Type 2 diabetes develops when the body becomes resistant to insulin or the pancreas becomes unable to produce enough insulin.  Though there is sometimes a genetic factor but it is overwhelmingly a lifestyle disease caused by being overweight and inactive. The pancreas simply becomes overworked.

Having one of the most powerful bites in the animal kingdom, crocodiles must be able to bite hard to eat their food such as turtles, wildebeest and other large prey.  Well, so do we, but we don't have exceptionally tough teeth and neither do crocodiles.

However, we do have relatively thick enamel on our teeth, which can get ruined over time without proper care. 

Crocodiles don't even have that. They have thin tooth enamel, the opposite of humans and other hard-biting species, as their plant-eating ancestors did. But unlike humans, when their teeth go bad, they seem to just grow new ones.


Fossilized crocodile teeth. Image: University of Missouri

Short summary: we have had wild fires for many years now in the Amazon, even in the tropical rainforest - mainly started by humans for forest clearing and ranching. It is not enough to impact significantly on the Paris agreement pledges yet, though it is important in the long term if this continues for decades. It does of course have major and immediate impacts on forest residents, nature services and the biodiversity in Brazil.

This is me according to the Daily Express. End of world: Scientist’s terrifying warning of apocalypse asteroid - ‘Would boil oceans!’ It is nonsense! I gave no warning, and as a science blogger I am not the person to issue a warning either. I wrote an article to HELP scared people who panic about such things. It was awful and many are panicking and it is not impossible someone has committed suicide over this.

Viking 1, an unmanned U.S. probe headed for Mars, was launched on this day in 1975 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, which is Brevard county on the Atlantic Ocean and across the Banana River east of Merritt Island where Kennedy Space Center is which is itself east Titusville across the Indian River.

Yet even though Viking 1 took off from Cape Canaveral, formerly called Cape Kennedy, it did not take off from its more famous adjacent site, Kennedy Space Center, formerly called NASA Launch Operations Center. It instead took off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station headquartered at Patrick Air Force Base, actual Cape Canaveral, not Merritt Island, which had once been renamed Cape Kennedy Air Force Station. 

Sound confusing? 

Mars may seem hospitable only for cute robots now, but 3 to 4 billion years ago it was warm enough to have rainstorms and flowing water, followed by a longer cold period where the water froze - a lot like earth. 

Scientists have long known that water was abundant on ancient Mars, but there has been no consensus on whether liquid water was common, or whether it was largely frozen in ice. Was the temperature high enough to allow the water to flow? Did this happen over an extended period, or just occasionally? Was the surface a desert or frozen? Warm conditions make it much more likely that life would have developed independently on the surface of ancient Mars.

If you read English newspaper The Guardian, you will be convinced farming is killing us all. Instead of being the negative they persistently insist, food is a basic resource, we will literally die without it, and the modern world is creating more food at affordable cost with less environmental strain and less energy than once even dreamed possible. Actual data show all land use combined, types of farming, forestry, etc. are only 23 percent of greenhouse gas emissions and not all greenhouse gases are equal.

In 2006, when Science 2.0 began, it felt like the world was ready for a writing network composed of scientists. There had already been two attempts, one failed and one wildly successful, albeit more focused on cultural issues than science.

The reason it felt time was because the public didn't trust journalists, who were (and are) often overtly partisan while scientists didn't trust journalists because they were (and are) often wrong. Why not make scientists the journalists?

An archaeological excavation on Mount Zion in Jerusalem has found clear evidence of the Babylonian conquest from 587/586 B.C. 

The discovery is of a deposit including layers of ash, arrowheads dating from the period, as well as Iron Age potsherds, lamps and a significant piece of period jewelry - a gold and silver tassel or earring. There are also signs of a significant Iron Age structure in the associated area, but the building, beneath layers from later periods, has yet to be excavated.

The use of social media is ubiquitous in today's culture. A recent Pew Research report found that, among 18 to 29-year-olds, over 90 percent use some form of social media while essentially 100 percent of young Americans (ages 18-29) have mobile phones, 94 percent of which are smartphones.