IF YOU'VE made a New Year’s resolution to eat right and trim down, be forewarned that medical science shows your brain has it in for you and will actively promote your failure on two different fronts. That’s not good news, of course, but you should know about it so you can strengthen your resolve as best you can.
Here’s the scoop. It’s relatively easy — particularly if you are significantly overweight – to lose a few pounds by reducing the number of calories you consume each day.

LIVE LONG enough, you see everything. Such were my thoughts as I studied the news reports that GM plans to build an electric Cadillac patterned on the same twist of hybrid technology used in the Chevy Volt.
The Chevy Volt went on sale last December, and it’s poised to be available in increasing numbers soon. It’s an interesting blend of an electric car and a gasoline one. You plug in the Volt to charge its battery, and at first the car then runs as a purely electric vehicle. You can get through a lot of your daily driving entirely on that electric charge — from 25 to 50 miles — based on the lithium-ion battery.

ONE OF THE best parts of baking for me as a kid was the process of “helping” my mama roll out and cut cookie shapes for the oven. At this age I know that I actually hindered her work and she was just being kind in letting me participate, but at the time I thought I was an aide in the process of transforming a lump of material into a thin sheet of ginger-rich dough that we could cut up into the barnyard animals of which I was so fond, and for which we had many different cutter shapes.
One of the goals in the overall process was to make as many ginger cookies as humanly possible from the first roll out of dough. The second roll out, because it necessarily had more flour worked into it, was considerably tougher and thicker, hence not as highly prized by anyone in the family. Indeed, when we were all done, we stored the first and second roll cookies in separate containers and ate them at different times, so great was our preference for the thinner and more delicate cookie.

THE MORE WE learn about animals, the more complex and interesting is the behavior they exhibit. My faithful mutt from the pound, a dog named Buster Brown, impresses me from time to time with complex behaviors aimed at getting what he wants out of me. Most people who live with animals can tell you a tale or two of diabolical ­– or thoughtful – animal behavior they’ve witnessed.
But even knowing all that, a recent study on lab rats took me by surprise. The research makes it clear that rats empathize with one another and will actively work to help one another.
Here’s the scoop that was recently published in the prestigious journal Science. The work was done by Peggy Mason of the University of Chicago with the help of colleagues

AS THE LONG season of darkness sweeps over the country, it's a natural time to think about lighting  and how dependent we are on electricity during this dim time of year. You can heat your home with several different energy sources, including natural gas, heating oil or wood. But unless you're living off-the-grid, the lights throughout your abode burn brightly because of electricity from the grid.
Yes, I have a couple of candles, a flashlight and two kerosene lamps in my household. But I don't use them. Instead, like more than 99% of us, I just flip up a switch to turn on electric lights throughout my house.

BETWEEN THE debt-ceiling kerfuffle and Hurricane Irene, you may have missed two bits of summertime news that will be important for what we drive in the coming years.
First, President Barack Obama announced that the administration and automakers had reached a deal to double the fuel economy of our national fleet of cars starting in model year 2017 and reaching the goal by 2025.

DOGS ARE LOYAL, playful, loving and sometimes cute as a button. It’s no wonder we love them (some of us more than others, to be sure).
Dogs were likely one of the very first animals we humans domesticated. They’ve been sitting around our campfires for a very long time, indeed. We train our dogs to sit, shake and lie down. It also could be said the dogs train us to dispense kibbles, rawhide treats and scratches behind the ears. What matters isn’t which side comes out ahead in the exchange, I like to think, but that both sides benefit from our association.