Newsletter GLP Human
Will Homo longi elbow aside Neanderthals as our closest relative?
In 1933 a mysterious fossil skull was discovered near Harbin City in the Heilongjiang province of north-eastern China. Despite being ...
Lefty or righty? Is handedness genes or chance?
Many geniuses, from Einstein to Bill Gates were lefties. But left-handedness remains a rarity--only 1 in 10 of us are ...
GLP Podcast: Loneliness causes dementia? Parkinson’s-fighting GM tomatoes; ‘Sovietizing’ science
Loneliness could drastically boost your risk of developing dementia. Genetically engineered tomatoes may be our first line of defense against ...
For the first time, CRISPR gene editing tools were injected into the human body — and cured a patient’s blindness. What’s next?
More evidence for the efficacy of a groundbreaking new gene-editing medical procedure has emerged, deepening hope it will provide one-shot treatments or ...
Viewpoint: From forced confessions to believing that vaccines cause autism, brainwashing has a harsh history
In 1937, the longtime Bolshevik leader Georgy Pyatakov was tried in Moscow for treason, sabotage and other alleged crimes against ...
Pet love: Humans nurture their animals as they parent their children. Here’s the evolutionary reason why
Have you noticed more cats riding in strollers lately? Or bumper stickers that read, “I love my granddogs”? You’re not ...
GLP Podcast: Trauma changes your DNA? Lifelike sex robots; Have we cured leukemia?
Can traumatic life experiences leave an imprint on our DNA that we pass down to our children? Get ready, because ...
Some endangered species can no longer survive in the wild. So should we alter their genes to protect them?
Around the world, populations of many beloved species are declining at increasing rates. According to one grim projection, as many as ...
What science says about the future of COVID-19
With pandemic fatigue becoming more intense, there is increasing speculation about when the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, might become ...
Understanding the ‘runner’s high’: How exercising creates a natural marijuana-like euphoria
Many people have experienced reductions in stress, pain and anxiety and sometimes even euphoria after exercise. What’s behind this so-called ...
Question the ‘lab leak’ theory but don’t call it a conspiracy
A warning: This article will not tell you whether SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a lab and set off the Covid-19 pandemic, ...
GLP Podcast: Don’t ‘cancel’ Joe Rogan?; Psychopaths among us; Green Revolution saved $83 trillion
The recent campaign to "cancel" comedian Joe Rogan for promoting COVID misinformation highlights a troubling trend in science communication. High-functioning ...
Viewpoint: Anti-GMO groups ‘using the COVID lab-leak theory to spur opposition to a wide swath of important, even life-saving, biotechnologies’
Hoping to keep their cause alive in the wake of the pandemic, the anti-GMO movement has glommed on to a ...
Sandy From the Mountains dies from COVID-19, leaving a message to the unvaxxed
Sandy and her husband lived in a cabin nestled into a mountainside in a small town in the Rockies, next ...
Viewpoint: ‘Sovietizing’ Western science? Conflating STEM research with fashionable ideologies raises Orwellian concerns
Earlier this year, I (Anna) did something that my friends feared I would come to regret: I publicly spoke out ...
COVID immunity: Is it stronger from infection or vaccination?
Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, a University of California-Irvine psychiatry professor, felt he didn’t need to be vaccinated against covid because he’d ...
GLP Podcast: Genetics of sugar cravings; Male birth control; CRISPR-edited apples coming soon?
We all crave sugar on occasion, and geneticists say they've found some of the genes that may have driven this ...
‘Byzantine regulations’: Here are the human health and environmental reasons why we need to aggressively embrace GMOs and gene editing
Organisms developed with so-called new breeding techniques (NBTs) like CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing have earned widespread support from farmers and scientists ...
Let food be thy medicine: How GMO tomatoes could help Parkinson’s patients
An apple a day might keep the doctor away, but soon the garden’s preventative prescription for 60 thousand Americans might ...
Are geniuses more likely to commit crimes than people of average intelligence?
“Our society tends to regard as a sickness any mode of thought or behavior that is inconvenient for the system ...
Will glow-in-the-dark materials someday light our cities?
Around the year 1603, Italian shoemaker and amateur alchemist Vincenzo Casciarolo tried smelting some especially dense stone he had found ...
GLP Podcast: Academic freedom has limits? UK backtracks on neonic ban; ‘Non-GMO’ tearless onions
Does academic freedom protect professors who spread scientific nonsense online? The UK appears to be backtracking on a pesticide ban ...
Infographic: How is surrogacy regulated around the world?
Surrogacy regulation can differ wildly from state to state and country to country. Take a look at these infographics to ...
Dangerous environmental neurotoxins are on the rise and climate change could make it worse. Can anything be done?
In the summer of 2021, a toxic, smoky haze stemming from Western wildfires wafted across large parts of the United States, ...
Determining when life biologically begins is too fuzzy to give clarity to the abortion debate
I’m a biologist. A neuroscientist, actually. Since I received my PhD in Biological Psychology from the University of Chicago, I’ve ...
GLP Podcast: 10 ‘stupid’ food memes; COVID drugs are here; What makes someone a narcissist?
People believe a lot of nonsense about food and farming; let's debunk the top-10 worst of these "truisms." The FDA ...
Ongoing dispute over the origins of COVID-19 raises a prickly question: Should consensus play a role in science?
After having been told for over a year that there was a scientific consensus that Covid had a natural origin ...
