Last month, sea-ice cover in the Arctic extended to just 5.95 million square kilometres — 1.68 million square kilometres less than the average between 1979 and 2000. While native fauna such as polar bears are threatened by dwindling summer sea ice, commercial opportunities are opening up in this newly accessible summer sea and are being pursued apace. The first commercial supertanker succeeded ...

What does it take to turn a learner into a discoverer? Or to turn a teacher into a co-adventurer? A handful of experiences—from teaching a middle-school math class to doing research with undergraduates—have changed the way that I would answer these questions. Some of the lessons I’ve learned have surprised me. The title of this article may seem a little puzzling. After all, the words teaching a...

Smoke from cigars, pipes and cigarettes has curled its way through all levels of society in the last two hundred years. Matthew Hilton peels away the multifaceted images evoked by smoking in British literature, advertising and the cinema, as well as by more recent medical and political responses. The virtues attributed to tobacco, pleasure and relaxation, were primarily for the leisured classes...

Health development expert. He was born in Vilvoorde, Belgium, on Feb 6, 1967, and died after a motorcycle accident Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Jan 15, 2021, aged 53 years. Bart Jacobs's areas of expertise encompassed social health policy, protection, financing for universal coverage. “He always keen that his work should be evidence based”, says Valeria de Oliveira Cruz, regional adviser governance at...

It is well known that Thomas Dover's career was one of the most colourful and varied of any British medical practitioner. He has been described erroneously as a "buccaneer",' a "mountebank"2 and a "pirate on the Spanish Main" :" all these labels do him ill justice and ignore the temper of his times. More accurately, he should be regarded as a "physician and merchant adventurer",' although the f...

(Fam Med 2007;39(7):465-8.) This is my first column as STFM president, and my purpose is to outline why I chose this theme for 2007–2008. I will address other issues related to the patient-centered medical home (PCMH) in future President’s Columns throughout the year. I decided on this theme months before the Annual Spring Conference in Chicago and was struck by how the plenary presentations re...

Does God react? Can be disappointed? repent? In the 1990s, a heated controversy over God's openness divided evangelical theologians in North America. On one side stood conservative evangelicals who affirmed God’s sovereignty, omniscience, and omnipotence based on traditional doctrines of Calvinist Puritanism. other were thinkers with Pietist, Methodist, or Pentecostal leanings convinced that do...

When a New York Times reporter asked George Mallory (1886–1924) why he wanted to ascend Mt Everest, the peak that would eventually take climber's life, replied, “Because it's there.” Other mountaineers have given their own reasons for risks they take: test themselves limit, find out who really are, be surrounded by beauty, or as Alan Arnette declared, “to see sun rise before it does”. In 1963, ...

The yeast Candida albicans lives an unnoticed and mostly harmless life as a member of our gut flora. However, mainly in an immunocompromised host, it can proliferate and cause severe, life-threatening infections. Within this normally mild-mannered, single-celled fungus beats the heart of a reproductive adventurer. For while it appears to be incapable of meiosis and therefore true sex, it engage...

A procedure for the synthesis of beta-lactones from thioesters and the conversion of betalactones to the corresponding olefins on a large scale has been investigated, showing that the reactions occur in good yield. Three simple N-terminal templated derivatives using AcHel(1) have been studied for potential intramolecular hydrogen bonding capacity. AcHel(l)Val-OH and the reduced template thiol c...