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Remembrance of things past-I
In Borges, we have the anomaly of a Hispanic writer who first read Don Quixote in English translation, and whose literary culture, though universal, remained English and North American in its deeper sensibility. Still Borges, oriented toward a literary career, was haunted by the military glory that had dominated both his father's and his mother's families. Inheriting the poor eyesight that had kept his father from becoming an officer, Borges seems to have inherited also his father's flight into the library as a refuge in which dreaming could atone for an impossible life of action. (Harold Bloom. The Western Canon. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1994:464.)
The use of statins and prevention of dementia
The use of statins to reduce cardiac death is now well established. Because vascular and lipid related mechanisms are thought to play a part in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease and vascular dementia, the possibility that statins might reduce the incidence of these disorders has been considered. A recent study from the University of Massachusetts Medical School demonstrated that individuals of 50 years and older who were prescribed statins had a substantially lower risk of developing dementia compared with those who did not receive the same medication. (Lancet2000;356:1627–31.)
The poor health of cloned animals
Although cloning animals has been viewed as a spectacular scientific success, animals born as the result of this process are often sickly or unusually large and many do not live long. Researchers produced 277 cloned sheep embryos before achieving a live birth with Dolly. Investigators at the Roslin Institute in Scotland have recently demonstrated that when sheep embryos are manipulated in …