【推荐3】At the start of nearly every doctor’s visit, chances are that you will be asked to get your weight measured. But many conversations around weight have become an obstacle, not a help, in the campaign to make people healthier. Doctors’ recommendations to drop pounds are still extremely common, even though using body size as a one-size-fits-all way can lead to ignorance of the complexity of an individual’ s particular physiology.

Many studies have shown heavier people are at higher risk for high blood pressure, diabetes and other diseases. But the big picture is not the whole picture. Researchers have identified some fat people considered to be “metabolically healthy”. However, one interesting report published in 2016 found that unhealthy thin people were twice as likely to get diabetes as healthy fat people. Clearly, although the association between being overweight and disease is very real, individual experience can vary greatly and depends on personal physiology and behavior.

Despite such findings, among the more terrible effects of weight-central health care are the increased shame experienced by the overweight. The well-reported experience of numerous fat people is that doctors often set weight loss without examining them. Research over the past two decades has shown that health professionals have negative attitudes toward fat people. Not only that but doctors’ appointments with fat patients are shorter on average, and some refuse to see these patients at all, as the South Florida Sun Sentinel reported in 2011. Such prejudiced practices keep people from regular annual exams and prevent the detection of serious hidden conditions.

To practice evidence-based medicine, doctors should stop relying on weight alone as an indicator of health and quickly setting out weight loss to treat health diseases. Instead, doctors should focus on behavioral changes to improve health outcomes. People of all sizes are entitled to evidence-based treatments and keep them healthy.

【推荐1】If you’ve been in public in the past year or so, chances are you’ve noticed someone breaking dining etiquette (礼仪) that would seem second-nature to any adult. Why does our dining etiquette seem to be at the lowest point of all time right now?

“Overall, there is much less feeling about the common good, which means caring about your neighbor—whether at home or in a restaurant,” said Steven, who writes articles for USA Today.

Take the use of cellphone at the table for example. While a 2015 survey by the Pew Research Center found that 38 percent of those surveyed thought it was acceptable to use their phones while dining out, the increasing number of cellphone bans in restaurants shows that restaurants aren’t putting up with it.

However, some see the growing use of cellphones as a sign that manners change alongside our society.

“Manners change,” said the writer behind a food site The Takeout. “What we consider improper isn’t set in stone.” She points out the other “rules” that have since become outdated nowadays, like saying “Sir” and “Ma’am” as proof of this change.

Yes, traditional manners are yet another thing being redefined by youth. “Younger people are growing up in a world with more flexible rules, and this spreads to the dining table,” said Daniel Levine, director of global trends consultancy The Avant－Guide Institute.

Whether you prefer high-end restaurants or a fast-casual meal, the biggest reason behind the decline of manners may just be a numbers game.

“I believe it is more likely for people to break dining ‘rules’ because they go out and eat more often,” said Diane Gottsman, owner of The Protocol School of Texas. “Years ago, people stayed home and sat around the family table. Today, there are more people in the workforce, which makes it more affordable for socializing and eating out. With new chance comes the possibility for more dining problems.”

【推荐3】More than 20 years ago, a skeleton called Little Foot turned up in a South African cave. The nearly complete skeleton was a member of the human family. Now researchers have freed most of the skeleton from its stony shell and analyzed the fossils (化石) and they say 3.67-million-years-old Little Foot belonged to a unique species.

Researcher Ronald Clarke and his colleagues think Little Foot belonged to A. Prometheus (普罗米修斯南猿). Clarke works at the university of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg South Africa. He studies fossilized humans and our relatives. Their foundings, published in four papers, have suggested the species A.Prometheus might have existed. Clarke has believed in that species for more than a decade, he found the first Little Foot’s remains in a storage box of fossils in 1994. People began digging out the rest of the skeleton in 1997.

Many other researchers instead argue that Little Foot likely belonged to a different species, which is known as A.africanus (南方古猿非洲种). Researcher Raymond Dart first identified A.africanus in 1924. He was studying the skull (头颅骨) of an ancient youngster called the Taung Child. Since then, people have turned up hundreds more A. africanus fossils in South African caves. Those include Sterkfontein, where Little Foot was found.

The braincase is the part of the skull that holds the brain. And researchers found a partial braincase that Dart thought belonged to a different species in Makapansgat, one of those other caves. In 1948, Dart called this other species A. Prometheus, but he changed his mind after 1955. Instead, he said that braincase and another fossil at Makapansgat belonged to A.africanus. There was no A. Prometheus after all, he concluded.

Clarke and his colleagues want to bring back the rejected species. They say Little Foot’s distinctive skeleton, an adult female that is at least 90 percent complete, is solid evidence for it.