A group of researchers say they have established a new biomarker for how stressed polar bears are about climate change.    

Last year, a team reported that fluctuations in climate and ice cover are closely related to stress among polar bears in East Greenland as indicated by levels of the stress hormone cortisol in hair samples. The team is hopeful this type of analysis will be beneficial once others learn that it can now be done with much greater reliability.

Obesity has risen and everyone wants to assign blame. New York City blamed trans fats before they blamed sodas, San Francisco blamed McDonald's marketing.

But outside government policy makers, most people consider obesity a choice. And the data is on their side. Every study throughout history has found that people who burn more calories than they consume lose weight, and that goes for weight gain also.

A new survey by two food economists confirmed that even obese people don't blame restaurants, grocery stores, farmers, or government policies for obesity, which means that creating and enforcing public policies to reduce obesity or encourage/mandate healthier food is probably not going to be effective.

Western humans are rare in that we drink milk after weaning.  Milk is the staple food for infants and contains the sugar lactose but most mammals lose the ability to digest lactose, and thus milk, as they get older. 

The ability to digest the sugar is governed by the production of the enzyme lactase in the small intestine. As children get older, the lactase gene is gradually disabled, which means that no lactase is formed and the lactose enters the colon undigested, where it is typically converted into acids and hydrogen gas and, in many people, causes the painful symptoms of lactose intolerance.

Currently in the UK, when health care workers are "unequivocally guilty of willful or reckless neglect or mistreatment of patients" that is not criminal behavior but Dr. Jo Bibby, Director of Strategy at the Health Foundation, writing in BMJ, says the proposal, made in response to the Francis inquiry, will close a gap in the law and is one of many important steps to improving patient care, though won't prevent any deaths.

Where do new genes come from?

It's a long standing debate in evolutionary biology but a new paper in Science Express says that new genes are created from non-coding DNA, and more rapidly than expected.

If you think wilding was much more civilized when you were young, well, you're old.

Older people are more likely to regard the behavior of younger people as anti-social, even if it doesn't bother young people at all. One example is swearing. 80% of adults in a recent survey thought swearing in a public place was anti-social behavior compared while less than 43% of young people did. When it comes to skateboarding on the street, over 60% of adults were against it while less than 8% of young people were. Mysteriously, even douchebikery behavior by cyclists had a generation gap regarding how annoying it was.