What happened
The House yesterday passed sweeping legislation to punish Russia and voted to hold billionaire Leon Black in contempt of Congress for defying subpoenas tied to Jeffrey Epstein, then adjourned until after the Nov. 3 midterms. House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) “decision to send the House home early — again” — exacerbated his “increasingly bitter feud” with Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) over his alleged use of the calendar to “dodge politically painful votes,” Axios said. 

Who said what
Massie (pictured above) “seized control” of the House for a “blistering hourlong speech” in which he accused Johnson of cutting out a day early to stymie “his bipartisan effort to force the release of more” Epstein files and his resolution to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, The Associated Press said. It was a “colorful capstone” to Johnson’s “tumultuous” two-year tenure, during which he “repeatedly and abruptly canceled House voting days” to avoid “disruptions from his own rebellious flank — particularly those legislative efforts that threatened to rebuke President Donald Trump.” By one count, Johnson cut a net 24 days this year, “about one-fourth of the total scheduled.”

What next?
The Russian sanctions bill, which passed 262-159, now goes to Trump’s desk for his expected signature. The legislation “targets Russia’s energy and defense industries” to “deprive Moscow of funds used to pay for its war with Ukraine,” Reuters said. But it “faced pushback because it also authorizes Trump to impose stiff tariffs ​of up to 100%” on countries that don’t “reduce their dependence on Russian oil and gas.” 

What happened
Tyrannosaurus rex, the “king of the dinosaurs,” was warm-blooded, with an average body temperature of 97 degrees Fahrenheit, scientists reported yesterday in the journal Science Advances. The researchers, from UCLA, calculated the dinosaur’s temperature by analyzing the chemical makeup of tiny samples of enamel drilled from three T. rex teeth. That “clever geochemistry technique” revealed that “T. rex ran hot, but not too hot,” The New York Times said, “somewhere on the body-temperature spectrum near large mammals like Indian elephants (97 degrees) or humans (98 degrees).” 

Who said what
The T. rex temperature is “unusually high for a reptile,” CNN said, but dinosaurs “share an evolutionary link with birds,” and 97 degrees “sits between” reptiles and “modern avians.” The findings “can help scientists piece together how the dinosaur might have lived,” said The Associated Press. The UCLA researchers calculated that T. rex “could have lived across most of prehistoric North America.” Being warm-blooded “really places new constraints on its behavior, its physiology, how it interacted with other species and how much food it needed,” study co-author Robert Eagle told CNN. 

What next?
Scientists plan to “test these methods on other dinosaurs to see how warm or cold they ran,” the AP said. “There’s lots of interesting, charismatic species that could be explored using this,” said Eagle.

More than 1,000 gene variants are associated with personality, including more than 800 not previously linked to it, according to a study published in the journal Nature. These genetic variants also “partially predict mental and physical health, longevity, education, career paths and outcomes, and even how people are perceived by close others,” Michigan State University said in a news release. 

While scientists have known that a variety of factors, including DNA, could affect personality, the “challenge has been deciphering the specific pathways through which a genetic blueprint nudges the direction of a person’s life,” said The New York Times. To figure that out, researchers had participants provide DNA samples and fill out a questionnaire measuring the “Big Five” personality traits: “openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism,” MSU said. Those traits are “relatively stable and habitual differences in how people think, feel and act.” 

Participants shared demographic and lifestyle information, allowing the researchers to “see links between personality traits, genetic variants and other parts of people’s lives,” said Time. For example, the variants linked to conscientiousness were “associated with being more active during the day while variants linked to openness to experience and extraversion were linked to being more of a night owl,” said the release. People with variants associated with neuroticism tended to spend more time at hospitals. 

Of course, experiences can shape personality too. Genetic variants linked to openness predict that a person will “move to more cosmopolitan neighborhoods,” MSU said. But “living in those neighborhoods may reinforce and further shape that same trait.”