As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

genetics

Will Superhumans Replace Us? Stephen Hawking Thought So

by
superhero - pixabay

Are we all going to be replaced? Stephen Hawking apparently thought so. In the grand tradition of famous physicists making claims about subjects beyond their scope of expertise, the great British theorist left behind a collection of essays in which he speculated about and predicted the human future. In one essay, published Oct. 14 in the Sunday Times, Hawking argued that humanity risks being replaced by genetically modified “superhumans.” Well-intentioned research designed to improve human health and human life, he wrote, will eventually be corrupted. People will start to modify humans to live longer, be smarter, or be more aggressive … Read more

SCIENCE: Can We Revive an Ice-Age Horse?

by
ice age horse

A team of scientists in Siberia is hopeful that a mummified 40,000-year-old baby horse can provide critical genetic material for cloning the extinct ice-age species. But experts told Live Science that they are skeptical that the scientists will be able to find viable DNA on the body at all, let alone overcome the enormous challenges of cloning a species that’s been extinct for millennia. Revived after millennia? The preserved foal’s body was discovered in August and was excavated from melting permafrost in the Batagaika crater in Yakutia, a region in eastern Russia. Researchers working with the frozen remains recently told … Read more

FOR WRITERS: Designer Babies

by
child butterfly wings - pixabay

FOR WRITERS Today’s writer topic comes from QSFer Aidee Ladnier: We’ve all heard the scare tactics of politicians warning of the dangers of designer babies, but genetically modified humans are literally due to be born in the next decade. Medical science has made our lives longer and healthier. But what if scientists modify those things that make us fundamentally who we are? Why is it okay to make sure a child is not born with a genetic disease that will kill them prematurely (like cystic fibrosis) but not okay to give an child a higher IQ which would give it … Read more

SCIENCE: Did Most Men Die Off 7,000 Years Ago?

by
warrior - pixabay

Modern men’s genes suggest that something peculiar happened 5,000 to 7,000 years ago: Most of the male population across Asia, Europe and Africa seems to have died off, leaving behind just one man for every 17 women. This so-called population “bottleneck” was first proposed in 2015, and since then, researchers have been trying to figure out what could’ve caused it. One hypothesis held that the drop-off in the male population occurred due to ecological or climatic factors that mainly affected male offspring, while another idea suggested that the die-off happened because some males had more power in society, and thus … Read more

SCIENCE: 83 Genetic Mutations That Help Determine Your Height

by
height pixabay

Ever wonder how much of your height you inherited from your parents? A large-scale genetic study published recently in the journal Nature is helping shed some light on the factors that determine whether a person grows to be 6-feet-1 or 5-feet-2. While scientists already had a good idea of the most common genetic factors that contribute to height, the new findings uncover a number of rare genetic alterations that can play a surprisingly major role in human growth. Using data from the Genetic Investigation of Anthropometric Traits consortium (a group also known as GIANT), scientists from the Broad Institute at … Read more

Science Trying to Answer Why People Are Trans

by
DNA

Why are girls born as girls, and boys as boys? What about an individual who is biologically female but feels or sees oneself as male, or the other way around? Dr. Qazi Rahman who is a lead investigator into LGBT mental health at King’s College London revealed that science still can’t give a complete answer to those questions. ‘This is the key question at the moment,’ the scientist told The Guardian. ‘We know much more about how nature shapes sexual orientation, and my view of the science is that nurture does very little, if any, shaping of sexual orientation. We … Read more