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.
Some stress-related factors in aging appear reversible
A new study from researchers at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons is the first to offer quantitative ...
How AI could confer ‘digital immortality’
Researchers and entrepreneurs are starting to ponder how artificial intelligence could create versions of people after their deaths—not only as ...
Saving the world — or possibly destroying it? What does the future of CRISPR genetic engineering portend?
In the past 70 years, we have uncovered the structure of DNA, the blueprint of life, built machines to read ...
Can AI brain-computer interfaces replace depression pills?
Sometimes antidepressants stop working after prolonged use and for many people they don’t work at all... With such gloomy prospects, it ...
Neuroscience of free thinking: Political correctness, free speech and the biological functions of the brain
What if a person’s stance on free speech—her willingness to tolerate opinions she doesn’t like—is linked to her brain function, ...
Why humans evolved to be the thirstiest of all mammals
To understand how water has influenced the course of human evolution, we need to page back to a pivotal chapter ...
Magic mushroom health promise: Psilocybin’s antidepressant brain-rewiring capabilities come into focus
Psilocybin, a psychedelic compound that can be derived from over 200 species of mushroom, can remodel connections in the mouse ...
Complimentary cognition: How humans evolved solution-focused brains and our unique ability to adapt
The period preceding the emergence of behaviorally modern humans was characterized by dramatic climatic and environmental variability - it is ...
Bionic bird? Meet Mia, rescued from certain death by a plug-and-play prosthetic foot
[Researcher Oskar Aszmann has given] Mia, a bearded vulture, a new foot. This is the first time a prosthetic of ...
Podcast: The evolution of lying
What is truth? How has it evolved? And what is its impact anyway? Evolutionary science shows that subtle social manipulation ...
Disorienting brain changes that occur during menopause are often only temporary
In one of the first studies to take an in-depth look at brain changes in healthy women before and after ...
Fan of soda? Association found between colon cancer and sugary drinks, though no direct links identified
[A] new study, published in the medical journal Gut, examined the link between colorectal cancer and sweet drinks in 94,464 ...
A brain helmet that can unlock the secrets of aging, concussions, meditation and metaphysical experiences? It’s now available and only cost $110 million to develop
“To make progress on all the fronts that we need to as a society, we have to bring the brain ...
Why the famous ‘march of human evolution’ illustration is so misleading
It's the diagram of evolution we're all familiar with – starting with an ape figure which slowly turns into an ...
Neuroscience of emotions: what we ‘see’ — smiles, frowns, puckered brows — are actually social constructs that your brain has learned from infancy
If you show pictures of actors portraying [common] emotions to people in all corners of the earth, they pretty reliably ...
The exabyte data solution? How we can store all of the world’s data in microscopic silica particles placed in DNA
On Earth right now, there are about 10 trillion gigabytes of digital data, and every day, humans produce emails, photos, ...
Did the global pandemic trigger a worldwide mental health crisis? Here’s why those fears never played out
As clinical scientists and research psychologists have pointed out, the coronavirus pandemic has created many conditions that might lead to ...
73% drop in HIV infections over the past 40 years
HIV infections have declined by 73 percent nationwide since peaking in the mid-1980s, according to the Centers for Disease Control ...
How the human brain resembles drug dealers in Albuquerque
David Eagleman, 50, is an American neuroscientist, bestselling author and presenter of the BBC series The Brain, as well as ...
Infographic: Gene transfer mystery — How ‘antifreeze’ genes jumped from one species to another without sex
It isn’t surprising... that herrings and smelts, two groups of fish that commonly roam the northernmost reaches of the Atlantic ...
Intellia’s disease-eradicating CRISPR tool is injected directly into the bloodstream. Here’s why that’s such a big deal
CRISPR gives us the ability to correct genetic mutations, and given that such mutations are responsible for more than 6,000 ...
How a blobby, brainless, bright yellow slime mold is redefining our understanding of human cognition
This slime mold species has thrived, more or less unchanged, for a billion years in its damp, decaying habitats. And, ...
Persuasion machines: AI can now debate humans. We still win — for now
Stand aside, Siri and Alexa. An IBM team led by artificial intelligence (A.I.) researcher Noam Slonim has devised a system ...
‘We create mosquito sex parties’: How an eco-friendly, AI-guided release of sterile mosquito females might control the scourge of disease-carrying insects
Jerusalem-based Diptera.ai has figured out a way to use AI to fight the growing threat of mosquitoes, which are spreading ...
‘Cutting nickel-size holes in your skull and plunging in metal-tipped electrodes’: Could deep brain stimulation cure drug addiction?
After nearly two decades of hardcore drug addiction — after overdoses and rehabs and relapses, homelessness and dead friends and ...
An instinct for numbers? Ancient humans and even some animals evolved the ability to count
Although researchers once thought that humans were the only species with a sense of quantity, studies since the mid-twentieth century ...
Is this skull unearthed in Israel the ‘missing link’ in human evolution that scientists have been hoping for?
[A newly discovered] hominin, or early human, has been named Nesher Ramla, after the site outside the city of Ramla ...
