Posted on July 31, 2007 - by deCadmus

Coffee Notes from All Over

• Just the same, don’t forget the sunscreen. Researchers have found that caffeine boosts resistance against UV radiation, and skin cancers.
  

  The relationship between caffeine and cancer cells is under close scrutiny following evidence that it can increase a process called “apoptosis”, in which the body gets rid of damaged or even cancerous cells by killing them off.

  To really boost the cancer-resisting effect? Add exercise into the mix.

• Talk softly, and carry a hot cuppa joe. Psychologists at Yale altered people’s judgments of a stranger by handing them a cup of coffee:
  

  The study participants, college students, had no idea that their social instincts were being deliberately manipulated. On the way to the laboratory, they had bumped into a laboratory assistant, who was holding textbooks, a clipboard, papers and a cup of hot or iced coffee — and asked for a hand with the cup.

  That was all it took: The students who held a cup of iced coffee rated a hypothetical person they later read about as being much colder, less social and more selfish than did their fellow students, who had momentarily held a cup of hot java.

• Let the battle begin! The World Barista Championship is underway in Tokyo, Japan. Forty-nine countries are represented this year, each by its own national champion. And this round of the WBC introduces a tasty new twist — for the first time ever spectators are able to sample some of the barista’s work. (What a concept!)

  While you can’t taste from here, you can watch the entire event. It’s not real-time, but that’s just fine… I understand they’re all night-owls on the other side of the planet.