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Friday, April 1, 2011

Exciting news on both the personal and the biological front!

So I feel I've already contributed all that I am willing and able to snow research. It's getting boring, weather-dependent work is too logistically difficult for me to continue as a long-term career, and dangit, I'm just tired of being out in the cold all the time! I need work that is less harsh and doesn't require so many layers of clothes!

So I've signed on to a new project entirely, under the auspices of the Institute of Arctic Biology. It's a partnership between the Large Animal Research Station and the Kostroma Moose Farm. Guess what I'll be doing? I'll be helping in a project with the long-term goal of domesticating meese!

Why, you ask? No, not for riding, nor for beasts of burden, although this has been tried. Horses and dogs work just fine for that; we aren't trying to reinvent the wheel. The purpose of domesticating moose is for their milk. Apparently, it has medicinal value.

Moose milk is regarded to be a natural product of increased biological value, apparently having diverse therapeutic mechanisms. Moose milk is also used in radiation lesions treatment and for prophylactics of cytostatic disbacteriosis during lymphogranulematosis therapy. First of all, high therapeutical activity is due to high lysozyme activity of 40 - 65 mkg/ml. Fat contents is over 10%; proteins over8%. The content of such essential amino acids as threonine, methionine, histidine and non-essential as serine, glycine, alanine and asparaginic acid in moose milk is twofold higher than that in cow milk. The high value of lipid and fat-acid composition of moose milk is noted, especially in terms of the composition of essential fatty acids. The content of such microelements as silicon, magnesium, aluminium, molybdenum and cobalt exceed their content in cow milk. Moose milk is stored for a long time at a temperature of liquid nitrogen.

Now the moose milk becomes available as economically profitable product. Using it as a source of lysozyme in clinical nutrition enlarges the arsenal of lysozyme-restoring remedies which not only adjust affected body resistance, but also enhance specific immunity, phagocytosis and reparative processes, have antiinflammatory and desensitilizating effect, remove noxious metabolites from the body, improve the composition of intestinal microflora, and enhance blood-histological barriers.


Authors: Antropov E.A., Bespalov G.I., Bogdarin J.A., Brodov A.A., Davydov V.A., Dorofeichuk V.G., Dudin V.A., Dzhurovich V.M., Griaznov D.D., Kozlov G.S., Mikhailov A.P., Vitakova A.N., Zaikina M.G. (Yaroslavl Medical Institute, Yaroslavl, Research Institute of Pediatrics, Gorki, Forest Experimental Station, Kostroma), presented at the Third International Moose Symposium.

I've got to attend an International Moose Symposium!

You must look at this footage of a pet moose:


I might just get me a pet moose!

Edit: Happy April Fool's Day!

But the Kostroma Moose Farm is real, and so is that video. I have no idea what the situation is, but I agree with my mudder that it is Not a Good Idea. In the video, I mean. The Kostroma Moose Farm is awesome, and I encourage you to go check out their site and look at their photos of semi-tame meese, especially the fuzzy behbehs. So adorable! And that article is real, too. Those folks are actually milking meese for medicinal purposes. Yay meese!

10 comments:

mdr said...

Please, they are quick and strong, even the baby one is quick and strong from that video.

I just hope your true friends will also remind you of the potential danger.

Don't take more risk that you don't have to. You took enough already.

rena said...

Moose Milk, that's great! What kinds of ice cream flavors could you come up with? Perhaps some sort of "Moose Marbled" that's a mix of two flavors plus some bran for fiber?

I suggest you turn your snow collection table out back into a moose feeding station so that you can try to domesticate the wild meese that are in your area. As they grow more accustomed to you and your cabin, you could eventually teach them to enter a milking pen. Course, as with all lactating mammals, it can be difficult to get them to relax and "let down" their milk so you'll have to develop some "moossage" techniques.

Alaskan Dave Down Under said...

Happy April Fools Day!

mdr said...

That Alaskan Dave guy knows you better, but any joke makes me worry is not a good joke

rena said...

Mudder, I believe your beloved daughter is a repeat offender,ha ha!

Thanks to blogger.com's organizational wonders, I can see that:
4/1/2010 Arvay decided to pick up stakes and move to Manhattan
4/1/2009 Arvay considered adopting 5 orphaned puppies
4/1/2008 A research cabin the size of a chicken coop was to be her new home in Barrow

Thanks to her excellent writing skills and her can-do adventurous spirit she's led all of us on many funny and wild goose chases... Haha, I can't wait till next year!

mdr said...

Mdr never learned from previous "shocks" and don't appreciate future ones either.

Like other people my age, Mdr is too old to appreciate risks/worries.

Arvay said...

LOL! In Mudder's defense, only the Manhattan one sounded 100% completely implausible. I mean, the others might have been a stretch, but a Sili Valley Volvo-driving, condo-living, cubicle-working girl up and announcing, "I'm moving to Alaska!" sounds like an April Fools leg pull in and of itself.

After that, not much sounds implausible.

Except for the Manhattan one. Really, Mudder? You thought I could move to Manhattan?

mdr said...

If one would actually move to Fairbanks (notice this, not even Anchorage where has slightly more civilization), one would move to Manhattan. where is Gihim? and you are from...

Arvay said...

"If one would actually move to Fairbanks... one would move to Manhattan."

Whaaaa...?

That makes no sense whatsoever. One place is to get away from city life, the other is to embrace it. Suburban California is kind of in between, so a person from there, preferring either extreme, would choose *either* Manhattan *or* Fairbanks, but not both!

"not even Anchorage where has slightly more civilization..."

Yes, exactly! See, I chose NOT-civilization. That means I would NOT be attracted to Manhattan. See how that makes sense?

You can't clump together ALL things into a single category of "different from suburban California."

"Oh, you are not-Californian? Me too! I'm not-Californian! We must be very similar to each other!" See how that doesn't sound sensible?

I do understand what you are getting at in the broader sense, though. It's because I'm sort of weird and seemingly unpredictable, that it seems I would do *anything* that sounds weird and unpredictable. But it doesn't actually work that way in execution.

To paraphrase Tolstoy, "Normal people are all alike. Weird people are all weird in their own ways."

:)

Debs said...

I always look forward to your April Fools and wonder what you'll come up with - love this one ;-)