I wish I had a real link, but all I have is

Refuges for Life in a Hostile Universe

It's merely the 'Quick Article Summaries' section of the current (October) issue.

'Refuges for Life in a Hostile Universe' is by Guillermo Gonzalez, Donald Brownlee and Peter D. Ward. It includes Lineweaver's study, who is cited for his work revealing the underlying dependence of planet formation and migration on metallicity.

The model they propose is essentially a variant of the 'Rare Earths' proposition. The authors continue to promote the Galactic Habitable Zone (GHZ) concept they proposed back in 1999.

The view they promote in some ways mirrors my own view of SETI. I do not see the evolution of life - or intelligence - as occurring independent of the evolution of the galaxy. In my opinion, life and intelligence are part of the galaxy's evolution and have a particular place in it. The authors expound a similar opinion, though it is probably a more pessimistic version of my own.

To me, the answer to the Fermi Paradox is that Earth is either an average civilization, or one that is actually more advanced than most others nearby. It may even be that ours is the most advanced in the galaxy.

I base some of my reasoning on the arguments involving metallicity. This also happens to be the focus of the article in Scientific American.

Some quotes:

Star-formation peak:

'In the galaxy as a whole, the star-formation rate peaked about eight billion to 10 billion years ago and has been declining ever since. Today the metallicity in the solar neighborhood is increasing by about 8 percent every billion years' (p. 64).

Our sun formed earlier than most siblings:

'The sun itself is about 40 percent richer in metal than other stars formed at the same time and location in the disk. This increased metal content may have given life on Earth a head start' (p. 64).

Stars formed later have higher
metallicity and less tectonics:

'As a result of the shifting supernova ratio, new sunlike stars are richer in iron than those that formed five billion years ago. All else being equal, this implies that a terrestrial planet forming today will have a proportionately larger iron care than Earth does. It will also have, in 4.5 billion years, about 40 percent less heat from the decay of potassium, thorium and uranium. The heat generated by these radioactive isotopes is what drives plate tectonics, which plays an essential role in the geochemical cycle that regulates the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere' (p. 65).

Civilized worlds could only have gotten their start in the last 5 billion years, and Earth was among the first:

'Furthermore, the GHZ concept constrains habitability not just in space but also in time. The Milky Way used to be pummeled by supernovae and an active nucleus. Only in the past five billion years or so could civilizations have safely arisen. The sun’s relatively high metallicity probably gave us a head start' (p. 67).

Yet another wrinkle in the endless SETI debate. My quotes were selective. The authors are not optimistic about the chances for the existence of other civilizations due to the constraints they place upon the Galactic Habitable Zone.

Go to your bookstore or library, check out the material and form your own impressions. I think it's a pretty good article.