In his recent and interesting contribution On Heidegger, medicine, and the modernity of modern medical technology Brassington brings together Heidegger s philosophy of technology on the one hand and medicine as being increasingly dependent on modern technology on the other (Brassington, 2006). Technology, for Heidegger, as Brassington points out, is associated with danger. Given the central rol...

The growing pressure on GPs to use chaperones when conducting intimate examinations (vaginal, rectal, breast, testicular) reveals an alarming deterioration in doctor–patient relationships. The peculiar intimacy of the relationship between doctor and patient renders the patient vulnerable to the doctor's abuse of power. Hence, making a sharp distinction between doctor and lover has been one of t...

While foreign pathogens and their products have long been known to activate the innate immune system, the recent recognition of a group of endogenous molecules that serve a similar function has provided a framework for understanding the overlap between the inflammatory responses activated by pathogens and injury. These endogenous molecules, termed alarmins, are normal cell constituents that can...

Oryctes agamemnon (Burmeister 1847) (Coleoptera, Scarabaeidae) was accidentally introduced in the southwestern oases of Tunisia (Tozeur) around 1980 and spread to the Rjim Maatoug region. In these areas O. agamemnon was specific to date palm trees causing severe damage that can result in potential danger due to collapse of the tree. This study was conducted from April 2004 to March 2006 in 4 si...

Fire regimes are strongly related to weather conditions that directly and indirectly influence fire ignition and propagation. Identifying the most important meteorological fire drivers is thus fundamental for daily fire risk forecasting. In this context, several fire weather indices have been developed focussing mainly on fire-related local weather conditions and fuel characteristics. The speci...

Adaptationist view proposes that emotions were shaped by natural selection and their primary function is to protect humans against predators and/or disease threat. This study examined cross-cultural and inter-personal differences in behavioural immune system measured by disgust, fear and perceived danger in participants from high (Turkey) and low (Slovakia) pathogen prevalence areas. We found t...

Cortical involvement in the evolution-favored automatic reaction to danger was studied. Electrical neural activity was recorded from 31 subjects, reporting fear of spiders, at 60 scalp locations. Visual stimuli containing spiders (negative elements) or, alternatively, nonnegative elements were presented to subjects, though they were unaware of their presence: a concurrent visual detection task ...

On the basis of a deterministic-probabilistic model for assessing occurrence fires interconnected vegetation areas according to natural and anthropogenic conditions, geoinformation system has been developed, consisting database blocks access open data searching adjacent neighborhoods, calculating meteorological fire danger, regulating forest protection measures. Databases contain information ab...

The crash of a coach with 58 occupants at 100 kmph revealed the danger covering ditch areas sharp stones 5–20 cm in size. Stones and dirt were sprayed into compartment resulting serious injuries death. Road safety works need to address this factor future.

A factor that promotes blood vessel growth keeps two types of brain cells alive, say Maharaj et al. (page 491). Their findings might explain why anticancer drugs that block this factor cause neurological side effects. The drug target in question—vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)— binds to receptors on blood vessel endothelial cells. A localized increase in VEGF, which is produced by und...