Population-based studies have consistently shown that our diet has an influence on health - a diet rich in fruits and vegetables is recommended.

But some people go overboard and just eat meat. Or just eat vegetables. Evidence for health benefits of exclusive diets is scant. Vegetarians are considered healthier, they are wealthier, they are more liberal, they drink less alcohol and they smoke less - but those are a lot of variables in health that don't necessarily result from being a vegetarian.

Although Neanderthals are extinct but fragments of their genomes persist in modern humans.

 These shared regions are unevenly distributed across the genome and some regions are particularly enriched with Neanderthal variants. An international team of researchers led by Philipp Khaitovich of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and the CAS-MPG Partner Institute for Computational Biology in Shanghai, China, have found that DNA sequences shared between modern humans and Neanderthals are specifically enriched in genes involved in the metabolic breakdown of lipids.

New research reveals that consuming two or more cups of coffee each day reduces the risk of death from liver cirrhosis by 66%, specifically cirrhosis caused by non-viral hepatitis. Findings in Hepatology, a journal published by Wiley on behalf of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, show that tea, fruit juice, and soft drink consumption are not linked to cirrhosis mortality risk. As with previous studies heavy alcohol use was found to increase risk of death from cirrhosis.

A Northwestern Medicine study reports the timing, intensity and duration of light exposure during the day is linked to your weight -- the first time this has been shown, though take population correlations with a grain of sunshine.

People who had most of their daily exposure to even moderately bright light in the morning had a significantly lower body mass index (BMI) than those who had most of their light exposure later in the day, the study found. BMI is a ratio calculated from a person's weight and height. 

The repeated cycles of plate tectonics throughout history that led to collision, assembly and disruption of large supercontinents have produced modern continents that are collages of bits and pieces of each other.

Figuring out the origin and make-up of continental crust formed and modified by these tectonic events is a vital to understanding Earth's geology and is important for many applied fields, such as oil, gas, and gold exploration. In many cases, the rocks involved in these collision and pull-apart episodes are still buried deep beneath the Earth's surface, so geologists must use geophysical measurements to study these features. 

A new study led by Lance Lesack, a Simon Fraser University geographer and Faculty of Environment professor, has discovered unexpected climate-driven changes in the mighty Mackenzie River's ice breakup. This discovery may help resolve the complex puzzle underlying why Arctic ice is disappearing more rapidly than expected.

Lesack is the lead author on Local spring warming drives earlier river-ice breakup in a large Arctic delta. Published recently in Geophysical Research Letters, the study has co-authors at Wilfrid Laurier University, the University of Alberta and Memorial University.