Personalized, or precision, medicine applied to cancer treatment has its origins in studies of human genetics and the genetic mutations found in different cancers. A variety of personalized treatments continue to make advances in increasing patients’ longevity and quality of life.

You’ve probably heard people talking about “runner’s high”: a sense of euphoria and relaxation runners feel when they’ve been running a long time.

New research provides evidence that political leanings are more deeply intertwined with our genetic makeup than previously thought, specifically linked to two core ideological traits: right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation. Unlike the conventional belief that our political stances are merely extensions of our personality traits, this study suggests that our views on hierarchy and social dominance have their own distinct genetic foundations. The findings have been published in the Journal of Personality.

Habitat degradation, invasive species, infectious diseases and climate change have put many native animals in jeopardy and given Australia one of the worst rates of species loss in the world.

Despite Vermont’s Agricultural Innovation Board (AIB), created to inform regulatory recommendations using science, flatly stating there was no basis for a ban on a class of safe pesticides called neonicotinoids, and agreement by Vermont’s Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets, the Vermont Senate just passed House Bill H706, which will ban such insecticides despite decades of safe use.

At the end of next year, genetically modified plants could be allowed in Switzerland. An alliance of organic farmers and opponents of genetic engineering want to prevent this – and is now launching an initiative.

Next battleground in US culture wars: Republican states advance bans on cell-cultured foods (Business Insider)

Science for Sustainable Agriculture (SSA) was recently asked by the farming media to comment on a policy paper issued by the organic certification body Organic Farmers & Growers (OF&G), calling on the UK Government to use its forthcoming land use framework to treble the area of organically managed land in England, claiming this would result in significant climate and biodiversity benefits.

Holden Thorp, the editor-in-chief of the prestigious journal Science, described on Substack a discussion that occurred during the recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In the closing plenary session, he posed to a “panel of scientific leaders” the question, “Who is a scientist?” The answers “ranged from very narrow (just people who are doing or planning research) all the way to very broad (every living human).”

Although human beings arrived on Earth just ~300,000 years ago, we’ve transformed the entire planet completely.