Lone Gunman

Accord­ing to Lab Notes, new research is sug­gest­ing that a higher IQ is an indi­ca­tion that you may live a longer life.

A num­ber of recent stud­ies have been find­ing that peo­ple who score lower on intel­li­gence tests (notice how care­ful I am not to say “smarter peo­ple”) tend to die ear­lier than those who score higher. The effect doesn’t seem to arise from socioe­co­nomic fac­tors (well-off peo­ple score higher on IQ tests and also tend to be health­ier), leav­ing sci­en­tists to reach for hypothe­ses. Maybe high-IQ peo­ple smoke less? eat health­ier? fol­low doc­tors’ advice more?

Now a new study, reported in the Sep­tem­ber issue of the jour­nal Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci­ence, finds an even more intrigu­ing connection.

via Seed

Remem­ber xkcd’s map of online com­mu­ni­ties? Well, Franklin Veaux has gone and done the same… but for sex.

I always thought I was pretty well-versed in slang of all types, but the sex map tells a dif­fer­ent story. Hope­fully this isn’t a sign of ageing.

via Rudius

RSD’s Tyler gives us some tips for achiev­ing peri­ods of intense pro­duc­tiv­ity by avoid­ing the ‘garbage in, garbage out’ prob­lem (plus some comments):

1. Remove the Inter­net from your house
   A bit extreme for me, but lim­it­ing its use is undoubt­edly a good idea.
2. Remove tele­vi­sion from your house
   I don’t watch ‘broad­cast’ TV any­way: it’s too mind-numbing.
3. Eat more fruit (espe­cially berries), veg­eta­bles, and clean meats
4. Black out your bed­room and sleep in the pitch dark
   Unbe­liev­ably great idea.
5. Turn your cell phone off
   My phi­los­o­phy: my mobile phone’s for my con­ve­nience, not yours. I keep mine on ‘silent’ mode 100% of the time already.
6. Recog­nise drama and avoid it
7. When you do some­thing fun, make sure it’s some­thing you really enjoy
8. Med­i­tate for 20 min­utes a day
   I’ve never med­i­tated before, but shall attend a Vipas­sana med­i­ta­tion course in the new year.
9. Increase the flow of oxygen-rich blood to the brain through exer­cis­ing
   My eter­nal neme­sis: exer­cise. My PodRun­ner rou­tine will be start­ing again soon now that my shin’s healed.
10. Read books that have the vibe that you want for your­self
    This year, my read­ing habits have been excellent.

Thanks, Andy

In design­ing any appli­ca­tion, cre­at­ing effi­cient and easy user flows is cru­cial to user engage­ment. Of course, this isn’t as easy as it sounds. Prod­uct Plan­ner pro­vides user flows from suc­cess­ful web appli­ca­tions to help oth­ers learn from them.

‘Mr. Green Genes’ is a trans­genic cat that glows in the dark. As a huge fan of both cats and sci­ence, I think this may be my ideal pet.

From the Sci­ence­Blogs Weekly Recap:

The cat’s DNA [has been injected] with a gene for green flu­o­res­cent pro­tein (GFP), to eas­ily visu­al­ize whether the pro­tein was local­ized as desired in the cat’s body. The Audubon Cen­ter team who gave Mr. Green Genes his glow hope to use their tech­nique to develop gene ther­apy meth­ods for cys­tic fibro­sis treatment.

It reminds me of a let­ter PETA sent me a few months ago. Try­ing to per­suade me to give them money, they wrote, “ani­mal exper­i­ments [include] insert­ing jel­ly­fish genes into the genetic code of pigs to make the pigs glow in the dark.” My response: give me the address for these ‘genetic tin­ker­ers’ at once, I feel com­pelled to send them a big, fat cheque.