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OBESITY AND PREJUDICE In “Treating Patients without the Scale,” Virginia Sole-Smith describes physician Louise Metz’s approach to issues around weight and eating that affect individuals’ health. I could not agree more with Metz, whose technique involves encouraging healthier behaviors rather than focusing on weight. During the past 27 years of my practice of internal medicine before my retirement, I treated many hundreds of people with eating disorders whose body mass index (BMI) ranged from malnourished to morbidly obese....

By Sid Perkins of Nature magazineWhile most of the world’s glaciers are shedding ice at a brisk clip, many in one mountain range along the rim of the Tibetan plateau have been posting measurable gains in recent years, a new study confirms1. The finding comes just as researchers get set to launch a long-term international effort to study in detail 25 Tibetan glaciers (see ‘Glaciologists to target third pole’) – a small sample of the 46,000 ice masses that supply water to some 1....

This story was originally published by Inside Science News Service. (ISNS) – “Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today’s events,” said Albert Einstein. It is also deceptive because it is frequently wrong, sometimes dangerously so. Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed the ability to implant mice with false memories. The memories can be easily induced and are just as strong as real memories, physiological proof of something psychologists and lawyers have known for years....

By Lesley WroughtonTAN AN TAY VILLAGE, Vietnam (Reuters) - As John Kerry’s boat winds its way along the turbid waters of the Cai Nuoc river in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, the U.S. Secretary of State is taken back to the time he spent here as a commander of an American patrol boat during the Vietnam War.But it is not only the past that brings Kerry to this remote part of the Mekong, the 12th largest river in the world....

What is the ultimate nature of reality? Are quantum effects constantly carving us into innumerable copies, each copy inhabiting a different version of the universe? Or do all those other worlds pop out of existence as mere might-have-beens? Do our particles surf on quantum waves? Or are we ultimately made of the quantum waves alone? Or do the waves merely represent how much information we could possess about the state of the world?...

Enormous, swirling gyres compose some of the world’s biggest and most important ocean currents. Found in the North and South Pacific, the North and South Atlantic, and the Indian Ocean, these massive, rotating currents help transport heat and nutrients around the globe. Now, new research suggests, they seem to be on the move. A recent study, conducted by scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany and the Ocean University of China, finds major ocean gyres are steadily creeping toward the poles....

By M.B. Pell and Joshua Schneyer ST. JOSEPH, Missouri (Reuters) - On a sunny November afternoon in this historic city, birthplace of the Pony Express and death spot of Jesse James, Lauranda Mignery watched her son Kadin, 2, dig in their front yard. As he played, she scolded him for putting his fingers in his mouth. In explanation, she pointed to the peeling paint on her old house. Kadin, she said, has been diagnosed with lead poisoning....

This graphic originally appeared with the article “Halting the World’s Most Lethal Parasite,” in the November 2010 issue of Scientific American. We are posting it as background for today’s announcement of good success in a phase III trial using a traditional vaccine by GlaxoSmithKline. Scroll down to see the illustration. For decades the public health community has tried to devise a vaccine that would confer lifetime immunity against the malaria parasite and help stamp out disease....

“VIOLENT psychopath” (21,700). “Psychopathic serial killer” (14,700). “Psychopathic murderer” (12,500). “Deranged psychopath” (1,050). We have all heard these phrases before, and the number of Google hits following them in parentheses attests to their currency in popular culture. Yet as we will soon discover, each phrase embodies a widespread misconception regarding psychopathic personality, often called psychopathy (pronounced “sigh-COP-athee”) or sociopathy. Indeed, few disorders are as misunderstood as is psychopathic personality. In this column, we will do our best to set the record straight and dispel popular myths about this condition....

Computers as we know them are close to reaching an inflection point—the next generation is in sight but not quite within our grasp. The trusty programmable machines that have proliferated since the 1940s will someday give way to cognitive systems that draw inferences from data in a way that mimics the human brain. IBM treated the world to an early look at cognitive computing in February 2011, when the company pitted its Watson computing system against two former champions on TV’s Jeopardy!...

Microsoft is hoping for a Windows 8 do-over with version 8.1 of the operating system, but this reboot likely isn’t enough to change buyers’ opinions. Windows 8 was the first major redesign of the storied Windows OS in years, and its launch was accompanied by a loud and splashy campaign. For consumers, however, that largely amounted to a lot of background noise. By trying to address both tablets and PCs, Microsoft ended up not serving either particularly well....

Thanks to climate change, that day is coming by the end of the century, making it harder to avoid simmering temperatures. Summers in most of the U.S. are already warmer than they were in the 1970s. And climate models tell us that summers are going to keep getting hotter as greenhouse gas emissions continue. What will this warming feel like? Our new analysis of future summers illustrates just how dramatic warming is going to be by the end of this century if current emissions trends continue unabated....

Last year was the third hottest on record in the United States, with an average temperature of 54.6 degrees Fahrenheit—2.6 F above average. Only 2012 and 2016 were warmer than 2017, according a new report from NOAA. The five hottest years on record in the country have been in the last decade, based on 123 years of record-keeping. The record heat means that every year since 1997 has been warmer than average in the United States....

From Nature magazine Even in death, the world’s most accomplished parrot continues to amaze. The final experiments involving Alex — an African grey parrot (Psittacus erithacus) trained to count objects — have just been published. They show that Alex could accurately add together two Arabic numerals to a sum of eight and the total number of objects under three cups, putting his mathematical abilities on par with (and maybe beyond) those of chimpanzees and other non-human primates....

Editor’s note: The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. As viruses go, Ebola is one that strikes particular fear. It’s infectious and four out of the five identified strains can cause severe hemorrhagic fever, which in later stages leads to bleeding from the eyes, ears and nose as well as the mouth and rectum. One particular strain, Zaire ebolavirus, is one of the deadliest viruses we know and fatal in up to 90% of cases....

Whisky auctioneer Isabel Graham-Yooll was examining a seller’s collection in London last year when she noticed some of the liquors were slightly off-color—and several bottles seemed a little too full. She called the police, who arrested the seller for fraud. If the case goes to court, prosecutors may be able to count on more than just Graham-Yooll’s knowledge of fine whiskies; emerging laboratory techniques could help identify the liquors in question....

Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg became famous this spring for launching a student movement to compel adults to take action on climate change. Instead of going to school, Greta has been spending her Fridays in front of the Swedish parliament with a sign reading: “School Strike for Climate.” Students in more than 70 countries have since followed her lead. But before she started trying to convince the world to take action, Thunberg worked on her parents....

The year 1914 dramatically changed the world. The Great War for Civilization (now known as World War I) broke out in July and spread as more countries joined in the fighting. Increasingly, military needs shunted aside civilian ones, and the peacetime aviation industry geared up for war. (Look for the slide show on military aviation later in this year.) Early in the year grand plans to build airplanes capable of crossing the Atlantic Ocean were advancing toward designing and building stages....

By Sharon Levy of Nature magazine Near the dawn of time, the story goes, Coyote saved the creatures of Earth. According to the mythology of Idaho’s Nez Perce people, the monster Kamiah had stalked into the region and was gobbling up the animals one by one. The crafty Coyote evaded Kamiah but didn’t want to lose his friends, so he let himself be swallowed. From inside the beast, Coyote severed Kamiah’s heart and freed his fellow animals....

On March 1 the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case that could have an enormous impact on American medicine. The case, which involves combined appeals from two doctors, Xiulu Ruan and Shakeel Kahn, is intended to resolve an important question that has had a chilling effect on both pain and addiction care. If the court decides against these defendants, people in the U.S. who are in agony may be unable to get needed relief....