Mercyvill

If you have been reading the newspaper recently, you will have come across some startling new nutrition advice. A much hyped new study, conducted with just 150 participants, calls for us to “ embrace fat ”—even the saturated kind. The alleged benefits? Weight loss and, most incredibly, healthier hearts. Unfortunately, this media attention is much ado about nothing.

Fighting Talk Ads are a punishment, not a reward. Adblock plus is sounding more tempting by the day Facebook made a lot of noise about a tweaking of its terms and conditions this week, making the language a little simpler and answering troublesome modern questions like "How can I stop someone who's bothering me?" in its FAQ. One of the changes it seems happiest about introducing to more parts of the world is the ability to have advert preferences synced on a cross-platform basis, meaning if you've told the phone app to stop showing you a certain type of advert, that choice will now be reflected on the desktop site too. Which means one type of advert will be replaced with another type of advert. Hooray for our innovative ad-serving overlords. The level of empowerment we have right now is insane.

ISIS plans to create its own currency NEW YORK (CNNMoney) If history is any guide, the new ISIS plot to create its own currency is destined to fail. That's according to gold and currency expert Axel Merk of Merk Investments in San Francisco. ISIS unveiled its plan for gold, silver and copper coins on Thursday in an effort to distance themselves from the West. The currency's value will be based on the actual worth of the metals.

How big banks broke the rules 210 TOTAL SHARES 101 102 7 LONDON (CNNMoney) Gaming the global financial system is easy when you get some help from your friends. British and U.S. regulators revealed Wednesday that chummy currency traders at a handful of major banks used private online chatrooms to coordinate their buying and selling to shift currency prices in their favor. Here's how they did it:

Monument Valley on the Arizona-Utah border is known for its sandstone formations and vast desert views. Toby Dingle captured this lightning strike in September 2013. Click to see some amazing lightning photos from the past few years. Monument Valley, Utah Warming means more water vapor in the air, says UC-Berkeley climate scientist Study using 11 climate models is reported in the latest issue of the journal Science Scientist David Romps: Lightning strikes will be 50% more common by century's end More lightning striking the ground means more people hit, more wildfires, he says.

(Nasa) Despite decades of sending sounds and pictures into space no aliens have responded. Have we been doing it wrong? Tracey Logan investigates, and discovers some novel attempts to make contact – including the smells of our planet. For decades we've been sending signals - both deliberate and accidental - into space, and listening out for alien civilisations' broadcasts. But what is the plan if one day we were to hear something? Artist Carrie Paterson has long dreamed of beaming messages far out to the emptiness of space. Except her messages would have an extra dimension – smell.

Childhood obesity has become a global epidemic, but it is not easy to treat. Now a scheme proven to help children shed pounds by asking them and their families to make numerous lifestyle changes has been adopted across Denmark. A Danish paediatrician claims his pilot project has made a significant breakthrough in the battle against childhood obesity. The scheme, in the town of Holbaek, has treated 1,900 patients and helped 70% of them to maintain normal weight by adjusting about 20 elements of their lifestyles. The way it tackles all aspects of the children's lives - and those of their families - sets it apart from traditional "small steps" approaches to losing weight.

The abduction of girls from a school in Chibok caused international outrage Boko Haram militants have seized the north-eastern Nigerian town of Chibok, the home of more than 200 schoolgirls the insurgents kidnapped in April, residents who fled have told the BBC. Militants attacked and took control of the town, in Borno state, on Thursday evening, residents said. The militants have repeatedly targeted villages around Chibok over recent months. Boko Haram says it is fighting to create an Islamic state in Nigeria.

Whatever you do, don't overpromise and underperform. (Thinkstock) Is your career at stalled out? It’s easy to look outward and blame company politics, a bad jobs market or even your colleagues. But, what if the problem is you? From coming across as a braggart to presenting problems without solutions, nuances in our behaviours can make or break success. It’s a topic several LinkedIn Influencers weighed in on this week. Here’s what two of them had to say.

A photograph from 2008 shows how children are put in cages Disabled people in Greece are often stigmatised and can struggle to get the support they need. Some disabled children who live in a state-run home are locked up in cages - staff say they want to improve conditions but money is short. Nine-year-old Jenny stands and rocks backwards and forwards, staring through the bars of a wooden cage. When the door is unlocked she jumps down on to the stone floor and wraps her arms tightly around the nurse. But a few minutes later she allows herself to be locked back in again without a fuss. She is used to her cage. It's been her home since she was two years old.

