In the 'we need to make sure all people can abdicate any responsibility for their actions' department, a new study makes obesity exculpatory by determining that a mother's nutrition during pregnancy influences the child's risk of obesity many years later.

Whew.  And here you were worried too many pizzas would influence the risk of obesity.

The downside to epigenetics studies is that they run the risk of turning legitimate aspects of biology into the DNA equivalent of evolutionary psychology by making bizarre correlation-causation claims.

Ozone is a known pollutant at low levels in the earth’s atmosphere, which causes harmful effects on the respiratory system and sensitive plants.    Ozone forms as hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides emitted into the air react with sunlight. Two of the largest emitters of these pollutants are vehicles and electricity generating units (EGUs) but as Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs) have risen in popularity over the past decade the positive impact on the environment due to lack of fossil fuel exhaust fumes is offset by increased ozone.

LONDON, April 18, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- The tax increase imposed by the UK government has invoked wide spread condemnation from the oil and gas industry with the threat of major North Sea projects being halted.

SMi Group's Taxation in Oil and Gas conference will investigate the effect that this increase could have on North Sea oil and gas ventures as the tax implications are factored into exploration and production companies' financial forecasts and the economics of these projects are reassessed.

Children eat fewer Easter eggs during the Easter holidays if parents let them decide how many they can have, according to Saima Ehsan and colleagues from the University of Surrey, who will present their research at the British Psychological Society's Annual Conference in Glasgow May 4th-6th.

When black holes slam into each other, the warping of space and time must be so complicated that physicists haven't been sure how to understand the details of what goes on, but by combining theory with computer simulations, Kip Thorne, Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, Emeritus, at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and colleagues say they have developed conceptual tools they've dubbed tendex lines and vortex lines. 

Hot new squid research has the world of cephalopod reporting all abuzz! The press release came out last Monday, so I'm a bit late to the game, but hey, that means I get to meta-report on the way everyone else reported it.

For now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known. 

It is, without a doubt, a truism, that we see the world through our own eyes, and that we cannot but help doing so. We try to put ourselves in other's shoes, but it is ourselves we put into those shoes, imagining it from our own perspective. We can't help it. And this is not a failure of autism, but of human nature in general.