January 3, 2024
(Undark) – Advances in the field have proved life-changing for individuals living with conditions like Parkinson’s, spinal cord injury, and stroke. People who cannot speak or type due to paralysis have regained the ability to communicate with loved ones, people … Read More
January 2, 2024
(Wired) – In June 2023, Moolec revealed that it had inserted genes from pigs into soy plants in order to make soybeans that expressed porcine proteins. The experiments were carried out at the company’s greenhouses in Wisconsin. In some of … Read More
December 29, 2023
(Associated Press) – A large pool of dark liquid festering on the floor. No fresh air. Computer displays that would overheat and ooze out a fishy-smelling gel that nauseated the crew. Asbestos readings 50 times higher than the Environmental Protection … Read More
December 28, 2023
(STAT News) – A slate of liver diseases got a rebrand this year. Experts hope the change can generate more conversation — and research interest — for conditions that still lack treatments. A group of over 200 physicians, public health … Read More
December 27, 2023
December 26, 2023
(NPR) – Gray’s transformation is the result of the landmark medical experiment that she launched and which culminated in December with a milestone: The Food and Drug Administration’s approved the first treatment that uses gene-editing to alleviate a human illness. … Read More
December 26, 2023
December 22, 2023
(MIT Technology Review) – Perhaps no technology has more power to transform medicine, and its vast potential is just beginning to be realized. Gene editing can be used to delete, insert, or alter portions of our genetic code. We’ve been … Read More
December 21, 2023
December 20, 2023
(Nature) – Chemists have used ChatGPT to design and conduct complex chemical reactions using a robotic laboratory set-up. The system, called Coscientist, can design, code and carry out several reactions — making compounds including paracetamol and aspirin in the wet … Read More
December 20, 2023
(IEEE Spectrum) – FUntil now, only about 50 humans have ever had BCIs implanted in their brains. And only a handful of those people have been able to leave the laboratory to use them in the real world, since most … Read More
December 19, 2023
(Bloomberg) – Retro Biosciences, a startup with $180 million from Sam Altman, has a simple and audacious goal: Add 10 good years to your life. And until now, we haven’t had a glimpse of its best ideas. (Read More)
December 15, 2023
(Wired) – Our B cells help prevent us from getting sick. Their job is to make antibodies, immune system proteins that fight off viruses and other foreign invaders. And they make a lot of antibodies—thousands of them every second. What … Read More
December 15, 2023
(KFF Health News) – Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy nonprofit, reports today that between 2010 and 2022, the drug industry’s main lobbying group and member companies provided at least $6 billion in grants to more than 20,000 organizations. The analysis, … Read More
December 15, 2023
(Washington Post) – Upon their deaths, one of the Smithsonian Institution’s top anthropologists, Ales Hrdlicka, enlisted the local institutions and doctors to help him remove their brains to build a “racial brain collection.” Hrdlicka, who sought brains and other body … Read More
December 14, 2023
(New York Times) – Ms. Sato is one of thousands of fitness professionals who have sought out cadaver workshops to better understand anatomy and improve their teaching skills. Over the past two decades, at least a dozen dissection courses — … Read More
December 14, 2023
(NBC News) – As the opioid epidemic continues raging, some advocates in Kentucky are pushing the state to explore a little-known psychedelic drug called ibogaine as a possible treatment option for addiction, a move, they say, could save lives. A … Read More
December 14, 2023
(MIT Technology Review) – Vertex Pharmaceuticals has agreed to buy rights to use a dominant CRISPR patent owned by the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, avoiding a potential lawsuit over its new gene-editing treatment for sickle-cell disease. The agreement … Read More
December 14, 2023
(Wired) – Right now, though, it’s still a rarefied treatment. “It’s expensive,” Jennifer Doudna, the pioneering biochemist who won a Nobel Prize in 2020 for her work on Crispr, told WIRED’s Emily Mullin at the LiveWIRED conference this week in … Read More
December 14, 2023
December 13, 2023
(Rolling Stone) – When a grieving son or daughter hands over their loved one to Harvard, they’re trusting the storied institution to handle them with respect. They’re passing over their parent or grandparent believing that they’re in safe hands with … Read More
December 12, 2023
(The Atlantic) – Just as the technology has blurred the line between human-created and computer-generated text and images—upending how people work, learn, and socialize—AI tools are accelerating and refashioning some of the basic elements of science. “We can really make … Read More
December 11, 2023
(The New Yorker) – We routinely test for chemicals that cause mutations. What about the dark matter of carcinogens–substances that don’t create cancer cells but rouse them from their slumber? [Article by Siddhartha Mukherjee] (Read More)
December 7, 2023
(The Washington Times) – U.S. national security officials say they have made significant changes to their experiments on human subjects since a botched research project in 1953 led to the death of an LSD-drugged CIA scientist who fell from a … Read More
December 6, 2023
(STAT News) – Trading her chances of having children naturally for a chance at freedom from a debilitating genetic disease was a difficult choice. But at least Tornyenu was presented with the option of preserving the possibility of having biological … Read More
