The problem isn’t the public’s reasoning capacity; it’s the polluted science-communication environment that drives people apart, says Dan Kahan.

Data from different national and regional surveys show that hypertension is common in developing countries, particularly in urban areas, and that rates of awareness, treatment, and control are low. Several hypertension risk factors seem to be more common in developing countries than in developed regions. Findings from serial surveys show an increasing prevalence of hypertension in developing countries, possibly caused by urbanisation, ageing of population, changes to dietary habits, and social stress.

Aaron Kesselheim and colleagues investigate conflict of interest disclosures in articles authored by physicians and scientists identified in whistleblower complaints alleging illegal off-label marketing by pharmaceutical companies.

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Behaviour change communication is vital for increasing the enactment of particular behaviours known to promote health and growth. The techniques used to change behaviour are important for determining how successful the intervention is. In order to integrate findings from different interventions, we need to define and organize the techniques previously used and connect them to effectiveness data.

On 15 July, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi hosted a group of professionals working on rural housing in diverse geographies of the country. The agenda for the meeting, which was co-hosted by several partners, was to present a portal built for the rural housing sector (www.ruralhousingnetwork.com) and to get feedback before the portal goes live in a month.

It created a media feeding frenzy and dragged climate scientists' reputations through the mud, but nobody will be prosecuted for the "climategate" email hack. Thousands of emails were stolen from the servers of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in November 2009 and posted on a Russian email server. Climate sceptics seized on them to claim that scientists had conspired to withhold or alter data, unfairly manipulated the peer-review process and smeared their critics.

Physical inactivity accounts for more than 3 million deaths per year, most from non-communicable diseases in low-income and middle-income countries. We used reviews of physical activity interventions and a simulation model to examine how megatrends in information and communication technology and transportation directly and indirectly affect levels of physical activity across countries of low, middle, and high income.