Female ginkgo trees are the ones that bear fruit and hence produce the offensive odor. But branches of a male ginko tree can (rarely) change sex and bare fruit.
I've never tried Ginko kernels roasted to the point they were crunchy. But I find the ones roasted (some times on a skewer) to the consistency of firm cooked lima beans have a flavor similar to lima beans. Preparing lima beans is much easier though they produce very different medicinal effects.
Would the early United States be considered an "individulistic society"?
If so then consider the continental level genocidal practices which that society consciously adopted. Remember that all of North America was populated before the westward expansion. Feel free to extrapolate backwards in time.
The early United States was on the way to being an individualistic society, but hadn't arrived. In particular the natives who they killed they saw as part of a group, and not as individuals.
There is a long and complicated history in English speaking people of "rights for me, but not for thee" which started with the king, was broadened to nobles with the Magna Carta, was broadened to rich landowners with the establishment of Parliament, was in the process of being broadened to free white men around the time of the American Revolution and has piecemeal been given to other groups over time.
What today we consider "universal rights" were historically not universal. Our awful treatment of others is tied to our not granting rights to them. And our awful treatment of ourselves (for example in totalitarian societies) is tied to our being subsumed in something greater.
I encountered the idea of the 'night watch' and in fact the three traditional military watches of the night and their relationship with historical sleep patterns around the world thanks to The Paleolithic Prescription (1988) by Boyd Eaton, et al.[1]. Beyond introducing the idea of a paleolithic diet, Dr. Eaton along with his colleagues and students researched sleep and activity patterns in historical texts (records of Victorian doctors), the anthropological record, and practices of contemporary indigenous groups. As I recall, they found three sleep patterns commonly coexisting through recorded history and around the globe.
1) The night owl's late to bed and late to rise (first military watch)
2) The Dagwood Bumstead early to bed, up in the middle of the night, late to rise (second military watch)
3) Poor Richard's "Early to bed and early to rise" (third watch)
It was theorized that the three military watches possibly arose from prehistoric humans in small bands gaining survival advantages from having subsets of group members awake throughout the night.
I should also mention that long standing human practices involving nights when groups went without sleep showed up around the globe were studied as well. These existed independent of and seemingly well before showing up in academic settings and post industrial workplaces.
Yes, all-nighter neighbourhood parties centred around prayer and group singing of religious music have been an integral part of Hindu religious practice for a long time. They are literally called “jaagran” (‘keeping awake’) or “jagraataa” (‘night-wake’).
Although tracing this forward I see the obvious derivatives (vajra, vaaja) and it would be peculiar, but not unheard of, for the word to take two mutations.
As klyrs mentioned, university bookstores typically have a section for writing implements where one can try out pens. Additionally, every decent art supply store I've been in has had a section for pens with paper to try them out on. Art stores don't usually carry cheaper mass market office pens, but I do see some of the Staedtler, Pentel, and other pens recommended. I've even found pens I like that Jet Pens doesn't carry.
Most radio receivers transmit a very weak signal slightly higher than the carrier frequency of the station tuned as a result of how they enhance received signals. Look up superheterodyne for details.
VistA has been a very successful open source project and is being continued in OpenVistA [1]. Originating as a software project in the Veterans Administration (named VA MUMPS) in 1977 it only took on the name VistA in 1994[2]. Internationally it has been used freely in hospitals in the U.S., Mexico, India, various countries in Africa, ...[3].
It was a truly open source project within the VA with programmers customizing this national patient record software in cooperation with doctors (to meet their needs) locally and sharing the modifications nationally. Perhaps its greatest technical challenge (besides complexity arising from decades of evolution) was finding programmers to work with the MUMPS language that it was written in. FYI MUMPS is a language with an integral db -a concept which was out of vogue for some time.
Programmers have a wonderful solution that builds on shared presence -reducing loneliness- while enhancing focus. By using a shared screen for WFH, pair programming seems an ideal fit for the current situation. It also allows for expensing a nice gaming headset.
As far as I know the route of SARS-Cov-2 spreading in the human body isn't known beyond the change in locality of symptomatic expression with progression of Covid-19 (upper respiratory tract to lower respiratory tract.)
Research has shown (1) the distribution of ACE2 protein, the functional receptor for SARS-Cov and SARS-Cov-2 (2), to include various human organs (oral and nasal mucosa, nasopharynx, lung, stomach, small intestine, colon, skin, lymph nodes, thymus, bone marrow, spleen, liver, kidney, and brain) along with arterial and venous endothelial cells and arterial smooth muscle cells in all organs studied. And ACE2 mRNA has been found in virtually all organs. So there is definitely the potential for cells in the circulatory system binding viruses.
What may be significant here is the concentration of ACE2 protein in cell membranes. One Chinese analysis of a group of 170 Covid-19 fatalities(3) found half of the cases suffered from hypertension. ACE inhibitors are a class of medication prescribed for lowering blood pressure and according to models they increase the concentration of ACE2 protein in lower respiratory tract cells. Given that fatality results from respiratory distress originating in the lower respiratory tract and that not all cases progress to the lower respiratory tract it seems possible that the spread of the virus within the body may be related to concentration of ACE2 protein in cells. The disease progression would also support mucosal transport of the virus within individuals the same as between them.
I've never tried Ginko kernels roasted to the point they were crunchy. But I find the ones roasted (some times on a skewer) to the consistency of firm cooked lima beans have a flavor similar to lima beans. Preparing lima beans is much easier though they produce very different medicinal effects.