Comment: Altar of Fire

The bamboo fire cycle hypothesis: a comment.

The bamboo fire cycle hypothesis proposed by Keeley and Bond (1999) argues that lightning-ignited wildfire has synchronized flowering and recruitment of bamboos throughout Asia. They argue that mast flowering followed by mass mortality leads to fuel-load accumulation, encouraging ignition by lightning strikes that results in complete consumption of litter and dead stalks, which both enhances ba...

EDITORIAL COMMENT Focus on the fire of life

Introduction In 1961 Max Kleiber published the book The Fire of Life [1]. It is still one of the classics in the field of animal and human bioenergetics. In his book he focussed on the parallel between animal and human life and fire, emphasizing the generalizations of biophysics rather than the differentiations of biochemistry. Life involves much more than chemical potential, work and heat. Mod...

Comment on "Fire-derived charcoal causes loss of forest humus".

Wardle et al. (Brevia, 2 May 2008, p. 629) reported that fire-derived charcoal can promote loss of forest humus and belowground carbon (C). However, C loss from charcoal-humus mixtures can be explained not only by accelerated loss of humus but also by loss of charcoal. It is also unclear whether such loss is related to mineralization to carbon dioxide or to physical export.

Altar and Table: A phenomenology of the surgeon-priest

I will never forget the first night I stood alone beside the operating table as the only surgeon in the room. I was beginning my fourth year of residency. Two patients from the same car wreck arrived simultaneously. Both were unstable. Both required urgent laparotomy. The sickest patient went to OR 9 with the attending surgeon. The other patient went with me to OR 6. The preliminaries were the ...

Murine "model" monotheism: an iconoclast at the altar of mouse.