Discrimination against overweight people is as common as racial discrimination, according to a study by the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at Yale University. The study also says that women are twice as likely as men to report weight discrimination and that weight discrimination in the workplace and interpersonal mistreatment due to obesity is common.

The study documented the prevalence of self-reported weight discrimination and compared it to experiences of discrimination based on race and gender among a nationally representative sample of adults aged 25- to 74-years-old. The data was obtained from the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States.

A research team from the Leioa campus of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), and led by Ms Concepción de la Rúa, has reconstructed the history of the evolution of human population and answered questions about history, using DNA extracted from skeleton remains.

Knowing the history of past populations and answering unresolved questions about them is highly interesting, more so when the information is obtained from the extraction of genetic material from historical remains. An example is the necropolis at Aldaieta (Araba) where some of these mysteries about these peoples have been answered – thanks to the study of their DNA.

If you read the medical news lately you may have seen a headline title Skeleton May Show Ancient Brain Surgery. This article was about an 1800 year old skeleton found in Veria, Greece. The skeleton was of a woman of about 25 years of age that suffered severe head trauma and underwent cranial surgery, unfortunately evidence shows that she did not survive.

There is an interesting history of skull surgery, known as trepanation, which comes from the Greek word trypanon, meaning auger or borer. Cranial trepanation has caught the interest of surgeons and archeologist since the 1860's, when it was first realized that ancient humans had scraped or cut holes in the skulls of living persons in France and Peru.

Trepanation is serious enough surgical procedure in this day and age, could this procedure have taken place as a routine operation as long ago as 2000 BC? We do have a historical record of thousands of skulls with evidence of this surgery. Sometimes historical records suggest a reality that we find hard to accept.

At Paris, 18 March of 1314, on the island of the Seine in front of the Garden real, Jacques de Molay, the last Great Master of the Templars, and Geoffroy de Charny, preceptor of Normandy, were burned as heretics.

Thus finishes the history of the Knights of the Temple after two centuries. The Templars would have been in possession of the most hidden secrets of alchemy. They were first to use the IPERICO on burns and hurts from cut, like antiseptic, astringent, healing, and in order to improve humor of the soldiers that remained immobilized in bed for months.

Medieval medicine gave great importance to the planets as influences in disease. The influence of the stars began at birth and influenced complexion. The continuous flow of celestial forces could change the course of disease.

The position of the planets was important in choosing the moment in which to begin cures or carry out a bloodletting. In "Regimen against the Plague", Siegmund Albich (1347-1427) invites readers not to think about the plague because that was sure to cause its appearance.

During the Middle Ages, the prevailing popular attitude in medicine was dictated by S. Ambrogio (334-378) who declared " the garnishments of the medicine are contrary to celestial science, contemplation and prayers".

American history is referenced in news features, profiles and analysis pieces, giving meaning to current events, discoveries and individuals. A University of Missouri researcher recently completed a study on the use of historical references by journalists in the 19th century, a time when the United States had little or no published history records. The study revealed that 19th century American journalism was significantly influential in shaping the nation’s early history.

Betty Winfield, Curators’ professor of Journalism at MU, based the study on 2,000 magazine and newspaper headlines from various publications throughout the 19th century. Organizing titles into particular groups and tracking patterns, Winfield found an increase in historical references from the beginning of the century to 1900, when historians first began recording the nation’s past. Winfield said journalists created a particular national story by referencing certain people and events, which emerged as collective memory.

A new study published in The Journal of Finance explores the economic significance of “smart money” in the U.S. and U.K. mutual fund marketplaces.

The “Smart Money” hypothesis states that investor money is “smart” enough to flow to funds that will outperform in the future, and that investors have genuine fund selection ability. The current study employs a British data set of monthly fund information differentiated between individual and institutional investors.

Research by Aneel Keswani at the Cass Business School in London, England, and David Stolin at the Toulouse Business School in Toulouse, France, documented a smart money effect in the United Kingdom using monthly data available from 1991 to 2000. Inflows, not outflows, gave rise to the smart money effect in the U.K.

Girolamo Fracastoro (also known as Hieronymus Fracastorius), was born in 1478 in Verona, at that time still part of the Republic of Venice, to a noble family. He studied at Padua University, where he graduated in 1502. At the same University, he was assigned the chair of Logic and Philosophy.

His teacher was the doctor-philosopher Pietro Pomponazzi and his study colleagues were Andrea Navagero, who became a noted historian, along with Pietro Bembo and Gaspare Contarini, both of whom became Cardinals.

Medicine was his passion but he was also a humanist and a scientist, he was interested in astronomy, mathematics, physics, botany, geology, geography, and even composition of verses. He was contemporary and friend to Nicolaus Copernico (Copernicus).

In the 1980s and 90s, Scotland was known for its alarmingly high suicide rate. But since 2000, suicide rates have fallen sharply. A study published in the online open access journal BMC Public Health found this reduction is associated with a significant drop in hangings as a means of suicide.

Dr Cameron Stark led the research team from the Department of Public Health, NHS Highland. The research team based the analysis on routinely collected information for the period 1980-2004 from the General Register Office for Scotland (GROS). The data showed a 42% reduction in suicide rates among 15-29 year old men, from 42.5/100,000 in 2000 to 24.5/100 000 in 2004, There were no significant changes in trend in any other male age group in the period reviewed.

The number of scientists is increasing along with the number of scientific journals and published papers, the latter two thanks in large part to the rise of electronic publishing. Scientists and other researchers are finding it more difficult than ever to zero in on the published literature that is most valuable to them.

A team of researchers from Northwestern University say they have developed a mathematical method to rank scientific journals according to quality.

The team analyzed the citation data of nearly 23 million papers that appeared in 2,267 journals representing 200 academic fields and that spanned the years from 1955 to 2006; their analysis produced 200 separate tables of journal rankings by field.