Health food is extremely popular in America yet obesity levels continue to rise. A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research explains that paradox.

It turns out that when consumers see a healthy choice, be it drinks, deserts or food, they end up consuming 131% more calories.

“In our black and white view, most food is good or not good,” explain Pierre Chandon (INSEAD, France) and Brian Wansink (Cornell University). “When we see a fast-food restaurant like Subway advertising its low-calorie sandwiches, we think, ‘It’s OK: I can eat a sandwich there and then have a high-calorie dessert,’ when, in fact, some Subway sandwiches contain more calories than a Big Mac.”

Weather conditions, including record summer temperatures and hot dry winds, have made parts of the Mediterranean, including Greece and southern Italy, a tinderbox, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization said.

Greece has experienced more wildfire activity this August than other European countries have over the last decade, according to data from ESA satellites. The country is currently battling an outbreak of blazes, which began last Thursday, that have spread across the country killing more than 60 people.

The ATSR World Fire Atlas provides data approximately six hours after acquisition. All available satellite passes are processed to create the ATSR World Fire Atlas. In addition to maps, the time, date, longitude and latitude of the hot spots are provided.

Astronomers at the University of Rochester have discovered five Earth-oceans’ worth of water that has recently fallen into the planet-forming region around an extremely young, developing star.

Dan Watson, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Rochester, believes he and his colleagues are the first to see a short-lived stage of protoplanetary disk formation, and the manner in which a planetary system’s supply of water arrives from the natal envelope within which its parent star originally formed.

The findings, published in today’s Nature, are the first-ever glimpse of material directly feeding a protoplanetary disk.

Throughout Earth's history, 90,000 out of every 100,000 years have been ice ages - and it's been 12,000 years since the last one. You can thank global warming, it seems.

Future ice ages may be delayed by up to 500,000 years by greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels, according to recent work by Dr Toby Tyrrell of the University of Southampton.

If their numerical model is accurate, this sets a new standard for detailing the disruption of long-term planetary processes by human activity.

In evolutionary terms, the difference between 2.1 and 2.2 children is a lot more important than the small difference sounds, especially as it accumulates over time.

A new study in Royal Society Biology Letters says that achieving that maximum offspring count is best accomplished by men if their partner is approximately 6 years younger and by women if their partner is approximately 4 years older.

This means that a man may not just be interested in a trophy wife, he may be thinking about the future of humanity. But this happens with women also. Women who find a new mate still choose a partner older than themselves, though younger than the first.

In a study to be published in the September issue of Psychological Science journal, researchers investigated how thinking about God and notions of a higher power influenced positive social behavior, specifically cooperation with others and generosity to strangers.

UBC PhD graduate Azim Shariff and UBC Assoc. Prof. Ara Norenzayan found that priming people with ‘God concepts’ – by activating subconscious thoughts through word games – promoted altruism. In addition, the researchers found that this effect was consistent in behaviour whether people declared themselves believers or not. The researchers also found that secular notions of civic responsibility promote cooperation and generosity.