Killer nanoparticles?

Or just another case of poisoning by inhaling plastic fumes in an enclosed, unventilated space for months on end?

A news item in this week's Nature starts with the journalistic sensation, but boils down to the facts in the end - the victims had been working in quite horrendous conditions, with not just nanoparticles but plastic fumes at toxic levels.

But then, nanoparticles kill is news, total failure in health and safety procedures at a Chinese factory sadly isn't.

Happy pills to let you sleep

Now, I know from past articles that the BBC can be - particularly when it comes to "Health" articles - strangers to the concept of the proper processes of science. And in all probability they have jumped at the combination of press release and Lancet article to hype something up beyond what it deserves (i.e. it might work a bit in some cases, and won't be on the market for years anyway)

But on the other hand... a pill to cure jet lag would be such a nice thing to have...

Music to resuscitate to

The story about the Bee Gees "Staying Alive" has been going around for the past couple of weeks, to the extent of cropping up on a popular news quiz on the BBC.

The NY Times article on the topic has a little more information than the BBC article I first read about it in. Those studying the idea - find a track that is sufficiently well known and has the right beats per minute to match the suggested chest compression rate - clearly had added a third requirement, which is applicability.

Or, to put it bluntly, if someone *has* to sing along while trying to resuscitate you, the Bee Gees "Stayin alive" at least gives a more optimistic slant on the chances of their success than Queen's "Another one bites the dust" does.

Grim start to the football season

It is one of those statistical anomolies, but this week there seem to have been a number of sad occurences in football - the death of Ray Jones of QPR in a car crash, the collapse and death of Spain and Sevilla's Antonio Puerta and tonight I hear the Forest-Leicester match has been abandoned after Clive Clarke collapsed in the dressing room. I hope it is just the news coming so soon after Puerta's death that is making me view this as such grim tidings.

UPDATE: Clive Clarke did have a cardiac arrest, was treated with a defibrillator in the changing room and is now in a stable condition in hospital. I hope they'll find out what caused his collapse soon, and he'll have a speedy and permanent recovery.