Ever worried that all the information you've crammed in during a study session might not stay in your memory? The answer might be going for a run, according to a new study published in Cognitive Systems Research.

A student's choice of activity after a period of learning -- such as cramming for an exam -- has a direct effect on their ability to remember information. The researchers behind the new study, from the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, say students should do moderate exercise, like running, rather than taking part in a passive activity such as playing computer games if they want to make sure they remember what they learned.

"I had kids in an age where computer games started to be of high interest," said Harald Kindermann, lead author and professor at the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria. "I wanted to find out how this -- and hence the increasing lack of exercise in fresh air -- impacts their ability to memorize facts for school."

For decades, the US Navy, by its own admission, has been conducting war game exercises in US waters using bombs, missiles, sonobuoys (sonar buoys), high explosives, bullets and other materials that contain toxic chemicals - including lead and mercury - that are harmful to both humans and wildlife.

The Navy's 2015 Northwest Training and Testing environmental impact statement(EIS) states that in the thousands of warfare "testing and training events" it conducts each year, 200,000 "stressors" from the use of missiles, torpedoes, guns and other explosive firings in US waters happen biennially.

Sonobuoys, which weigh from 36 to 936 pounds apiece and many of which can contain up to five pounds of explosives, are dropped from aircraft and never recovered; they're called "expended materials." The Navy is planning to increase its sonobuoy use from 20 to 720 annually, according to its Northwest Training and Testing 2014 document. This steep increase could have devastating impacts for humans.

Researchers estimate the United States economy takes a $340 billion hit annually as endocrine-disrupting compounds lower IQs, increase behavior problems and exacerbate health woes like obesity and diabetes.

Exposure to chemicals in pesticides, toys, makeup, food packaging and detergents costs the U.S. more than $340 billion annually due to health care costs and lost wages, according to a new analysis.

The chemicals, known as endocrine disruptors, impact how human hormones function and have been linked to a variety of health problems such as impaired brain development, lower IQs, behavior problems, infertility, birth defects, obesity and diabetes.

The estimated economic toll is more than 2 percent of the nation's gross domestic product (GDP).

The findings, researchers say, "document the urgent public threat posed by endocrine disrupting chemicals."

Epidemic levels of opioid addiction and overdose in the United States have gained widespread attention, and Big Pharma has rightfully been implicated in the problem. But another health crisis is sweeping not just America, but the world — and drug companies' role in the latest crisis is equally significant.

Superbugs have garnered countless headlines lately — and for good reason. As Bloomberg reported this week, superbugs, bacteria that have grown resistant to antibiotics, are estimated to claim the lives of 700,000 worldwide every year data on cases in the United States and government agencies are complicit. A recent report by Rand Europe commissioned by the U.K. government found that by 2050, that number could rise to 10 million if measures are not taken to quell the rising threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). By comparison, the World Health Organization estimates 69,000 people die every year globally from opiate overdose.

News stories consistently crop up sounding alarms about discoveries of superbugs resistant to even the most potent antibiotics — some of which are saved for use only in the most dangerous, life-threatening cases. In truth, many of these headlines are grossly sensationalized by mainstream media in apparent attempts to fearmonger their audiences and draw traffic. For example, most superbugs are confined to and contracted at hospitals, meaning the "nightmare strains" many outlets have warned about are not crawling on street corners.

Nevertheless, the underlying problem is real.

According to the latest research coming out of the United Kingdom, patients should think twice before taking SSRI antidepressant medications. Brand names can include Prozac, Luvox, Paxil, Zoloft, Celexa and others. Researchers in the UK evaluated clinical trials of SSRIs (Selective Serotonin Uptake Inhibitors) and concluded healthy adults, who had showed no signs of depression before the clinical trials began, reported double the risk of having feelings which could lead to suicide and violence.

In other words, the control group, the group of normal individuals who did not have depression but were given the antidepressant medications during the trial phase of the drug company's research, reported they had experienced suicidal thoughts and ideations, and thoughts of violence. Put bluntly, antidepressants can potentially make a normal person want to kill themselves or others.

As reported by The Express, "Experts working on the study said the analysis was undertaken because the harms of antidepressants, including the risk of suicide, are often explained away as if they are disease symptoms or only a problem in children." The Free Thought Project spoke with an ER nurse to confirm these suspicions and get an opinion from someone working in the field of Emergency Medicine.

How is it that sunlight, once regarded as a divine power in some cultures, has come to be classified as a Class 1 carcinogen by the World Health Organization (WHO)? This is a question posed by photobiologist Dr. Alexander Wunsch, CEO of Medical Light Consulting in Heidelberg, Germany.

It's a fundamental one because it shows the dichotomy between sunlight in ancient and modern cultures. Once revered as a healing power, today sunlight is blamed for disease and humans are urged to largely shun this natural element.

