My picks from ScienceDaily

Americans Sleeping More, Not Less, Says New Study

Contrary to conventional wisdom, Americans average as much sleep as they did 40 years ago, and possibly more, according to University of Maryland sociologists.

Yes, when you suddenly start including the unemployed in the study.

Mantis Shrimp Vision Reveals New Way That Animals Can See:

Mantis shrimp can see the world in a way that had never been observed in any animal before, researchers report in the March 20th Current Biology, a Cell Press publication. The discovery--which marks the fourth type of visual system--suggests that the ability to perceive circular polarized light may lend mantis shrimp a secret mode of communication.

Ants Are Experienced Fungus Farmers:

It turns out ants, like humans, are true farmers. The difference is that ants are farming fungus.

Delicate Partnership Between Coral And Algae Threatened By Global Warming:

Over two hundred million humans depend for their subsistence on the fact that coral has an addiction to 'junk food' - and orders its partners, the symbiotic algae, to make it.

Insects Take A Bigger Bite Out Of Plants In A Higher Carbon Dioxide World:

Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are rising at an alarming rate, and new research indicates that soybean plant defenses go down as CO2 goes up. Elevated CO2 impairs a key component of the plant's defenses against leaf-eating insects, according to the report.

More like this

Reason For Almost Two Billion Year Delay In Animal Evolution On Earth Discovered: Scientists from around the world have reconstructed changes in Earth's ancient ocean chemistry during a broad sweep of geological time, from about 2.5 to 0.5 billion years ago. They have discovered that a deficiency…
Sericomyrmex ants in a laboratory fungus garden The textbook version of the leafcutter ant and its fungus is a simple story: attine ants cultivate an edible fungus in their nests.  They are obligate farmers, eating only the fungus, and the fungus is a specialized cultivar found only in ant nests…
We mammals have been beaten again. Shrimp have more sophisticated eyes than we do, with the ability to see things we can't, and I'm feeling a bit envious. There are a couple of general properties of light that can be captured and measured with a light detector. One is the amplitude of the light…
This article is reposted from the old Wordpress incarnation of Not Exactly Rocket Science. The blog is on holiday until the start of October, when I'll return with fresh material. In your garden, there's a fair chance that a farmer is currently tranquilising her livestock with a chemical cocktail…

Americans sleeping more / less / whatever. Always just adults? I suspect kids are sleeping a lot less than a few decades ago.