Wouldn’t it be grand if married couples everywhere could have enduring, satisfying relationships, based on spiritual principles? Wouldn’t it be marvelous if all children could grow up in a healthy two-parent home? Such was the goal of most of the attendees of the 12th Annual SmartMarriages conference from July 2-6, 2008 in San Francisco, California.

The part of the brain responsible for memory shrinks twice as much in elderly people who have had a limited education, stunted social life or have not kept mentally active since they were teens, a Sydney study has found.

University of NSW researchers followed a group of 60-year-olds over three years and found that those who had been mentally and physically active continually since the age of 13 had a larger hippocampus, the part of the brain that controls short-term memory and navigation skills.

Californians, long known for their propensity to buck convention, have apparently done it again: A national survey released Monday revealed that they are less religious and less certain about the existence of God than the nation as a whole.

Residents of the Golden State do not pray as much as people in other parts of the country. They are less inclined to take scripture literally. And they are likelier to embrace "more than one true way" of interpreting their religious teachings.

Rick and Julie Vreeland opened Freedom Hill Farm last year as a place for kids, but quickly found themselves fielding an unexpected request: The people who came wanted to buy raw milk.

In August 2007 the Vreelands began selling raw milk. In that first month they sold 13 gallons of it; last month, they sold more than a thousand.

South Korean police have used a water cannon to disperse thousands of people in the capital Seoul protesting against the resumption of US beef imports.

The protests took place as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice insisted in Seoul that US beef is safe to eat.

If you caught your son burning ants with a magnifying glass, would it bother you less than if you found him torturing a mouse with a soldering iron? How about a snake? How about his sister?

Does Khalid Shaikh Mohammed — the Guantánamo detainee who claims he personally beheaded the reporter Daniel Pearl — deserve the rights he denied Mr. Pearl? Which ones? A painless execution? Exemption from capital punishment? Decent prison conditions? Habeas corpus?

These days you hear a lot about the world financial crisis. But there’s another world crisis under way — and it’s hurting a lot more people.

I’m talking about the food crisis. Over the past few years the prices of wheat, corn, rice and other basic foodstuffs have doubled or tripled, with much of the increase taking place just in the last few months.

Eating high levels of some soy products - including tofu - may raise the risk of memory loss, research suggests.

The study focused on 719 elderly Indonesians living in urban and rural regions of Java.

The researchers found high tofu consumption - at least once a day - was associated with worse memory, particularly among the over-68s.

Alice Waters might not seem like a conservative. A veteran of Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement, who once cooked a $25,000-a-seat fundraising dinner for Bill Clinton, she eagerly compares her campaign for “edible schoolyards”—where children work with instructors to grow, prepare, and eat fresh produce—to John F. Kennedy’s attempt to improve physical fitness through mandatory exercise.

The Tirumala temple, in the south Indian city of Tirupathi, is one of Hinduism's holiest shrines. Over 5,000 pilgrims a day visit this city of seven hills, filling Tirumala's coffers with donations and making it India's richest temple. But since 2002, Tirumala has also been generating revenue from a less likely source: carbon credits. For decades, the temple's community kitchen has fed nearly 15,000 people, cooking 30,000 meals a day.

More than one million people in Taiwan have pledged to help cut carbon emissions by being a vegetarian. Taiwan's population is about 23 million, and the one million vegetarians would reduce at least 1.5 million tons of carbon emissions in Taiwan in one year.

The Indian government has unveiled a national action plan to confront the threat posed by climate change.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the plan envisaged a gradual shift to greater reliance on sustainable sources of energy.

IIT engineers and water experts have pooled resources and skills to salvage the ancient kunds (ponds) of Vrindavan, Krishna’s childhood home. The water bodies, a big draw for tourists who throng Mathura, of which Vrindavan is a part, disappeared over the past 25 years, swallowed by encroachments and illegal constructions that changed the landscape.

Jai Shree Krishna, a new show on Krishna will hit the TV screens on July 21. Though Krishna has not been finalized, the rest of the star cast has already started the shoot. The producer of the show Moti Sagar gave us the details.

”We made Krishna in the 90’s but a lot has changed now so we felt the need to come up with a new series.

Have you ever wondered why the consumption of processed meats is so strongly linked to cancers of the colon, breast, prostate and pancreas? The evidence continues to mount, as demonstrated by a recent study showing a 67% increase in pancreatic cancer for people consuming moderate amounts of processed meat on a frequent basis.

Ditching your gas guzzler is a great way to reduce your carbon footprint, but if you really want to do something about global warming, get a used car. You'll be putting less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

As Matt Power notes in this month's issue of Wired, hybrids get great gas mileage but it takes 113 million BTUs of energy to make a Toyota Prius.

NASA scientists are struggling to process the soil that the Phoenix Mars Lander scooped from the Red Planet's surface, finding that the Martian dirt was too clumpy to sift into the spacecraft's onboard laboratory.

The scientists called it an important day last week when the Phoenix's robotic arm scraped its first, cup-sized sample from the planet's surface, but since then have been unable to get any of the clotted soil through a screen into the lander's Thermal Evolved Gas Analyser (TEGA).

Today is exactly 270 years since the day in 1738 when John Wesley went to a prayer meeting in London and felt his heart ’strangely warmed.’ It was about ‘quarter to nine in the evening’ and he felt himself saved by God. A fleeting moment in time for him, but one that would dramatically change his life and have immense repercussions for millions of people.

For three years, my husband has talked about taking to the hills. About buying a smallholding on Exmoor where, with our four-year-old daughter, we can safely survive the coming storm - famine, pestilence and a total breakdown of society. I would wait for his lectures to finish, then return to my own interests. I had no time for the end of civilisation.

There was a parade on Sunday that brought all manner of people who love flora and defend fauna to the city’s streets. It took place in downtown Manhattan and organizers called it Veggie Pride.

The festivities began at noon in the meatpacking district — get it? — and drew about 600 people and at least one vegan dog — Simba, a tofu-fed black Labrador retriever.