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Observing the critic's code of scrupulous fairness, I have to say that Leap Year becomes very nearly bearable in the last reel, when the two leads can finally radiate a little mutual charisma. That's mostly thanks to Goode, who had what we'll call the Jeremy Irons role in the 2008 Brideshead Revisited remake, and who is Colin Firth's lover in A Single Man. Here he agreeably inhabits his character even as he somehow stands outside the film, fixing it with the same skeptical eye Declan focuses on Anna. "The countryside's pretty...
...nurture. Bygren's data - along with those of many other scientists working separately over the past 20 years - have given birth to a new science called epigenetics. At its most basic, epigenetics is the study of changes in gene activity that do not involve alterations to the genetic code but still get passed down to at least one successive generation. These patterns of gene expression are governed by the cellular material - the epigenome - that sits on top of the genome, just outside it (hence the prefix epi-, which means above). It is these epigenetic "marks" that tell your genes...
...remember that epigenetics isn't evolution. It doesn't change DNA. Epigenetic changes represent a biological response to an environmental stressor. That response can be inherited through many generations via epigenetic marks, but if you remove the environmental pressure, the epigenetic marks will eventually fade, and the DNA code will - over time - begin to revert to its original programming. That's the current thinking, anyway: that only natural selection causes permanent genetic change. (See "The Year in Health 2009: From...
...potential is staggering. For decades, we have stumbled around massive Darwinian roadblocks. DNA, we thought, was an ironclad code that we and our children and their children had to live by. Now we can imagine a world in which we can tinker with DNA, bend it to our will. It will take geneticists and ethicists many years to work out all the implications, but be assured: the age of epigenetics has arrived...
...rulers of China may not commemorate Christmas and may have cynically picked the day to pass judgment on Liu to avoid Western media attention. But they may have given the people they wish to silence a new code word for anger. In the Twitterverse, Chinese language tweets have now paired Liu's fate and shengdan, the Chinese words for the birthday of Christ. From now on, Christmas will have a separate meaning for dissidents in China. It will be their day to commemorate Liu Xiaobo...