Murder aforethought be described in this study, which focuses on a particular kind of cereal killer—one that strikes from within: “Programmed cell death in cereal aleurone,” Angelika Fath [pictured here], Paul Bethke, Jennifer Lonsdale, Roberto Meza-Romero and Russel Jones, Plant Molecular Biology, 2000 Oct;44(3):255-66. The authors, at the University of California, Berkeley, report: “Progress in […]
Tag: Death
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 […]
Farewell, bagel-making machine inventor
The New York Times brings sad news: Daniel Thompson, Whose Bagel Machine Altered the American Diet, Dies at 94 Daniel Thompson, who five decades ago automated the arcane art of bagel making, a development — seen variously as saving grace and sacrilege — that has sent billions of mass-produced bagels raining down on the American […]
Musical birds of a feather, when together, live ∼7.2 weeks less
Artists of all kinds often tend to cluster together (think Montmartre etc.) bringing the benefits of collaboration, interaction and inspiration. But what if there are just too many? For composers, in Paris or Vienna for example, there could be competition for limited resources such as concert halls. In other words they might incur high stress […]
“Is Death Bad for a Cow?”
Professor Ben Bradley is chair of the Department of Philosophy at Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, US. The professor asks the question “Is Death Bad for a Cow?” In fact he has asked several times – once at West Virginia University, US, in 2007, and again at the University of Reading, UK, in 2008, then at […]
Toppling of the Pops: A sometimes fatal quest for soda pop
We all know that fizzy drinks can affect the health of people who drink them, especially in super-size quantities, but – even worse – fizzy drinks in a vending machine sometimes bring immediate violent death when the machines are attacked. This is documented dramatically by Dr Michael Q Cosio in a 1988 research study published in […]
Brain transplants : the implications [5 of n]
Professor Rebeka Rice of the Philosophy Department at Seattle Pacific University, US, examines the paradoxical implications of brain transplants. [see previous article in this series] The 2012 Winifred E. Weter Faculty Award Lecture for Meritorious Scholarship presents an entity called ‘Bob’ (pictured) Bob is a human being, albeit a hypothetical one. “Perhaps a better way […]
Study: Top (male) comedians die earlier?
A new study from professors Simon Stewart and David Thompson of the Centre for the Heart and Mind and the Mary MacKillop Institute of Health Research (MMIHR) at the Australian Catholic University (ACU) has found that : “Elite comedians are at increased risk of premature death compared to their less funny counterparts.” The team examined […]
Coffee: Healthful or harmful? An emphatic maybe
Here’s a new answer to the much-researched, much-debated question about whether drinking coffee helps boosts people’s health or harms them. The answer appears in a newly published paper: “Is it dangerous or beneficial to drink coffee? Reflections on a meta-analysis on risk at birth and a population study on risk in late life,” Ingmar Skoog, European […]
The doc who gave out while giving sperm
“Details, please!” is the hope and plea of medical professionals everywhere, about a train of medical events reported to have happened in Wuhan, China. The hope is that the attending physicians involved in the case will publish a formal case report in a good-quality medical journal. The case, thus far, has been told only in the general […]