My picks from ScienceDaily

Genetic Region For Tame Animals Discovered: Horse Whisperers, Lion Tamers Not Needed:

In what could be a breakthrough in animal breeding, a team of scientists from Germany, Russia and Sweden have discovered a set of genetic regions responsible for animal tameness. This discovery, published in the June 2009 issue of the journal Genetics, should help animal breeders, farmers, zoologists, and anyone else who handles and raises animals to more fully understand what makes some animals interact with humans better than do others. It may also lead to more precise breeding strategies designed to pass specific genes from one generation to the next as a way to produce tame animals.

Animal Mating Choices More Complex Than Once Thought:

When female tiger salamanders choose a mate, it turns out that size does matter - tail size that is - and that's not the only factor they weigh.

Discovery Raises New Doubts About Dinosaur-bird Links:

Researchers at Oregon State University have made a fundamental new discovery about how birds breathe and have a lung capacity that allows for flight - and the finding means it's unlikely that birds descended from any known theropod dinosaurs.

Insomnia With Objective Short Sleep Duration In Men Is Associated With Increased Mortality:

Men with insomnia and sleep duration of six or fewer hours of nightly sleep are at an increased risk for mortality, according to a research abstract that will be presented on June 8, at Sleep 2009, the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies.

Let Me Sleep On It: Creative Problem Solving Enhanced By REM Sleep:

Research led by a leading expert on the positive benefits of napping at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine suggests that Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep enhances creative problem-solving. The findings may have important implications for how sleep, specifically REM sleep, fosters the formation of associative networks in the brain.

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Poor Sleep Is Associated With Lower Relationship Satisfaction In Both Women And Men: A bidirectional association exists between couples' sleep quality and the quality of their relationship, according to a research abstract that will be presented on Wednesday, June 10, at SLEEP 2009, the 23rd…
Bird Migrations Set To Increase: Added Distance Is 'Considerable Threat' To Some Species: Bird migrations are likely to get longer according to the first ever study of the potential impacts of climate change on the breeding and winter ranges of migrant birds. The length of some migrations could…
Female Water Striders Expose Their Genitalia Only After Males 'Sing': Chang Seok Han and Piotr Jablonski at Seoul National University, Korea have found that by evolving a morphological shield to protect their genitalia from males' forceful copulatory attempts, females of an Asian species of water…
When Pittsburgh paleontologist Matt Lamanna jokingly promised his fellow scientists that he would eat a duck foot if they unearthed a rare bird fossil, he never expected that they would discover a large group of them in northwest China. This discovery, the most significant in the past 25 years, was…