In the video below, Wunsch explores sunlight from a historical perspective, including how both public and medical opinions of sunlight have changed dramatically over time. He says:

"Nowadays, sunlight is not fashionable anymore. Some experts even try to ban the tan, others work on restrictions, the U.S. Surgeon General issues a call to action on UV and tanning. How can we deal with these dark clouds in a formerly sunny sky?Knowing more details about the past can help us to adjust and normalize the extreme positions of the 'no sun policy' advocated by the World Health Organization (WHO), the anti-cancer associations and many dermatologists."

Mark Twain once wrote, "The basin of the Mississippi is the body of the nation," but even the mighty Mississippi is facing mounting environmental threats.

The Mississippi River was named the second-most polluted waterway in the U.S. in 2012,¹ but it still maintained swatches that were considered to be relatively pristine, particularly in the Upper Mississippi in Minnesota.

Now that, too, is being threatened by changes in the landscape, namely increasing industrial agriculture that is depleting groundwater for irrigation while flooding the area with chemicals.

Forests Rapidly Replaced With Corn, Soy and Potato Fields

Since 2011, about 400 square miles of forest, marshes and grasslands in the Upper Mississippi watershed have been lost. The once-rich natural ecosystems were cleared out to make way for agriculture and urban development.

This is the second fastest rate of land conversion in the U.S., according to a national study reported by a Star Tribune special report.² Forests and marshes help to keep water supplies naturally cleansed and refreshed — the opposite of what occurs when industrial agriculture moves in. The Star Tribune continued:³

"That breathtaking transformation [of natural land being converted to industry] is now endangering the cleanest stretch of America's greatest river with farm chemicals, depleted groundwater and urban runoff.

At this rate, conservationists warn, the Upper Mississippi — a recreational jewel and the source of drinking water for millions of Minnesotans — could become just another polluted river."

We are still on the threshold of fully understanding the complex relationship between light and life, but we can now say emphatically, that the function of our entire metabolism is dependent on light." ~ Dr. Fritz-Albert Popp

It has long been held that non-conventional treatments for cancer such as homeopathy, Tai ji, yoga, or acupuncture couldn't 'cure' a disease because medical science simply didn't understand how these modalities worked. German researchers have proven, with special equipment created for the study of photons stored in our DNA, that there is no need for chemotherapy, or other invasive surgeries to cure the body of cancer. As neurophysiologist, Karl Pribram, has postulated, German experimental physicist, Fritz-Alfred Popp has demonstrated, and many ancient cultures have proven, cancer (along with many other diseases) die in the presence of light.

Pope Francis has made his strongest attack yet on genetically modified plants and animals (GMOs) and the Biotech Industry (which includes companies such as Monsanto, Bayer, Dow, Du Pont, Syngenta and ChemChina), in a letter to the Director General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Professor José Graziano da Silva on World Food Day.

On Sunday, World Food Day, Pope Francis stated;

"From the wisdom of rural communities we can learn a style of life that can help defend us from the logic of consumerism and production at any cost, a logic that, cloaked in good justifications, such as the increasing population, is in reality aimed solely at the increase of profit. In the sector in which the FAO works, there is a growing number of people who believe they are omnipotent, or able to ignore the cycles of the seasons and to improperly modify the various animal and plant species, leading to the loss of variety that, if it exists in nature, has and must have its role. Producing qualities that may give excellent results in the laboratory may be advantageous for some, but have ruinous effects for others. And the principle of caution is not enough, as very often it is limited to not allowing something to be done, whereas there is a need to act in a balanced and honest way. Genetic selection of a quality of plant may produce impressive results in terms of yield, but have we considered the terrain that loses its productive capacity, farmers who no longer have pasture for their livestock, and water resources that become unusable? And above all, do we ask if and to what extent we contribute to altering the climate?

"Not precaution, then, but wisdom: what peasants, fisherman and farmers conserve in memory handed down through the generations and which is now derided and forgotten by a model of production that is entirely to the advantage of a limited group and a tiny portion of the world population. Let us remember that it is a model which, despite all its science, allows around eight hundred million people to continue to go hungry."

There's been increasing media coverage recently harkening back to Lamarck and inheritance of genetic code that changes in response to the environment (epigenetics).

"Lamarckism" as it came to be called was eschewed for more than a hundred years after its initial proposition because it was thought that genes were static (this reminds me of how Einstein originally developed a model which required an expanding universe, then he added a coefficient (the 'Cosmological Constant') to return its behavior to a static state, which later in hindsight was found to be wrong). Now it appears Lamarck while overstating the plasticity of genes, was on to something.

Epigenetics suggests that our genes are constantly in a state of flux, exposed and changing in response to environmental factors. But are these changes indeed heritable? Currently, there isn't yet consensus that environment, epigenetics, and inheritance intersect or a valid theory for how genes behave in organisms. But now that Lamarckism is back in the public's vernacular there will be countless studies performed to support or refute the thesis.