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.
Infographic: Tree of Sex — Cataloging wild ways nature reproduces, from sex-changing fish to asexual lizards
From sex-changing fish to asexual lizards, these and many more species will be captured in a new sex database ...
Henrietta Lacks’ family reaches undisclosed settlement with ThermoFisher, ending 70-year long battle for compensation after using her cancer cells without permission
Descendants of Henrietta Lacks announced a lawsuit in October 2021 accusing Thermo Fisher Scientific of profiting from cancer cells that ...
Evolution of humor: Smiles are silent — so why do we hear laughter?
Laughter: Auditory signals were probably more effective in communicating feelings of mutual vulnerability during play ...
mRNA technology revolution: Battling sickle cell, aging and other tough-to-tackle diseases will soon be easier and cheaper
A technique for delivering mRNAs to blood stem cells should enable better and cheaper treatments for conditions from sickle cell ...
DNA-solved cold cases: How effective has forensic genetic genealogy been over the years?
The April 2018 arrest of Joseph DeAngelo, the Golden State Killer, is often considered the birth of forensic genetic genealogy ...
Viewpoint: When it comes to the future of Artificial Intelligence (AI), we need to separate valid concerns from unfounded fears
Questioning how humans want to relate to Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the coming decades need not be muddled together with ...
Do energy drinks and caffeinated sodas provide the same energy jolt as coffee?
Scientists testing coffee against plain caffeine found that plain caffeine only partially reproduces the effects of drinking a cup of ...
‘It ages the brain by a decade’: Long COVID symptoms including extreme fatigue and brain fog take severe health toll
Scientists tested the cognitive function of more than 3,000 participants and found those with longer-lasting Covid symptoms had the strongest ...
Viewpoint: How did science become a messy jumble of politics?
Mucking around in the messy business of political compromises and calculations puts scientists at a distance from what they really ...
Searching for answers: Why asking questions make us uniquely human
Evolution of propositional speech: Human self-consciousness is about generating justification systems for one's self and others ...
Here’s why ChaptGPT and other AI models may not always improve over time
AI Deterioration: More training and more data can have unintended consequences for machine-learning models such as GPT-4 ...
‘Effectively banned’: Florida’s GOP-lead legislature battles with College Board after voting to strip sections on gender fluidity and sexual orientation from AP Psychology curriculum
The nonprofit said it would not remove a section on gender and sexual orientation, as Florida had requested, and advised ...
Cute canine head tilt: What are dogs thinking?
Canine behavior: research suggests the animals might cock their furry noggins when processing familiar words ...
Could we live longer with transfusions of ‘young blood’? It’s worked on mice
Old mice live longer thanks to young blood: Duke University scientists found that their procedure slows down ageing at the ...
‘Third human lineage’: Previously unknown human ancestor unearthed in China provokes speculation
In East China, specifically at the site called Hualongdong, scientists conducted an excavation and discovered fossils pointing to a possible ...
GOP House adds dozens of riders to spending bills that limit gender-affirming care, marriage equality and other LGBTQ+ rights, but Senate Dems likely to strip out measures
House Republicans have embedded at least 45 anti-LGBTQ+ provisions into must-pass funding bills — many of which would weaken discrimination ...
Viewpoint: ‘Acupuncture pseudoscience’ — Washington Post propagates alternative medicine
Pseudoscience, how to exploit the vulnerabilities in evidence-based medicine, and how effective propaganda can be, even against professionals ...
Is the Oppenheimer movie accurate? Expert breaks down science of box office hit
Oppenheimer won’t bomb in the box office, but despite its director’s best efforts, the science in the film is a ...
Viewpoint: We still don’t know where COVID truly came from. Should we be concerned?
Ongoing mystery: We still don’t know how the pandemic started. Here's what we do know — and why it matters ...
‘Superman syndrome’: What happens if you have an extra Y chromosome?
The superman syndrome (not related to the superhero named Superman) is a disorder in which an individual has an extra ...
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr’s campaign has hired anti-vax activists and health conspiracy theorists
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign reveal numerous payments to individuals and groups whose ideologies differ significantly from traditional Democratic Party ...
Does Barbie cause girls to have negative feelings about their bodies?
Barbie body image: A clinical health psychologist talks about Barbie’s influence on how women and girls view their body ...
Podcast: Debating doppelgangers — How do two completely different people end up with the same face?
What can doppelgangers tell us about nature versus nurture? – podcast ...
Viewpoint: ‘Advances in brain-computer interfaces and prosthetics could improve quality of life for millions, but they carry risks that touch upon eugenics’
Advances in brain-computer interfaces and prosthetics could improve the quality of life for millions, but they carry risks that even ...
A new COVID vaccine is arriving this fall. Will anyone take it?
Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax are slated to deliver new single-strain coronavirus shots targeting the omicron subvariant XBB.1.5 in September ...
‘It was like a psychedelic trip’: Neurosurgeon describes coma and near-death-experience
Both DMT and a near-death experience evoked feelings of transcending time and space and glimpsing the multiverse, while at the ...
The Hidden Spring: Controversial new book addresses where consciousness originates
Viewpoint: Why and how does the subjective quality of experience arise from objective neurophysiological events? ...
