The seasons are about to change and that means a new round of projections, prognostications, sooth-saying and doomsday forecasts.

If you think you know which of those are done by the civilized world and which of those are done by pagan Wildlings, you know nothing about modern climate science and culture.

In George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire", a wall separates two very different people - think England and Scotland. South of The Wall, the people of Winterfell are always preparing for the worst. North of The Wall, they are just living their lives and rolling with the punches. And there is a lot more (consensual) sex. These two groups live in the same world but approach it in very different ways.

Modern genetic modification, where biologists cause a plant to express a natural protein taken from another plant that wards off pests, is protested by environmental groups and organic farmers. Organic farmers will spray Bt on their plants, while calling them organic food, yet the same food that expresses Bt naturally, like many plants do, is a Frankenfood.

It's the protein expression, they insist. There may be a compromise between the world of science - and not letting poor people die - and activism. If protein expression is the problem, don't code for proteins. Non-coding RNA (ncRNA) still sounds like scary science to environmentalists, but transcripts that do not code for proteins exclude the possibility of producing exogenous protein products.

When it comes to defense against viruses, the immune system has an arsenal of weapons at its disposal, including killer cells, antibodies and messenger molecules, and when a pathogen attacks the body, the immune system usually activates the appropriate mechanisms. 

China has 18 percent of the world's population but 25 percent of its diabetics. When the numbers are a staggering 1.3 billion, such a startling disparity in representation means a major public health crisis.

In 1980, less than 1% of Chinese adults had diabetes but with wealth and more food comes more opportunities to eat poorly. Though pre-diabetes is a wholly fabricated condition the evidence-based world wishes epidemiologists would stop talking about, if we do consider that, then 50% of Chinese adults have it.  

In the UK, where health care is paid for by the government, and in the United States, where health care is increasingly government controlled, fat shaming has become the norm. Since everyone will have to pay for health care, and obese people are more likely to need it, gthe public gets to have a voice in behavior.

The federal government has even taken to micromanaging school lunches.

But does it work, or is it just a way for elite social authoritarians to assert their superiority over the masses? New University College London research funded by Cancer Research UK finds that discrimination is a poor tactic, even if it is subtle, like newspaper articles and government programs fat shaming indirectly.

Forget lettuce, adults who consume a high-protein diet are at a lower risk for developing high blood pressure (HBP), according to a paper in the American Journal of Hypertension.

One of three U.S. adults has hypertension and 78.6 million are clinically obese, which is considered a risk factor for the development of hypertension. Because of the strain that it puts on blood vessel walls, high blood pressure is one of the most common risk factors of stroke and an accelerator of multiple forms of heart disease, especially when paired with excess body weight. 

Venus is uninhabitable for humans yet from a distance, using statistical wobbles, a Venus-like planet and an Earth-like planet are very similar.

While the Earth has oceans of water and relatively moderate temperatures, Venus has no liquid
water and exists in a runaway greenhouse scenario where the levels of carbon dioxide are so high that the atmosphere traps all the heat. The planet is torrid but it is 95 percent the size of Earth. Right now, size is what astronomers are looking for when searching for exoplanets but size alone is not a distinguishing characteristic when sorting for a habitable one. 

A protein called Nrf2,continually moves in and out of the nuclei of human cells to sense the cell's health and vitality and when Nrf2 is exposed to threats to the cell's health, it oscillates faster and activates an increase in the cell's defense mechanism, including raising the levels of antioxidants.

The public has long suffered from green fatigue, where constant doomsday prophecies by environmental groups have become background noise, but there is good news too. It just has to come from the world of science instead.

After the detection of the ozone-depleting properties of  chlorofluorocarbons
(CFCs) in the 1970s, data from satellite measurements in 1985 were startling; a huge hole had been discovered over the Antarctic in the ozone layer that protects the Earth from dangerous, carcinogenic UV rays and it was unclear how much was natural and what had been caused by man.

What do leopards in India do when prowling at night? Like with smaller domestic cats in America, evidence from a GoPro video around their necks would probably horrify pet owners, but scat samples for leopards in India's Ahmednagar's district in Maharashtra tell the story.

Leopards mostly eat dogs, it turns out. 

87 percent of their diet was made up of domestic animals, according to  a new study led by the Wildlife Conservation Society. And that was mostly pets dog. 39 percent was man's best friend and 15 percent were even other cats. 17 percent was assorted wild animals including rodents, monkeys, and mongoose, and birds.