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Harvard researcher: coffee poisoning not accidental

One of six Harvard Medical School researchers who became ill after drinking coffee on Aug. 26 said on Monday the poisoning was not accidental, according to media reports.
Matteo Iannacone, postdoctoral fellow, 33, said he immediately noticed a “weird” taste after sipping an espresso he poured from a coffee machine in an eighth-floor lounge near his research lab.
After taking a second sip to make sure he wasn’t imagining the foul taste, he began feeling dizziness and a rapid heartbeat, but said the symptoms passed quickly.
“It was too strange for me to be an accident,” he was quoted by the Associated Press as saying in an interview Monday.
Toxicology results, Iannacone said, showed the coffee contained a “very high concentration” of sodium azide, a powerful chemical preservative used in many research labs in the building and  can be fatal in high doses, causing respiratory failure.
Iannacone was one of six people who became ill after drinking coffee from the communal espresso machine.
Two of the researchers who drank coffee earlier in the day had fainted, but officials did not immediately connect their illnesses to the coffee machine, Iannacone said.
An ambulance carried Iannacone to nearby Brigham and Women’s Hospital for treatment. Doctors could find nothing wrong, he said.

David Cameron, spokesman for Harvard Medical School, said the coffee machine is not connected to the water supply. The eighth floor coffee machine also served researchers and students on the 9th floor, he said, about 200 people total. The machine has since been removed.
“I have no idea who might have done this thing,” he said. “To me it doesn’t look like a joke, obviously, because we were not far from a lethal dose.”
Harvard police were looking into “every possible, conceivable option as to how this could have occurred,” said Cameron, a spokesman for Harvard Medical School.
The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration said it was looking into the incident to determine if there were any violations of health or safety standards in the workplace.

Beijing cafes booming not because of coffee, but space

While it is no surprise that many Beijingers have taken to coffee since foreign companies arrived on the scene nearly 10 years ago, customers are hanging out at cafes not for the coffee – but the environment.
Ren Yue, 31, is the face of the Chinese coffee drinking generation. As a successful banking consultant, drinking a cup of Joe became part of her daily routine more than six years ago. Her doctor even recommended she started drinking coffee to aid digestion.
While she is a coffee lover, most of her friends are not – but that has not stopped them from being part of Beijing’s emerging cafe culture.
A decade ago, Starbucks opened its first store on the Chinese mainland, looking to shake up the long-standing tea drinking culture with a jolt of caffeine. A few years later, Yue had her first sip of coffee and she was soon hooked.
Starbucks now runs about 700 outlets on the mainland. Martin Coles, president of Starbucks Coffee International Inc, told Bloomberg news agency in July that “China clearly is a huge opportunity for us, today and into the foreseeable future”.
Starbucks is not the only foreign coffee chain doing business in China. Popular United Kingdom company Costa Coffee started serving Chinese customers in Shanghai in 2006 with the opening of their first Chinese store, and has opened 33 stores in China since.
However, its President Paul Smith says the business model is different from that in the UK because it is not about the product people are buying, but the place that it is offered in.
“It’s not just coffee that you’re selling in China, it’s 20 minutes’ of personal space, in a country of 1.3 billion people and you only have to sit and watch the seats that fill up first to really understand how important that factor is,” Smith said.
Yue herself first stepped into a Chinese cafe called Sculpting in Time, near her home in Wudaokou several years ago. She soon found herself bringing piles of books into the outlet on the weekend and camping out for hours until it closed, soaking up caffeine and reading novels cover to cover.
“At home, I always think about watching TV or cooking, or doing something else,” she explained. “But at the coffee shop, I have nothing else to do except reading.” For her, the coffee shop was a stress-free place to relax.
For college students in the Wudaokou area, four-storey coffee shop The Bridge has become the ultimate hangout.
Close to Tsinghua University and several other schools, the place remains packed throughout the day with Chinese and foreign students. Many of these students share small dorm rooms with several roommates, so The Bridge offers a place to get some space.
Yue hangs out there with several girls dragging on cigarettes and sending cellphone messages to friends. While Yue likes her coffee black, her friends do not actually like the taste of the drink. They say they are there to enjoy the environment.
One of the most popular expat cafes in the capital is The Bookworm in Sanlitun. The establishment brings in its customer base by encouraging customers to build communities in their space, Bookworm’s events coordinator Jenny Niven said.
In the last two years, more Chinese people have started attending the cafe’s events, she said.
“There are people whom you see every single morning. They use it like an office,” she said.
Niven said it is not just the sophistication of the coffee that is bringing people in. “If it was coffee, they would all just be going to Starbucks,” she said. “We invite people to make it a home.”

Yao Restaurant closes unexpectedly

Yao Restaurant, which gets its fame from people believing it is connected with Chinese NBA star Yao Ming, closed last Friday, leaving dozens of unpaid, stunned employees standing around outside.
The restaurant is behind in its obligations nearly 100,000 yuan ($15,000), local media reported.

