tech hopes to produce 24,000 tonnes a year, enough for 500,000 cars.

Even that is not nearly enough to meet the expected demand in Europe, says Brügmann. “It’s going to be like this,” he says, etching a hockey stick in the air. Driving the boom are climate policies that will vastly increase demand for electric cars. “The European market for electric mobility is years ahead of all others,” he says.

Meanwhile, other parts of the supply chain in the east are also taking shape. BASF is building a factory in Schwarzheide to make cathode active materials used in lithium-ion batteries, Australia’s Altech will produce anode materials in Schwarze Pumpe in Brandenburg and Microvast and CATL of China are also building factories to make actual batteries, one in Ludwigsfelde south of Berlin and one in Erfurt.

Last year, of the more than 323,000 electric vehicles produced in Germany, 57 per cent were manufactured in VW’s Zwickau and Dresden plants, according to autos analyst Matthias Schmidt. The opening of Tesla’s Brandenburg factory earlier this year has cemented the east of the country’s dominance in the battery vehicle world.

The buzz in eastern Germany contrasts with a much bleaker picture in the traditional carmaking regions, where more than 100,000 job cuts have been announced in the past three years. The lobby group that represents European auto suppliers, Clepa, has suggested that hundreds of thousands of roles will go thanks to the EU’s 2035 mandate.

Return to the past

Economic historians draw parallels between the east’s current revival and earlier phases of prosperity and progress. The area around Leuna in eastern Germany — now the site of a big oil refinery — was one of the “economically strongest regions in Germany before the second world war”, says Oliver Holtemöller, of the Halle Institute for Economic Research.

Meanwhile, Bavaria was then largely an agricultural state that only much later earned its reputation for “laptops and lederhosen”.

Yet there are some who argue that talk of a resurgence in the east can be overstated: most of Germany’s higher-paying jobs will remain in the south, after all. “The investments we’re seeing are in production, but research and development are what matters when it comes to innovation,” says Holtemöller.

The share of R&D spending by private companies, measured as a share of GDP, is two-to-three times higher in southern Germany than it is in the east. “That’s where the innovation is happening, and that’s where the highest salaries are,” he says.

And while the pace of the renewable energy buildout in the east is impressive, Russia’s weaponising of gas supplies could trigger a short-term energy squeeze that will affect new companies and established consumers alike. One semiconductor manufacturer in Dresden told the Financial Times it had already been informed that gas supplies to its plant could be rationed in the event of acute shortages this winter.

While the east is currently not more vulnerable to gas shortages than much of the rest of the country, the mere threat of rationing could dissuade some potential investors.

Politics is also an issue. The AfD remains strong in the east, particularly Saxony, which executives worry will deter foreign nationals from seeking jobs in the region’s new factories. “We are reliant on immigration, and we need to be open to it,” says Holtemöller. “But, particularly in rural areas of the east, xenophobia is a problem.”

Yet in the coming years, the east’s population is due to shrink, even more quickly than that of western Germany, making it increasingly dependent on imported labour. Of the 100 German districts with the worst predicted demographic decline, 55 are in the east, according to the latest government report on the region’s progress since reunification.

The report said that in the next 15 years, 42 per cent of working-age east Germans will retire, much more than the national average. “That will have significant effects on the labour market, companies’ ability to hire enough skilled workers, the pension system and healthcare,” the report said. “By 2032 there will be one person of pensionable age for every two of working age.”

“New jobs can only arise when there are enough people to take them up,” says Holtemöller. “But the east’s population is shrinking.”

It’s an issue that the people of Guben are also acutely aware of. A few days ago, executives from Rock Tech Lithium came to the town to inform locals about their project. The reception was warm, but scepticism was rife.

“I can’t imagine how they’re going to find the workers they need here — this is an ageing town,” says Gaby Hartmann, a pensioner. “My generation dominates and our ship has sailed.”

Lothar Hüfner, who worked for 40 years at Guben’s synthetic fibre plant, is pleased about Rock Tech Lithium’s investment. “If something will happen here again, then that’s great,” he says with a smile.

But he remains cautious — a prudence born of experience. The 87-year-old helped lay the first bricks of the Guben fibre plant in 1960 and then, more than 30 years later, watched as it was torn down. Since then, “We’ve seen plenty of investors come and go”, he says. “But their projects pop like soap bubbles.”

Mayor Fred Mahro, however, is much more optimistic. “We rolled out the red carpet for so many people in the past and suffered so many defeats,” he says. But things are different now. “This is the most wonderful time I’ve ever had in Guben.”

https://www.ft.com/content/f1d0e732-d523-40db-b753-ae404498dc7a