News

Tomorrow some of us will get back to regular ID news, but it would be really hard to ignore this:: The big fat truth: More and more studies show that being overweight does not always shorten life — but some public-health researchers would rather not talk about them. Nature’s Virginia Hughes has tussled with the diet industry and lived to tell about it. Skinny: Clinical obesity is—by definition—a problem. That is why it is called “clinical.” But the fact that you or somebody or somebody’s brother-in-law might be 15 lbs. more than the insurance company charts think they should be is not necessarily a medical or health problem. Maybe the time, energy and money spent dealing with it could be Read More ›

A North Carolina State University research team has reported that a mutant strain of German cockroaches have gained a new biological function over the last 20 years: they have developed the capacity to perceive sugar as bitter, enabling them to avoid sugar-coated cockroach traps and increase their chances of survival. The research team’s original report, which is titled, Changes in Taste Neurons Support the Emergence of an Adaptive Behavior in Cockroaches was jointly authored by Ayako Wada-Katsumata, Jules Silverman, and Coby Schal and was published last week in Science magazine (24 May 2013: Vol. 340 no. 6135 pp. 972-975, DOI: 10.1126/science.1234854). Science reporter Victoria Gill summarized the scientists’ findings in a BBC News report (Cockroaches lose their ‘sweet tooth’ to Read More ›