Health & Medicine
Through the study and use of genetics, we can identify measures that could lead to the improvement of human health and wellness. These methods and procedures aim to prevent years of chronic disease and thousands of dollars in health care costs, and provide families and communities with knowledge of how to live healthier.
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Looking for a memory boost? Forget crossword puzzles and get more sleep
People try numerous methods to stave off the memory decline associated with old age, but how many of them actually ...
Video: Our bodies continue ‘ticking right along’ after we die
When youโre dead, youโre deadโright? No pulse, no brain activity, no signs of life. But at the cellular level, things ...
Will this โgerm gameโ help us prepare for a terror attack using a bioengineered virus?
In June 2001, a group of government officials and journalists play-acted their way through a โgerm game,โ a fictional scenario ...
Have we discovered a key switch for our biological clocks?
Our circadian clocks can be misaligned by a variety of reasons. Some of us are morning larks, other night owls ...
Chess grandmasters live longerโjust like elite athletes
Itโs well established that elite athletes have a longer life expectancy than the general public. A recentย reviewย of over 50 studies ...
Video: A quick history of biotechnology
Hereโs a history of DNA, genes, and chromosomes as fast as possible. Read full, original post:ย A History Of Biotechnology ...
Why can your DNA vary from cell to cell? Mosaicism is a โhidden mix of mutationsโ
James Priest couldnโt make sense of it. He was examining the DNA of a desperately ill baby, searching for a ...
Genetics of socialization revealed through study of rare Williams Syndrome
One of the things that makes us human is how we socialize with one another. What drives our social behavior ...
What does it really mean to be normal?
We use the term โnormalโ so casually and so often that it seems utterlyโฆnormal. But in a compellingย Trends in Cognitive ...
How genes affect your dog’s athleticismโand what we might learn about ourselves
Compare the sprinting Shetland sheepdog with the sluggish St. Bernard, and itโs clear a dogโs genes play a large role ...
Is religion incompatible with science? Three scientists say itโs possible to have both
Is the conflict between religion and science as deep as some think? We talk to three scientists about how they ...
Boosting memory by combining electrical brain stimulation and learning
Low dose transcranial direct current stimulation have been the subject of much debate. Now, the technology is combined with cognitive ...
‘Biofortification’: Super-nutritious crops could help millions of undernourished children
An incredibleย 155 million childrenย around the world are chronically undernourished, despite dramatic improvements in recent decades. In view of this, the ...
‘Algorithmic death spiral’: The failing mental health of our machines
Is my car hallucinating? Is the algorithm that runs the police surveillance system in my city paranoid? Marvin the android ...
Antibiotic resistance may be dangerousโbut it’s hardly new
Despite media reports, antibiotics always faced microbe resistance. Can studying their genetics show us a path to new drugs ...
Can we reverse aging in dogs through gene therapy? If so, humans could be next.
The worldโs most influential synthetic biologist is behind a new company that plans to rejuvenate dogs using gene therapy. If ...
Viewpoint: Doctors need better training if DNA sequencing becomes standard care
[Recently] the CEO of Pennsylvania health care providerย Geisingerย announced that its doctors will now offer patients DNA sequencing โas part of ...
Sex in space? An awkward talk we will need to have
As the prospect of Mars colonization grows on the public radar screen, sex talk is not as much taboo that ...
Night shift workers are at greater risk for obesity, diabetes, cancerโbut why?
Researchers have been studying night workers for years, trying to better understand what happens to our circadian rhythms and our ...
Does ‘brain stress’ play a key role in our obesity epidemic?
Keeping off weight is harder than it seems, but it could be due to how our brains are wired ...
Mind or matter? How consciousness in the universe could be โeternalโ
Which is more fundamental, mind or matter? You would think, in our ultra-materialistic era, that debate would be settled. But ...
Does an extra glass of wine take 30 minutes off your life? Thatโs โoutlandishโ
A few weeks ago, the media ran wild with an outlandish claim that an extra glass of wine will take ...
Does birth control affect who women are attracted to?
A commonly touted theory about how womenโs attraction to men works might be all wrong, suggests a new paperย publishedย this week ...
Delving into our dreamsโand why they evolve as we age
Although radically different in terms of their content and feel, the range of dream states are just as complex as ...
โOne shotโ treatment for hemophilia B uses CRISPR and stem cells
Scientists at the Salk Institute have combinedย CRISPR-Cas9ย gene editing with stem cell technology to generate a one-time, autologousย cell therapyย for the genetic ...
The ‘Big O’: How and why evolution brought us the female orgasm
Female orgasms arenโt necessary for reproduction. A comparative evolution study suggests they once might have been ...
Reproductive warfare: Do infertile โkamikaze spermโ thwart rival males?
In the 1990s, biologist Robin Bakerย put forth the ideaย that a significant proportion of human sperm are not actually capable of ...
