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.
Will Hollywood again embrace anti-vaccine activism? Alicia Silverstone endorses Dem presidential candidate and conspiracist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr
Actress Alicia Silverstone endorsed 2024 Democratic candidate and top Biden challenger Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on June 7, while admitting ...
Why do treatment outcomes often differ between populations? Human Pangenome Project catalogs genomes of 47 people from around the world to help science understand health disparities
The Human Pangenome Reference Consortium has made significant progress in creating a more inclusive human reference genome by assembling genomic ...
Attention span crisis: In a world of 10-second videos, are we losing our ability to read complicated texts?
Have we really become worse at reading than we were before? And is it really that important to be able ...
How does chronic stress worsen gut inflammation and cause bowel diseases?
Signals originating in the brain make their way to gut nerve cells, leading to a release of inflammatory chemicals ...
Human pedigree through the ages: 14 reasons why people may want to know more about their family history
Pedigrees have long been the backbone of genetics. Not surprisingly, therefore, we tend to think of pedigrees as primarily medical ...
‘Dessert stomach effect’: Here’s why you still want sweets even after a huge meal
ASK A RESEARCHER: Jelly babies, vanilla fudge, cola bottles, or giant strawbs – most people have their favourite sweets. But ...
‘AI hallucinations’: How OpenAI can combat ChatGPT’s tendency to fabricate information
OpenAI is taking up the mantle against AI “hallucinations,” the company announced Wednesday, with a newer method for training artificial ...
‘One-and-done’ CRISPR gene therapy treatment could be lifetime cure for high cholesterol — but the FDA remains cautious
CRISPR sometimes edits genes in places it’s not supposed to, though, and those off-target edits can create new problems ...
The myth of the reptilian human brain is tenacious – but wrong
The reptilian brain is often blamed for our primitive instincts that can trigger fight, flight or freeze responses in us ...
Cold adaptation: Why did it take humans 30,000 years to adapt to chilly climates?
Ancient DNA has helped scientists reconstruct evolution and adaptation among humans living in Eurasia over the course of 30,000 years ...
What caused the Habsburg royal family’s jaw deformity? Blame inbreeding
Today, the Habsburgs are all but forgotten from mainstream public consciousness, apart from one notable feature: the famous Habsburg Jaw ...
How AI is bending the future of genetics research
The power of artificial intelligence (AI) in genetics is revolutionizing the field of genomics and paving the way for groundbreaking ...
What is the Shoggoth? Here’s what this meme symbolizes for AI researchers
The Shoggoth, a character from a science fiction story, captures the essential weirdness of the A.I. moment ...
Homo futurae: Evolution and genetic manipulation could create superhumans, parahumans and transhumans. Here’s what that means
People continue to evolve even as our societies become more interconnected. What are we becoming now and what might we ...
Antarctica’s Thwaites ‘doomsday glacier’ continues to recede: Climate change or natural phenomenon — or both?
The Thwaites Glacier is a huge ice mass the size of Great Britain located in West Antarctica ...
‘Awakenings’ for real: Trapped in her brain for 20 years, a catatonic woman awakes. Her story may spark a revolution in the treatment of severe schizophrenia
New research suggests that a subset of patients with psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia may actually have autoimmune disease that ...
Why carbon capture alone will not put a dent in our ballooning health crisis
Technology that captures carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels and stores them underground is being touted as necessary ...
How can educators guide students’ use of AI ChatGPT?
With the advent of ever-more capable artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as chatGPT, we once again have an opportunity to ...
Should we bring the wooly mammoth and other species back from extinction — Yes or no?
A scientist helping to bring back the woolly mammoth debates two Stanford professors who argue that we are unprepared to ...
Reality check: Are there ‘intelligent’ trees that ‘talk’ to each other?
Is it true that trees talk to each other? A fantastic idea and a popular science book that has sold ...
Viewpoint: What are the social factors shaping science?
The rise in science advocacy raises important questions regarding how science mobilization can both defend science and promote its use ...
Forgotten by science: Four decades ago, medical researchers launched studies on rural Colombian families with fatal Huntington’s disease. They are just now following up
Huntington’s is a hereditary neurodegenerative disease caused by excess repetitions of three building blocks of DNA ...
Elon Musk’s Neuralink brain implant approved for human trials by the FDA
Elon Musk's brain-implant company Neuralink said May 25 that it got approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to ...
Humanity originally evolved in Africa — but new evidence shows we came from two distinct groups of hominids
A new fascinating study reveals humans were living in different regions of Africa, migrating from one region to another and ...
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey joins vaccine-rejecting crusade, shares video from Democratic presidential candidate and anti-vax activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Jack Dorsey, the head of Block Inc. and a co-founder of Twitter, posted two videos [recently] featuring presidential candidate Robert ...
How gene therapy could eventually snip out diseases in the womb
Recent advances in lab animals may bring medicine closer to achieving it—but this field is still in its infancy ...
AI helps discover new drug that kills antibiotic-resistant ‘superbugs’
Scientists have used artificial intelligence (AI) to discover a new antibiotic that can kill a deadly species of superbug ...
