Daily Human Digest
Every day, the staff of the Genetic Literacy Project scours the Web for stories on a range of human genetics issues, including gene editing, regulations and bioethics, gene therapy, epigenetics, personal genomics, evolution, ancestry and artificial intelligence. We publish excerpts of those stories and encourage our readers to visit the original publications for the complete stories.
Move, talk and touch: Brain-reading implants are revolutionizing life for paralyzed people
James Johnson hopes to drive a car again one day. If he does, he will do it using only his ...
Homo floresiensis mystery: Could this ancient hominid species still be alive?
Anthropologist Gregory Forth spent many years living among an ethnic group known as the Lio, an agricultural people who live ...
Aha! The science behind eureka moments
Psychologists call sudden aha! moments “insight.” They occur not only when we are faced with a problem but also when ...
Do evolution rejectionists tend to be more bigoted?
A recent psychological study by Stylianos Syropoulos et al. published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggests that ...
What’s the timeline for gene edited babies? 25 years, says CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna
It’s been 10 years since Crispr gene-editing pioneer Jennifer Doudna published the landmark paper that landed a Nobel Prize for ...
Anguish factor: Here’s why some people are more anxious than others — and what can be done about it
Anxiety disorders are the most common type of mental disorders in the U.S. But a simple diagnosis of generalized anxiety ...
Gene study begins unraveling the mystery of why humans live longer than most animals
In a major study, scientists have revealed that the slower a genetic code mutates, the longer the individual lives. The ...
How might geoengineering the climate impact infectious disease control?
Geoengineering the climate would have massive repercussions for the health of billions of people at risk of malaria who live ...
Most of us are more likely to trust AI-generated faces than actual humans
A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA provides a measure of how far ...
Some early hominins beat Homo sapiens out of Africa. Who were they?
Hominins, the branch of our family tree that separated itself from the other great apes, are believed to have ventured ...
‘Mate choice hypothesis’: Unraveling the evolutionary importance of female orgasms
The female orgasm may be a means for selecting mates for committed long-term relationships, according to a new study published ...
30 years younger? How scientists are getting human cells to ‘time-jump’
Scientists at the Babraham Institute have developed a method to “time jump” human skin cells by 30 years, turning back ...
Do you believe in human evolution? Rejectionism linked to racism and anti-LGBTQ attitudes
A disbelief in human evolution was associated with higher levels of prejudice, racist attitudes and support of discriminatory behavior against ...
Genetic factors can drive how we choose friendship bonds – in mice. Does it work the same way in humans?
A study published in Molecular Psychiatry suggests that certain enzymes in the brain may have a previously unrecognized link to ...
Biogas from human waste could be key to promoting African energy independence
While not necessarily a topic to discuss in polite company, many experts believe that the future of sustainable energy lies ...
How COVID steals sense of smell
Few of Covid-19’s peculiarities have piqued as much interest as anosmia, the abrupt loss of smell that has become a ...
Some heavy smokers will never get cancer. Here’s why
Cigarette smoking is overwhelmingly the main cause of lung cancer, yet only a minority of smokers develop the disease. A ...
Can we ‘reverse’ aging? ‘Reprogrammed’ skin cells offer promise — but we don’t know why
People could eventually be able to turn the clock back on the cell-aging process by 30 years, according to researchers ...
Unraveling the mystery of why some of us stutter
Interruptions anywhere along this articulation pathway can impair the utterance, and create something like a stutter. Now, studying a neurocomputational ...
Could a simple blood test reveal risks of developing some mental illnesses?
Mental health disorders including depression, schizophrenia, and anorexia show links to biological markers detected in routine blood tests, according to ...
‘I have an interesting brain’: The genius woman with a missing temporal lobe
In early February 2016, after reading an article featuring a couple of scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who ...
Vanity Fair examines COVID lab-leak controversy
More than a year into the pandemic, the genesis of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, was still a mystery. ...
What do parrots and humans have in common? Unraveling connection between longevity and brain size
When it comes to lifespan, birds truly stand out. Lifespan tends to increase with an animal’s body size, roughly speaking, ...
Ancient skeletons reveal history of inequality
Contrary to popular belief and cinematic glorification, most archaeologists would say that the search for spectacular treasures isn’t their main ...
Why are those with schizophrenia dying from COVID at extraordinarily high rates? Scientists study links between immune system and psychiatric illness
Most of the time, the voices in Keris Myrick’s head don’t bother her. They stay in the background or say ...
How psilocybin rewires the brain to treat depression
Psilocybin is one of a number of psychedelics under investigation as a potential therapy for psychiatric disorders. In the last ...
Viewpoint: Anti-science vigilantism – Attacks target sociobiology pioneer EO Wilson
Was the renowned Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson wrongly convicted of racism and promoting race science in the court of ...
