James Kenneth Rogers

1. The hundred year starship project. A new DARPA initiative to explore what it would take to develop interstellar travel over the next hundred years. 2. The genetics of happiness. Recent research suggests that about one-third of the variation in people’s happiness levels is heritable. The gene which seems to account for increased happiness was found least often among those of Asian ancestry and most often among those of African ancestry, with Europeans falling in the middle. 3. More jobs…

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1. Are Twin Studies “Pretty Much Useless”? A defense of the value of using twin studies to scientifically examine the effects of heredity and environment. Here is another good defense of twin studies. 2. Limits to growth. We have grown used to continuous economic growth. But such growth cannot continue forever. No matter how much we innovate, the physical laws of the universe impose limits on how much the economy can grow. 3. Juno looks back, photographs earth-moon system A…

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1. Gobar gas. Using relatively cheap materials, it is possible to build a “digester” that turns dung into natural gas. Gobar gas has had a lot of success in the Indian subcontinent. It seems like this could be an excellent way to provide safer cooking fuels for rural people in developing countries (as opposed to using wood for cooking fuel, which produces indoor smoke which is often a health hazard and which uses up the trees in forests). 2 Computer…

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1. Somatic mutations make twins’ brain less similar. A new study indicates that one of the reasons that even identical twins differ in their development and how they turn out is maybe because of post-conception mutations in their somatic cells. Random mutations happen when your cells divide. A study comparing mutations in identical twins found about 1,000 point mutations (a change in one letter of the DNA code) in one twin not present in the other and two to three…

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1. Celts to Anglo-Saxons, in light of updated assumptions. Interesting discussion about the two ways people living in a certain place transform into a new ethnicity — whether by replacement of the population, or through assimilation. 2 The first advertising campaign for non-human primates . Researchers are seeing if using sex in advertising targeted to chimpanzees can get them to start eating a flavor of jello that they otherwise don’t like. 3. Could Legally Getting High Reduce the Deficit?. “Rep….

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