It's no secret that the organic growing process is harder on the environment, with more toxic pesticides, less efficient use of the land, and lower yields, but some practices are exceptionally harmful, like growing crops in organic (peat) soil. 

When organic soils are drained and cultivated the organic matter in the soil will decompose which leads to emissions of greenhouse gases, finds a study in Denmark, and that makes up as much as 6 percent of Denmark's total greenhouse gas emissions.

• Students can feel isolated and pressure to represent all minorities

Kyoto, Japan -- Researchers have found that fish oil transforms fat-storage cells into fat-burning cells, which may reduce weight gain in middle age.

The team explains in Scientific Reports that fish oil activates receptors in the digestive tract, fires the sympathetic nervous system, and induces storage cells to metabolize fat.

Fat tissues don't all store fat. So-called "white" cells store fat in order to maintain energy supply, while "brown" cells metabolize fat to maintain a stable body temperature. Brown cells are abundant in babies but decrease in number with maturity into adulthood.

One of the popular myths that lazy journalists like to "debunk" this time of year is that early cancer detection saves lives. That's because there is no way to really prove someone didn't die, any more than it is possible for a politician to claim that a giant pork stimulus packing for government union employees saved jobs.

A lazy narrative like 'early detection doesn't save lives' means people will think that about all things, and they may not go to a doctor until they have a giant tumor growing out of them.

In the 1980s, the recycling debate was all the rage, with arguments for and against government doing it. The argument against government doing it was predictable; government is inefficient and expensive and the landfills waiting for a recycling list that would grow with every environmental lobbying effort would be the size of regular landfills.

Government recycling won and now there are giant landfills of recycling material that can never actually be recycled - all those glossy magazine pages with perfume on them, for example. Most of California recycling is actually done in China, after being shipped there in emissions-belching boats.

A commonly used skin care ingredient is one of several newly identified compounds that can mimic the life-extending effect of a starvation diet, finds a new lab study.

Calorie restriction, a dramatic reduction in calorie intake, has been found to slow down the aging process in several animal models. Mice weaned on it from birth live longer but to-date it has not been shown to work in humans, since such an experiment on babies would be a human rights violation. Efforts are on to try and create drugs that can reproduce this effect, without the side effects of starvation.