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.

Body odor can convey a lot of personal information, according to new research from the Monell Chemical Senses Center and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) which reveals that immunization can trigger a distinct change in body odor. This is the first demonstration of a bodily odor change due to immune activation. 

In the study, 'biosensor' mice were trained to discriminate between urine odors from mice vaccinated against either the rabies virus (RV) or the West Nile virus (WNV). All training and testing trials were conducted using a Y-maze with odors randomly assigned to each arm of the "Y."

Countries are looking for fossil fuel alternatives that can get somewhere near the density of gasoline but with less impact on the global ecosystem. Among the most promising contenders for mainstream alternative energy production, especially on alternative science media sites like Science 2.0, is hydrogen – but that increasingly appears to be an unlikely candidate.

Low energy conversion efficiency weakens the case for hydrogen as a commercial fuel. Hydrogen requires one-too-many conversions to be as efficient as electricity (water to hydrogen to electricity), as opposed to a simple fuel to electricity conversion.

20 years ago there was widespread concern about the impact of video game violence. "Mortal Kombat" created a gore filter so parents could turn that off, "Postal" had, unsurprisingly, someone committing mass killings emulating the rash of government union workers shooting people, which gave birth to the 'going postal' idiom. "Night Trap" was banned due to its use of full-motion video related to the murders.