Recently, Pacific Standard published a review (“Red Science, Blue Science,”January/February 2013) by Wray Herbert, a pop psychology writer,of political writer Chris Mooney’s book The Republican Brain and my new book, Science Left Behind, which I co-authored with Hank Campbell.

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The study confirms what largely seems like common sense: Financial insecurity is stressful, and anxiety associated with unemployment and low household income can affect how well parents parent. It's easy enough to understand how more time worrying about keeping the lights on could mean less time to focus on helping with homework and strengthening family bonds.

Led by Dr. Seethalakshmi Ramanathan of the State University of New York’s Upstate Medical University, researchers used information about 8,984 youth born between Jan. 1, 1980, and Dec. 31, 1984, as a sample group. As Time magazine reports:

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So they did.

According to Studio Roosegaarde the highways of the future are safer, cleaner and more environmentally sound. The lab has developed solar powered glow-in-the-dark roads that charge during the day to illuminate your evening drive, dynamic asphalt paint that transforms in response to road conditions like ice and sleet, and car lanes that double as electric car chargers by using magnetic fields under the asphalt.

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"These results suggest that prenatal brain development may be a very important influence on psychiatric risk later in life," said lead author of the study and assistant professor of psychiatry at UNC, Rebecca C. Knickmeyer. In addition to early detection, the study may also lead to early intervention breakthroughs in the degenerative brain disorder.

According to the report on UNC's website:

The study included 272 infants who received MRI scans at UNC Hospitals shortly after birth. The DNA of each was tested for 10 common variations in 7 genes that have been linked to brain structure in adults. These genes have also been implicated in conditions such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, autism, Alzheimer's disease, anxiety disorders and depression.

For some polymorphisms – such as a variation in the APOE gene which is associated with Alzheimer's disease – the brain changes in infants looked very similar to brain changes found in adults with the same variants, Knickmeyer said. "This could stimulate an exciting new line of research focused on preventing onset of illness through very early intervention in at-risk individuals."

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Sure it's possible that you'll stick to that diet or learn a second language in 2013, it's just not probable.

A report in the university's Journal of Clinical Psychology reveals that most Americans make the same resolutions, with commitments to health, self-improvement and family ranking heavily in the top 10. And most Americans fail miserably at keeping them. How miserably? The data indicates Americans have a success rate of 8 percent when it comes to being our best selves in the new year.

But don't feel too bad: 75 percent of us keep our resolutions for at least two weeks! And two weeks on the elliptical is better than nothing.

There's always next year, right?

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Researchers gathered data from 40 infants in the U.S. and another 40 in Sweden, all less than 3 days old. The newborns were tested on two types of vowel sounds -- 17 from their native language sounds and 17 from a foreign language. Researchers then measured the infant's response to the sounds by how long they sucked a pacifier connected to a computer. The babies could control how many times they heard the vowels by sucking continuously on the pacifier, hearing the same vowel sound until they paused. Sucking the pacifier again produced a new sound. According to Science Daily, the pattern reveals how infants absorb new information:

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Scientists at Yale University have used scans of the human brain to show that fructose, a monosaccharide found in everything from fruit to chicken nuggets, can trigger brain function that leads to overeating. According to the study, research subjects given a fructose beverage were less likely to feel "full" than subjects given a glucose beverage.

As reported by the Associated Press, researchers used MRI scans to monitor blood flow in the brains of 20 young, average-weight people before and after they consumed drinks containing fructose or glucose. Brain scans revealed that drinking glucose “turns off or suppresses the activity of areas of the brain that are critical for reward and desire for food,” said Robert Sherwin, an endocrinologist who led the study. Adding that with fructose, “we don’t see those changes. As a result, the desire to eat continues — it isn’t turned off.”

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In the past 12 months we’ve gained increasingly good statistics on the incredible abundance of planets around other stars and their multiplicity. We also finally seem to have evidence that our neighboring star Alpha Centauri B does indeed harbor at least one world. It is by any set of standards, a great haul.

But I continue to be a bugged by the claims of ‘habitable’ worlds and ‘Earth-like planets’ that seem to beset many scientific announcements (including I’m ashamed to say my own). In the spirit of closing out the passage of our 4,500,000,000 th or so orbit around the Sun I thought I’d try to set the record straight, because I think we have so much more to look forward to than simply finding ‘another Earth’.

