Wired
Replacing chemical pesticides? Sprays made from RNA may be the next generation of plant pest control
The downsides of existing fungicides and pesticides are well-known: Residue from the sprays can build up in the environment and ...
5-minute at-home dementia test has some health experts concerned
Neurodegenerative diseases like dementia and Alzheimer’s are more feared than cancer and heart disease combined, according to a 2016 survey, ...
Are DNA from at-home ancestry tests private? Not always, and some states are cracking down
If you’ve ever spit into a plastic tube or swabbed your cheek and mailed your saliva away to learn about ...
Switching from beef to chicken can have big environmental benefits — but it also means many more animals to miserable lives and death
We often talk about steak, lamb chops, bacon and chicken nuggets as if they’re on a level playing field. Just ...
It all started in Italy? Latest COVID origin theory explodes on the web
In early August 2021, a preprint reported a potentially huge discovery. Researchers had looked at samples that were collected as ...
Edible but ugly: Bruised apples and spotty potatoes never make it to supermarket shelves. Tweaking crop genes could feed billions and help address climate change
Farming has a major food waste problem. Approximately 40 per cent of the food produced globally goes uneaten every year, ...
AI-driven robots can now be found everywhere — but they’re often annoying. Will they ever evolve grace and consciousness?
With AI, engineers had typically used a top-down approach to programming, as though they were gods making creatures in their ...
Delta COVID fallout: Vaccine mandates are becoming the new normal
[Recently,] dozens of influential organizations decided it’s time for vaccine mandates. [July 29,] President Joe Biden announced vaccine rules for ...
Tempering optimism: Here’s why the trajectory of COVID’s third wave will be so hard to predict
On June 24, the number of daily infections in the UK crossed 16,000, levels not seen since early February when ...
Why the UK’s announced embrace of CRISPR gene editing food revolution likely won’t go as smoothly as hoped
“Let's start now to liberate the UK's extraordinary bioscience sector from anti-genetic modification rules, and let's develop the blight-resistant crops ...
Search for the perfect cell-donor cow: Why cultured lab-grown beef is the future of sustainable meat
At a glance, the formula for cultured – or lab-grown – meat is simple. Take some animal cells, feed them ...
Arabic language anti-vaccine conspiracy theories feature Bill Gates as the central target
Across dozens of Arabic pages and groups, dangerous conspiracy theories about the pandemic are racking up millions of views and ...
Scientific conundrum solved? Dairy-free cheese that mimics the real thing in development
“Coming at it from a scientific perspective, you can't help but realise that there's no magic in cows or in ...
This cold war neurosurgeon successfully transplanted monkey heads. Could it work on humans?
Robert White [was] a neurosurgeon who spent decades performing head transplants on monkeys, hoping to eventually use the procedure to ...
Lab-grown tuna could satisfy growing demand for fish without the severe environmental impact
From 1961 to 2015, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, global fish consumption grew from 9kg to 20.2kg ...
Jennifer Doudna on how CRISPR is moving out of the lab to transform medicine and revolutionize disease treatments
In 2021, we will see increased use of CRISPR-Cas enzymes to underpin a new generation of cost-effective, individualised therapies. With ...
Virus wars: The evolutionary battle between humans and COVID-19
The past (horrible, tragic, no-good, very bad) year might have seemed like a straightforward battle between scientists and a virus ...
Viewpoint: Let them eat cheese: Evidence shows this ‘guilty pleasure’ doesn’t deserve its unhealthy reputation
A large body of research suggests that cheese’s reputation as a fattening, heart-imperiling food is undeserved. When it comes to ...
Growing food in space may offer sustainability benefits beyond genetically engineering plants on Earth
Sending fancy French grapes into orbit might sound like an expensive PR stunt. There is, after all, a long history ...
Lab-grown wood: Could scientists make better trees than nature?
Wood and other plant-based materials may be renewable resources, but obtaining usable forms typically requires lots of transportation, milling, and ...
5 ways CRISPR has begun changing the world
[W]hile thousands of life scientists pivoted to trying to understand how the novel coronavirus wreaks havoc on the human body, and others transformed their ...
Reopening cold cases: The new tools revolutionizing DNA crime detection
Puzzle solvers by nature, genealogists tie the loose ends of a person’s familial tapestry for answers… It’s an emerging practice ...
‘Circular economy’: Turning waste into reusable products makes food and energy production more sustainable
We need to find a way to reduce waste, and the answer could be moving to a circular economy, which ...
FDA mulling approval of a device that monitors brains using electrodes threaded through veins and plugged into a computer
For decades, technologists have been trying to get brains to interface with computer keyboards or robot arms, to get meat ...
Viewpoint: Great Barrington Declaration on herd immunity falsely suggests a scientific divide over if we can achieve it and how
[The Great Barrington Declaration] suggests that scientists fall into two camps: those who are pro-lockdown and those who think we ...
How accurate are the ‘ethnicity estimates’ claimed by DNA genealogy companies?
Since 2012, more than 18 million people have mailed their spit-filled vials to [Ancestry DNA], which analyzes the genetic material ...
DNA testing reveals buried family secrets
[T]echnology has a way of creating new consequences for old decisions. Today, some 30 million people have taken consumer DNA ...
