Overweight political candidates have gotten fewer votes than thinner opponents, finds a new study co-authored by a Michigan State University weight bias expert.

Of course, discrimination is everywhere, it is the favored position of the humanities in trying to quantify culture. In 2008, Democrats discriminated against Senator Hillary Clinton because she was a woman while Republicans were against Senator Obama in the general election because he was black. No one ever just acknowledged he was the best candidate, even in winning we were told it was despite his race.

So political parties should be picking the thinnest candidates? That explains why Pres. Obama beat Gov. Mitt Romney in 2012. He had a smaller waist.

A new study demonstrates the importance of considering developmental differences when creating programs for cochlear implants in infants.

Cochlear implants, which are surgically placed in the inner ear, provide the ability to hear for some people with severe to profound hearing loss. Because of technological and biological limitations, people with cochlear implants hear differently than those with normal hearing.

In recent court cases involving affirmative action for university admissions, the obvious question became 'when should it ever end?' and how is that not discrimination? Supporters of race-based admissions argued that ending discrimination would mean favoritism.

Favoritism is something less understood than as a form of discrimination, the oft-repeated belief is that discrimination is a hostile act, but a new paper in American Psychologist argues it is even worse than believed. It's a review of other psychology papers, which are overrun with stereotype threats and Implicit Association tests, so the results are not a surprise.

Images of Saturn's auroras as the planet's magnetic field is battered by charged particles from the Sun have led a team to claim decisive evidence for the hypothesis that Saturn's auroral displays are often caused by the dramatic collapse of its "magnetic tail".

Just like comets, planets such as Saturn and the Earth have a "tail" – known as the magnetotail – that is made up of electrified gas from the Sun and flows out in the planet's wake.

When a particularly strong burst of particles from the Sun hits Saturn, it can cause the magnetotail to collapse, with the ensuing disturbance of the planet's magnetic field resulting in spectacular auroral displays. A very similar process happens here on Earth.

New research does not support claims that fluoridating water adversely affects children's mental development and adult IQ.

The researchers were testing the claim that exposure to levels of fluoride used in community water fluoridation is toxic to the developing brain and can cause IQ deficits.  The data used in the American Journal of Public Health article used data from the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Study, which   has followed nearly all aspects of the health and development of around 1,000 people born in Dunedin in 1972-1973 up to age 38.  

ATS 2014, SAN DIEGO ─ Despite being touted by their manufacturers as a healthy alternative to cigarettes, e-cigarettes appear in a laboratory study to increase the virulence of drug- resistant and potentially life-threatening bacteria, while decreasing the ability of human cells to kill these bacteria

Researchers at the VA San Diego Healthcare System (VASDHS) and the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), tested the effects of e-cigarette vapor on live methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and human epithelial cells. MRSA commonly colonizes the epithelium of the nasopharynx, where the bacteria and epithelial cells are exposed constantly to inhaled substances such as e-cigarette vapor and cigarette smoke.