Jacques LeGoff remarks, 'Hagiography tells us much about the mental infrastructure [of the middle ages]: the interpenetration between the tangible world and the supernatural world, the common nature of the corporeal and psychic, are the conditions which make miracles and related phenomena possible.

The biochemical features of parthanatos are distinct from classically defined pathways of cell death, and include rapid PARP-1 activation, early PAR accumulation, mitochondrial depolarization, early nuclear AIF translocation, loss of cellular NAD and ATP, and late caspase activation.

Even in Europe, where killer bees are not much a menace, we have developed a kind of Winnie-the-Pooh attitude to the bees: they are dangerous, they are unpredictable, and they are usually acting to thwart us.

This coming-of-age story signals that eco-fiction has come of age as well: wilder, more reckless and more breathtaking than previously thought, a wager and a promise that what emerges from the 21st century will be as good as any from the 20th, or the 19th.