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Most smokers find it much easier to cut down their number of cigarettes a day than they do to quit smoking entirely. Now scientists know why: they’re actually still getting the same amount of nicotine and cancer-causing agents because they’ve unconsciously changed their smoking style so that the inhale more deeply.

Cancer researcher Karen Ahijevych says, “The human body really is a miracle. It knows when it is not getting what it’s used to, and it automatically does something about it.”
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A new study shows that people who inherit their money (or win it in the lottery) instead of working for it don?t get as much happiness from it.

Behavioral scientist Greg Berns compared the brain activity of people playing two types of computer games. In one, they had to work to get money, while in the other, they were rewarded without having to earn it. The brains of those who had to work for their cash were more stimulated. He says, “When you have to do things for your reward, it’s clearly more important to the brain?There’s substantial evidence that people who win the lottery are not happier a year after they win the lottery.”
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Climate change will affect the world’s poor more drastically than rich nations, but the rich will suffer too. For all of us, the world will become a much duller place.

Many of the impacts of global warming are not life-threatening for humans, but will reduce the quality of life. Dan Whipple writes, “A lot of these components?free-ranging wildlife, water to irrigate the golf course, coral reefs to explore while snorkeling?might indeed be things we could get along without, but they also represent things that make life varied and interesting.”
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The experts who broke the Nazi’s secret codes are trying to decipher the mysterious 10-letter inscription D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M. on an 18th-century monument at an English country estate. Legends say it reveals the location of the Holy Grail.

Jill Lawless writes that former British World War II code-breakers met at Bletchley Park, where the letters are carved on a marble monument hidden away in the garden. Mathematician Oliver Lawn says, “The inscription is obviously a classical reference. It’s either Latin or Greek and based on some historical happening.”
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