In contrast to earlier concepts, it seems that distinct ligands acting on the same receptor may elicit qualitative different response patterns, a phenomenon given many names, including "functional selectivity," "agonist-directed trafficking," "biased agonism," "protean agonism," or "ligand-directed signaling." In this issue of Molecular Pharmacology, Sato et al. (p. 1359) extend this concept to...

This article considers Richard Rolle's use of erotic imagery and romantic metaphor in his popular fourteenth-century devotional manual, The Form of Living. The Form engaged a widespread community of readers through the glorification of desire and pleasure, which were sanctified by merit of Christ, the lover that Rolle encouraged his readers to woo. While the use of language in the text is inclu...

It seems that the controversies over nature of beloved in classical Persian mystic poetry (also known as Sufi poetry) an earthly or ethereal phenomenon would never end. Those favor celestial reading it consider their counterparts to be narrow-minded. The adherents terrestrial love, though, see mystical readings dogmatic and outdated, prevailed by traditionalists. topic gets even more complicate...

Autobiographical memories (AMs) are personally experienced events that may be localized in time and space. In the present work we present an overview targeting memories evoked by the sense of smell. Overall, research indicates that autobiographical odor memory is different than memories evoked by our primary sensory systems; sight, and hearing. Here, observed differences from a behavioral and n...

STUDY OBJECTIVE The aim was to evaluate the hypothesis that sunlight exposure leads to the development of gallstones in people with a sun sensitive skin. DESIGN AND SETTING This was a case-control study among 206 white patients referred for an ultrasound examination of the gallbladder. Sunlight exposure and skin sensitivity were retrospectively assessed by a structured questionnaire. The ques...