When the United States Environmental Protection Agency wrecked the ecosystem in Colorado, CEOs across the America likely had a private sentiment - if a corporation not being paid by the EPA had done it, they'd be in jail.

Sure enough, when the EPA caused toxic sludge to spill into a river, their bureaucrats assured us nature would fix itself.

As smoking continues its inexorable southward journey toward single-digit percentages of populations being smokers, it’s common to hear people say the smokers who remain are all “hard core”, heavily dependent smokers, impervious to policies and campaigns.

The argument runs that the ripe fruit of less addicted smokers have long fallen from the tree, and that today anyone still smoking will be unresponsive to the traditional suite of policies and motivational appeals. This argument is known as the “hardening hypothesis”.

New Haven, Conn.--The most effective prescription drug used to quit smoking initially helps women more than men, according to a Yale School of Medicine study.
The study, published Oct. 7 by the journal Nicotine and Tobacco Research, found that varenicline, marketed as Chantix, was more effective earlier in women, and equally effective in women and men after one year.

Back in February, General Mills announced that five varieties of gluten-free Cheerios (Apple Cinnamon, Frosted, Honey Nut, Multi Grain, and Original) would be available nationwide for purchase later in the year. With the launch of gluten-free Cheerios in recent months, General Mills embarked on one of the company's largest marketing offensives for cereal in many years.

It was great marketing, food is all about chasing the latest fads. But it was not without missteps. On October 5th they recalled 1.8 million boxes of original and Honey Nut Cheerios labeled gluten-free because they contained wheat and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had received 125 complaints from consumers who ate gluten-free Cheerios and experienced gastrointestinal problems.

Fresh research at Sahlgrenska Academy has found that antioxidants can double the rate of melanoma metastasis in mice. The results reinforce previous findings that antioxidants hasten the progression of lung cancer. According to Professor Martin Bergö, people with cancer or an elevated risk of developing the disease should avoid nutritional supplements that contain antioxidants.

Researchers at Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, demonstrated in January 2014 that antioxidants hastened and aggravated the progression of lung cancer. Mice that were given antioxidants developed additional and more aggressive tumors. Experiments on human lung cancer cells confirmed the results.

Three prime ministers and nearly three years ago, “first bloke” Tim Mathieson caused a brouhaha with his advice on prostate cancer screening:

We can get a blood test for it, but the digital examination is the only true way to get a correct reading on your prostate, so make sure you go and do that, and perhaps look for a small Asian female doctor is probably the best way.

It was the “small Asian female” part of this statement that attracted criticism, but what of the rest of his advice?

Many of my patients came to their first visit in the clinic and told me they were “a ticking time bomb.” Men, especially, seemed to have a view of themselves as a collection of risks that, left unchecked, would, without fail, cause them to have an early heart attack. When I asked them about how dangerous obesity, specifically, was to them, many patients would tell me that it can take ten or twenty years off their life…unless I could help them. Which, of course, was why they’d come to see me.

In some cases, I agreed with them. They were thirty years old, weighed 400 pounds and had a medication list like a nursing home patient. Those guys, I worried about. But many of my weight management patients were 50-100 pounds overweight at age 50 and on just a couple medicines. 

Scientists writing in Environmental Research Letters estimate that the onset of spring plant growth will shift by a median of three weeks over the next century - and global warming is to blame.

The scholars from University of Wisconsin-Madison applied the extended Spring Indices to predict the dates of leaf and flower emergence based on day length. These general models capture the phenology of many plant species.  Their results show particularly rapid shifts in plant phenology in the Pacific Northwest and Mountainous regions of the western US, with smaller shifts in southern areas, where spring already arrives early. Much of their data is available at http://silvis.forest.wisc.edu/

The graph below, I hope you'll agree, is significantly cooler and better-looking than the typical data display plots you get from high-energy physics analyses. Colours are bright, graphical symbols are clean, and one grasps the essence of the information quickly once one knows what it is about. So, let me tell you what it is about for starters.

Researchers have developed a new strategy for helping African farmers fight a parasitic plant that devastates crops - plants in the genus Striga, also known as witchweed.

Though their purple flowers are pretty to look at, a field full of Striga plants is in fact a nightmare for a farmer who wants to grow corn, sorghum, rice or other subsistence crops. The problem affects more than 100 million people across 25 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

 University of Toronto  chemical engineering professor Alexei Savchenko, along with professor Peter McCourt in the Department of Cell and Systems Biology, have created a genetically engineered plant biosensor, a tool that will help them hunt for molecules that could prevent Striga infestations.