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.
Can we blame Neanderthal-human sex for a million COVID deaths?
About 60,000 years ago, a human had a sexual encounter with a Neanderthal. Now, a genetic scientist has claimed that ...
Should an AI chatbot robot have rights? A now-suspended Google engineer thinks so
Google suspended an engineer who contended that an artificial-intelligence chatbot the company developed had become sentient, telling him that he ...
Can the body exist without the brain? Is the human mind nothing more than a parasite?
Take a deep breath. Can you feel your lungs filling with air? Now look at your hand. Can you see ...
Should COVID sufferers avoid Paxlovid because of symptom rebound reports?
Paxlovid is an oral two-drug combination regimen that treats COVID-19. One drug is nirmatrelvir, an antiviral, while the second, ritonavir, ...
One in 500 men have an extra sex chromosome. What does that mean and what are the signs?
Twice as many men carry an extra sex chromosome as previously thought, according to researchers who called for more genetic ...
Digital children? Will AI create the offspring of the future?
If you prick it, it will not bleed. If you tickle it, it will not laugh. And, perhaps most importantly, ...
Is melatonin a safe and risk-free sleep aid — as many doctors contend? Think twice
Melatonin poisoning in kids is on the rise, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. From 2012 to ...
Evolving smaller humans? Scientists debate whether rising temperatures will cause our species to shrink
Throughout history, species have evolved to adapt to their changing surroundings. Now, with skyrocketing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere ...
Robotic realism: For the first time, human skin engineered to grow on a robot’s finger
It's still a long way until human-like robots walk among us in our daily lives, but scientists from Japan are ...
New COVID Omicron variants become dominant strains in US, especially in South
The United States appears to be in the midst of another biological baton pass between Covid-19 variants. The Omicron lineage ...
Video: Are babies born with a moral compass?
Are people born with a sense of right and wrong? A new study finds young infants can already make moral ...
Book review: ‘The Rise and Reign of the Mammals’ is Steve Brusatte’s sweeping history of how mammals took over the world
[In] The Rise and Reign of the Mammals, paleontologist Steve Brusatte’s [recounts the] sweeping history of the animals that have, ...
Artificial sentience: How close are AI models to achieving consciousness?
LaMDA, short for Language Model for Dialogue Applications, is Google’s system for building chatbots based on its most advanced large ...
‘Neurological roots of politics’: Are Democrat and Republican brains wired differently?
Emerging research has begun investigating the neural underpinnings of the biological and psychological differences that drive political ideology, attitudes and ...
Is short better: Can height predict your risk for certain diseases?
Over the years, scientists have examined a person’s height as a non-modifiable risk factor for certain diseases. Past research shows ...
COVID risk genes: 1370 gene variants predispose people to severe virus and even death
Researchers from the University of Sheffield and Stanford University in the US have discovered there are specific genetic signals in ...
Dinosaur takeover? How realistic is the science of cloning and gene editing in Jurassic World Dominion?
The Jurassic Park franchise has never exactly been praised for its scientific accuracy. Even its core concept - the idea dinosaur DNA ...
How politics can impact health: ‘Stark partisan divide’ in premature death rates among Democrat and Republican voters
In an ideal world, public health would be independent of politics. Yet recent events in the U.S., such as the ...
Do dogs ponder the future? Here’s what we can learn from animal dreams
Other animals may not ponder deep, existential questions, but the fact that they dream proves that they possess formidable memories ...
Gene-editing injections: A new way to tweak epigenetic expression of genes to treat alcohol addiction
While gene editing relies on changing the DNA code itself, epigenetic editing involves dialing the expression of individual genes up ...
Is Singapore’s mosquito-borne dengue emergency a harbinger of climate change disruptions ahead?
Singapore says it is facing a dengue “emergency” as it grapples with an outbreak of the seasonal disease that has ...
Crimes of the Future: David Cronenberg movie ‘imagines a world in which humans are evolving and mutating and growing new organs regularly’
Pain is a essentially a thing of the past for some in David Cronenberg’s “ Crimes of the Future,” a ...
How did ancient animals evolve to be so giant?
Prehistoric giants used to populate the Earth. These behemoths included mighty dinosaurs, airplane-size pterosaurs, massive crocodiles and snakes, and even ...
‘Dark personalities’: When are destructive traits like narcissism and psychopathy most likely to appear?
Stories about insufferable teenagers, selfish college students, or inconsiderate older adults have one thing in common: They attribute the presence ...
‘We just clicked’: Is there a chemical basis to ‘love at first sight’?
Finding true love may actually be due to how well your body synch’s up with your partner, according to researchers ...
Antibiotics that kill gut bacteria can ravage athletes’ motivation and endurance
New research demonstrates that by killing essential gut bacteria, antibiotics ravage athletes’ motivation and endurance. The UC Riverside-led mouse study ...
Here’s how abortion pills mifepristone and misoprostol work
Today mifepristone is often used in combination with another drug, misoprostol, and together the pair are more than 95 percent ...
