Weekend Reads 2/20/16

Neandertal–Human Trysts May Be Linked to Modern Depression, Heart Disease

Ultimately, the researchers found that Neanderthal genetic variants were significantly linked to increased risk of 12 traits, including heart attack and artery thickening. Surprisingly, the investigators also found a Neanderthal genetic variant that significantly increased the modern human risk for nicotine addiction.

Read Justice Ginsburg’s moving tribute to her “best buddy” Justice Scalia

The respect that Ginsburg's statement shows for Scalia's intellect — that she could trust him to point out the flaws in her arguments — also reveals a respect for her own, to know the difference between a genuine agreement of principle and an error that needed to be corrected. But more importantly, the statement shows that it's okay for people in politics to spend time cultivating other interests — like opera — and that those can be a genuine basis for friendship in their own right.

Comets May Not Explain 'Alien Megastructure' Star's Strange Flickering After All

The results also change the requirements for the alien megastructure hypothesis.…Plait calculated that aliens would need to build a minimum of 750 billion square kilometers (290 billion square miles) of solar panels to account for the 20 percent drop in their star's brightness. "That's 1,500 times the area of the entire Earth," Plait wrote. "Yikes."

I Miss Barack Obama

Obama radiates an ethos of integrity, humanity, good manners and elegance that I’m beginning to miss, and that I suspect we will all miss a bit, regardless of who replaces him.