Fruit flies can be measurably affected by explosion-puffed coffee, suggests this new study: “Effect of Explosion-Puffed Coffee on Locomotor Activity and Behavioral Patterns in Drosophila melanogaster,” Bong Soo Ko, So Hyun Ahn, Dong Ouk Noh, Ki-Bae Hong, Sung Hee Han, and Hyung Joo Suh, Food Research International, epub 2017. The authors, at several institutions in […]
Tag: Coffee
Six Cups of Coffee Goes to Your Head, for Surgical Guidance [research study]
A special hat filled with six cups’ worth of ground coffee may make it easier for surgeons to succeed at some kinds of nose and throat surgery. This study presents the news: “Coffee: the key to safer image-guided surgery—a granular jamming cap for non-invasive, rigid fixation of fiducial markers to the patient,” Patrick S. Wellborn […]
Schmutz: White Wine Invites Melanoma, and Coffee Discourages It?
Drinking alcohol — specifically, drinking white wine — may increase your change of getting melanoma, but drinking coffee may decrease your chance. That’s what this new study suggests. The study does not suggest, though we do, that you spend a few minutes exploring the ways that someone might find seemingly interesting things by the process […]
A man describing coffee descriptors for an hour and a half
This is a rare 90-minute-long video of an emeritus professor describing coffee descriptors. If you are not sure what a coffee descriptor is, you have 90 minutes in which to figure that out. After that, you are free to continue the effort unassisted: BONUS: Professor Kenneth Liberman, of coffee descriptor descriptions fame, describes “turn-taking in […]
The delicious effect of espresso foam [research study]
Two scientists in Japan studied how the foam on a fresh cup of espresso makes that drink so thermodynamically delicious. My “Improbable Research” column on the RealClearLife web site gives details. It begins: What’s not so hot about hot coffee —no matter how much you love it — is how quickly it cools. Two Japanese scientists noticed […]
Coffee and Cancer: A Bad News Burp for Modern Science Journalism
A newly published study is bad news for news organizations — it’s a burp in the stream of guaranteed-attention-getting medical reports that suggest coffee-drinking might cause cancer. The study is: “Coffee and Cancer Risk: A Summary Overview,” Gianfranco Alicandro [pictured here], Alessandra Tavani, and Carlo La Vecchia, European Journal of Cancer Prevention, epub March 2017. The authors, at the University of […]
Tea & coffee diet: Theory of everything
To gain quick fame as a biomedical seer, explain how a person can grow slim (or fat) by drinking coffee (or tea). This newly published study gives you fodder for devising your Theory of Everything. Good luck! “Molecular mechanisms of the anti-obesity effect of bioactive compounds in tea and coffee,” by Min-Hsiung Pan, Yen-Chen Tung, Guliang Yang, Shiming […]
A graph for those who like coffee and spiders
Do you like coffee and spiders? If the immediate, unthinking answer to that question is “Yes”, then perhaps you will like this coffee spider graph. A coffee spider graph specialist (who goes by the pen name “Staff”) at a company called Coffee Analysts explains it on their web site: Coffee Taste Spider Graphs Explained By […]
The Smell of Jazz
Would you say that Jazz music tends to go with the smell of coffee? How about Blues with leather, or Bach with peppermint? Rather than, say, fish*? If so, you’re very much attuned with the findings of a new study published in CogSci 2015 Proceedings, entitled ‘The Smell of Jazz: Crossmodal Correspondences Between Music, Odor, […]
An authoritative answer to the coffee/health question
A question may be difficult (or impossible) to really answer, but that difficulty does not prevent authoritative people from supplying authoritative answers. A November 16, 2015 press release brews up a new authoritative answer to the question “Is drinking coffee good or bad for your health”: Moderate coffee drinking may lower risk of premature death […]