How Exercise Changes Fat and Muscle Cells - NYTimes.com

How Exercise Changes Fat and Muscle Cells - NYTimes.com: One powerful means of affecting gene activity involves a process called methylation, in which methyl groups, a cluster of carbon and hydrogen atoms, attach to the outside of a gene and make it easier or harder for that gene to receive and respond to messages from the body. In this way, the behavior of the gene is changed, but not the fundamental structure of the gene itself. Remarkably, these methylation patterns can be passed on to offspring – a phenomenon known as epigenetics.

In Climbing Income Ladder, Location Matters - NYTimes.com

In Climbing Income Ladder, Location Matters - NYTimes.com: The study — based on millions of anonymous earnings records and being released this week by a team of top academic economists — is the first with enough data to compare upward mobility across metropolitan areas. These comparisons provide some of the most powerful evidence so far about the factors that seem to drive people’s chances of rising beyond the station of their birth, including education, family structure and the economic layout of metropolitan areas.

Landmark study.

Faster Than the Speed of Light? - NYTimes.com

Faster Than the Speed of Light? - NYTimes.com: But in 1994, a Mexican physicist, Miguel Alcubierre, theorized that faster-than-light speeds were possible in a way that did not contradict Einstein...

His theory involved harnessing the expansion and contraction of space itself. Under Dr. Alcubierre’s hypothesis, a ship still couldn’t exceed light speed in a local region of space. But a theoretical propulsion system he sketched out manipulated space-time by generating a so-called “warp bubble” that would expand space on one side of a spacecraft and contract it on another.

Neat stuff.

BBC News - 'Big leap' towards curing blindness in stem cell study

BBC News - 'Big leap' towards curing blindness in stem cell study: Dr Marcelo Rivolta, from the University of Sheffield, said the study was a "huge leap" forward for treating blindness and could have implications across stem cell research.

If we can use stem cells to uptake in the body, we can likely cure aging altogether.  Crazy times.