Across the world, fewer people are buying the "I have a glandular disorder" excuse for obesity.
As the average waistline increases but the numbers of obese people skew that result, society is getting less tolerant of heavier folk - even in cultures where being big is considered better, according to a cross-cultural study of attitudes toward obesity to be published in the April issue of Current Anthropology.
The study didn't test what is driving the shift in attitude, but the researchers say that "newer forms of educational media, including global public health campaigns" may be playing a role.
It has been a while since I last wrote about results from the DZERO collaboration, and I am happy to be given a chance to do so by my casual Monday morning browsing of the most recent Arxiv preprints.
Is biology too important to be left in the hands of experts? Maybe.
Americans like stories about underdogs who start as outsiders but then become the very core of what being 'inside' means. Think Einstein and the patent office. Or Mendel, an 'uncertified substitute teacher' whose day job was being an Augustian monk but whose knowledge of amateur horticulture allowed him to win a race career biologists did not even know had started.
Outsiders doing important things appeals to the frontier spirit in Americans and there's nothing more like a wide open frontier than biology in the hands of hackers - biopunks.
Future firefighters may use electricity instead of water to control flames, according to results of a discovery that could underpin a new genre of fire-fighting devices, including 'sprinkler' systems that suppress fires not with water, but with zaps of electric current.
You may have heard of a new car with lots of problems referred to as a 'lemon' but not all fruits are bad when it comes to automobiles. Scientists in Brazil have developed a more effective way to use fibers from these and other plants in a new generation of automotive plastics that are stronger, lighter, and more eco-friendly than plastics now in use, according to their presentation at the National Meeting&Exposition of the American Chemical Society.
Ginseng and saffron are sexual performance boosters, according to a new scientific review of natural aphrodisiacs, but while the more obscure Spanish fly and Bufo toad are purported to be sexually enhancing, they produced the opposite result and can even be toxic.
Wine and chocolate are okay, though it's all in your head, say the findings by Massimo Marcone, a professor in Guelph's Department of Food Science, and master's student John Melnyk in Food Research International.
