Culture

Think you're a foodie? Adventurous eaters, known as "foodies," are often associated with indulgence and excess. However, a new Cornell Food and Brand Lab study shows just the opposite -adventurous eaters weigh less and may be healthier than their less-adventurous counterparts.

It’s not difficult to tell when a female chimpanzee is in heat. As she nears ovulation  — the point in her cycle when she’s most fertile  –  her bottom swells up like a balloon and turns bright pink.

Humans are obviously different. We don’t make a show of how fertile we are. But does this mean that women have evolved to conceal ovulation?

A study of nearly 1,000 teens found that sexually active obese adolescents were significantly less likely to use contraception than normal weight peers, putting them at higher risk of unintended pregnancy.

Obese adolescents who did use contraception were also less likely to use it consistently, according to the University of Michigan Health System study that appears in the Journal of Pediatrics.

An international research team led by the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa has discovered a milk-and ochre-based paint dating to 49,000 years ago that inhabitants may have used to adorn themselves with or to decorate stone or wooden slabs.

There is a paradox when it comes to guns in America. In states like California, gun ownership has doubled while murder rates have dropped substantially. Most guns are used for suicide rather than crime and fewer people commit suicide with guns in the US than do by hanging in Japan. Almost one in three US adults owns at least one gun, and they are predominantly white married men over the age of 55, which dispels the myth that more guns lead to more crime or more murders.

Humanities scholars say that black and Hispanic families need much higher incomes than white families to live in comparably affluent neighborhoods. Since any number of federal laws prevent discrimination - just the opposite, the 2008 housing crisis was caused by it being easier to approve people who did not qualify for mortgages than deny anyone - how is that possible? In a recent paper, authors contend it must be racism and that black and hispanic families need much higher incomes to move up. Yet Asians, a smaller minority than both, do not.

Are they instead self-segregating?

Toxic environmental contaminants are increasingly known to cause a number of severe health problems, in particular on fetuses, including heart failure, low cognitive ability, delayed development, and neurobehavioral disorders.