Tattoos and body piercings are so ubiquitous in western societies that they are more cliché than  edgy, but social scientists in France say they may be more than fashion trends - they may be harbingers of doom. Individuals who get them  are also more likely to engage in risky behaviors that include substance and alcohol use. 

The second-largest mass extinction in Earth's history, the so-called Late Ordovician mass extinction, coincided with a short but intense ice age during which enormous glaciers grew and sea levels dropped.

The Late Ordovician mass extinction occurred about 450 million years ago and was related to climate change, that has been known, but exactly how the climate change produced the extinction has not. A team led by scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has created a framework for weighing the factors that might have led to mass extinction and has used that framework to determine that the majority of extinctions were caused by habitat loss due to falling sea levels and cooling of the tropical oceans.

As the London marathon gets underway, there are going to be lots of people getting high- 37,500 according to one recent BBC article. However, this is a different “high” than those individuals who partook, or attempted to, in massive marijuana festivities of April 20^th, such as the 2011 University of Colorado demonstration to legalize marijuana that was 10,000 people strong.

In a development that would be bad for the U.S. Department of Energy but good for solar power worldwide, a new process developed by scientists at the University of Cambridge has the potential to drive down the cost of manufacturing solar-grade silicon and boost use of photovoltaic devices.

Many of you, especially in the UK will have undoubtedly heard of the collapse of Fabrice Muamba. A Bolton Wanderer's football player, who at the time was playing in a FA cup football match watched by thousands. But is this a one-off or are we scratching at the surface with what happened?

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Close to supermarkets or not, fat poor kids are different than fat rich kids

Over the past decade, the American obesity epidemic has provoked a wide range of possible solutions, from soda-pop bans in elementary schools to salad bars in high school cafeterias. Some cities have begun retooling their recreation infrastructure, making playgrounds and public sports fields safer and more accessible.

The jury is still out on such measures, but there remain two fundamental truths. One: Obesity, especially childhood obesity, is real and getting worse. Two: Obesity eludes simple, popular fixes.

Let's be honest - in the 21st century the wussification of men has been in full force.   Being a man is out if that means not being a politically correct, hyper-sensitive, asexual, homogenized follower of all that is cool and popular among the cultural intelligentsia.

But testosterone levels are dropping and that could mean any number of consequences for the future of our species. Now you have one more science excuse to sack up and stop identifying as a metrosexual; a group of researchers concluded in 2010 that modest males endure social backlash because they are not 'macho' enough. We may not like arrogant people but meek people are annoying too.

The Judge Rotenberg Center is on trial, legally, for negligence in the 31 shocks and hours of restraint that Andre McCollins suffered at the hands of JRC staff and in the court of public opinion, finally, for its decades of use of skin shocks by a device Matthew Israel created.