Passive smoking warning to bar workers
One bartender, waiter or club worker dies every week from illnesses related to passive smoking, according to figures calculated by Konrad Jamrozik, professor of primary care epidemiology at Imperial.

The figures are based on the number of employees in the hospitality industry, their exposure to tobacco smoke and their likely risk of dying as a result. They were revealed by the Royal College of Physicians, which is campaigning for a ban on smoking in public.
Reuters (18/05/04).

'Yuk' guide to medical ethics
The rights and wrongs of basing ethical decisions on our gut reactions is debated by Imperial PhD student Daniel Sokol in an article for the International Herald Tribune (18/05/04).

Examining reactions to issues such as the first televised abortion on British TV and the possibility of face transplants, he comments: "History is strewn with examples of misplaced disgust. When chloroform was first used in the 19th century, relieving patients from the excruciating and often life-threatening pain of surgery, many people vigorously protested against the satanic invention."

Benefits of staging World Cup football
The commitment by FIFA, football's world governing body, to stage the 2010 World Cup in an African country, in order to boost the host nation's economy, has been questioned by Stefan Szymanski of Imperial's Tanaka business school. "From an economic perspective, tournaments like the World Cup bring negligible benefit, partly because they cost so much to stage," he argues in the Financial Times (14/05/04). "They bring a small stimulus in terms of tourism, but that doesn't really tend to have a long-lasting effect."

Live slow, die old
The key to the longevity of the Blue Peter tortoise, which recently died aged 83, is its slow pace of life, according to Imperial researcher Armand Leroi. He explains to The Guardian (13/05/04) that while scientists know longevity increases as metabolic rate drops, there is still some controversy as to why. Many believe that ageing is linked to the production of free radicals, reactive particles that are released into the body as it burns fuel. "There's plenty of evidence to suggest that free radicals damage proteins and DNA, but metabolism is not the beall and endall," he explains. "If you were to slow down your metabolism, you'd still die from any number of things."

Imperial high in Times university guide
Imperial has retained third place in The Times league table of UK universities, with only six points separating it from Cambridge in second place.

Other London universities in the table include LSE at number four and UCL at six. Oxford is ranked top.