You are what you eat, as the saying goes, and while good dietary choices boost your own health, they also could improve the health care system and even benefit the planet. Healthier people mean not only less disease but also reduced greenhouse gas emissions from health care. As it turns out, some relatively small diet tweaks…

Millions of Americans live in flood-prone areas. In 2012 alone, the cost of direct flood damage hit nearly half a billion dollars. However, because the factors contributing to flood risk are not fully understood, river basin management — and even the calculation of flood insurance premiums — may be misguided. A new study by UC Santa…

New evidence suggests that a comet collision might have been the trigger for the Younger Dryas, contributing to North America’s megafauna extinction. UC Santa Barbara’s James Kennett, professor emeritus in the Department of Earth Science, posits that such an extraterrestrial event did occur killing off woolly mammoths, giant ground sloths and saber-tooth tigers 12,900 years…