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.
Video and Infographic: Pandemic response has sent trust in science soaring after years of faltering
The global pandemic has renewed trust in science. Our annual research shows that appreciation for science and trust in scientists ...
Some birds are quite smart but do they really ‘think like humans’?
[B]road claims for animal intelligence that go well beyond problem-solving abilities are often questionable. Consider, for example, the mirror test ...
CBD is hyped as a ‘miracle cure’ for just about everything. Here is the reality
So, is CBD a miracle cure? Despite its promise, if you’re someone who hopes to read that science proves CBD ...
Not quite total recall: How limits on what humans can remember is helping us ‘teach’ AI
An artificial neural network learns by adjusting synaptic weights—how strongly one artificial neuron connects to another—which in turn leads to ...
Vaccines contain GMOs that will harm you? Debunking anti-biotechnology/anti-vaccine nonsense
There is no scientifically plausible reason to accept the hypothesis that either DNA in vaccines or the DNA in GMO foods are ...
Why intermittent fasting often doesn’t work
Many followers of the [intermittent fasting] diet, which has been popularized in best-selling diet books and touted by celebrities, routinely ...
Corvids are more brainiac than birdbrain: Crows may be able to reflect and ponder their own mind
Research unveiled on [September 24] in Science finds that crows know what they know and can ponder the content of their ...
Scientists create mutant enzyme that chomps plastic bottles for lunch
A team of researchers that previously re-engineered a plastic-eating enzyme named PETase have now combined it with a second enzyme ...
Recreating the Neanderthal Y chromosome helps explain how modern humans emerged
One hurdle in deciphering human prehistory is the absence of evidence of a Neanderthal Y chromosome in the genetic record ...
Video: How to boost your immune system to guard against COVID and other illnesses
Scientists have recently developed ways to measure your immune age. Fortunately, it turns out your immune age can go down ...
Dyslexia shows the inborn nature of visual imagining and cognition
Reading is a learned skill; no one is born reading. But learning to read relies on inborn human capacities for ...
4 of the most promising planets where we might find alien life
The Earth’s biosphere contains all the known ingredients necessary for life as we know it. Broadly speaking these are: liquid ...
COVID spikes surge in search for birth parents and disconnected relatives
[Krystal] Myers, 34, grew up in Freeport, Long Island with her mother, and still lives near there. When she was ...
Trump did not ‘beat COVID’: Recovering from an illness is not a form of warfare
“Our president is strong and will beat the virus,” said House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. “He’s a fighter,” said former press secretary Sarah Huckabee ...
‘Editing Humanity’: Kevin Davies’ new book on CRISPR, the ‘miracle of our age’
“The Crispr story has arrived for the grand telling as a miracle of our age,” the [MIT Technology Review announced ...
Why males suffer from more diseases than females: Blame it on the Y
Humans each have 23 pairs of chromosomes, including one pair of sex chromosomes. While females carry two X sex chromosomes, ...
Gaming addiction doesn’t appear to foreshadow psychiatric problems
A gaming disorder is characterized by causing a variety of problems in a person’s personal and work life. It can ...
Video: Antarctica research shows how isolation changes the brain
As humans grapple with pandemic-induced isolation, science is starting to offer insight into what may be happening in our brains when ...
How the brain bends our sense of time
Time in the brain doesn't follow the steady ticking of the world's most precise clocks. Instead, it seems to fly by ...
Air pollution kills more than HIV, tuberculosis and smoking
The COVID-19 pandemic underscores more than any time in recent history how important it is to protect public health. Yet, as countries ...
A cup of coffee a day keeps colorectal cancer away
Drinking one to four or more cups of coffee a day may help people with advanced colorectal cancer live longer ...
Intricate high synergy brain regions likely explanation for complex thinking
[Researchers at the University of Cambridge are studying] a new aspect of brain organization: synergy between brain regions. Some networks ...
Video: Breaking the COVID genetic code: How genetic data revealed a secret coronavirus outbreak
The coronavirus mutates as it moves through its victims. Infectious particles swabbed from a patient’s nose carry small but distinctive differences ...
Biden vs Trump on technology
In every presidential election since 2008, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) has released a report examining the two ...
Neanderthals probably were not full time cave dwellers
Genetic, chemical and geological analysis tools help teams extract as much information as they can from the bones and tools ...
Only 67% of schools teach evolution is ‘settled science’ although teaching creationism in schools is on the wane
American teachers have not always been afforded the luxury of teaching evolution forthrightly. John Thomas Scopes, for example, was famously ...
Fear and anxiety may not be as separate as we have come to believe
[It’s commonly believed that] fear is a more basal response to an immediate threat thought to be controlled by the ...
