Science

The ethanol industry is happy with the Environmental Protection Agency today. If you're worried about the price of meat, though, you may not be so pleased.

Could bacon get any tastier?

Pig scientists and breeders say indeed it could, now that the pig genome has been sequenced and a trove of new genetic information is available.

The Swine Genome Sequencing Consortium, an international group of researchers, published their analysis of the genome this week in Nature.

It's a question that's baffled evolutionary theorists for decades: if survival of the fittest is the rule, how have the genes that contribute to serious, debilitating mental disorders survived?

No millipede actually has 1000 feet--but the species Illacme plenipes comes closest, with up to 750. Entomologist Paul Marek, who rediscovered the rare species a few years ago in California's coastal mountains, calls counting legs and measuring millipedes a "guilty pleasure."

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IRA FLATOW, HOST:

This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. If you're a political junkie, I'm guessing a couple of words will make your skin crawl: hanging chads. Or you might like pregnant chads or whatever - we didn't know what a chad was before then. After the problems counting ballots in the 2000 election in Florida, municipalities around the country moved to adopt electronic voting systems with the thought that they would be easier to use, more straightforward to count.

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IRA FLATOW, HOST:

Why does stuff have mass, you know, that gives it weight? If you're a regular listener, you might recall that it has to do with how subatomic particles interact with something called the Higgs Field, right? Higgs boson, becoming more familiar? How do scientists know that? Well, it's theory. It's backed up by, in part, by the reported discovery of the Higgs Boson at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, back in July.

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IRA FLATOW, HOST:

Well, luckily that we lost Dr. Crabtree that - I'm sorry that we did lose him, but fortunately for us we have our next guest with us here, it's Dr. James Watson, sitting right here with us. Welcome to the program.

JAMES WATSON: I'm glad to be back with you.

FLATOW: Well, let me begin our interview a little bit early. You are certainly not unknown, Watson and Crick, and you have also a new book out now called "The Double Helix," and it's got all kinds of annotations, and what's new about this version of the book?

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IRA FLATOW, HOST:

Next up, Flora Lichtman is here, our multimedia editor, with our Video Pick of the Week.

FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: Hi, Ira.

FLATOW: Hi, Flora. And it is super - we have a specials - we have special ones. This is a...

LICHTMAN: This is a special day for us.

FLATOW: ...special day.

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IRA FLATOW, HOST:

This is SCIENCE FRIDAY, I'm Ira Flatow. Turn on reality TV, and it may not be long before you ask yourself: Are we getting dumber? A new study may have some genetic answers to that question. Provocative research published this week in the journal Trends in Genetics suggests that human intelligence may have peaked thousands of years ago.

Walk into a 3rd-grade classroom and see children negotiating an obstacle course: desks, chairs and boxes create tunnels through which the students are crawling. A whistle blows and the students freeze in place; when a bell sounds, the kids once again negotiate their makeshift maze.