Florida’s Everglades are in peril, according to UNSECO’s World Heritage Committee, which has added Everglades National Park to its List of World Heritage in Danger in response to the continued destruction of the region’s saw-grass marsh ecosystem.

For non-scientists like myself, scientific studies can be validating, frustrating, and, ultimately, confusing. The headlines have a particular allure, even if the actual results are not as clear cut as the headlines suggest.

Based on a slew of recent findings about alcohol, if you read the headlines, here is the formula to live a healthy and happy long life: develop great friends and eat chocolate and drink alcohol in moderation. Advice many of us will willingly take–even if it is “weak science.”

By 2013, when the new DSM—the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—is published, Americans are bound to become even more confused about who they are and whether they’re “normal.” The addition of “illnesses” like mild anxiety depression, temper regulation disorder, reactive attachment disorder, and borderline personality disorder are labels likely to be slapped on unprecedented numbers of Americans. The fine lines and minutiae of these new diagnostic criteria are enough to make anyone crazy—even psychiatrists.

When it comes to genes and our ancestry, DNA testing is a gateway to knowing. This emerging obsession with the need to know our genes is expressed in the expanding role of DNA in medicine and its growing influence in society. But the chromosome craze extends beyond the personal desire to know more about one’s own history. DNA testing is now a window to past political and social eras, marking events that changed human societies and offering up genetic truths in place of anecdotal mysteries.

Also known as plantain lily, hosta is the go-to plant for shade gardeners everywhere. What’s not to like? They’re hardy, require little care and can be divided, adding more plants to your garden at no additional charge. Sounds like a win-win to me. But wait, there’s more. This shade-loving beauty is poisonous to cats and dogs.

Like many preeminent thinkers through history, Charles Darwin has suffered the posthumous indignity of having his name attached to a variety of offbeat notions and half-baked fancies that would puzzle and even scandalize him were he to meet them in the daylight. Biological evolution by means of natural selection has somehow become “Darwinism,” and “Darwinism” has had a tail — many tails — pinned to it. Odd.

First created experimentally 25 years ago, buckyballs, cage-shaped carbon structures, have now been found in space. More generally known as fullerenes, the 60-carbon-atom structures are the largest molecules that have ever been observed in the Cosmos.

Climate change isn’t just a human problem; it could also dramatically alter the habitats — and limit the survival prospects — for many already fragile species of flora and fauna, warn scientists. Salvation strategies once thought too radical are now under serious consideration, according to the National Science Foundation.

The architecture of the human brain may hold the key to career selection, according to scientists who have successfully identified parts of the brain that correlate with aptitude for specific skills and knowledge. The new findings, discussed in the July 22 edition of BMC Research Notes, indicate that through mapping different brain areas to specific talents and then associating these talents with anatomical differences in brain structure, choosing the right career could in the future boil down to a simple brain scan.

Centenarians hold the key to longevity in their genetic codes, according to research published earlier this month in the journal Science by Boston University researchers Paola Sebastiani and Thomas Perls.

The two scientists have long suspected that when it comes to exceptional longevity genes trump lifestyle.