Big Think
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Population bomb, in reverse: Too few babies — not too many — is emerging as a major global problem
In Japan, people buy more diapers for the elderly than babies... And the population growth rate in the U.S. is ...
Video: To feed nearly 8 billion people, we need to grow more food on less land. Vertical farming could increase yields by up to 700%
Vertical farming is a form of agriculture that grows plants indoors in floor-to-ceiling, tower-like walls of plant-holding cells. Instead of ...
‘Magic mushroom’ migraine relief? Single dose of psilocybin shows significant impact in reducing intractable headaches
Migraine treatments can be either preventive or abortive, and they range from prescription drugs, to over-the-counter medications like Advil Migraine, ...
Is embryo gene editing a technology we can afford — ethically and morally? Hank Greely address the future in ‘CRISPR People’
The following is an excerpt from Hank Greely’s book CRISPR People. I see no inherent or unmanageable ethical barriers to ...
Evolutionary tradeoffs: Here’s why birthing a child is so difficult
To pass through the birth canal, human infants have to perform a series of twists and turns, a process called ...
Video: Viewpoint — The upside is immense but ‘threats from CRISPR gene editing are too big to ignore’
CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) is a revolutionary technology that gives scientists the ability to alter DNA. On ...
Getting high on hypoxia: Ancient humans went deep into caves in search of euphoria, and depicted the experience in their paintings
As archaeologist Yafit Kedar from Tel-Aviv University in Israel was in France enjoying some cave art deep within the ground, ...
Coronavirus vaccine created with synthetic biology would be ‘more potent’ than flu shot
As companies hurry to test potential vaccines, the National Institute of Health (NIH) is hoping new bio-engineering techniques to help ...
Infographic: What the US public thinks about tinkering with human genetics
The Pew Research Center published a fascinating roundup of studies that revealed the opinions of the U.S. public on a ...
7 things to know about autism, including why it’s unlikely there will ever be a ‘cure’
To help spread awareness — and cut through the falsehoods, half-truths, and misinformation — here are seven things everyone should ...
Life on Earth is carbon-based. But that doesn’t mean other planets have to use the same building block.
All life on Earth, and thus, all life we've ever observed in the universe, shares a few basic characteristics. Its ...
Lab-grown meat is coming soon—but will anyone eat it?
As 2018 wraps up, the average American is poised to have eaten 222 pounds of beef over the course of ...
Boltzmann brain: You may be living in your own simulated reality
The paradox of the Boltzmann Brain can really pull the rug from under you if you follow it to all ...
Americans think they know about GMOs, but poll shows consumers still badly confused
As a non-expert consumer, it’s hard to know what to think about GMOs. Of course, we’re already consuming them, with ...
Is there a link between food allergies and autism?
A new study from researchers at the University of Iowa reveals a link between food allergies and autism, though many ...
Persistence and perspiration: How sweating allowed humans to dominate other species
Millions of years ago, digestion consumed most of the calories we ate. These days, our brain takes 20 times more energy than ...
What would happen if we suddenly stopped dreaming?
Rowan Hooper, the managing editor at New Scientist, reports that chronic dream deprivation is damaging our waking hours in numerous ways. … This ...
CRISPR can fix gene that causes intellectual impairment in men–fragile X syndrome
The fragile X syndrome is the most common form of intellectual impairment in men, affecting 1 out of 3,600 boys. Now, scientists ...
Price of evolution? Schizophrenia linked to development of complex brains
Schizophrenia affects only about 1% of the US population. The condition is typified by confused thoughts and speech, delusions and hallucinations. Symptoms ...
Video: Ancient virus could explain how human memories are formed
The particulars surrounding how our memory works has baffled neuroscientists for decades. Turns out, it’s a very sophisticated process involving ...
Lucid dreaming linked to higher creativity
Have you ever had a dream so real, you mistook it for reality? This is a state called lucid dreaming ...
Why human-like robots are creepy
The robot revolution is on the horizon...One report says that they’ll be commonplace by 2025. In another case, a professor claims ...
Brain damage may spur extreme religious fundamentalism, study finds
Scientists found that damage in a certain part of the brain is linked to an increase in religious fundamentalism. In ...
Feeling blue? Depression may have offered evolutionary advantage to our ancestors
Depressive symptoms have been found in every culture on Earth and throughout history...Unlike other psychiatric disorders, which are rare, depression ...
US next in line to test CRISPR gene editing technology on human cells
You probably know about CRISPR-Cas9. It’s the recently developed method for genetic engineering that’s brought costs down by 99%, and ...
Vaccine may soon help patients fight Alzheimer’s (along with some red wine)
Five million people in the US today struggle with Alzheimer’s...and approximately 47 million globally are stricken, this being the most ...
Pentagon wants to develop ‘safe genes’ to stop biohackers from making weapons with CRISPR
[T]he Pentagon is moving to...find a “safe course” to rein [gene editing technology] in. But it will be a difficult balancing ...
Researchers may have found key to cancer cure in four-strand DNA
One problem with cancer treatments today is that they attack all cells indiscriminately. Chemotherapy for instance, hurts healthy cells and ...
