Want to live to 100? This may depend on Mom

A team at the University of Chicago found that people born to women younger than 25 were about 2 times more likely to live for a century or longer than people born to older mothers.

The study of 198 centenarians born in the United States from 1890-1893 found that first-born children were more likely to live to 100 than later-born siblings. After further analysis, the researchers concluded that this longevity advantage among first-born children was largely linked to the fact that they were born when their mothers were in their teens or early 20s.

Just a FYI - according to the Census Bureau, between 1990 and 2000, the number of centenarians in the United States increased from 37,000 to 55,000. Women are 3 to 5 times more likely than men to reach 100 years.

Are entrepreneurs made or born ?

Typical entrepreneurs are restless, independent, have a tendency to be a loner, and extreme self confident. Like most human behaviors, entrepreneurial behavior can be traced to a complex interaction of innate, background, and environmental factors. But which factor is critical ? According to a recent survey, nearly 2/3 of entrepreneurs claim they were "inspired to start their own companies by their innate desire and determination, rather than by their education or work experience". So if this study can be further confirmed, we can say entrepreneurs are born, not made.

I must say we need to acknowledge and celebrate the inequality that has enabled many entrepreneurs making fortune, and at the same time enriched the lives of the rest of us.

Beautiful parents have more daughters

Evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa of the London School of Economics found that 56% of the most beautiful people from a survey had a daughter first compared with only 48% of the average people, so "by marrying a beautiful spouse you are slightly increasing the chance that you'll have a daughter".

The researcher's explanation? Natural selection may find a way to make better-looking people more likely to have daughters because being beautiful tends to pay off for women (in terms of reproductive success) more than for men. Satoshi Kanazawa also noticed that violent men have more sons (Journal of Theoretical Biology, 239: 450-459, 2006).

Tall people earn more

It is been know for some time that tall people earn more, each additional inch of height adds roughly 2% to average annual earnings, for both men and women. In a new study, two scientists from Princeton University, find that tall people earn more, because they're smarter, on average. It is possible that early childhood care, including prenatal care, can increase both height and cognitive ability.

Americans fail the test on evolution

1/3 American adults do not believe in evolution, a far larger fraction than in most European countries, a new study revealed. Of the 34 countries surveyed, only Turkey had a smaller percentage of adults who believed in evolution.

Michigan State University's Jon D. Miller, who carried out the research, theorized that "Individuals who hold a strong belief in a personal God—and who pray frequently—were significantly less likely to view evolution as probably or definitely true than adults with less conservative religious views."

Half of entrepreneurship is caused by genetics

A group of researcher compared rates of entrepreneurship between and among more than 1,200 pairs of identical and fraternal twins in the U.K and conclude that nearly half—48%—of an individual's propensity to become self-employed is genetic.

Anorexia is mostly genetic

People with anorexia have a distorted body image and refuse to maintain a minimally acceptable body weight. Anorexics are about 10 times more likely to die in a given period of time than peers the same age.

A study of twins suggests anorexia is mostly genetic. Researchers compared the disorder's frequency in identical twins, who share all their genes, and fraternal twins, who share half their genes. They deduced that 56% of the "liability" for getting anorexia is genetic.

Conclusions: since the disease isn't "a choice", patients can stop being scolded by doctors, and insurers will have to pay for treatment. Parents don't have to feel guilty about giving their daughter an anorexic upbringing, or blame their parents for passing anorexic genes.

I couldn’t help it baby, it’s in my genes

There may be a genetic component to infidelity, says a professor at the Twin Research Unit at St. Thomas’ Hospital, London. This is based on the fact that if one twin exhibits infidelity, the other twin strays 55% of the time. In the general population, the number is 23%. The tendency to remain faithful is a component of personality, the scientist elaborates, which is governed both by a number of genes and societal factors.

Your DNA spell out your last name

A swipe of blood, semen, saliva or any other DNA-carrying bodily evidence at a crime scene can help implicate a suspect- if the police have one handy. But if there’s no one under suspicion, the DNA is largely useless.

Now researchers at the University of Leicester and the University of Essex in the UK have developed a method for linking genetic material to a last name. Here is the rational - the Y chromosome DNA, which determines maleness, is paternally inherited, just like most surnames in England. So, the scientists tested for Y chromosome DNA similarity among men with the same last name.

For some popular names such as Smith, researcher said they could predict a man's surname using his DNA data with 20% of accuracy; for names that are less popular, being in the bottom 80% of the regularity spectrum, they could up their success rate to about a 33% of the time. Not bad at all.

In the future, if the police go to a crime scene, got the DNA, they can analyze the Y-chromosome DNA, put it in this database and see what surnames it brings up. It might let police prioritize the suspect list - in UK, at least.

Humans are 98% chimp

In Sept. 2005, the 1st analytical comparisons of the chimpanzee and human genomes were published in Nature. The results were unsettling: man is 98.77% chimpanzee. Since chimps and humans parted ways on the evolutionary chart about 6 millions years ago, most Homo sapiens proteins have accumulated a grand total of 1 unique change.

Of course, humans are not merely chimps. This Nature's publication revealed that natural selection didn't go about redesigning us base pair by base pair; rather, by changing how our genes are expressed (when, where, how much). By so doing natural selection achieved profound effects with minimal rewriting.

person who's born happy doesn't have to try hard

50 to 70 percent of the variation in people as to their level of happiness over time is genetically determined - according to James Maddux, professor and director of the clinical psychologist training program at George Mason University, in Fairfax, Va.

The above number, I believe, applies to most of human behavior -- 50-70% of human behavior are determined by DNA, the rest are determined by how much effort they to put into it.