But what we know is that reproductive justice isn’t just about freedom from coercive sterilization. It’s also about access to a full range of reproductive technologies, whether that’s birth control, sterilization, abortion or even childbirth.

From Worried About Women of Color? Thanks, But No Thanks, Anti-Choicers. We’ve Got It Covered. by the kick-ass Miriam Pérez on Racialicious.com.

The voices of women of color have been silent and/or silenced on the issues of abortion, birth control, and access. Pérez discusses reproductive justice in Latina-specific context in her essay. Similar struggles and policies have targeted Black American women. Now, however, this history of forced sterilizations and eugenics is being used by anti-abortion groups to undermine access to abortion for all women.

Still, participants didn’t merely exhibit a preference for thin figures and indifference to obese ones — they showed active dislike toward these theoretically obese. That finding, while regrettable, is enlightening.

From A Fatter Phobia at Miller-McCune.

It’s not clear from the Miller-McCune piece whether or how this varies by race and gender. For example, previous studies (I’m too lazy to find them) have shown that weight negatively affects white women’s earnings more than it affects those of black men and women. I wonder if the same holds true here. Do people revile obese black people any more than they revile obese white people? Do they revile obese black people more than they revile black people in general?

For the last decade, one company, Omega Protein of Houston, has been catching 90 percent of the nation’s menhaden. The perniciousness of menhaden removals has been widely enough recognized that 13 of the 15 Atlantic states have banned Omega Protein’s boats from their waters. But the company’s toehold in North Carolina and Virginia (where it has its largest processing plant), and its continued right to fish in federal waters, means a half-billion menhaden are still taken from the ecosystem every year.

From A Fish Oil Story by Paul Greenburg on the overfishing of menhaden in the Atlantic Ocean.

The H1N1 flu virus that triggered the first influenza pandemic in 40 years seemed to come out of nowhere, but, of course, that wasn’t the case. The virus mutated inside a pig before making the leap to human beings, and scientists have traced it back to a strain that first emerged in U.S. factory pork farms back in 1998.

That’s #7 on the Top 10 Green Ideas list from Time magazine’s 2009 The Top 10 Everything of 2009.

(Via @Alternet → @SlowFoodUSA)

Analyzing the data, the scholars determined that, in that year, 40 percent of the boys and 46 percent of the girls had had sexual intercourse before their parents had ever given them advice on how to ask someone out on a date. More than 40 percent of the teens had had sex before having a single conversation with their parents about condom use, birth-control options, or sexually transmitted diseases.

From Newsweek‘s Nurtureshock blog post Parents Wait Too Late to Talk to Kids About Sex.

One girl I went to school with got pregnant and gave birth at 13. Another at 14. Another at 16. I have cousins who got pregnant and gave birth at 15, 16 and 17. I know boys who lost their virginity at 11, 12 and 13. Believe me when I say that The (Sex) Talk — particularly the values-based, emotional component — needs to be an ongoing conversation starting before puberty sets in and kids start getting extra curious. Three cheers for my mom letting me read Cosmo and Sassy as a teenager; she surely didn’t talk to me about sex.

But the youngest brain cells in the running rats, the cells that the scientists assumed were created by running, were less likely to express the genes. They generally remained quiet. The “cells born from running,” the researchers concluded, appeared to have been “specifically buffered from exposure to a stressful experience.” The rats had created, through running, a brain that seemed biochemically, molecularly, calm.

Yes: the stress of running or other exercise causes the brain to produce new cells that are wired to react differently to stress — at least in rats.

Researchers know that exercise works to boost mood, relieve stress, and can be used to treat depression and anxiety. But what was less clear before now was how exercise affects the brain.

This study suggests that a sustained exercise habit — three to six weeks in rats — helps your brain rewire itself in a way that greatly reduces anxiety symptoms.