Submission + - The Genetics of Happiness
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "The Economist reports that studies comparing identical with non-identical twins have helped to establish the heritability of many aspects of behavour with recent work suggesting that about one third of the variation in people’s happiness is heritable. Jan-Emmanuel De Neve has taken the study a step further picking a popular suspect—the gene that encodes the serotonin-transporter protein, a molecule that shuffles a brain messenger called serotonin through cell membranes—and examined how variants of the 5-HTT gene affect levels of happiness. The serotonin-transporter gene comes in two functional variants—long and short and people have two versions (known as alleles) of each gene, one from each parent. After examining genetic data from more than 2,500 participants in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, De Neve found that people with one long allele were 8% more likely than those with none to describe themselves as very satisfied with life and those with two long alleles were 17% more likely of describing themselves as very satisfied. Interestingly enough, there is a notable variation across races with Asian Americans in the sample having on average 0.69 long genes, white Americans with 1.12, and black Americans with 1.47. “It has long been suspected that this gene plays a role in mental health but this is the first study to show that it is instrumental in shaping our individual happiness levels (PDF)," writes De Neve. "This finding helps to explain why we each have a unique baseline level of happiness and why some people tend to be naturally happier than others, and that’s in no small part due to our individual genetic make-up.” ""
Comment Re:$100 for only brief e-mail delays, AWESOME! (Score 1) 122
Actually, I did consider buying NOVA ($7), iSpeech ($20) and vlingo ($20), but didn't want to spend money on them.. and, I'd imagine that there are other blackberry users who would have bought some of these if they knew about them.
Comment Re:Unless... (Score 1) 122
If a company lost $200+ due to email delays, I'm certain their lawyers would be breathing down the necks of RIM..
yet, I doubt there are any BBM-loving BIS users who lost $100+ of anything when they were forced to rely on SMS and old-fashioned phone calls when their phones were affected by the outage.
Comment Re:Free Apps? Meh. (Score 1) 122
How well does your desktop software run on your computer when your internet service provider goes down?
Comment Re:And the apps are ... ? (Score 1) 122
Vlingo is like Siri, and has been a $20 app on blackberry devices since 2009
Comment $100 for only brief e-mail delays, AWESOME! (Score 1) 122
$100 of premium apps from EA, gameloft, ispeech and vlingo (Blackberry's version of Siri) is an awesome reward for having my e-mail arrive 15 mins late around 1am last Tuesday!
Comment Author knows ALL about propaganda... (Score 3, Informative) 1496
Both articles were written by the same author (Tom Harris), who is a director at a public relations firm "High Park Group" ( http://www.highparkgroup.com/tharris.htm ).. Some may call such a business a lobby group.. others may call it an industry-friendly strategic consulting firm. A very trust-worthy source, especially when it comes to public interest.
High Park Group's is proud to offer our clients a wide range of services, including:
- policy and strategic consulting
- project development
- project management
- issues management
- research initiatives and analysis
- economic analytics
- direct lobbying
- event planning
- media relations
- fundraising
High Park Group's is proud to offer our clients a wide range of services, including:
- policy and strategic consulting
- project development
- project management
- issues management
- research initiatives and analysis
- economic analytics
- direct lobbying
- event planning
- media relations
- fundraising
