With the cost of American health care set to increase substantially, the search is on to start forcing people to curb preventable diseases, like those related to obesity.

But it may not be a choice, according to some psychologists. The same way that people can be addicted to drugs and alcohol, they can have an unhealthy relationship with food. 

More than one-third of U.S. adults are obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, putting them at greater risk for heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and certain types of cancer. The estimated annual medical cost of obesity could have been as high as $147 billion in 2008 U.S. dollars, and obese people pay an average of $1,429 more in medical expenses than those of normal weight.

10 years of Opportunity and Spirit on Mars have given us some interesting insights, like that the oldest minerals show that around four billion years ago Mars had liquid water so fresh it could have supported life.

Everyone with a sense of adventure wants to go to 'the final frontier' and explore strange new worlds.

But bring your medication. It might not be good for your immune system.

It's so surprise that spaceflight affects immune responses but the new paper clarifies that a bit and says that being born in and growing up on the Space Shuttle weakened a key arm of the immune system in Drosophila flies, while being in a centrifuge under hypergravity conditions improved resistance. 

A group of researchers say they have established a new biomarker for how stressed polar bears are about climate change.    

Last year, a team reported that fluctuations in climate and ice cover are closely related to stress among polar bears in East Greenland as indicated by levels of the stress hormone cortisol in hair samples. The team is hopeful this type of analysis will be beneficial once others learn that it can now be done with much greater reliability.

Obesity has risen and everyone wants to assign blame. New York City blamed trans fats before they blamed sodas, San Francisco blamed McDonald's marketing.

But outside government policy makers, most people consider obesity a choice. And the data is on their side. Every study throughout history has found that people who burn more calories than they consume lose weight, and that goes for weight gain also.

A new survey by two food economists confirmed that even obese people don't blame restaurants, grocery stores, farmers, or government policies for obesity, which means that creating and enforcing public policies to reduce obesity or encourage/mandate healthier food is probably not going to be effective.

Western humans are rare in that we drink milk after weaning.  Milk is the staple food for infants and contains the sugar lactose but most mammals lose the ability to digest lactose, and thus milk, as they get older. 

The ability to digest the sugar is governed by the production of the enzyme lactase in the small intestine. As children get older, the lactase gene is gradually disabled, which means that no lactase is formed and the lactose enters the colon undigested, where it is typically converted into acids and hydrogen gas and, in many people, causes the painful symptoms of lactose intolerance.

• What is ‘Answering Machine Talk’?

“Answering machine talk represents a form of mediated conversation in which messages are recorded to facilitate communication between participants.“

• What of the resources?

“The talk which occurs in such messages draws upon the pool of available resources for telephone-based communication…”

• What of the constraints?

“[telephone-based communication] … modifies these resources as the result of constraints imposed by the communicative environment.”

A new analysis has affirmed what many in the science audience already knew; mainstream media prefer weak observational studies. It's why you're reading this article here instead of the New York Times.

And that is not just in regards to social psychology correlations made using surveys of college students or sociology mysticism, it happens in medical coverage too. The examination found that observational studies get far better coverage than actual randomized controlled trials, which are what should really be important to most people.

In a previous article I built a magnetic stirrer using littleBits and Erector set parts for the home laboratory. At the end of the article I added a design for a sample rotator (a device used to continuously mix lab samples). I have (somewhat) improved the design of the Erector set and littleBits sample rotator and in this article I document the build.

The Rotator ”Base”

Currently in the UK, when health care workers are "unequivocally guilty of willful or reckless neglect or mistreatment of patients" that is not criminal behavior but Dr. Jo Bibby, Director of Strategy at the Health Foundation, writing in BMJ, says the proposal, made in response to the Francis inquiry, will close a gap in the law and is one of many important steps to improving patient care, though won't prevent any deaths.