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.
The first neural bypass implant powered by AI has helped a patient recover from near-full-body paralysis
A New York man who was left paralyzed after a diving accident is starting to regain movement a year after ...
Swiss surgeons use a PlayStation controller to perform a remote endoscopy in Hong Kong
In a groundbreaking experiment, surgeons in Switzerland successfully performed an endoscopic procedure on a pig 5,780 miles away in Hong ...
Virtue over impact: Greens environmentalist policy likely to backfire
[There is] a particular kind of increasingly common environmental regulation: one that is short on impact but big on virtue ...
Genomic prediction: Start-up claims to offer parents a way to select ‘desirable’ traits like IQ. Will it work?
There is broad scientific consensus that intelligence is partly inherited and that genes play a significant role. But pinning this ...
Ancient DNA can be an indicator of your ability to digest carbs
If you’ve ever struggled to reduce your carb intake, ancient DNA might be to blame. It has long been known ...
Trump’s prospective ‘Health Czar’ RFK, Jr. says new administration will push to ban fluoride in water
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pledged ... that a future Trump administration would seek to remove fluoride from drinking water as ...
Brains and risk: The genetics of politics
Elections tend to bring out strong emotions in people. As voters evaluate the candidates, emotions can rise. Political disagreements may ...
Over regulation or protecting the public? Republicans and Democrats have very different visions on how to regulate AI
If Donald Trump wins the US presidential election in November, the guardrails could come off of artificial intelligence development, even ...
Viewpoint: How progressives have undermined their stated agenda and slowed the introduction of new drugs
With the rallying cry of corporate greed, each year of the Biden-Harris administration has brought successive government interventions in the ...
Electrostatic ‘thinking’: How insects evolved to navigate the world
For years, biologists have wondered whether bees have [some] grand sense that we lack. The static electricity they accumulate by ...
Health alert: Here’s what you can expect if you take anti-aging supplements
Among the many wonder products out there on the market, there is a type that inspires equal parts fascination and ...
Echolocation: How tongue clicks allow the blind to ride bikes
Human echolocation has at times allowed people to ride bikes or play basketball despite being completely blind from a very ...
Viewpoint: Trump leverages RFK Jr.’s endorsement to rally support for his ‘radical deregulation agenda’
When [Robert F. Kennedy Jr.], the country’s most famous anti-vaccine activist, suspended his campaign to endorse Donald Trump, it [represented] ...
15 ‘skinny genes’ may be key to losing weight
The secret to losing weight could all be down to a combination of 14 ‘skinny genes’, a new study has ...
Why many mathematicians say that ‘the number zero is mankind’s greatest achievement’
From zero sprang the laws of the universe, number theory, and modern mathematics. “Zero is, by many mathematicians, definitely considered ...
Following new Idaho law, doctors delayed the pelvic exam of a pregnant 13-year-old girl because they couldn’t locate her homeless mother
[Mom-to-be Aleah], 36 weeks pregnant, was having mild but frequent contractions.... In most cases, physician Caitlin Gustafson would have begun ...
Viewpoint: Who are the moms falling for the Donald Trump — RFK, Jr. conspiratorial Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) anti-vaccine partnership
When I first started writing, pre-Covid, about the anti-vaccine crowd I didn’t find them to be especially associated with either ...
Loneliness epidemic: As we become more and more isolated, tech companies search for solutions
Despite being more connected than ever, we're pretty lonely right now. So lonely, in fact, that the World Health Organization ...
Consciousness: More than nothing is going on in the mind of a bees and other animals
In 2022, researchers at the Bee Sensory and Behavioral Ecology Lab at Queen Mary University of London observed bumblebees doing ...
Why are kindergarten vaccination rates falling?
U.S. kindergarten vaccination rates dipped [in 2023] and the proportion of children with exemptions rose to an all-time high, according ...
Photoacoustic imaging: Newly-developed scanner that produces 3-D images that show our blood vessels
It’s not the famous Star Trek tricorder but it’s close: researchers have developed a hand-held scanner that can generate highly ...
Supercentenarians: What are the limits of human life expectancy?
Life expectancy saw dramatic increases throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, driven by healthier diets, medical advances, and numerous other ...
California’s first plastic bag ban made things worse. Now it’s trying again
Ten years after California approved a plastic bag ban that’s been blamed for making its plastic bag problem worse, the ...
Want to increase the odds of having a boy or a girl? Looking for the genetic underpinnings of sex
Each year, roughly the same numbers of boys and girls are born. But in individual families, some couples have four ...
‘It looks to me like what we would call bullshitting: The ‘smarter’ the AI, the more it cleverly lies
Beware the smart ones: they seem to have all the answers, but can also weave the most convincing lies. It ...
Another step ahead in AI advancement leaves scientists ‘in awe’ by latest ChatGPT model o1
Researchers who helped to test OpenAI’s new large language model, OpenAI o1, say it represents a big step up in ...
Transcranial direct current stimulation — At-home headset that stimulates the brain to alleviate depression is in the works
A headset that can be worn at home to stimulate the brain and treat depression has passed an important research milestone. The tiny ...
