ScienceDaily: Most Popular News

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• It's the pits: Ancient peach stones offer clues to fruit's origins
• Copper Age settlement discovered in Central Spain: Archaeologists show the Meseta's resources were used intensively as early as 4,000 years ago
• What is keeping your kids up at night? Turning off electronics helps everyone sleep better
• Clues to trapping carbon dioxide in rock: Calcium carbonate takes multiple, simultaneous roads to different minerals
• Mantle plumes crack continents
• Liver injury caused by herbals, dietary supplements rises in study population
• Ancient mammal relatives were active at night 100 million years before origin of mammals
• Nature or nurture? It's all about the message
• Comparison of named diet programs finds little difference in weight loss outcomes
• Over-the-counter pain reliever may restore immune function in old age
• Asian camel crickets now common in U.S. homes
• Nature's tiny engineers: Corals control their environment, stirring up water eddies to bring nutrients

It's the pits: Ancient peach stones offer clues to fruit's origins Posted: 06 Sep 2014 06:31 AM PDT Anyone who enjoys biting into a sweet, fleshy peach can now give thanks to the people who first began domesticating this fruit: Chinese farmers who lived 7,500 years ago. Archeologists have a good understanding of domestication -- conscious breeding for traits preferred by people -- of annual plants such as grains (rice, wheat, etc.), but the role of trees in early farming and how trees were domesticated has not been well documented to date.

Copper Age settlement discovered in Central Spain: Archaeologists show the Meseta's resources were used intensively as early as 4,000 years ago Posted: 05 Sep 2014 08:39 AM PDT Archaeologists have uncovered the remains of a previously unknown Copper Age settlement in the central Spanish region of Azután. The researchers found shards and stone tools over an area of around 90 hectares. Typological analysis placed the finds in the Copper Age or Chalcolithic period -- the transitional era after the Stone Age before metallurgists discovered that adding tin to copper produced much harder bronze, 4,000-5,000 years ago.

What is keeping your kids up at night? Turning off electronics helps everyone sleep better Posted: 04 Sep 2014 03:35 PM PDT Sleep, or lack thereof, and technology often go hand in hand when it comes to school-aged kids. Nearly three out of four children (72%) between the ages of 6 and 17 have at least one electronic device in their bedrooms while sleeping, according to a National Sleep Foundation survey. Children who leave those electronic devices on at night sleep less -— up to one hour less on average per night.

Clues to trapping carbon dioxide in rock: Calcium carbonate takes multiple, simultaneous roads to different minerals Posted: 04 Sep 2014 11:18 AM PDT Researchers used a powerful microscope that allows them to see the birth of calcium carbonate crystals in real time, giving them a peek at how different calcium carbonate crystals form.

Mantle plumes crack continents Posted: 04 Sep 2014 07:38 AM PDT Using a simulation with an unprecedentedly high resolution, Earth scientists have shown that magma columns in the Earth's interior can cause continental breakup -- but only if the Earth's skin is already taut.

Liver injury caused by herbals, dietary supplements rises in study population Posted: 04 Sep 2014 05:46 AM PDT Liver injury caused by herbals and dietary supplements increased from 7% to 20% in a U.S. study group over a ten-year period, research shows. According to the study, liver injury caused by non-bodybuilding supplements is most severe, occurring more often in middle-aged women and more frequently resulting in death or the need for transplantation than liver injury from bodybuilding supplements or conventional medications.

Ancient mammal relatives were active at night 100 million years before origin of mammals Posted: 03 Sep 2014 05:41 PM PDT New study reveals that nocturnality has older origin than previously thought. Synapsids, living about 300 million years ago, were probably active at night.

Nature or nurture? It's all about the message Posted: 03 Sep 2014 07:57 AM PDT Simply telling people that hard work is more important than genetics causes positive changes in the brain and may make them willing to try harder, a study shows. "Giving people messages that encourage learning and motivation may promote more efficient performance," said the lead investigator. "In contrast, telling people that intelligence is genetically fixed may inadvertently hamper learning."

Comparison of named diet programs finds little difference in weight loss outcomes Posted: 02 Sep 2014 02:11 PM PDT In an analysis of data from nearly 50 trials including about 7,300 individuals, significant weight loss was observed with any low-carbohydrate or low-fat diet, with weight loss differences between diet programs small, findings that support the practice of recommending any diet that a patient will adhere to in order to lose weight.

Over-the-counter pain reliever may restore immune function in old age Posted: 02 Sep 2014 08:47 AM PDT New research involving mice suggests that the key to more youthful immune function might already be in your medicine cabinet. Scientists have shown that macrophages from the lungs of old mice had different responses to Mycobacterium tuberculosis than macrophages from young mice, but these changes were reversed by ibuprofen.

Asian camel crickets now common in U.S. homes Posted: 02 Sep 2014 06:34 AM PDT With their long, spiky legs and their propensity for eating anything, including each other, camel crickets are the stuff of nightmares. And now research finds that non-native camel cricket species have spread into homes across the eastern United States.

Nature's tiny engineers: Corals control their environment, stirring up water eddies to bring nutrients Posted: 01 Sep 2014 06:14 PM PDT Conventional wisdom has long held that corals -- whose calcium-carbonate skeletons form the foundation of coral reefs -- are passive organisms that rely entirely on ocean currents to deliver dissolved substances, such as nutrients and oxygen. But now scientists have found that they are far from passive, engineering their environment to sweep water into turbulent patterns that greatly enhance their ability to exchange nutrients and dissolved gases with their environment.

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