What accounts for modern peace? There are varying ideas. When America won World War II and occupied Germany and Japan in 1945, two militant cultures were off the table, while psychologist Steven Pinker argues in 2011's "The Better Angels of Our Nature" argues that there has been a continuous decline in the relative levels of virtually all types of violence, and he writes of a “humanitarian revolution”, driven by democracy, trade and information. Perhaps World War II, and the implementation of "total war" and nuclear weapons, sent wars into decline - at least major wars.

High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is made from corn starch whereas sucrose us usually made from sugarcane or beets. Because starch itself is a simple sugar, a chain of glucose molecules joined together, once it's broken down into individual glucose molecules, it's corn syrup, which is essentially 100% glucose. It becomes high-fructose corn syrup when enzymes are added.

HFCS is sometimes called isoglucose and is used in the food industry to sweeten processed foods such as soft drinks, creams, cakes, confectionery, yogurts etc. to keep costs lower. It's sweeter than regular sugar because the fructose level can be more like honey.

Skin, with its densely packed layers of cells and lipids, keeps foreign substances from leaking in and water from leaking out. It's a reverse raincoat for our organs. 

In ichthyosis and other skin diseases, this barrier breaks down, and problems arise. Unlike more commonly known skin diseases, in ichthyosis thick layers of scales can build up because the lipid-synthesis process in the skin goes awry. Besides causing discomfort and a scaly appearance, the condition can make the skin prone to secondary infections.

The Baltic Sea is home to some of the world's largest areas of oxygen-starved waters where most marine animals can't survive - dead zones - and it has been that way for as long as records have been kept, but a new study estimates that oxygen loss in coastal areas over the past century is unprecedented in the last 1500 years.

According to the researchers, human-induced pollution, from fertilizers and sewage running off the countries surrounding the Baltic into the sea, is the main driver of recent oxygen loss in the region's coastal waters. If low-oxygen areas spread it can reduce fish yields for indigenous people and even lead to increased mortality of marine animals.

In ireland 100 years ago, 1 percent of the island was forest, now it is 11 percent, and Irish people have no problem with food. They even grow Spruce, which is not native, to craft and sell furniture.

Given that developed countries have lots of forest now, despite going through periods of growth where they felled far more than they planted, it smacks of hypocrisy that wealthy nations tell poor ones how vital the rainforest is.  

Thousands of lawsuits around the nation claim glyphosate—the active ingredient in Monsanto’s popular weed killer Roundup—causes cancer. These cases are based on pretty much zero evidence, but if trial lawyers can get a jury to accept their false narrative, thousands of more cases may proceed. 

Suicide rates in the U.S. have increased nearly 30 percent in less than 20 years, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported June 7. These mind-numbing statistics were released the same week two very famous, successful and beloved people committed suicide – Kate Spade, a tremendous entrepreneur, trendsetter and fashion icon, and Anthony Bourdain, a distinguished chef and world traveler who took us on gastronomic journeys to all corners of the world through his TV shows.

Starting in the 1960s, a Green Revolution in India led to a boom in rice and wheat production and that helped reduce hunger - but it meant demands on the water supply and pollution from fertilizer.

When Indians have embraced modern technology more recently, pollution from fertilizer has gone down, but rice takes a lot of water. And "natural" rice is not great nutritionally. Nutrient deficiencies are already widespread in India today--30 percent or more are anemic--and many regions are chronically water-stressed. 

Replacing fallow lands with cover crops in order to increase the levels of carbon and soil nitrogen  also enhances its quality and mitigates nitrate leaching in an agricultural land, according to a new analysis. 

After collecting data for ten years, results indicate that such cover crops, which maintain the soil protected during winter months, reduce degradation and provide an extra organic matter after their completion, though not without cost.

Happy Birthday Higgs boson! The discovery of the last fundamental particle of the Standard Model was announced exactly 6 years ago at CERN (well, plus one day, since I decided to postpone to July 5 the publication of this post...).

In the Standard Model, the theory of fundamental interactions among elementary particles which enshrines our current understanding of the subnuclear world,  particles that constitute matter are fermionic: they have a haif-integer value of a quantity we call spin; and particles that mediate interactions between those fermions, keeping them together and governing their behaviour, are bosonic: they have an integer value of spin.