In 1979 China instituted the one-child policy, which limited every family to just one offspring in a controversial attempt to reduce the country’s burgeoning population. The strictly enforced law had the desired effects: in 2011 researchers estimated that the policy prevented 400 million births. In a new study in Science, researchers find that it has also caused China’s so-called little emperors to be more pessimistic, neurotic and selfish than their peers who have siblings. (Scientific American)

Fertility specialists have developed a radical technique that can boost the chances of IVF couples having a healthy baby. Doctors in Nottingham who devised the procedure say it could raise live birthrates at their clinic to 78%, around three times the national average for IVF treatment in the UK. (The Guardian)

The US adolescents who signed up for the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY) in the 1970s were the smartest of the smart, with mathematical and verbal-reasoning skills within the top 1% of the population. Now, researchers at BGI (formerly the Beijing Genomics Institute) in Shenzhen, China, the largest gene-sequencing facility in the world, are searching for the quirks of DNA that may contribute to such gifts. (Nature)

What is science revealing about the nature of the criminal mind? Adrian Raine, a professor at the university of Pennsylvania, is an expert in the expanding field of “neurocriminology.” He has written The Anatomy of Violence, a sweeping account of crime’s biological roots, including genetics, neuro-anatomy and environmental toxins like lead. He spoke with Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook. (The New Scientist)

The killings we’ve seen at a Connecticut elementary school, and more recently at the Boston Marathon, are fortunately rare events. Mass killings have remained at a stable level for the past two decades. But they are just the tip of a chilling violence iceberg that has titanic financial and social costs to society. (CNN)

In a shocking incident, doctors of a test tube baby centre aborted pregnancy after they found the foetus to be female. As the fertility clinic had reportedly promised to deliver a male child through in vitro fertilization (IVF) the foetus was aborted. (Times of India)

Children at an increased risk of autism may have abnormal structures in the placenta that can be detected at birth, a new study finds. (Scientific American)

UK scientists have embarked on a six-year project to map how nerve connections develop in babies’ brains while still in the womb and after birth. (BBC)

The American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG) has just released an important new Policy Statement on “Noninvasive Prenatal Screening for Fetal Aneuploidy.” (Medical Xpress)

A series of recent scientific results suggest that, in the not-too-distant future, it will be possible to create viable human gametes from human stem cells. This paper discusses the potential of this technology to make possible what I call ‘in vitro eugenics’: the deliberate breeding of human beings in vitro by fusing sperm and egg derived from different stem-cell lines to create an embryo and then deriving new gametes from stem cells derived from that embryo. (J. Med. Ethics)

In a recent study published in Reproductive Biomedicine Online, a group of researchers from Italy and the United Kingdom sought to achieve diagnose of genetic disease in embryonic DNA without the use of a biopsy. By extracting fluid from human embryos at the blastocyst stage they found that it contains DNA from the embryo. (News-Medical.net)

In a recent study published in Reproductive Biomedicine Online, a group of researchers from Italy and the United Kingdom sought to achieve diagnose of genetic disease in embryonic DNA without the use of a biopsy. By extracting fluid from human embryos at the blastocyst stage they found that it contains DNA from the embryo. Blastocysts are 5 or 6 day old embryos and are at the last free-living stage that can be studied in the laboratory prior to transfer into the uterus. (Medical Xpress)

Testing for fetal abnormalities can alert expectant parents to potential health problems to come. And it’s the parents who should decide on how to act on those results, right? (Time)

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority is considering whether to recommend legalisation of “mitochondrial replacement” techniques designed to avoid the transmission of mitochondrial diseases. We believe the benefits to a small number of parents are heavily outweighed by the risks to the child and to society. (The Guardian)

The procedures described, currently under evaluation by the British Human Fertilisation and Embryo Authority (HFEA) for the prevention of “mitochondrial diseases,” would carry profoundly negative implications for the future of the human species were they ever implemented, and thus warrant much wider concern than they have attracted up until now. In particular, they will facilitate a new form of eugenics, the improvement of humans by deliberately choosing their inherited traits. (Huffington Post)

The new documentary It’s a Girl highlights just how complicated sex selection is. (The Atlantic)

Nina Desai, Ph.D., a researcher at the Cleveland Clinic, says with the EmbryoScope, “You’re looking at real-time imaging of embryos as they develop. You can look at 12 embryos at a time without removing the embryo from the safety of the incubator itself.” (NBC News)

The psychiatric illnesses seem very different — schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, autism, major depression and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Yet they share several genetic glitches that can nudge the brain along a path to mental illness, researchers report. Which disease, if any, develops is thought to depend on other genetic or environmental factors. (New York Times)

Between 70 and 85 percent of women in the U.S. confronted with a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome choose abortion — but that number used to be higher. (The Atlantic)

In the past, good science has been used for unethical purposes, like eugenics. The concept of culture can protect genetics from a similar fate, an anthropologist argues. (Futurity)

The increasing power and accessibility of genetic technology may one day give parents the option of modifying their unborn children, in order to spare offspring from disease or, conceivably, make them tall, well muscled, intelligent or otherwise blessed with desirable traits. (Yahoo News)