If you're a child of the 1970s you remember peak oil - it was a book that claimed by 1992 we were going to reach maximum capacity and then it would gradually become more scarce.   If you're a fan of science fiction, it meant a world where oil was worth more than gold and we put machine guns on cars to fight over stuff.  More likely, we would come up with an alternative, but not before government lobbyists got subsidies for things we know won't work.

Herbal medicines are more common in Asian countries to treat pre-diabetes (impaired glucose tolerance or IGT), the precursor of diabetes but is there any hard scientific evidence to confidently recommend their use?

No.  That doesn't mean they aren't a viable treatment but, or that they haven't worked in some people, just like the confounding placebo effect, but more research would be needed to establish whether Chinese herbal medicines can reduce the likelihood of developing diabetes the way advocates claim.

A study combining family- and population-based approaches has uncovered a single-letter change in the genetic code that is associated with autism.  The finding implicates a neuronal gene not previously tied to the disorder and more broadly, underscores a role for common DNA variation. In addition, the new research highlights two other regions of the genome, which are likely to contain rare genetic differences that may also influence autism risk.

There is a subset of people in the environmental conservation movement who hate their fellow man - they like nature but don't think anyone outside of their companies should enjoy it, they should just pay companies to raise money for advocacy.

Everyone's heard of open heart surgery but closed heart surgery could one day be just as ubiquitous, according to research from the Universities of Michigan and Minnesota in the FASEB Journal.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, heart failure is a condition where the heart cannot pump enough blood and oxygen to meet the needs of other body organs. Approximately 5 million people in the United States have heart failure, about 550,000 new cases are diagnosed each year, and more than 287,000 people in the United States die each year of heart failure. The most common causes of heart failure are coronary artery disease, hypertension or high blood pressure, and diabetes.

You've heard of the Mercury 7 astronauts; they became the backbone of the NASA program and inspiration to an entire generation of young people.   But you may not have known there were also a Mercury 13 - and they were women.

In the early years of the space race two men sought to test a scientifically simple yet culturally complicated theory - that women might be better suited for space travel than men.

In 1960 a woman in space instead of a man was a revolutionary idea: 75% of American women did not work outside the home and females were banned from military flight service.   Wives were required to have their husband's permission to take out a bank loan, buy property, or purchase large household goods such as a refrigerator.