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In the future, you may be able to forgo exercise and still stay healthy, by having your genes tweaked instead. By tweaking a single gene, scientists have mimicked in sedentary mice the heart-strengthening effects of two weeks of endurance training.

The genetic manipulation spurred the animals’ heart muscle cells to proliferate and grow larger by an amount comparable to normal mice that swam for up to three hours a day. Alas, this type of gene manipulation can’t be done in humans, but these findings may suggest a future strategy for repairing injured hearts through muscle regeneration.
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Are criminals are product of their upbringing and environment? Or are they just acting out their genetics? A new finding shows that TALL people earn more money (and thus pay more taxes), and that short, fat people commit more crimes (and they’re more likely to go to jail when they’re tried in court!)

But while genetics remain pretty standard (depending on who’s having babies), social circumstances change. For instance, when economist Gregory N. Price studied 19th century prison records, he found that in those days, being fat was associated with a LOWER risk of committing a crime, which is just the opposite of today’s statistics.
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Everybody loves a lover?is that you? Were you the most (or least) popular kid in your class? Whichever it was (and is), maybe you were just born that way. If you were the LEAST popular, cheer up: happiness is catching.

Researchers have found that our place in a social network is influenced partly by our genes. Sociologist Nicholas Christakis says, “We were able to show that our particular location in vast social networks has a genetic basis. In fact, the beautiful and complicated pattern of human connection depends on our genes to a significant measure.”

Art credit: freeimages.co.uk
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We are on the road to creating artificial intelligence, despite the fact that we really don’t understand OUR OWN intelligence yet. Among the approximately 23,000 genes found in human DNA, scientists currently estimate that there may be as few as 50 to 100 that are unique to human beings, but they don’t yet understand what these genes do or why they make such a big difference.
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