What’s in a surname, if one wants to see portents about the medical fates of persons who have those surnames? This study aims to answer that question, focusing on British surnames: “British Surname Origins, Population Structure and Health Outcomes—An Observational Study of Hospital Admissions,” Jakob Petersen, Jens Kandt, and Paul A. Longley, Scientific Reports, vol. […]
Tag: health
Health announcements in the year 2020
People are trying new ways to try to educate the public, in the vexed year 2020, about health care and safety. This video is, perhaps, a bold experiment: (Thanks to @Beccanalia for bringing this to our attention.)
Research About Coffee-and-Health is Often and Easily Confounded
It’s easy to say that coffee has a good or bad effect on people’s health, but it’s not easy to know, suggests a study about studies about whether coffee has a good or bad effect on people’s health. The study is: “Dietary research on coffee: Improving adjustment for confounding,” David R. Thomas, Ian D. Hodges, […]
Double helix conductors and their ‘extraordinary promise’ (new patents)
Medical Energetics Ltd. of Galway, Ireland, has just been granted (Nov. 2018) a US patent for the invention of ‘Agricultural applications of a double helix conductor’ (DHC) The extraordinariness of which can probably only be appreciated by reading the patent document [click link or image above]. The company has also applied for another patent (March […]
Mental Health Effects Caused by Red Imported Fire Ant Attacks? [research study]
Stings by imported red fire ants don’t (though maybe do) induce some mental health problems in humans—the yes or no of it depending on one’s inclination and interpretation—suggests this study: “Mental Health Effects Caused by Red Imported Fire Ant Attacks (Solenopsis invicta),” Lei Wang, Yongyue Lu, Ripeng Li, Ling Zeng, Junling Du, Xiong Huang, Yijuan […]
Automated password generation of offensive expressions
The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) offers users an online ‘Choose and Book’ service for making appointments. When a user creates an account, the software automatically creates a two word passphrase – but not everyone is happy. Professor Simon de Lusignan MSc MD FBCS CITP FRCGP for instance (currently Professor of Primary Care & Clinical […]
Government warning about Slime
The French government has issued an official warning about Slime. The warning comes from ANSES [Agence nationale de sécurité sanitaire de l’alimentation, de l’environnement et du travail]. It bears the headline “Le Slime, une pâte très prisée mais pas sans risque.” Here’s a machine-translation of the first paragraph: “ANSES and the DGCCRF alert consumers to […]
The Glossiness of Grackles (and other birds)
“The glossy sheen of healthy hair is an ideal of human beauty; however, glossiness has never been quantified in the context of non-human animal signaling. Glossiness, the specular reflectance characteristic of polished surfaces, has the potential to act as a signal of quality because it depends upon material integrity and cleanliness.” For those reasons, Matthew […]
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 […]
Is coffee-drinking good for you? How to say “It’s complicated” in 192 words.
Scientists continue to struggle, or at least write, on the question: Is coffee-drinking good or bad for a person’s health? One scientist found a new way to say — using only 192 words — “It’s complicated”. That summary appears in the study: “Toward systems epidemiology of coffee and health,” Marilyn C. Cornelis, vol. 26, no. 1, Current Opinions in […]