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Condorcet’s story opens "The Republican Brain," the science writer Chris Mooney’s lament about today’s polarized intellectual climate. Mooney mourns the death of Condorcet’s enlightened vision, and I suspect Alex Berezow and Hank Campbell would as well. Like Mooney’s, their new book, "Science Left Behind," describes a 21st-century American society that is the exact opposite of what Condorcet wanted and predicted. Both books condemn the magical thinking and distorted passions that shape our modern intellectual enterprise and diminish our lives.

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According to a report in Science Daily:

Researchers compared the genome macrostructure for 157 gene families present both in conifers and flowering plants. They observed that the genome of conifers has remained particularly stable for at least 100 million years, while that of flowering plants has undergone major changes in the same period.

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Time Out, the hit 1959 album by the Dave Brubeck Quartet, was one of the first popular jazz works to explore meters beyond the traditional 4/4 and 3/4. (The first number, which is the top number of the time signature in sheet music, represents the number of beats in the measure, and the second number represents the note value that receives one beat. 4/4 means that there are four beats and a quarter note lasts for one beat, yielding four quarter notes in each measure.) "Take Five" and "Blue Rondo a la Turk," two of Brubeck's most popular works, are both on Time Out.

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A recent study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology reports that after three days of playing violent video games like "Call of Duty," research subjects exhibited a spike in "hostile expectations" as compared to the group who played nonviolent games. As Science Daily reports:

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"There is no scientific debate on the age of the earth. I mean, it’s established pretty definitively, it’s at least 4.5 billion years old," Rubio told Mike Allen of Politico. "I was referring to a theological debate, which is a pretty healthy debate.

"The theological debate is, how do you reconcile with what science has definitively established with what you may think your faith teaches," Rubio continued. "Now for me, actually, when it comes to the age of the earth, there is no conflict."

Watch:

Rubio initially made the following comments to GQ:

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The justices on Friday decided they would hear an appeal from medical professionals who want to stop Myriad Genetics Inc. from patenting genetic mutations that are linked to increased risk of breast cancer. The company's BRACAnalysis test looks for those mutations.

Doctors want to use genetic testing to look at these genes to discover whether patients have increased risks of diseases like breast or ovarian cancer, but they say letting businesses patent them would get in their way. Companies say without being able to patent and profit from their work, they would not be able to fund the type of medical breakthroughs doctors depend on.

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At least this is what scientists from the 1940s began to suggest with increasing confidence. The universe had begun from a point, an unimaginably hot, dense state, and then there was the big bang. Ever since this moment, it has been cooling and expanding, carrying the galaxies outwards from this original point. Ours is a dynamic and exciting universe, in which we are the tiniest of tiny specks. It is composed of the stars, planets and comets making up the visible galaxies; there is also much that’s invisible – black holes and the much more abundant ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’.

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Singing, dancing, and drumming.

That’s the conclusion of a study by University of Oxford psychologist Robin Dunbar. He and his colleagues report people who have just been playing music have a higher tolerance for pain—an indication their bodies are producing endorphins, which are sometimes referred to as natural opiates.

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Second, he seems to have zagged to the right while the rest of his party is zigging (or at least head-faking) to the middle. While other national leaders in his party, almost to a person, have condemned Mitt Romney's postmortem "gifts" comments and the candidate more generally, Rubio brushed aside the comments and generously defended Romney. "I hope Mitt will stay involved in politics. I thought he was a great candidate, would have made a great president, and I hope he stays involved in our party," he said in Iowa.

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Freestyling is to rap as improvisation is to jazz. Rather than reciting a pre-written rhyme, or reading off pages of sheet music, the artist stands up onstage and channels the Muse directly, no filter: whatever comes up, comes out. There are some rules, of course. Trumpet players have to stay in the right key and follow, say, a 12-bar count; emcees have to keep time with the beat, and recycling old material is frowned upon. Aside from that, it’s an artistic free-for-all.

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As part of the study, a select group was shown a sad movie (this one, perhaps?) and were then asked to make financial decisions. Compared to subjects who had not watched the video, the sad group were far more likely to make choices that presented a short-term benefit, but were less profitable in the long run.

Blame it on "present bias," a phenomenon that makes us crave immediate gratification at the expense of even greater rewards later on. It's a tendency that many people exhibit in everyday life, but add a little melancholy into the mix and you've got yourself a recipe for financial disaster. Lead researcher Jennifer Lerner explains that "compared with neutral emotion, sadness -- and not just any negative emotion -- made people more myopic, and therefore willing to forgo greater future gains in return for instant gratification."

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