CRISPR/Cas9 technology has led to a “homing gene drive system” based on a specific Drosophila suzukii gene called doublesex that can suppress populations of D. suzukii vinegar flies – the “spotted-wing Drosophila” that devastate soft-skinned fruit in North America, Europe and parts of South America.

A new study suggests alcoholism coupled with genetic susceptibility is associated with changes to gene expression indicative of disease progression in the brains of mice that are genetically predisposed to Alzheimer’s. When repeatedly exposed to intoxicating amounts of alcohol, these mice showed signs of cognitive decline approximately two months sooner than they usually would.

A short time ago, the National Institutes of Health 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee held its second public meeting to discuss recommended changes. It was very authoritative, they said they were concerned about cancer and chemicals and obesity and they assured us they were looking at all of the new literature. The panel signaled it wants to go after Frappuccinos and aspartame. The problem is that none of those issues are why they were created.

An organ donor waiting list is not just who has been waiting the longest, an equation ranks patients based on age, waiting time, and other checklist. Yet the 'other factors may' mean a secret sauce that leads to disparity the same way EPA panels refusing to disclose data in studies its epidemiologists choose to use leads to erosions in public trust.

Transplant centers may be ignoring such secret sauce determinations. A new analysis of 11 centers between 2015 and 2019 found that 78 percent of kidneys offered to these centers were not placed with candidates at the top of the list of around 6,000 transplant candidates - which meant 4,700 transplants. 

If you have been to a zoo and been around our primate evolutionary cousins with kids, you may have had an awkward moment or two. They are going to masturbate, and don't care who's watching.

A new study says more is better. The Postcopulatory Selection Hypothesis believes it helps shed low-quality semen while the The Pathogen Avoidance Hypothesis believes it may reduce the risk of contracting sexually-transmitted infections. Primates have been doing it for at least 40 million years so something keeps it going.

The University of Padova has extended until tomorrow, June 8 at 1PM CEST the deadline to submit applications to be enrolled in a Ph.D. course in Physics at the University of Padova. 
Below I summarize a previous post that describes the opportunity. 

With the development of the new generation of large language models (ChatGPT, Bard, etcetera) we are seeing the first hints of an accelerating pace in the progress of artificial intelligence. These innovations may turn out to be good for humanity (with all problems we have already identified, bias, misinformation, work displacement, etc.), but their possibly exponential (and more-than-exponential) rate of change is something we cannot fathom, and is in and of itself the source of large risks.

A new op-ed in Nature argues that countries which have air conditioning owe the world up to $298 trillion. And counting.

That figure is virtual money. Like virtual water, or virtual pregnancy, it isn't a real thing, it is a computer model by activist economists who love to use terms like "reparations" because the modern world doesn't have people routinely freezing to death.

What often-debilitating condition affects up to 75 percent of women and has long been ignored by the US healthcare system?

The answer is uterine fibroids.

The world of elementary particles has something in common with our own: there are large inequalities in the properties of particles, as in the properties of human beings. The heaviest particle, the top quark, with its estimated mass of 172 GeV is five orders of magnitude heavier than the most common matter constituents, the up and down quarks and the electron. Along with the top quark there are three other heavyweight particles that we currently call elementary -perhaps only a label we have to use because we haven't been able to split them further into smaller bits: the Higgs boson (125 GeV), the Z boson (91 GeV), and the W boson (80 GeV).