Science Literacy Project Daily Digest
Sahara Desert was once a lush oasis and home to a human mysterious lineage
The Sahara desert, once lush and green, during a time between 14,500 and 5,000 years ago, was also home to ...
Resurrecting dead species—Despite the hype over the dire wolf and the wooly mammoth, chorongenetics poses immense challenges
Colossal Biosciences, the biotech company behind [these] woolly mice [says the] eventual goal is to modify elephants with enough mammoth ...
From nuclear energy to chemicals to vaccines to GMO crops and food, conspiracy theories and disinformation are as rampant on the political left as the far right
The great majority of conspiracy theories and disinformation spread about environmental and health topics are popularly attributed to the conservative/right side of the political spectrum. But ...
Mostly nutrition-less rice could be gene edited to increase heart health for hundreds of million of nutrition-challenged children
A team of Chinese scientists has successfully modified rice to produce coenzyme Q10, an essential compound known for its role in energy ...
Viewpoint: In RFK, Jr.’s Brave New World of food and health, Zen Honeycutt and and other ‘zealots and gurus’ roam freely
In an NPR article on Moms Across America’s Zen Honeycutt, covered in The Firebreak, the anti-vax activist stated she had given her co-conspirator, ...
Viewpoint: ‘Sending science backward’—MAGA fuels a culture war against life-saving mRNA vaccines
US health agency leadership and policymakers seem intent on undermining trust in mRNA, the technology that saved millions of lives ...
US dominance of artificial intelligence is threatened as China, France and others rush to join the AI development race
“Chinese models are catching up as far as performance to the US models,” [Vanessa Parli] adds, “but across the globe, ...
China’s Frankenstein? Controversial scientist He Jiankui who stirred a global debate by genetically modifying babies to prevent HIV disease now targets Alzheimer’s
International media has dubbed [He Jiankui] “China’s Frankenstein.” He has no academic affiliations. He declines to reveal where his funding ...
Viewpoint: RFK, Jr. finally conceded that the measles vaccine is ‘the most effective way to prevent its spread’—MAHA anti-vaccine activists are calling him a turncoat
For vaccine opponents, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s appointment as secretary of health and human services represented something close to nirvana ...
Viewpoint: ‘We need to protect ag’ — ‘Meritless’ threats to ban safe pesticides and chemicals could surge US food costs by $10 billion
Along with volatile market conditions and erratic weather, Florida’s farmers now face growing legal assaults brought on by activist lawyers ...
Here’s the case for vertical farming and gene editing in Pakistan
When genome editing and vertical farming are combined, the results are transformative. Scientists can tailor crops-like dwarf wheat or fast-growing ...
AI, freeze drying and 3-D printing are poised to make food more nutritious and carbon friendly
One of the most promising applications is the use of AI to tackle food loss — one of the biggest ...
Viewpoint: ‘This is Hollywood science, not real science’ — RFK, Jr.’s ‘plan’ to let avian flu ‘run through the flock’ courts a catastrophic, global pandemic
In two recent interviews on Fox News, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. downplayed concerns about H5N1 avian influenza in the U.S., raising alarm among ...
Bayer petitions Supreme Court to block lawsuits targeting Roundup and set aside verdicts because EPA has determined it is safe as used
Bayer (BAYGn.DE) said on [April 4, 2025] it was again petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to sharply limit legal claims that ...
Trump’s first tariff trade war cost U.S. farmers $27 billion. This round is shaping up as far worse, with food prices poised to rise as a result
If history is any indicator, farmers are sure to pay for Trump's trade war. During the first Trump administration, retaliatory ...
Face science: Here’s why human faces look so different from our extinct Neanderthal cousins and chimpanzees, or primate relatives
In a new study, researchers have uncovered a fundamental difference in how human faces grow compared to those of our ...
AI generated food images make people queasy. Here’s why
If you’ve seen a recent advertisement for food that you found unsettling rather than appealing, artificial intelligence may be to ...
Artificial General Intelligence: The billion dollar challenge of scaling up AI to AGI that would surpass human intelligence
[A] new report ... which queried 475 AI researchers and was conducted by scientists at the Association for the Advancement ...
Switzerland poised to break from its anti-GMO past, edges closer to deregulating gene edited crops to increase crop yields
Switzerland is considering a change of its rules to allow gene editing, reflecting a broader shift across Europe aimed at ...
Viewpoint: ‘People will die’—The dramatic fallout from indiscriminate cuts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
Thousands of federal employees at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were notified early Tuesday morning that they were subject ...
Viewpoint: Should we regulate or ban embryo selection based on IQ?
In mid-November 2024, the British organization Hope not Hate published its investigative research ‘Inside the Eugenics Revival’. In addition to ...
Viewpoint: Trump is MIA in his response to bird flu. Here’s what the administration needs to do, and fast
First, vaccinating poultry is critical to preventing flock outbreaks and must be a cornerstone of the nation’s avian influenza prevention ...
Tariff chaos threatens to ignite agricultural trade war with China that could roil US farmers and send food prices soaring
China ... is the third-largest importer of American farm goods, behind Mexico and Canada. ... [It's] retaliatory tariffs, which are supposed ...
Viewpoint: Here’s a backgrounder on the anti-vaccine quack RFK, Jr. has drafted to prove vaccines cause autism
The longer President Donald Trump and his lackeys, particularly his Secretary of Health and Human Services, longtime antivax activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., ...
117 Organizations join 153 Nobel laureates in a global call for agricultural innovation to end hunger
More than 115 organizations worldwide have joined a coalition urging urgent action against global hunger. This initiative follows the call ...
100 people globally use brain-computer interfaces in clinical trials. Scaling up commercially is on the horizon
Implanted BCIs [brain-computer interfaces] are electrodes put in paralyzed people’s brains so they can use imagined movements to send commands ...
Nanomedicine techniques are being redeployed to accelerate transition to more sustainable farming
Cancer drugs and agrichemicals can be powerful, but toxic, tools. Now, UNSW scientists are applying nanomedicine insights in a project ...
