The United States contributes almost $10 billion a year from Medicare into funding the Graduate medical education (GME) system but it fails to provide the workforce needed for the 21st century and lacks the necessary transparency and accountability.

Instead, it is more like political cronyism. New York, for example, gets 20% of the total while 29 other states, including places with a severe shortage of physicians with far more seniors and poor patients, get less than 1 percent.

Boulder, Colo., USA – Impact craters reveal one of the most spectacular geologic process known to man. During the past 3.5 billion years, it is estimated that more than 80 bodies, larger than the dinosaur-killing asteroid that struck the Yucatan Peninsula 66 million years ago, have bombarded Earth. However, tectonic processes, weathering, and burial quickly obscure or destroy craters. For example, if Earth weren't so dynamic, its surface would be heavily cratered like the Moon or Mercury.

Using your brain – particularly during adolescence – may help brain cells survive and could impact how it functions after puberty.

According to a recently published study in Frontiers in Neuroscience, Rutgers University behavioral neuroscientist Tracey Shors, who co-authored the study, found that the newborn brain cells in young rats that were successful at learning survived while the same brain cells in animals that didn't master the task died quickly.

Lighter-colored butterflies and dragonflies do better in warmer areas of Europe, a finding that could have implicated for global warming; darker insects could face a competitive disadvantage, finds a study recently published in Nature Communications.

Light-colored insects dominate the warmer south of Europe and darker insects dominate the cooler north. For dragonflies, the insect assemblage in Europe has on average gotten lighter during the last decades, which the authors attribute to climate change.

Defensive medicine, to prevent malpractice claims, are far higher costs than medical personnel, but the United States shift to government health care is going to add a third component. Tests will be free and people will demand them.

Dr. Alai Tan, a senior biostatistician in the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston   Sealy Center on Aging and lead author of a new study has concluded that providing better access to health care may lead to the overuse of mammograms for women who regularly see a primary care physician and who have a limited life expectancy.

Screening women in this category could subject them "to greater risks of physical, emotional and economic suffering" but it could happen anyway.  

First Lady Michelle Obama may mean well, but overturning school lunch policy based on the beliefs of someone who was paid $300,000 per year to do community outreach for a university wasn't really helping the poor children for whom a school lunch may be their most meaningful meal of the day.

Mandating fruit, which is what the USDA required in 2012, is fine, except a lot of it goes in the garbage. Most decisions are based on fads and gimmicks rather than real data.

Vermont's Charlotte Central school cafeteria has basically a restaurant menu, with locally sourced ingredients, including herbs and vegetables from the playground garden. There's just one problem; the higher cost is obvious but does it work?