ScienceDaily: Most Popular News

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• Chili peppers for a healthy gut: Spicy chemical may inhibit gut tumors
• Why is the Sun's atmosphere so much hotter than its surface? Nanoflares
• Society bloomed with gentler personalities, more feminine faces: Technology boom 50,000 years ago correlated with less testosterone
• Scientists find new calorie-burning switch in brown fat
• C. difficile vaccine proves safe, 100 percent effective in animal models
• The 'memory' of starvation is in your genes
• Pesticide DDT linked to slow metabolism, obesity and diabetes, mouse study finds

Chili peppers for a healthy gut: Spicy chemical may inhibit gut tumors Posted: 01 Aug 2014 06:33 PM PDT Researchers report that dietary capsaicin – the active ingredient in chili peppers – produces chronic activation of a receptor on cells lining the intestines of mice, triggering a reaction that ultimately reduces the risk of colorectal tumors.

Why is the Sun's atmosphere so much hotter than its surface? Nanoflares Posted: 01 Aug 2014 02:11 PM PDT Scientists have recently gathered some of the strongest evidence to date to explain what makes the sun's outer atmosphere so much hotter than its surface. The new observations of the small-scale extremely hot temperatures are consistent with only one current theory: something called nanoflares -- a constant peppering of impulsive bursts of heating, none of which can be individually detected -- provide the mysterious extra heat.

Society bloomed with gentler personalities, more feminine faces: Technology boom 50,000 years ago correlated with less testosterone Posted: 01 Aug 2014 02:11 PM PDT Scientists have shown that human skulls changed in ways that indicate a lowering of testosterone levels at around the same time that culture was blossoming. Heavy brows were out, rounder heads were in. Technological innovation, making art and rapid cultural exchange probably came at the same time that we developed a more cooperative temperament by dialing back aggression with lower testosterone levels.

Scientists find new calorie-burning switch in brown fat Posted: 01 Aug 2014 06:11 AM PDT Biologists have identified a signaling pathway that switches on a powerful calorie-burning process in brown fat cells. The study sheds light on a process known as "brown fat thermogenesis," which is of great interest to medical researchers because it naturally stimulates weight loss and may also protect against diabetes.

C. difficile vaccine proves safe, 100 percent effective in animal models Posted: 31 Jul 2014 11:59 AM PDT An experimental vaccine protected 100 percent of animal models against the highly infectious and virulent bacterium, Clostridium difficile, which causes an intestinal disease that kills approximately 30,000 Americans annually.

The 'memory' of starvation is in your genes Posted: 31 Jul 2014 11:58 AM PDT Epigenetic 'experiments' -- changes resulting from external rather than genetic influences -- suggest that the body's physiological responses to hardship could be inherited, although the underlying mechanism has been a mystery. Now researchers have discovered a genetic mechanism that passes on the body's response to starvation to subsequent generations of worms, with potential implications for humans also exposed to starvation and other physiological challenges.

Pesticide DDT linked to slow metabolism, obesity and diabetes, mouse study finds Posted: 30 Jul 2014 12:17 PM PDT A new study in mice is the first to show that developmental exposure to DDT increases the risk of females later developing metabolic syndrome -- a cluster of conditions that include increased body fat, blood glucose, and cholesterol.

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