Cholesterol sufferers could soon take a simple pill which keeps levels under control and protects them against heart disease or a stroke. The daily wonder pill has been hailed as a new fat buster by scientists. Experts found that people who took just two capsules packed with healthy bacteria every day not only had lower "bad" cholesterol but also of total cholesterol.

(History professor Gil Troy): Mitt Romney and Barack Obama appear to agree about at least one thing on this tense Election Day: They are standing on mutually exclusive party platforms, offering Americans what Obama called “the clearest choice of any time in a generation.” The candidates – and their partisans – insist voters are deciding today between a country that will be prospering or bankrupt, with a foreign policy that is firm or flaccid, and with abortion either remaining legal or abruptly outlawed.

(Henry Mintzberg) Governments and corporations can't be relied upon to provide solutions to our biggest problems – instead we must look to ourselves. That we face serious problems – poverty amid plenty, the degradation of our physical, social, and economic environments, terrorism by fanatic cells and rogue states, and so on – is clear. But how our established institutions – governments and businesses – deal with them, even when responsive and responsible, is not. We need another way.

Karl Moore of Desautels Faculty of Management talks with Peter McGraw, a professor of marketing at the University of Colorado, about the place of humour at work.

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Researchers have previously demonstrated that approximately half of the pay gap between men and women (women earn about 20% less) is due to women having a tendency to work in different occupations and industries than men, a phenomenon called “gender segregation.” But what causes this gender segregation? Wharton management professor Matthew Bidwell and Roxana Barbulescu, a management professor at McGill University in Montreal, decided to find out and what they uncovered is that negative employer behavior isn’t the only cause of gender segregation.

A sensitive diagnostic test implemented last year at the Royal Victoria Hospital is showing consistently higher rates of detection for a potentially fatal superbug than a test currently used at most Montreal hospitals, officials said Wednesday. At least one surgery patient has spoken to The Gazette about being sent home from the Royal Victoria Hospital last month as a preventive measure because of an outbreak of Clostridium difficile, a bacterium that can cause damage to the bowel and lead to severe diarrhea in people at risk.

From the shade of an adobe house overlooking Peru's Santa River, Jimmy Melgarejo squints at the dual peaks of Mount Huascarán looming against a cloudless sky. “The snow keeps getting farther away,” says Melgarejo, a farmer worried about his livelihood. “It's moving up, little by little. When the snow disappears, there will be no water.” Throughout the Andes, millions of people voice the same concern as they watch climate change eat away at the mountain chain's icy mantle. But although everyone fears a water shortage, they do not know how quickly it will come or how severe it will be.