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.
More than 50% of Americans accept the science of evolution — but only 32% of fundamentalist Christians
Americans are more scientifically literate than ever in 2021 — so much so that creationism has become a minority opinion. And ...
Less than half of cultures around the world indulge in romantic lip kissing — a uniquely human endeavor
Less than half of all societies kiss with their lips, according to a study of 168 cultures from around the ...
Many non-human animals end their lives through self-destructive behaviors. Is it suicide?
Are non-human animals actually capable of purposely ending their own lives? ... Famed field biologist George Schaller recounts an instance ...
Lab-grown mini brains grow their own eyes
A group of scientists has grown mini brains that have something their real counterparts do not: a set of eye-like ...
Brain fingerprinting: Microelectronics and medical imaging bring us closer to acheiving mind reading and banishing blindness
Coupled with powerful microelectronics, science’s understanding of the brain is opening the door to new ways of handling criminal investigations ...
Children who finish puberty earlier — usually girls — tend to do better in school
Girls do better than boys in almost all subjects at school. Many researchers are concerned about the growing differences in ...
Love over food: Canines pass on eating when forced to choose between their owners and snacks
An analysis of several kinds of research on dogs has concluded that dogs really do love their owners or other ...
If you can’t see me you can’t bite me: CRISPR experiments target altering mosquitoes to make them blind to humans
For the first time, scientists have used the gene-editing tool Crispr-Cas9 to render humans effectively invisible in the eyes of ...
Hsam: The genetic mystery of photographic memory
Genuinely “photographic” memories are exceptionally rare. Also called highly superior autobiographical memory (Hsam), this ability is only verified by one ...
Suddenly, we have more antidepressant alternatives than just conventional depression-treating drugs
Patient responses.... after years of unsuccessful treatment with standard drugs, are spurring a gradual — and, some would say, overdue ...
First global index of pollinator population changes: Habitat loss and land management are primary drivers, with pesticides last
The top three global causes of pollinator loss are habitat destruction, followed by land management – primarily the grazing, fertilizers ...
Is there an evolutionary advantage to feeling pain?
For individuals that have either an acquired or naturally occurring reduced sensitivity to pain, the results can be fatal.... Clearly, ...
How diabetes and mental health are inextricably linked
Mental health has long been known as a determinant of physical health, a fact made painfully obvious during a pandemic ...
How grief overwhelms and transforms who we are
Grief has such a powerful effect on us, I learned, that it rewires the brain: the limbic system, a primal ...
Part I: Viewpoint — Does American medicine perpetuate a ‘racist caste system’? Critical Race Theory enters mainstream health
Medical schools are adding units on critical race theory, intersectionality, implicit bias, identity, oppression, allyship, power and privilege to their curricula. Medical students are ...
Brain Computer Interface: How BCI implants can transform thoughts into spoken words
More than 15 years ago, a man who was only 20 years old had a massive stroke when a major ...
Viewpoint: Might embracing fake news and conspiracy theories serve as an evolutionary survival strategy?
Human beings have an evolutionary history, and deception is commonplace in the animal world because it confers evolutionary advantage. There's ...
3,000 years: That’s how long it might take to hear back from our outreach to extraterrestrial civilizations
As a field, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence suffers from some rather significant constraints. Aside from the uncertainty involved (e.g., ...
‘Eyes are a window to the brain?’ Pupil size emerges as a marker of intelligence
Our pupils respond to more than just the light. They indicate arousal, interest or mental exhaustion. Pupil dilation is even ...
How our brains reward us during sleep to reinforce positive experiences
Memory’s function is to store information that will be useful. Because of this, our mind prioritizes remembering some things over ...
Alzheimer’s is almost impossible to treat. Now there are treatments drawing on brain waves and protein tangles in the pipeline beyond the focus on sticky amyloid plaques
Immune cells, toxic protein tangles and brain waves are among the targets of future Alzheimer's treatments, scientists say. These approaches ...
Synthetic biology in space: Mushrooms could be used to build extraterrestrial habitats
In a new “astromycological” venture launched in conjunction with NASA, [Paul] Stamets and various research teams are studying how fungi ...
Finding ‘invisible DNA’ floating in the air opens doors to detecting and protecting rare wildlife
DNA is in the air – literally. It is wafted around by all the Earth’s creatures, and now scientists have ...
‘A tyrannical clawhold’ on their world: How Tyrannosaurus Rex dominated the prehistoric ecosystem
The sheer size and apparent ferocity of T. rex has been apparent from the outset, but, paleontologists have learned, this ...
CRISPR, fluorescent proteins, optogenetics: Three life-enhancing technologies inspired by nature
Watson and Crick, Schrödinger and Einstein all made theoretical breakthroughs that have changed the world’s understanding of science. Today big, game-changing ideas are less ...
The intriguing brain science of left-handedness
Handedness is one of many functional left-right differences in the brain. Specifically, in left-handers, the motor cortex in the right ...
Sex or food? When deprived of both, dinner wins out — at least for fruit flies
Animals make behavioral choices every day. But how do they prioritize one need over another—especially when those choices are both ...
