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Self-harm is rather common among young people but we tend to think of all self harm in modern times as elaborate cutting rituals and signs of mental illness.  Not so, many teenagers have at one time scratched, punctured or even cut themselves and hit their head forcefully against a wall - and it is behavior almost as common among boys as it is girls, despite the the steretotype. Labeling young people who self-harm as on a slippery slope to adult psychiatric states is not warranted.  Rather than over-diagnose, some knowledge is needed in order not to over-interpret the behavior of young people, says psychologist Jonas Bjärehed in his thesis at Lund University in Sweden.

Solar systems with life-bearing planets are, so far, unique.  There is only one.  But they would be rare anyway, if they are dependent on the presence of asteroid belts of just the right mass, according to two US astronomers. Rebecca Martin, a NASA Sagan Fellow from the University of Colorado and astronomer Mario Livio of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore suggest that the size and location of an asteroid belt, shaped by the evolution of the Sun's protoplanetary disk and by the gravitational influence of a nearby giant Jupiter-like planet, may determine whether complex life could evolve on an Earth-like planet. 

Using the family tree linking every known bird species, scientists now say that birds appear to be accelerating their rate of evolution. Most people did not predict that. They spent five years creating their tree, using millions of years worth of fossil data stretching back to Dinosaurs. They then mapped where on Earth and when in history birds' diversification took place. Their paper in Nature contains results of how 9,993 bird species currently alive globally made it to where they are today. Based on previous studies, the researchers expected to see bird speciation slowing down, but they instead found that birds' speciation rate is increasing, not declining.

An Asian elephant named Koshik can speak exactly five words in Korean that can be readily understood by those who know the language. The elephant accomplishes this in a most unusual way: he vocalizes with his trunk in his mouth.

The words include "annyong" ("hello"), "anja" ("sit down"), "aniya" ("no"), "nuo" ("lie down"), and "choah" ("good"). While cool on their own, Koshik's language skills may also provide important insights into the biology and evolution of complex vocal learning, an ability that is critical for human speech and music, the researchers say. 

Researchers say their refinements in silicon-based lithium-ion technology could lead to a high-capacity, long-lived and low-cost anode material for next-generation rechargeable lithium batteries. 

The Mendeley collaboration company has published the Global Research Report (http://mnd.ly/global-research-report), an analysis of two million scholars' research activity in relation to economic indicators and research productivity. 

Researchers  have been studying toll-receptors for decades, revealing functions in immune defence developmental biology. Now, a research team from Kiel University says reporting that toll-receptors have primarily served to identify germs and to control bacterial colonization of organisms – typical immune defense functions. Toll receptors exist in many animal species as well as humans. Cnidarians are convenient research subjects because they live in plain aquaria, have a simple genome and can be examined easily in experiments. They also live in association with few types of bacteria compared to humans.

If you are a $2 billion company, people will pay for your content - if you are losing money and not making a profit, claims a paper published today in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking.

The giant asteroid Vesta is constantly stirring its outermost layer, according to data from NASA's Dawn mission that show that a form of weathering that occurs on the moon and other airless bodies we've visited in the inner solar system does not alter Vesta's outermost layer in the same way.

The yeast used to make beer has yielded what may be the first gene for beer foam, CFG1, scientists are reporting in a new study. The discovery opens the door to new possibilities for improving the frothy "head" so critical to the aroma and eye appeal of the world's favorite alcoholic beverage, beer. And it gives Science 2.0 another reason to write about beer.

A spectacular find of some 1,800 fossilized mesa chelonia turtles from the Jurassic era has been uncovered in China’s northwest province of Xinjiang.Today one of the world’s driest regions, 160 million years ago Xinjiang was a green place of lakes and rivers, bursting with life. Since 2007, researchers have found fossil sharks, crocodiles, mammals and several dinosaur skeletons. 

Where will you find gypsum rocks forged by fire and water millions of years ago?