The next generation of doctors and other health professionals does not like fat people. In fact, they like fat people even less than the rest of the population, according to a study published in Obesity.

Scientists at the Universities of Manchester and Hawaii and Yale University suggests that medical and allied health professions need to present a balanced view of the causes of, and treatment for, obesity when training young professionals in order to reduce the strong prejudice towards obese people. Emphasizing the "uncontrollable" causes of weight gain, such as exposure to junk food advertising, would be one way to reduce the prejudice among health professionals.

A new British Medical Journal editorial claims that banning trans fats would protect the public and save lives by preventing thousands of heart attacks and deaths every year.

The policy recommendation follows calls by public health specialists to eliminate the consumption of industrially-produced trans fats in the UK by next year. Action by the UK might also produce larger benefits by inspiring other developed and developing countries to take similar measures to protect their citizens' health, the authors conclude.

Trans fats (trans fatty acids) are solid fats found in margarine, biscuits, cakes, and fast food. Many studies demonstrate harmful effects of trans fats on cardiovascular risk factors.

Electronic readers allow children to interact with texts in ways they don't interact with the printed word, encouraging them to read, according to Kansas State University professor of Education Lotta Larson.

Since fall 2009, Larson has been using the Amazon Kindle in her work with a pair of second-graders. The e-reader has features that make the text audible, increase or decrease font size and let readers make notes about the book.

"It's interesting to see the kinds of things these kids have been able to do," Larson said.

Sometimes they make comments summarizing the plot, therefore reinforcing their understanding of the book. Other times they ponder character development, jotting down things like "If I were him, I'd say no way!"

The world's water cycle has already intensified and the changes are consistent with predictions made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, according to  new research in the Journal of Climate.

The stronger water cycle means arid regions have become drier and high rainfall regions wetter as atmospheric temperature increases.

The study shows the surface ocean beneath rainfall-dominated regions has freshened, whereas ocean regions dominated by evaporation are saltier. The paper also confirms that surface warming of the world's oceans over the past 50 years has penetrated into the oceans' interior changing deep-ocean salinity patterns.

I read with interest and excitement a very lightweight preprint on the Cornell preprint arxiv this afternoon. Although I usually skip reading papers on subjects I know little about (Cosmology), the title startled me enough to plunge into it:


Single author, Paul Howard Frampton. Hmmm. A thought crossed my mind at the very start. Was this the work of a crackpot, sneaked into the arxiv while nobody was looking ?

Volcano in Iceland Grounds UK Flights

Edit: for latest updates please see comments, below.

A volcanic ash cloud in UK airspace has left tens of thousands of travellers returning from Easter holidays facing long delays in getting home.  All non-emergency flights have been banned within UK airspace.

Statement on Icelandic volcanic eruption: Thurs April 15, 09:30

UEA CRU Scientists Cleared Of Malpractice Allegations

An independent panel of scientists has cleared scientists at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit of the malpractice allegations which have been made against them.

This follows the the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee report, which I abstracted in The Mother Of Inquiries: Parliamentary CRU Report.

Response by the University of East Anglia to the Report by Lord Oxburgh’s Science Assessment Panel

Wed, 14 Apr 2010

Simon Singh Wins Legal Battle

Good news for lovers of freedom of speech across the planet.

The British Chiropractic Association (BCA) this morning dropped its libel
claim against Dr Singh.

Thanks to the adoption by British judges of a principle of US Law, the BCA has finally realised that the legal maxim: 'when you find yourself in a hole, you should stop digging' is a truth of universal application.

Have a look at the figure on the left. It shows the number of visits to this site broken down in hours of the day -the time of the server used by the visitor. The statistics of each bar is sufficient that the uncertainty on their height is of the order of 2%, so almost indistinguishable by eye. What you can see, therefore, are real variations with time of the traffic to this site, and not random fluctuations up and down.

Scientists cannot account for roughly half of the heat that is believed to have built up on Earth in recent years, according to a new article in Science.

While we may have been spared some of the warming that inevitably results from our reckless C02 emissions, "the heat will come back to haunt us sooner or later," says NCAR scientist Kevin Trenberth, the article's lead author.

The researchers warn that satellite sensors, ocean floats, and other instruments are inadequate to track this "missing" heat, which may be building up in the deep oceans or elsewhere in the climate system.