Nina Azari, a neuroscientist at the University of Hawaii at Hilo who also has a doctorate in theology, has looked at the brains of religious people.

ECONOMIST: The science of religion

Wayne Holland, currently at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, and his colleagues, who have just published their results in Nature, looked at three stars: Vega (350m years old), Fomalhaut (200m years), and Beta Pictoris (between 10m and 100m years), all within a few dozen light years of the earth.

ECONOMIST: Dusty genesis