Nature Nurture Debate: Born Lazy? Don't like going to the gym? Hate exercise? Now there's an excuse: new studies on mice have shown that the desire to exercise may be largely determined by genetic factors. This suggests that some people may find it easy to increase their activity levels to get healthy, while others will struggle.

New research carried out by sociologists has added to wealth of evidence that nature and nurture cannot be treated as separate factors when explaining human behaviour: human behaviour is the result of interactions between genes and the environment. Whether genes are expressed depends on environmental factors and genes themselves can change the environment.

More evidence that intelligence can be affected by nurture, but biological determinism still rules (at least for gerbils) New research findings published online in The FASEB Journal provide more evidence that if we get smart about what we eat, our intelligence can improve. According to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) scientists, dietary nutrients found in a wide range of foods from infant formula to eggs increase brain synapses and improve cognitive abilities.

Nature v Nurture: Homosexuality due to genes and environment The world's largest twin study indicates that homosexuality is due to both nature (genes) and nurture (the environment); however environmental factors that are specific to the individual (e.g., pre-natal exposure to hormones) are more important than shared environmental factors (e.g., parenting).