The Swiss researchers who (some of them) two years ago did an “analysis of a piece of shit” now supply an answer to the question “Are shoes good for you?” They are two-fifths of the way towards completing the poetical list “shoes and shit [reverse sic] and sealing wax, cabbages and kings“. Their shit study is called “An In-Depth Analysis […]
Tag: health
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 […]
Medical effects of coffee: Two new insights
Does it matter, medically, whether you drink coffee or not? Here are two further insights into this life-or-death question: “Coffee consumption and hip fracture risk: a meta-analysis,” X.L. Li and J.H. Xu, Journal of Nutritional Science, 2013 Jul 24;2:e23. The authors, at the Medical College of Soochow University, China, report: “Although our meta-analysis has provided insufficient […]
Complex Medical Insights: “Indoor Air Pollution, Nighttime Heart Rate Variability and Coffee Consumption among Convenient Store Workers”
Medical researchers, seeking insight, sometimes try to make simple sense of complex, difficult conglomerations of things that may or may not have effects on each other and on many other things. Sometimes coffee is involved, as is the case here: “Indoor Air Pollution, Nighttime Heart Rate Variability and Coffee Consumption among Convenient Store Workers,” Kai-Jen […]
Somewhat baffling companion-animal patent apps
These two graphics are from a patent application we find mildly baffling. Titled “METHOD FOR DETERMINING THE BIOLOGICAL AGE OF A COMPANION ANIMAL,” US patent application #12/395,924 was filed on March 2, 2009 to inventors Allan John Lepine [pictured here], Dennis Richard Ditmer, Lori Lee Halsey and John Russell Burr. The description is brief (the […]
Another startling study about coffee-drinkers
Many people who drink tremendous amounts of coffee also smoke heavily, and some of them, the men especially, kinda-sorta tend to die a little early, statistically speaking. Maybe they die from the coffee. Maybe they die from the smoking. Maybe they die from something other than the coffee or the smoking. Maybe they die from car […]
Clowns and/or health
Linda Rodriguez McRobbie writes, on the Smithsonian blog, about “The History and Psychology of Clowns Being Scary“: Even the people who are supposed to like clowns—children—supposedly don’t. In 2008, a widely reported University of Sheffield, England, survey of 250 children between the ages of four and 16 found that most of the children disliked and even […]
How kids should avoid colds, 1947-style [video]
“George jumps right into trouble, because he forgot his galoshes.” That’s just one insight from this 1947 American instructional video about “How young children must behave to avoid transmitting germs to one another.” At the end, “they learn that Dutch people are clean.”
Reproductive effects of wearing a kilt [Scottish Medical Journal]
Men of Scotland, there are facts for you to ponder, in this new medical study: “‘Real men wear kilts’. The anecdotal evidence that wearing a Scottish kilt has influence on reproductive potential: how much is true?” Erwin J.O. Kompanje [possibly pictured here], Scottish Medical Journal, vol. 58, no 1, February 2013, e1–e5. The author writes: […]
The Assessed Un-idealness of Italian cardiologists
A new look at the habits and health prospects of some of the planet’s most glamorous medicos: “Cardiovascular Risk Profile and Lifestyle Habits in a Cohort of Italian Cardiologists (from the SOCRATES Survey),” Pier Luigi Temporelli, Giovanni Zito, Pompilio Faggiano, and the SOCRATES Investigators, American Journal of Cardiology, epub April 12, 2013. The authors, at […]