BACKGROUND Public health recommendations are usually based on a mixture of empirical evidence and normative arguments: to argue that authorities ought to implement an intervention that has proven effective in improving people's health requires a normative position confirming that the authorities are responsible for improving people's health. While public health (at the national level) is based ...

American education subscribes wholeheartedly to the idea that only by long, arduous disciplining can real achievement in culture result. The unlucky and unwilling student finds himself faced with the necessity of forcing his emotional and, occasionally, his cortical processes through a rigorous treadmill of tedious facts collected by hordes of the uninspired. The tediousness of the material is,...

Both biological and social sciences have identified contributing factors to human health. However, health outcomes are unlikely to equal a simple sum of these identified factors. This article makes an attempt to put together the information, methods, and technologies that relate to health outcomes from biological, behavioral, and social disciplines. Much of this information was obtained by cont...