So, now here’s a book that can tell me how to be happy.

It’s called The How of Happiness by research psychologist and University of California professor of psychology Sonja Lyubomirsky.

Every statement Lyubomirsky makes about about our happiness is supported by research. (Plus, for a little visual verification of her results, check out the jacket photo, the author herself looks radiant.)

40 Percent

We’ve all noticed that there are some people who are just basically happier. That’s because a portion of your happiness – a kind of happiness baseline - is genetically determined. Fifty percent, according to Lyubomirsky.

And then there’s 10 percent of your happiness that depends on what’s going on: you have a wonderful new job, you have a horrible new job, you got a new puppy, your cat died.

But the remaining portion, that’s yours to do what you will. And science is saying that you can help yourself out. Lyubomirsky asserts that humans have control of 40 percent of their happiness.

Use your 40

You are who you are, but don’t you want to be happier?

So after thousands of years, after Jesus, after the Buddha, after yoga, after Grannie’s good old common sense, here are some ‘how’s of happiness,’ backed by research (…and I know the way they’re put doesn’t sound like science, but there you go…)

Money doesn’t buy happiness
Doing nice things for other people makes you feel good
Have a positive attitude
Spend time with your friends

Thing is, it sounds to me pretty much what everybody’s been saying this whole time.

I love it when science affirms wisdom from novels or philosphy or mysticism or street smarts, because it just shows that science and philosphy and hey, even religion aren’t totally at odds. In fact, one might say, putting it hokily-dokily rather than scientifically:

There are many pathways up the mountain of truth.

Here’s a picture that can go with it (for the poster or card.)

(I didn’t finish the book. I got to thinking, what kind of happy person sits around reading about how to be happy? Thus, there may be important info in the last 40 percent of the book that I don’t mention here.)

Here’s some information that might have kept me off Lexapro: The New York Times reports that, although environment has an influence, it’s genes that determine a picky eater.

A University College London study, which was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in August, examined the eating habits of 5,390 pairs of twins between 8 and 11 years old and found children’s aversions to trying new foods are mostly inherited.

Had I only known, my son could have been spared all that cajoling, nagging and even yelling at innumerable dinnertimes that will probably put him on Lexapro later in life.

And as I child, I too was among the fussiest of eaters. But not now …. I love it all! (no bleu cheese.)

Really, all we need to do as parents is hang in. Here’s Harriet Worobey, director of the Nutritional Sciences Preschool at Rutgers University: “Unless it becomes a huge issue, it tends to be a little more fleeting than parents think,” she said. “I know a year can seem like five to parents, but these food jags are normal.”

A: What time is it when an elephant sits on your fence?

I know that’s answering a question with a question, but, point is, looking for something bigger and stronger than an elephant to keep out an elephant is a problem. Besides, why keep elephants away? There’s no more intelligent, beautiful or worthy animal to live alongside.

Well, in African villages, elephants can trample and eat up all a farmer’s crops. They can be very large trouble.

Interesting that very small trouble might be a low-cost way to help elephants and us to coexist.

The BBC reports that the sound of bees can scare a whole herd of elephants away.

The African bee is aggressive. Their sting is painful - to people and to elephants. They sting and then they die; and when they sting, it releases a pheromone that encourages other bees to sting. Elephants have learned to avoid them.

A team of The Oxford researchers set up hidden loudspeakers in trees where elephants regularly came to find shade. While the animals rested, researchers played buzzing sounds recorded at beehives. Here’s what happened:

Ninety-four percent of the elephant families left the tree within 80 seconds of hearing bee sounds, nearly half of the time at a run.

(Don’t believe it? Watch the video)

But how to use this information?

Most farmers can’t afford to put up loudspeakers in their trees. Besides, elephants are smart and would figure out pretty soon that no stinging follows.

Nor would farmers like a huge hive of stinging bees sitting at the edgle of the crops. People are smart too, and have learned to avoid bees. Two ideas mentioned in the article:

1. a beehive fence: “where the passage of a hungry elephant would trigger bees to start flying and buzzing, giving the animal cause to turn and not come back.”

