In case you haven’t noticed, election season is upon us! Ok, it has been upon us for almost two years, but never mind that. Pollsters are busy trying to determine why people might be voting for one candidate or another, with special attention being paid to the so-called undecided voters, on whose last-minute whim the fate of the nation -- and the world -- seems to hinge.

Two recent studies, however, provide much food for thought about why people vote one way or the other, and about the reasons they give to themselves and others.

I am obsessed with CSI (excluding CSI Miami, David Caruso is just too smarmy). I simply can’t help it. I will watch an episode of CSI that I have already seen twice, just for the thrill of seeing the cases unfold. I even downloaded the entire first season of CSI and watched every single episode, back to back, without sleeping. I know that I am not alone. Shows like CSI have swept the nation due partly to its drama, but also to its science. The fact that a single hair, nail or swath of skin could yield a lead on a case is captivating. It is also true.

Granted shows like CSI sensationalize the lab work and results yielded by forensic science, but its basis is accurate. DNA profiling is one of the most valuable tools used by law enforcement and in fact does help to solve cases.

People come to this web site for well written, interesting columns on science. To some degree it must be questioned as to whether economics is a science. That being said, the current financial crisis is worthy of some commentary here as it will affect all of us to some degree. As a futurist, I see this crisis as part of a bigger transition from one Age to another. The Information Age began in the 1970s and is now giving way to the Shift Age. All year, in speeches given around the country, I have stated that the economic downturn we are going through must be looked at from a new perspective. The ‘is it a recession or not’ and ‘is it a bear stock market or not’ is a far too narrow focus for insightful discussion. There is something much larger that we are beginning to move through.

Remember that old expression about your fence, "the grass is always greener on the other side?" Although this may not be entirely true, a recent study shows that a daily dose of the green stuff may actually prove beneficial to both your mental and physical health. 

Students attending college in San Marcos, Texas are taking advantage of their luscious green surroundings and are feeling quite good about it.

A.L. McFarland, a graduate student at Texas State University's Department of Agriculture, is head of a new "green" study which created data on the effects of outdoor interaction on a student's overall quality of life.

An analysis of news media coverage of medical studies indicates that news articles often fail to report pharmaceutical company funding and frequently refer to medications by their brand names, both potential sources of bias, according to a study in the October 1 issue of JAMA.

New articles represent an important source of medical information for many patients, and even some physicians. "An increasingly recognized source of commercial bias in medical research is the funding of studies by companies with a financial interest in the results," the authors write. Little is known about how frequently news articles report the funding sources of the medical research they report on, or how frequently news articles use brand medication names instead of generic names, which could create commercial bias.

A link between reduced levels of the 'stress hormone' cortisol and antisocial behaviour in male adolescents has been discovered by a research team at the University of Cambridge.

Levels of cortisol in the body usually increase when people undergo a stressful experience, such as public speaking, sitting an exam, or having surgery. It enhances memory formation and is thought to make people behave more cautiously and to help them regulate their emotions, particularly their temper and violent impulses.

The new research, funded by the Wellcome Trust, shows that adolescents with severe antisocial behaviour do not exhibit the same increase in cortisol levels when under stress as those without antisocial behaviour.

Sunnybrook researcher Dr. Donald Redelmeier and Stanford University statistician Robert Tibshirani have found an increased risk of fatal motor vehicle crashes on United States (US) presidential election days.

US presidential elections have large effects on public health by influencing policy, the economy, and military action. "Whether the US presidential electoral process has a direct effect on public health had never been tested despite the endless media commentary and the 1 billion dollars spent on this year's election alone," says Dr. Donald Redelmeier.

It's not what you take but the way that you take it that can produce different results in women who take hormone replacement therapy (HRT), according to new research on the association between HRT and heart attacks, published the European Heart Journal [1] today.

The study is the largest to look at the effects of HRT since the Women's Health Initiative trial was stopped early after finding that HRT increased the risk of women developing a range of conditions including breast cancer and thromboembolism.

The research is an observational study of 698,098 healthy Danish women, aged 51-69, who were followed between 1995-2001. It has found that overall there was no increased risk of heart attacks in current users of HRT compared to women who had never taken it.

The detailed study, called the ACS Nearby Galaxy Survey Treasury (ANGST) program, explored a region called the Local Volume, where galaxy distances range from 6.5 million light-years to 13 million light-years from Earth.

A typical galaxy contains billions of stars but looks smooth when viewed through a conventional telescope because the stars appear blurred together. In contrast, the galaxies observed in this new survey are close enough to Earth that the sharp view provided by Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys and Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 can resolve the brightness and colour of some individual stars. This allows scientists to determine the history of star formation within a galaxy and tease out subtle features in a galaxy's shape.

Researchers have identified two new genes – and confirmed the role of a third gene – associated with increased risk of higher levels of uric acid in the blood, which can lead to gout, a common, painful form of arthritis. Combined, the three genetic variations were associated with up to a 40-fold increased risk in developing gout. The findings suggest that genetic testing could one day be used to identify individuals at risk for gout before symptoms develop, as well as determine who might benefit from medications to prevent the development of gout.

The genes were identified using data from two large genome-wide association studies – genetic variations of nearly 7,700 participants from NHLBI's Framingham Heart Study SHARe (SNP Health Association Resource) and more than 4,100 participants in NWO's Rotterdam Study. Researchers then replicated their finding using data from nearly 14,900 participants in NHLBI's Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study (ARIC).