Crime may be affected by the sniffling of potential criminals which may be affected by the amounts of pollen in the air, which might explain all sorts of things, suggests this new study: “More sneezing, less crime? Health shocks and the market for offenses,” Aaron Chalfin, Shooshan Danagoulian, and Monica Deza, Journal of Health Economics, […]
Tag: allergy
Allergy to a Partially Extraterrestrial Object
A touching allergy, an encounter of an unusual kind (an encounter of a third kind, according to some classifications), made its way into a medical journal report: “Contact allergy to a meteorite: An interesting consequence of nickel allergy,” L. Malinauskiene, Contact Dermatitis, epub 2018. The author, at Vilnius University, Lithuania, reports: “A 28-year-old male patient […]
Feather Duvet Lung Danger
If you were compiling a compendium of everyday household items which can pose a danger, stepladders, drain-cleaning chemicals, and hot saucepans might immediately spring to mind. Feather duvets would quite probably be considerably further down the list. But don’t be lulled into a false sense of security by their lightweight, soft and fluffy demeanour – […]
Involuntary Hippophagia (2): Horsemeat and Hamsters
Improbable readers may be familiar with the Pork-Cat Syndrome (a link between allergic sensitivity to pork meat and cat epithelia), details of which were first published in 1994. Perhaps less well known though is the Horsemeat-Hamster Syndrome, which could have implications for those who have been exposed to the current UK outbreak of Involuntary Hippophagia. […]