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.
AI-powered patch that reads throat muscle movements can potentially restore speech for people with voice disorders
AI-powered patch reads throat muscle movements, potentially restoring speech for people with voice disorders ...
What’s going on in your brain when you’re zoning out on the couch?
The brain's 'default mode' has inspired a raft of research into networks of brain regions and how they interact with ...
New England Journal of Medicine and eugenics: Journal chronicles fraught history covering sterilization of immigrants, poor people and those with disabilities
In 1923, Boston City Hospital chose Dr. William Mayo, already famous for the work of his Minnesota clinic, to speak ...
AI and race: This bot can sniff out depression based on your social media posts — but only if you’re white
Over the years, scientists had developed methods to identify depression by analyzing the language people use in social media posts ...
Viewpoint: ‘Baby Olivia’ scandal — Republican legislators lie to kids about fetal development in anti-abortion propaganda video
“Meet Baby Olivia,” a three-minute video produced by the anti-abortion group Live Action, is the foundation of the latest bill that ...
Leading ways CRISPR is being honed to cure and prevent disease
Talented researchers are exploring ways of using CRISPR to edit genes by cutting and pasting any desired DNA sequence ...
How common is incest? Rise of genetic testing reveals disturbing evidence
Across human cultures, incest between close family members is one of the most universal and most deeply held taboos ...
Microplastics found clogging human arteries and lungs. What are the long-term health consequences?
Raising risk of heart attacks in humans: microplastics have been found in the blood and in organs such as the ...
‘This should be setting off alarms’: Nearly 18 million Americans could be living with long COVID. What are the implications?
CDC data shows nearly 18m people could be living with long Covid even as health agency relaxes isolation recommendations ...
‘Infantile amnesia’: People can’t form conscious memories before the age of 3. Could there be an evolutionary purpose?
Toddlers remember events in context, and new research suggests such memory lapses play an important role in brain development ...
Viewpoint: Seen headlines saying intermittent fasting diets can boost heart disease risks or even kill you? Here’s why you should be skeptical
Science as a process where studies help to make us a little less wrong, and a little more certain about ...
Long COVID survivors may experience brain fog and other symptoms but study suggests no lasting reduction in problem solving or other functions
Participants in a recent study struggled with concentration and sleep, including individuals who had not had Covid-19 and some who ...
Drug-free Alzheimer’s treatment: Headset and glasses combo that pulses with light and sound developed to combat cognitive decline
An experimental device developed by Cognito Therapeutics seeks to slow cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s patients using light and sound ...
Building an ‘uncancellable, parallel society of the future’? Far-right and anti-vaxxers meet to create a ‘freedom economy’ that ‘leaves woke corporations behind’
A spectrum of conspiracist and religious communities gathered in Las Vegas in March to discuss building an "uncancellable" future together ...
‘Suddenly everybody in the world looked like a creature in a horror movie’: Rare condition causes man to see distorted ‘demon’ faces
Science now knows that people can develop PMO after a brain injury, tumor or infection, or after seizures such as ...
War and artificial intelligence: Who’s to blame when something goes wrong?
States and civil society have taken up the question of intelligent autonomous weapons as a matter of serious concern ...
Bolsonaro, Modi, and Trump: What is so appealing about authoritarian men?
There are many voters voluntarily that give their vote to politicians who are not particularly interested in democracy ...
Could swimming ‘microbots’ smaller than a grain of sand one day deliver drugs and destroy pathogens in the bloodstream? We’re one step closer
Tiny robots that swim through our blood to deliver drugs or hunt down pathogens that can think for themselves ...
Tapeworm brain infestation? That’s what happened after one man ate undercooked bacon for years on end
A man in the US with a history of consuming undercooked “soft” bacon for years has been found to have ...
Can AI accurately guess your sexual orientation by scanning your brain?
A recent study investigated whether sexual orientation can be reliably predicted, based solely on a brief five-minute brain scan ...
Mythos and logos: Are people programmed to ‘need’ religion?
Justification systems: science is one, religion can be thought of as another, while humans are ultimately justifying creatures ...
Brain scans reveal how parental education and income affect kids’ development
Researchers have studied images of the brains of 10,000 American children finding parental education and income impact brain development ...
Generative AI’s energy-gobbling needs may pose a climate change problem
This is the first time the carbon emissions caused by using an AI model for different tasks have been calculated ...
Person in Texas contracts virulent strain of bird flu after contact with cattle, in second known US case
A person in Texas has been diagnosed with a highly virulent strain of bird flu, the first such case since ...
Challenging bioethical taboos: Chinese scientist He Jiankui who modified the genes of human embryos to protect them from HIV reopens his lab
Chinese researcher He Jiankui revealed to the Mainichi Shimbun that he has resumed research on human embryo genome editing ...
$4.25 million: World’s most expensive drug targets genetic disease that disables and kills toddlers. Will anyone pay for it?
There is a new most expensive drug ever—a gene therapy that costs more than the average person will earn in ...
Multiple companies scrambling to develop brain-computer interfaces that restore movement for severely injured patients
Device was temporarily implanted in a patient, moving it one step closer toward becoming a standard of care ...