2. a chain of hives suspened from stanchions, linked together by wires which would be disturbed by an elephant’s leg.

He was found dead in his cage the next morning, at age 31, apparently of natural causes.

This is the first parrot I can recall who’s gotten his passing recognized by an article in the New York Times

But then Alex was perhaps the world’s most famous talking bird. The African gray parrot knew his colors and shapes, and more than 100 English words. He appeared in news reports, scientific papers, and on TV - he shared scenes with the actor Alan Alda on the PBS series “Look Who’s Talking.”

Dr. Pepperberg bought him at a pet shop in 1977, when she was a doctoral student. At that time, scientists thought that parrots could merely mimic words and sounds, rather than using language to truly communicate with humans.

But maybe Dr. Pepperberg and Alex have changed scientists’ minds. Over the next 30 years, Pepperberg taught Alex not just words, but how to count small numbers of things, and recognize shapes and colors. The Times reports:

When shown a blue paper triangle, he could tell an experimenter what color the paper was, what shape it was, and — after touching it — what it was made of. As parrots can, he also picked up one-liners from hanging around the lab, like ‘calm down’ and ‘good morning.’

So think twice before you call someone a birdbrain. ‘That used to be a pejorative,” said Diana Reiss, a Hunter College psychologist who works with dolphins and elephants, ‘but now we look at those brains — at least Alex’s — with some awe.’

Here, pictured in the New York Times, is bully whippet Wendy (right.) Some of us might treasure this good looking girl. But breeders of championship whippets want to purge the trait from the breed.

Since the dog genome has recently been mapped, scientists are beginning to discover which genes are responsible for many specific traits. In the case of the bully whippets, scientists found that the “double muscling” is caused by a mutation in a gene that enhances muscle development.

Some Labrador breeders are using DNA tests for coat color to guarantee exotic silver-coated retrievers. Mastiff breeders are testing for shaggy fur to keep out the “fluffies,” long-haired puppies that occasionally are born to short-haired parents.

This is a far cry from creating cockapoos or labradoodles - breeding poodles with cocker spaniels or labradors. This is not about mixing, but purifying. On the horizon, says the Times report, could be tests for “big dogs, small dogs, curly-tailed dogs, dogs with the keenest senses of smell and dogs that cock their heads endearingly when they look at you.”

But (surprise, surprise) there are some consequences in dog breeders’ zeal for genetic perfection. Genes are often tied to multiple traits. Deliberate selection of certain ones can result in imperfection elsewhere. The gene responsible for those silver-coated Labradors is tied to skin problems.

And take the whippets. It turns out that the same mutation that pumps up some whippets makes others among the fastest dogs on the track.

New York Times reports:

Free of most of the ethical concerns — and practical difficulties — associated with the practice of eugenics in humans, dog breeders are seizing on new genetic research to exert dominion over the canine gene pool. Companies with names like Vetgen and Healthgene have begun offering dozens of DNA tests to tailor the way dogs look, improve their health and, perhaps soon, enhance their athletic performance

Hold on for a second. What exactly does this imply:

“Free of most of the ethical concerns — and practical difficulties associated with the practice of eugenics in humans…?”

I’d say it means we can guess what’s likely to happen to the puppy that’s been genetically screened and found to have, say, the bully gene.

It ends up in the dog pound and I adopt it.

Because my dogs will always be mutts. I have nothing against silver-coated labradors or super fast whippets, or brilliant border collies (though I do like to be a little smarter than my dog.) And it isn’t even that I’m especially kind and want to save a dog from death. I like the surprise. I don’t want to design my dog. I like to watch my own dog emerge, watch what sort of animal develops from that particular puppy. The beauty or the oddball, the mellow or the curious. How big? How hairy?

None of the dogs in my muttface gallery below would make the cut for any breed.

