Researchers have identified four new regions on the human genome associated with Behcet's disease, a painful and potentially dangerous condition which
causes inflammation of blood vessels in various parts of the body
- the work was aided because the disease is found predominantly in people with ancestors along the Silk Road.

Named for the Turkish physician who described it in 1937, Behcet's disease has no specific genetic or environmental cause but common symptoms include painful mouth and genital sores, and eye inflammation that can lead to blindness. In some cases, it can affect blood vessels in the brain, lungs, and other vital organs. 

It's statistical polling...for science. 

A paper in Nature Climate Change uses structured expert elicitation and mathematically pools experts' opinions to forecast future sea level rises from melting ice sheets. Soliciting and pooling expert judgments is used in eruption forecasting and the spread of vector borne diseases - with questionable accuracy - and in their paper Professor Jonathan Bamber and Professor Willy Aspinall from the University of Bristol try to model the uncertainties in the future response of the ice sheets. 

Planetary systems with very distant binary stars are particularly susceptible to violent disruptions, more so than if they had stellar companions with tighter orbits around them, according to a new paper.

While diet and exercise are guaranteed to eliminate obesity, there can sometimes be a biological issue that arises, making it harder to lose fat. 

Pop culture diet doctors selling books have done a lot of damage by recommending people not just diet because they claim the metabolism 'slows down' and stores more fat and burns less energy. It happens, but not enough for most people to not simply diet.  

On the Kelvin Scale, the absolute temperature used by physicists, it is not possible to get colder than zero degrees kelvin. The physical meaning of the temperature of a gas is determined by chaos, the disordered movement of its particles. The colder the gas, the slower the particles and at zero kelvin (-459.67 F,  -273 C) the particles stop moving and all disorder disappears. That is why it is called absolute zero.

Genomic research will transform medicine but progress has been slower than expected, leading critics to charge that the promise of genomics was hyperbole to get funding mandates and that while research should continue, the bulk of the money earmarked because of its applied science potential might instead be better spent elsewhere.

Proponents argue that the slowness shows the complexity of the relationship between medicine and disease and argue for more funding.