Okay, no more space articles this month. Instead, it’s time for biology.

• This Molecular Psychiatry paper describes an attempt to identify genes that are associated with high intelligence. Specifically they sampled genes from individuals with IQs of over 170 and matched them against a control group to search for genes that are common in the high intelligence group but rare in the control group. Their finding however is consistent with previous such studies in that no genes that are reproducibly associated with high intelligence can be identified even though individual differences in intelligence is known to be highly heritable. This suggests that inherited intelligence relies on the complex interplay of many different genes rather than the presence of any rare ones.

• We already know that humans possess specialized structures in our brains that are dedicated to recognize faces and so do some other primates. This article from Phys.org talks about a study that proves for the first time that the same also applies to dogs by watching their brain activity through MRI machine while they view videos and still images of the faces of both humans and dogs. After going through the Dog Emotion and Cognition course, the obvious next step to me is testing if the brains of wolves react in a similar manner, though getting wolves to cooperate in an experiment like this will be a nightmare.
• Moving on to science that is immediately applicable, this paper from Nature covers the development of a new type of vaccine that might provide permanent, or at least fairly long term, protection against influenza. While vaccines against influenza have long existed, they need to be updated annually since they prime our antibodies to recognize the virus by identifying the head region of the hemagglutinin glycoprotein of the virus and this region often changes. This new vaccine however targets the stem region which appears to be highly conserved and hence should prime the immune system to attack all influenza strains which share similar stem regions regardless of how the head region changes from generation to generation.
• The war on the drugs as championed primarily by the US actually seems to be winding down as more and more governments recognize the futility of banning recreational drugs. One reason for this is that new types of drugs are appearing faster than the regulators can pass the necessary laws to outlaw them. This article from Sciencemag describes how the pace of this sort of innovation will even accelerate. Researchers have engineered a form of yeast that will create thebaine, an opiate closely related to morphine. Effectively, this means that Walter White wannabes would not need access to a continual supply of exotic chemicals to create all sorts of interesting drugs so long as they can breed the required microbes. Indeed, this opens the door to small-scale homebrewed drugs that will be almost impossible for the authorities to police.
• Finally, let’s end with a paper on economics, though I tend to dislike this as this is a field that is still more art than science. The write-up in The Daily Signal talks about an analysis of the effects of fair-trade coffee. The paper finds that although fair-trade coffee continue to command a premium price, most of the benefits accrue to the retailers, not the growers in developing countries as originally intended. This is because as more and more growers enter the fair trade market, the competition causes the price on their end to revert back to the market equilibrium. In the meantime, while the consumer pays a higher price for the fair trade branding, most of the profits go to the retailers who sell it.