From 5,000 to 11,000 years ago, what is now the Sahara Desert had 10X the rainfall it does today and was home to hunter-gatherers who lived in the region's savannahs and wooded grasslands. By analyzing marine sediments, rainfall patterns in the Sahara during that 'Green Sahara' period have been pinpointed.

Elderly women who sit more than 10 hours a day have accelerated biological aging, according to an epidemiology paper. They have older cells? 

It's the increasingly popular shorter telomeres hypothesis. Telomeres are tiny caps found on the ends of DNA strands, like the plastic tips of shoelaces, that protect chromosomes from deterioration. It has been found that they progressively shorten with age, just one of the reasons why we are considered to be biologically programmed to die. 

Many viruses face a choice after they have infected their hosts: to replicate quickly, killing the cell in the process, or to become dormant and lie in wait. HIV, herpes, and a number of other human viruses behave this way and, in fact, even the viruses that attack bacteria – phages – face similar decisions when invading a cell.

What causes a virus to choose dormancy over immediate gratification? Prof. Rotem Sorek and his group in the Weizmann Institute’s Department of Molecular Genetics have now discovered that, during infection, viruses secrete small molecules into their environment that other viruses can pick up and “read.” In this way, they can actually coordinate their attack, turning simple messages into a fairly sophisticated strategy.

To be science, there must be a theoretical foundation. What does psychology lack? A theoretical foundation. In fact, the only true theoretical foundation of psychology is widely derided by psychologists and psychiatrists alike, yet much of the world can only name one person in the field - and that person is Dr. Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis.

Though opiods are getting all of the government attention, and the substitute fentanyl all of the attention in media, they are not the only substances putting people at risk. Kratom has gotten some media attention, but among users, psilocybin-containing 'magic mushrooms' are a bigger worry, with more than 10 percent in a recent survey believing their worst 'bad trip' had put themselves or others in harm's way, and a substantial majority called their most distressing episode one of the top 10 biggest challenges of their lives.