Melita says the problem is I’m talking the wrong way. “You need to be more flattering with an orchid,” she said. “Plants can sense communication.”

I hate it when Melita’s right.

That’s why I am so happy that she’s pretty wrong as well. According to a new study, plants can indeed sense communication, and I am indeed talking to mine the wrong way. But whether I cuss or praise, it won’t make no nevermind.

Plants talk to plants. The beach-dwelling sea rocket (see photo, left) appears to be able to recognize its kin, and be nicer, if you will, when growing alongside its family. It grows aggressively next to unrelated neighbors but it’s less competitive when sharing the soil with siblings.

Kyoto researchers say that certain plants send out SOS signals to their nearby siblings when they’re getting chewed up by insects. The siblings respond by producing chemicals that attract wasps that prey on the unwanted bugs.

But how the plants figure out which of their neighbors are siblings is still a mystery.

Learning and memory appear to be important for kin recognition in animals, but that isn’t an option for plants.

Some researchers speculate that plants communicate through their roots, identifying themselves using tiny chemical signatures specific to each plant’s family. And that isn’t an option for people.

So much for convincing my orchid to bloom. But I’m used to not being listened to. I have teenagers. And one thing I like about plants is they don’t talk back. As I said, I have teenagers.

(By the way, the woman in this photo is neither me nor Melita. It’s a photo by Mary Tuab that I got from Fickr of someone named Nancy.)

First off, it seems that Delta and Dawn are back at sea. When the two wayward humpback whales, a mother and her calf, were sighted 90 miles inland, up the Sacramento River on May 13, humans rushed to their aid. After two weeks of efforts, with thousands of spectators on the banks and in boats, cheering the whales on, the whales seemed to figure out how to get back to the salty Pacific. Whether the recorded whales calls, banging metal pipes and fire hoses helped or distracted the injured whales from their journey back to the Bay, no one knows. Maybe they would have found their way back without any human help at all…

While the predicament of these two individual whales captured the public attention and sympathy, the fate of the rest of the world’s whales hung in the balance as well.

It was an event during which humans could surely help whales, not just two whales, but whale populations all over the globe -the 59th annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) last week in Anchorage Alaska.

What were the results of this weeklong convention whose purpose is “to provide for the proper conservation of whale stocks?”

“Any significant development for whale conservation was thwarted by political wrangling and self-interest,” according to a World Wildlife fund report

The international forum barely addressed global warming, which scientists consider one of the most serious threats to marine life. A warming climate threatens food sources in Antarctic waters for the world’s largest creature, and has been linked to unusual migration patterns and the strange behavior of whales off Alaska’s coast, scientists say.

A proposed International Whaling Commission resolution about global warming’s impact on whales never even came up for a vote. The group opted instead for a climate change conference “at some point in the future.”

And sure, there were some strong statements against the proposal by the U.S. government to lease an area of critical habitat for the world’s most endangered whale population – the eastern North Pacific right whale – for oil and gas development. But “strong statements” don’t do much.

Plus, by the end of the tumultuous week, Japan threatened to quit the International Whaling Commission according to a National Geographic report. Japan had failed to gain support for a proposal to allow four of its coastal communities to hunt whales.

“As governments disagree on the same issues over and again, more and more whales are being killed by governments exploiting loopholes in the moratorium against commercial whaling. This degrades the entire spirit of the convention” said Wendy Elliott of WWF International’s Global Species Program. “Time is running out for these species and for the IWC.”

But what exactly is it?

It’s a question that was debated at Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Sustainable Food Institute on Thursday.

There were some agreed-upon yeses, according to The Daily Green.

Local is better
Why? it requires far less energy to get food from the farm to your plate than when food is trucked or flown from afar.

Unprocessed is better than processed
Why? Pretty much the same reason. Fewer ingredients and less manufacturing means less energy.

Organic is better
Why? Doesn’t use petroleum-based chemical fertilizers and pesticides. That reduces the energy needed to grow the crop. Plus less toxins for the environment

But, from where I sit:

*Unprocessed food requires time to prepare and cook. Who has that time?
*Local food is not readily available.
*Organic food is a luxury. People feeding a family on tight budget simply can’t afford it.