Some 17 employees of the restaurant have applied for arbitration, said a deputy chief of Jing’an District Labor and Social Security Bureau surnamed Ge. He would not give the exact amount of money involved.
The restaurant opened in 2006 as a flagship restaurant called Yeeha Texas BBQ & Sports Bar and Yao Restaurant in Chinese.
The business was initiated by Yu Di. Yu and Yao are both shareholders of Yao Restaurant and Bar in Houston, Texas.
Yao Ming and his agent denied they get any profit from the Shanghai restaurant.
“Yao Ming and his family members didn’t get a penny from the restaurant and didn’t get involved in the operation,” Zhang Mingji, who is in charge of Yao’s management team, was quoted by National Business Daily as saying.
Yao and his family did not invest directly in the restaurant. The restaurant uses the name of Yao because Yu is a friend of Yao’s family, according to Zhang.
Fei Yunsheng, an employee who worked for two years at the restaurant, said more than 20 employees didn’t get their salary on time.
“The restaurant owes me a half-month’s salary,” he told China Daily Wednesday. The restaurant’s chef is owed more than 10,000 yuan, Fei said.
The restaurant was closed Wednesday, with a note hanging on the door saying that the business is closing temporarily for interior decoration, and it will reopen on Nov 1.
“The restaurant was just decorated this August,” said Xu Liang, a cook who has worked at the restaurant for more than two months and has never been paid. He claimed the employer owes him 5,100 yuan.
Xu said one employee found the note on the wall last Friday. “We were surprised to find that the most valuable equipment in the dining hall, such as the LCD TVs and computers, had disappeared,” he said. “None of us were told the restaurant would close.”
Zhao Yue, the contractor for the restaurant who took over its operation in August, denied there were disputes between the restaurant and employees.
He told China Daily over phone that the restaurant will reopen soon. “The restaurant doesn’t owe any salary to employees,” Zhao said.

Delicious Salon du Chocolat held in Paris


A chocolate fountain is displayed during the Salon du Chocolat (Chocolate Salon) in Paris, capital of France, Oct. 17, 2009. The salon runs from 14 Oct. till 18, Oct. 2009.(Xinhua/Chu Wen)

Craftworks carved from fruit and vegetables


The photo taken on Oct. 10, 2009 shows a craftwork carved from a watermelon on a cooking contest held in Taipei of southeast China’s Taiwan Province. The 2nd Taipei Cooking Competition and 2009 Taipei International King Cook Invitational Championship were presenting super cooking skills to the audience from Oct. 9 to 12. (Xinhua/Wu Ching-teng)

Let’s taste delicious wafu grill saury fish!


Two men pose with their grill saury fish on a street during a saury event in Tokyo, capital of Japan, Oct. 11, 2009. Some 2,000 saury fish, a popular seafood used in Japanese cuisine, will be distributed to people during the autumn event.(Xinhua/Hua Yi) 

Food festival held in Suzhou, E China

 

Visitors take pictures during a food festival held in Suzhou, east China’s Jiangsu Province, Sept. 12, 2009. The 4th China Suzhou Food Festival, which was also the 1st China “Su Style” Moon Cake Cultural Festival, was opened at the gymnasium of Xiangcheng District in Suzhou on Saturday. (Xinhua/Hang Xingwei)

“King and Queen Crabs” selected in Jiangsu


The raiser shows the “Queen Crab” just selected out during a “King and Queen Crabs” selection activity held in Hongze County of east China’s Jiangsu Province, Oct. 10, 2009. About a hundred fishermen and raisers in the surroundings of Hongze Lake in Hongze County took part in the activity with hairy crabs on Saturday. A 533-gram male crab and a 441-gram female one won the “King and Queen Crabs” in the end.(Xinhua/Chen Liang)

Let vegetarianism grow on you!


Ashley Fruno from Canada, who is an activist from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), promotes vegetarianism while clad in full length gown made of vegetable leaves in front of a shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Sept. 2, 2009. (Xinhua/Chong Voon Chung)

Scientists discover secrets of red wine’s health benefits

Red wine’s health benefits lie in resveratrol which works as an effective therapy for life-threatening inflammation, a new study has found.
The study not only explains resveratrol’s one-two punch on inflammation, but also shows how it, or a derivative, can be used to treat potentially deadly inflammatory disease, such as appendicitis, peritonitis, and systemic sepsis, said a team of scientists from Scotland and Singapore.
The study was published in the August 2009 print issue of Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (The FASEB Journal) .
In the study, the researchers administered an inflammatory agent to two groups of mice. One group was pretreated with resveratrol and the other group was not. The mice that were not pretreated with resveratrol experienced a strong inflammatory response, simulating disease in humans, while the group pretreated with resveratrol was protected from the inflammation.
The scientists then examined the tissues of the mice to determine exactly how resveratrol was able to protect the mice from inflammation. They found that resveratrol used a one-two punch to stop inflammation in the mice by preventing the body from creating two different molecules known to trigger inflammation, sphingosine kinase and phospholipase D.
This finding suggests that resveratrol may be harnessable as a treatment for inflammatory diseases and may also lead to entirely new resveratrol-based drugs that are even more effective, said the researchers.
“Strong acute inflammatory diseases such as sepsis are very difficult to treat and many die every day due to lack of treatment, ” said Alirio Melendez, senior lecturer on the faculty of medicine at Glasgow Biomedical Research Centre in Scotland and one of the researchers involved in the work.
“Moreover, many survivors of sepsis develop a very low quality of life due to the damage that inflammation causes to several internal organs. The ultimate goal of our study was to identify a potential novel therapy to help in the treatment of strong acute inflammatory diseases,” he added.
“The therapeutic potential of red wine has been bottled up for thousands of years,” said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal, “and now that scientists have uncorked its secrets, they find that studies of how resveratrol works can lead to new treatments for life-threatening inflammation.”