June 18th, 2008 marks the fifth quarterly International Polar Day, this time focusing on Land and Life.

Polar Days provide an interactive hands-on way to learn and get involved – they include press releases, contacts to experts in several languages, activities for teachers, on-line community participation, web-conferencing events, and links to researchers in the Arctic and Antarctic.

Polar landscapes and terrestrial ecosystems extend from southern cold maritime islands to dry continental deserts in Antarctica, and from tree line across the continental tundra to remote northern islands in the Arctic. Ice, in the forms of permafrost, snow and ice cover, plays a dominant role – polar biological communities survive through remarkable adaptations and extensive migration.

On June 18 & 19, global audiences will connect in real-time to polar scientists and with young people live at the UNEP Children’s Conference in Stavanger, Norway. Both events, each 30 minutes in length, will cover the same topics and are timed to accommodate different time zones.

To learn more about the upcoming Polar Day events and more about IPY, go to: http://www.ipy.org/index.php?/ipy/detail/land_life

By: Deborah Cohen, Thomas Farley

The continued growth of the obesity epidemic at a time when obesity is highly stigmatizing should make us question the assumption that, given the right information and motivation, people can successfully reduce their food intake over the long term. An alternative view is that eating is an automatic behavior over which the environment has more control than do individuals. Automatic behaviors are those that occur without awareness, are initiated without intention, tend to continue without control, and operate efficiently or with little effort.

Reprinted with permission from Preventing Chronic Disease, Vol. 5, No. 1, Jan. 2008, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [Epub Dec. 17, 2007].

RAND makes an electronic version of this document available for free as a public service.

To download the full text of this report:
http://www.rand.org/pubs/reprints/2008/RAND_RP1326.pdf