Public Health England (PHE), the UK governmental body the equivalent to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), says that its review of the evidence has found that e-cigarettes are 95 percent less harmful to health than combustible cigarettes and they should be recommended for smoking cessation and harm reduction.

This is the opposite stance taken by anti-smoking activists who have morphed into anti-nicotine activists, and demand that cigarette smokers engage in "abstinence only" when it comes to nicotine, an approach that works with almost nothing. 

Food should be labeled with the equivalent exercise to expend its calories to help people change their behavior, argues Shirley Cramer, Chief Executive at the Royal Society of Public Health,
in The BMJ. Giving consumers an immediate link between foods' energy content and physical activity might help to reduce obesity, she believes.

Two-thirds of the UK population either overweight or obese yet little evidence indicates that the current information on food and drink packaging, including traffic light labeling, actually changes behavior. No one obeys nutrition guidelines as dutifully as Canadians and they have become just as fat as anyone else.

RICHLAND, Wash. - When water levels in rivers rise, an area known as the "river's liver" kicks into action, cleansing river water of pollutants and altering the flow of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Now, in a paper published April 7 in Nature Communications, scientists at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory present evidence suggesting that rising river waters deliver a feast of carbon to hungry microbes where water meets land, triggering increased activity, which could naturally boost emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases.

LAWRENCE -- The public's understanding of genetics, particularly as a cause of sexual orientation, can influence the level of stereotypical behavior, according to a new study by two University of Kansas researchers.

Mark Joslyn and Don Haider-Markel, professors in the KU Department of Political Science, found that genetic attributions strongly shape perceptions of whether a person's sexual orientation could change and likely made same-sex marriage and other policies more widely acceptable in the past decade.

London, UK (April 06, 2016). A new report from Index on Censorship exposes how many LGBT activists in Honduras risk torture, prison and assassination.

The research from Index on Censorship, published by SAGE, carried out by journalist Duncan Tucker and utilising data collected by on-the-ground NGOs, delves into some shocking statistics:

• 215 LGBT people were murdered in Honduras between 2009 and 2015
• 37 deaths occurred in 2015 alone

Of the?235 murders of LGBT people since 1994, only?48?cases (20%) have gone to court.

Two studies published by The BMJ today evaluate treatments for patients with cardiac arrest in hospital.

The first study suggests that advice to delay giving a second heart shock, known as defibrillation, to patients with cardiac arrest in hospital is not associated with improved survival.

Guidelines previously called for "stacked" shocks with minimal time delay between defibrillation attempts. But in 2005 the guidelines were revised to recommend deferring a second attempt at defibrillation to allow time for chest compressions.

However, data on the effect of these changes on survival for patients with cardiac arrest in hospital are lacking.

If you are keen on Mars colonization, it is not hard to find a future vision to inspire you. Elon Musk has plans to send a hundred people at a time in his proposed "Mars Colonial Transporter" and found a city of 80,000, and eventually a million. He is due to reveal these plans at the IAC conference this September.

Everyone has known a coworker who wastes time, mismanages resources, and has been known to engage in activities that are conflicts of interest, yet they "do no wrong" in the eyes of the company.

Why?

Because they produce. 

A new paper in Personnel Psychology discusses surveys of why employees' unethical behaviors may be tolerated or rejected. The scholars conducted three studies and surveyed 1,040 people, including more than 300 pairs of supervisors and their employees.

Survey results show:

If you trace our evolutionary tree way back to its roots, before the shedding of gills or the development of opposable thumbs, you will likely find a common ancestor with the amazing ability to regenerate lost body parts. Descendants of this creature, including today's salamanders or zebrafish, can still perform the feat, but humans lost much of their regenerative power over millions of years of evolution. 

An international team of scientists has found evidence of a series of massive supernova explosions near our solar system, which showered the Earth with radioactive debris.

The scientists found radioactive iron-60 in sediment and crust samples taken from the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans.

The iron-60 was concentrated in a period between 3.2 and 1.7 million years ago, which is relatively recent in astronomical terms, said research leader Dr Anton Wallner from The Australian National University (ANU).

Artist's impression of supernova. Credit: Greg Stewart, SLAC National Accelerator Lab