MY MOTHER fought cancer for almost a decade and died at 56. She held out long enough to meet the first of her grandchildren and to hold them in her arms. But my other children will never have the chance to know her and experience how loving and gracious she was. (New York Times, op-ed by Angelina Jolie)

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)

Eminent Belgian scientist Christian de Duve, aged 95, a winner of the Nobel prize for medicine, died on Saturday after committing euthanasia, which is legal in Belgium, his family said. (Times of India)

The veteran 73-year-old arts critic, novelist and broadcaster was deeply affected by watching Alzheimer’s take its toll on his 95-year-old mother for five years until her death last year, and said assisted suicide was an issue for people his age. “It’s happening to my generation – they see what happens when people get close to death, and we’re saying, ‘We don’t want that.’” (The Guardian)

Dr. François Jacob, a French war hero whose combat wounds forced him to change his career paths from surgeon to scientist, a pursuit that led to a Nobel Prize in 1965 for his role in discovering how genes are regulated, died on April 19 in Paris. He was 92. (New York Times)

Dr. Vincent L. Gott was part of an innovative group of doctors who trained with Dr. C. Walton Lillehei, considered to be the father of open-heart surgery. (CNN)

The man who pioneered in vitro fertilization also stirred deep unease about what he was doing. (The Wall Street Journal)

Stephen Hawking toured a stem cell laboratory Tuesday where scientists are studying ways to slow the progression of Lou Gehrig’s disease, a neurological disorder that has left the British cosmologist almost completely paralyzed. (ABC News)

The long list of roles Margaret Thatcher played during her 87 years — potent politician, free-market evangelist, labor antagonist, dominant global leader — includes the one she never publicly discussed: person with dementia. (New York Times)

Robert Edwards, a British Nobel prize-winning scientist known as the father of in-vitro fertilization (IVF) for pioneering the development of “test tube babies”, died on Wednesday aged 87 after a long illness, his university said. (Reuters)

The astonishing story of Henrietta Lacks, who died of cancer in 1951 but whose still living cells are now the basis for much medical research, has captivated the U.S. for the past two years — and there is no sign of the debate, or its controversies, abating. (Japan Times)

From the Vatican to Buenos Aires, Catholics worldwide rejoiced when Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio became the new pope. (CNN)

Discovering your DNA sequence is cheap and easy, and that genetic knowledge could change – even save – your life. [Op-ed by one of the founders of 23andMe]. (The Guardian)

In this interview given the day before a seminar for the creation of a National Bioethics Committee in Trinidad and Tobago, held in Port-of-Spain on 28 February and 1 March 2013, Dr D. Simeon, Director of the Caribbean Health Research Council (CHRC), expresses his hope that the creation of such a structure will contribute to a better comprehension of the relation between bioethical challenges and development issues, especially in Small Island Developing States. (UNESCO)

Dr. C. Everett Koop, who was widely regarded as the most influential surgeon general in American history and played a crucial role in changing public attitudes about smoking, died on Monday at his home in Hanover, N.H. He was 96. (New York Times)

A Quebec woman in the process of challenging Canada’s law against assisted suicide has died after struggling with Lou Gehrig’s disease, her family said. (UPI)

The Grammy winner reveals she suffered a miscarriage – and slams rumors she used a gestational surrogate – in her upcoming HBO documentary, Life Is But a Dream – slated to air Feb. 16. (People)

Tom Beauchamp, Ph.D., an invited speaker at the 12^th meeting of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, has been a Senior Research Scholar at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics and a Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University for more than 30 years. (Bioethics.gov)

Forty years after Roe v. Wade, Joshua Prager examines the life of a woman whose very existence has been defined by an issue. “McCorvey has long been less pro-choice or pro-life than pro-Norma,” Prager writes. “And she has played Jane Roe every which way, venturing far from the original script.” (Vanity Fair)

Ray Kurzweil, an inventor and futurist who predicts the coming rise of superhuman intelligence, has become Google’s new guru for pushing the boundaries of artificial intelligence starting today (Dec. 17). (Live Science)

Tom Knight got the bug for bioscience while he was a computer engineer at MIT. He founded the synthetic biology field and help set up bioengineering company Ginkgo BioWorks. He says we’ll soon be able to engineer living things with mechanical precision. (Slate)