George Dvorsky
Neanderthals’ healthcare skills helped them survive through Ice Age
Neanderthals cared for their sick and wounded, and new research suggests this well-documented behavior was more than just a cultural ...
Remembering last year like last week: Is a perfect memory a blessing or a curse?
The ability to remember every moment of your life sounds like an amazing proposition, but for the very few people ...
Mysterious fossil could be oldest known animal—if scientists can agree it is one
An international team of researchers is claiming to have discovered traces of cholesterol on a fossil of Dickinsonia—a mysterious creature that ...
Genetic Noah’s Ark intends to sequence DNA of 66,000 species
An international consortium involving over 50 institutions has announced an ambitious project to assemble high-quality genome sequences of all 66,000 ...
What do toddlers and chimpanzees have in common? They use the same unspoken language
Prior to developing the capacity for speech, toddlers communicate their desires, demands, and discontent using a diverse repertoire of physical ...
Search for alien life gets boost from new NASA project
The ability to detect life on distant worlds still eludes us, but a new project coordinated by NASA now takes ...
Synthetic ‘skin’ could return pain sensations to users of prosthetic limbs
Current prosthetic limbs aren’t yet capable of transmitting complex sensations like texture or pain to the user, but a recent ...
Rethinking the search for alien life: Let’s look for their space junk
SETI enthusiasts have devised all sorts of complicated ways for us to find signs of alien life, but a new ...
17,000-year-old route to North America could redefine human migration history
The first people to cross into North America from Eurasia did so by traveling through the Bering Strait, or so ...
Neanderthals’ brains may have doomed them to extinction
Using computers and MRI scans, researchers have created the most detailed reconstruction of a Neanderthal brain to date, offering new ...
AI personhood? European Parliament under fire for proposing recognizing legal status of robots
Over 150 experts in AI, robotics, commerce, law, and ethics from 14 countries have signed an open letter denouncing the ...
Discovery of ancient finger in Saudi Arabia suggests humans left Africa 20,000 years earlier than assumed
It’s just a lone, boney middle finger, but the scientists who found it say it’s the oldest directly dated fossil ...
Why humans and Neanderthals look so different
Compared to modern humans, Neanderthals had heavy eyebrows, huge noses, and large, long faces that bulged forward. Using 3D computer ...
Questioning the decision to resurrect smallpox relative in the lab
In an effort to develop a safer vaccine substitute, Canadian researchers have resurrected a close relative—the extinct horsepox virus—from scratch ...
Harvard scientists use CRISPR to store data in living bacteria cells
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. Using the CRISPR gene-editing ...
New primate ancestor calls ape evolution into question
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. Meet Pliobates catalonia, an ...
Computer AI system solves genetics mystery that stumped scientists
For years, biologists have sought to understand how the genes of planarians, a group of free-living flatworms, direct growth in ...
Scientists create genetically modified cells that fight HIV
The treatment is considered radical, and the results were drawn from a small scale human trial, but for the first ...
What if natural products came with a list of ingredients?
Processed foods are notorious for their jaw-droppingly long lists of chemical-laden ingredients, each one sounding worse than the last. But ...
Scientists Use a Mutated Virus to Build a Better Battery
By unleashing a genetically modified virus onto microscopic electrode wires, researchers from MIT have shown that the performance of lithium-air ...
Bioengineered patch regrows damaged bones inside the body
Researchers from the University of Iowa have developed a remarkable new procedure for regenerating missing or damaged bone. It's called ...
Genetic analysis shows “Yeti” is actually a polar bear hybrid
Aw, shucks. Science goin’ off and ruining everything again for cryptozoologists. The latest blow comes from a UK geneticist who ...
How artificial chromosomes could transform humanity
Normally, an extra pair of chromosomes would be considered dangerous. But what if we could design our own? According to ...
The idea of open-sourcing GE attracts more interest
The following is an edited excerpt. Frederick Kaufman has penned a provocative article for Slate's Future Tense column in which ...
Far-fetched ethical questions that are about to get real
Science fiction's favorite moral quandaries are suddenly pressing concerns ...
10 unusual genetic mutations in humans
The following is an excerpt. No two people are alike, due to the subtly different ways our genomes are expressed ...
Is China selectively breeding a new generation of genius babies?
The following is an excerpt. There's a provocative and somewhat disturbing article over at Vice about China's recent foray into genetics and the country's ...
Debunking the “humans are getting dumber” study
A new study published in Trends in Geneticsis suggesting that humans are slowly but surely losing their intellectual and emotional ...