How do you balance competing choices — between workers’ jobs, the environment, and your own health? One example of the complexity of these decisions is the case of green beans in the UK.

Rich Pirog, program leader for the Marketing and Foods Systems Initiative at Iowa State University’s Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture said green beans imported from Kenya to the United Kingdom represent 1.5 percent of the total fruits and vegetables eaten in the U.K.

Yet, the amount of greenhouse gas emissions released in shipping the beans represents half of the total emissions to import all produce to the U.K. each year.

Still, the money from the green beans helps Kenyans develop their country - about 70 percent of the country’s green beans are imported to the U.K. But then there is the question of the 190 million cubic meters of water necessary to ship the beans. That water might be a lot more useful in the sub-Saharan country, he said.

I wonder, when we say sustainable, what do we really mean?

But researchers are saying it’s a top notch lie detector that far surpasses the polygraph in determining whether or not a person is lying.

The polygraph just measures physiological responses to stress - your pulse rate, sweating, irregular breathing - and has largely been discredited as a scientific tool.

The MRI goes straight to the source.

The MRI measures what’s happening in your brain. Researchers are using what’s called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), to watch localized brain activity, to look inside heads and see what your brain does when it lies.

According to Dr. K. Luan Phan, a psychiatrist at the University of Chicago, lying causes changes in your brain that you can see with a functional MRI because lying makes your brain work harder in the pre-frontal cortex, where reasoning occurs.

Guess who’s interested?

MRI lie-detection has already gone commercial. A California company, No Lie MRI says that, for a price (around $10,000), it can identify lies with 90% accuracy. Its website claims that it “provides unbiased methods for the detection of deception and other information stored in the brain,” and that their MRI technology “represents the first and only direct measure of truth verification and lie detection in human history!”

Meanwhile, federal dollars are pouring into this research. According to an article in The Scientist, since September 11, 2001, grants from US agencies, including the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, have “burst open the field.” Jon Gabrieli’s group at Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology has funding from the Central Intelligence Agency. No Lie MRI’s technology is based on the results of Daniel Langleben’s research at the University of Pennsylvania, which was partially funded by the Department of Defense.

How to trick an MRI

Researchers say the only way to trick the MRI is to convince yourself you’re telling the truth. If you really believe something is true, your brain won’t register enough changes to be conclusive.

We all know there are many different kinds of lying: “I love your haircut!” versus “I found the money in a trash heap.” Is telling the truth about whether a card is red or black the same as telling the truth about whether you are a terrorist? So far, researchers have had only willing subjects.

Is this the ultimate invasion of our privacy? Or is it a great new way to identify terrorists and serial killers?

“About a third of the American diet can be traced back to bees,” said May Berenbaum, professor and head of the department of entomology at the University of Illinois in Urbana – Champaign. According to a Congressional study, honeybees add about $15 billion a year in value to the U.S. food supply.

In her Clear Voices podcast, Berenbaum told Earth & Sky, “most people don’t grasp the gravity of the situation.”

Honeybees pollinate the flowers of an alphabet of crops: almonds, apples, asparagus, avocados, blueberries, broccoli, cantaloupe, celery, cherries, cranberries …

Another “A,” alfalfa, is an important food for cattle.

But scientists don’t know the cause of what’s been termed “colony collapse disorder.” Parasites, genetically modified foods, pesticides, and electromagnetic radiation from cell phone have all been proposed as possible culprits.

One of the weird aspects about this particular bee die-off is the missing bodies. Beekeepers open the lid of their hive, expecting to find a hiveful of bees, and instead there are only a few worker bees flying around inside. The queen, honey and eggs are still in the hive. “Bees just don’t do that,” beekeeper David Hackenberg told USA Today.

Read or listen to this Earth & Sky radio show: Since 2006, unprecedented honeybee decline