In a future where the public will be paying for health care, the patience for preventable diseases, like those related to smoking and overeating, is dwindling.

But current weight loss messages and the stereotyping in the media -  that characterize overweight individuals as lazy, weak-willed, self-indulgent and contributing to rising health care costs — may be tipping the scales in the wrong direction. Designed to encourage weight loss, they may actually have the opposite effect, according to U.C. Santa Barbara psychology professor Brenda Major.

Because of the prevalence of sports in popular culture, there is a belief that younger is always better. But coaches know differently. They talk about the value of a 'veteran' presence on the field. And a saying goes, 'if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen' - it turns out that no one has been taking the heat longer than older firefighters and that adds to the value of veteran presence. They can simply take heat better.

We hear a lot about carbon storage and the impact on the atmosphere if CO2 is release during warming, but how does that work?

Carbon is not evenly distributed in soil, instead the kinds of carbon hot spots that matter are found on about 20 percent of mineral surfaces, according to a new paper. Studies have established that carbon binds to tiny mineral particles and in a new paper researchers show that the surface of the minerals plays just as important a role as their size.

"The carbon binds to minerals that are just a few thousandths of a millimeter in size – and it accumulates there almost exclusively on rough and angular surfaces," explains Prof. Ingrid Kögel-Knabner,
Technische Universitaet Muenchen

One of the best arguments for using science to allow people to grow food in difficult climates, rather than having wealthier nations donate it to them, is that wealth leads to better lives in lots of ways. Agriculture made Europe and the United States and countries with strong food production healthier and then wealthier.

But health and wealth may still be related in developed nations as well. A new paper led by San Diego State University School of Public Health research professor John W.

Dinosaur fossils are exceptionally rare in the Arabian Peninsula but researchers have uncovered the first record of dinosaurs from Arabia itself.

What is now dry desert was once a beach littered with the bones and teeth of ancient marine reptiles and dinosaurs. A string of vertebrae from the tail of a huge "Brontosaurus-like" sauropod, together with some shed teeth from a carnivorous theropod represent the first formally identified dinosaur fossils from Arabia, and were found in the north-western part of the dictatorship run by the Al-Saud family, along the coast of the Red Sea.

Though the War on Drugs has been a complete failure, and led to making poor people poorer and the rich in that market richer, scholars are touting the War on Cigarettes as a complete success - 8 million lives saved, they estimate.