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.
Craving to catch the last rays of summer? It’s likely in your genes
[P]eople’s behaviour towards seeking sun is complicated by a genetic predisposition, and this needs to be taken into account when ...
Designer babies? CRISPR cucumbers? Time for a global citizens’ ethics assembly
[The] implications [of gene editing] are so profound that a growing group of experts believe it is too important a ...
How can we detect alien organisms that don’t look like life on Earth?
Nearly all previous life detection instruments have looked for volatile organic compounds using a gas chromatograph–mass spectrometer, or GC-MS. The Viking ...
Masculinity crisis? Social roles and what defines manhood are in flux
Usually, masculinity is defined in terms of various lists of traits or characteristics. However, there is no authoritative list of such ...
After watching family member suffer ALS-related anxiety, family launches campaign to encourage patients to try medical marijuana
[Pete Frates, a] Boston College graduate who had been diagnosed with ALS years earlier, was already seeing top psychiatrists and ...
Evolution’s unpredictable dark side: Everything ‘natural’ is not always good
Given a choice, most people gravitate toward the natural over the artificial. After all, natural environments are preferable to garbage ...
Puberty resets the brain, giving preteens facing stress and hardship a second chance
A childhood characterized by hardship, negligence or abuse can also alter the neuroendocrine system that regulates how the body responds ...
‘I’ve saved 38 days of ‘wasted time’ in five years by not showering. What else happened?’
If you spent 30 minutes per day showering and applying products, over the course of a long life—100 years, for ...
Vaccine advances for gastric, pancreatic, esophageal and colon cancer
Scientists at Thomas Jefferson University who are developing a cancer vaccine to prevent recurrences of gastric, pancreatic, esophageal, and colon ...
Epigenetics mystery: Can environment-induced changes be passed on?
Israeli researchers have discovered that laboratory worms transfer information about their parents’ physical environment through small RNA molecules that occur ...
When ‘bones and stones’ are not enough: Genetics fills in the blanks in the story of human evolution
In recent years, a field that has traditionally relied on fossil discoveries has acquired helpful new tools: genomics and ancient ...
How sleep ‘cleans’ the brain
Sleep has critical roles in health and regeneration, and one of those is clearing the brain of metabolic waste, according ...
Viewpoint: Public confused and divided about genetically engineering diseases out of babies
Here’s a provocative headline and subhead from OneZero, a publication by Medium, above an article by Emily Mullin published on August 17: Men Are ...
Artificial blood edges closer to reality, spurred by pandemic-driven shortage
While scientists have developed backups for most parts of our bodies—from prosthetic limbs to titanium teeth implants—the production of artificial ...
Do you get dizzy when standing up? Here’s why
A significant number of falls and fractures, particularly among the elderly, are likely to result from orthostatic hypotension — literally, ...
Meet the scientists who research mosquitoes by feeding them their own blood
The colony was picky — it wouldn’t feed on anesthetized mice or drink from a container covered with a membrane ...
Why do so many dogs eat human poop?
Molly, our beloved Labrador retriever, certainly loved to eat poop. Sometimes she would chow down on her own feces, and ...
Viewpoint: Genetics is revolutionizing baby making and what it means to be a family
Humans are reproducing in ways that would have been truly unimaginable just several decades ago: Two men and a surrogate ...
COVID spurs fears of surge in suicides
The rate of suicide—the second leading cause of death in the U.S. among people ages 10 to 34 and the ...
Nature vs nurture? Why humans are the only animal that has genders
As gender theorists like Judith Butler and Anne Fausto-Sterling have pointed out, sex and gender cannot be fully pulled apart. Facts about our sexed ...
For untreatable diseases, should you consider unapproved stem cell therapy?
Regenerative medicine is a controversial field, still in its infancy. There are academic researchers and major biotech companies testing key ...
Freud was right – dreams are a distorted continuation of reality
Whereas ancient civilisations may have interpreted dreams as having supernatural or spiritual origins, in modern society, we're more likely to ...
Health monitors you can draw on your skin with electronic pen and ink
Wearable sensor technology, which helps doctors check a variety of health indicators, has in recent years advanced from bulky devices ...
Can you change your personality as you age?
Personality is the pattern of thoughts, feelings and behaviors unique to a person. People tend to think of personality as fixed. But ...
How one person was spontaneously cured of HIV—and what that may mean in the fight against AIDS
Twice, people infected with HIV have had levels of the virus in their bodies drop to undetectable levels after bone marrow ...
How animals think
Neuroscientists wanting to understand the brain’s coding language have conventionally studied how its networks of cells respond to sensory information ...
Nature has given us a blueprint for longevity. We just need to decode it
Our aging process extends for years, during which we experience a slew of age-related disorders. Diabetes. Heart disease. Dementia. Surprisingly, ...