Chandra Bahadur Dangi, from Nepal (L), the shortest adult to have ever been verified by Guinness World Records, poses for pictures with the world's tallest man Sultan Kosen from Turkey, in London on Nov. 13, 2014. (Andrew Cowie/AFP/Getty Images)

Photographer Alexey Kljatov developed a technique that captured the microscopic beauty of snowflakes. From the open balcony of his house, he photographed snowflakes on a glass surface. He illuminated the flakes with a LED flashlight that shone through the glass, and used a dark wool fabric as the background. His methods varied.  Sometimes he used natural light. No two snowflakes are alike. Alexey’s photographs allow us to appreciate the details of a natural wonder we wouldn’t see otherwise. Click here to see more of his snow crystals . 

1) Physicians use body water content to heal In traditional Eastern medicine, a person’s well being is determined by the vibrations and resonance of the body’s water content . The physician reads the pulse as strong, weak, cold, or hot. They then prescribe treatment to the patient. They don’t treat the body with water, because depending on age the human body can be comprised of anywhere between 75% to 90% water.

We all have boring beds. You know, the type that just sits there and does nothing. It’s time to buy unconventional beds that are better looking and more useful. I came across an article about amazing beds and picked the most intriguing ones. Below are some totally awesome beds that are creative and straight out of the future:

(Sheila Sund, CC BY 2.0) Harvard pediatrician David Ludwig and the chairman of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard, Walter Willett, think that North Americans do not need to drink milk. Drinking milk appears to increase risk for various diseases and has not been shown to prevent bone weakening ( Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics , July 2013). I received so many emails after last week’s article about the health dangers of milk that I will try to explain why all non-fermented diary products may be harmful to your health. The component in milk that appears to cause harm is the sugar called galactose. Whole milk, skim milk and other non-fermented milk products contain galactose. Fermenting milk breaks down galactose, so fermented dairy foods such as yogurt and cheese do not contain galactose and therefore appear to be safe.

Magazine Monitor A collection of cultural artefacts The most complicated handmade watch, the Henry Graves Supercomplication, is to be auctioned with an estimate of £9.8m, writes Luke Jones. A "complication" is a technical term referring to any feature on a watch which is in addition to simply telling the time - and Henry Graves Jr wanted more than anyone else. The Supercomplication, made by Patek Philippe in 1933, has 24 of them including Westminster chimes, a perpetual calendar, sunrise and sunset times, and a celestial map of New York as seen from Graves's apartment on Fifth Avenue. But for a "very flamboyant time he was a strangely quiet man", says Stacy Perman, author of A Grand Complication. His father was a "figure of the gilded age of American finance", but Graves was more a man of leisure. He was a banker, but not "nine to five", notes Perman.

Staying open-minded can make or break a move abroad. (Thinkstock) Before Jody Holland arrived in Shanghai in 2011, she and her family attended a two-day cultural immersion course in the UK, arranged and paid for by her husband’s company “We were taught business etiquette, how business operates, the importance of titles to people, the meaning of guanxi (the social connections and relationships that underpin much Chinese business activity), and other things we wouldn’t have been able to find out ourselves,” Holland said.

The green stuff Absinthe, a green liquor known for its hallucinogenic effects and popular with legendary authors and artists, was banned for most of the past century. (Goran Heckler/Alamy) Absinthe has inspired many great authors of the last 150 years – and may have ruined some as well. Jane Ciabattari investigates the green spirit’s peculiar power. Arthur Rimbaud called absinthe the “sagebrush of the glaciers”  because a key ingredient, the bitter-tasting herb Artemisia absinthium or wormwood, is plentiful in the icy Val-de-Travers region of Switzerland. That is where the legendary aromatic drink that came to symbolise decadence was invented in the late 18th Century. It’s hard to overstate absinthe’s cultural impact – or imagine a contemporary equivalent.

Iris Apfel (& Other Stories/Advanced Style/Ari Seth Cohen) Older women are more prominent in the fashion world than ever before. But how do you age with style? Lindsay Baker takes a look. “Old age ain’t no place for sissies,” said Bette Davies – a phrase that rings true for more and more of us as the population lives longer. And older women – once largely invisible and overlooked in fashion –- have become increasingly central to the style zeitgeist, with fashion directors such as  Grace Coddington and Carine Roitfeld ever more influential. And mature women are being cast more frequently as models and brand ambassadors too. The elegant, silver-haired 86-year-old British model Daphne Selfe is in constant demand, and the flamboyant  New Yorker Iris Apfel – also an interior designer, whose motto is “more is more and less is a bore” – was recently chosen as the face of hip fashion label & Other Stories.