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....Social scientists generally, and criminologists especially, often lack the ability (usually due to both ethical and practical concerns) to perform randomized controlled trials, the gold standard of research. We might expect, for instance, that having low levels of self-control is a cause of criminal behavior. In fact, some of the most powerful explanations of crime have been built on this idea, and there is much evidence to support it. We might also hypothesize that bad parenting causes children to develop low levels of self-control. Yet we can’t randomly assign people to have different levels of self-control, and we most assuredly...

Part human, part pig embryos have been successfully created by scientists for the first time. The embryos, that were grown inside a sow, contained a 'low' amount of human tissue. But it is hoped one day this technique will allow whole organs in the pig to be grown of human cells, to tackle the increasing shortage of organs for transplants. The ‘chimera’, or human-animal hybrid, was created by injecting human stem cells into pig embryos and then implanting them in a sow. The human stem cells grew and formed part of the tissue of the pig embryos, although they did...

Here’s an excerpt from the Wheat Belly Cookbook about modern high-yield, semi-dwarf wheat, what I call the “Frankengrain” because of the extensive and bizarre changes introduced into this grass by geneticists and agribusiness. (Even though a cookbook, I tried to make the Wheat Belly Cookbook a standalone book that discusses the background on why and how the Wheat Belly lifestyle yields such unexpected and extravagant health and weight loss successes. For this reason, the first 90 pages of the cookbook reiterate many of the Wheat Belly basic concepts.)From the Wheat Belly Cookbook: Wheat encapsulates a fundamental dilemma of our technological...

New evidence found by scientists has started to suggest that the people living on the islands of Melanesia could have human DNA the world has never seen. The theory is that the DNA does not come from a Neanderthal or Denisovan (which are the two ancient species we most closely relate humans with). Scientists believe that they come from a new undiscovered species that derived from the South Pacific, northeast of Austrailia.

It’s a boy! A five-month-old boy is the first baby to be born using a new technique that incorporates DNA from three people, New Scientist can reveal. “This is great news and a huge deal,” says Dusko Ilic at King’s College London, who wasn’t involved in the work. “It’s revolutionary.” The controversial technique, which allows parents with rare genetic mutations to have healthy babies, has only been legally approved in the UK. But the birth of the child, whose Jordanian parents were treated by a US-based team in Mexico, should fast-forward progress around the world, say embryologists.

Back in 2014, a bigoted African leader put J. Michael Bailey, a psychologist at Northwestern, in a strange position. Yoweri Museveni, the president of Uganda, had been issuing a series of anti-gay tirades, and — partially fueled by anti-gay religious figures from the U.S. — was considering toughening Uganda’s anti-gay laws. The rhetoric was getting out of control: “The commercialisation of homosexuality is unacceptable,” said Simon Lokodo, Uganda’s ethics minister. “If they were doing it in their own rooms we wouldn’t mind, but when they go for children, that’s not fair. They are beasts of the forest.” Eventually, Museveni said...

DNA tests confirm both were given to wrong mothers after being born at Norway House Indian HospitalLeon Swanson and David Tait Jr. are both 41 years old and have just learned they're not exactly who they thought they were. Both wept Friday in Winnipeg as Eric Robinson, a former NDP member of the Manitoba Legislative Assembly for Keewatinook, told media that the two men were switched at birth more than 40 years ago at a hospital in Norway House Cree Nation. "What happened here is lives were stolen," Robinson said. "You can't describe it as anything less than that." Swanson...

South African runner Caster Semenya dominated the women’s 800-meter final Saturday in Rio, finishing well ahead of the competition to take home the gold medal. Semenya is widely believed to be “intersex,” defined by the United Nations as people born with sex characteristics “that do not fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies.” The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) last summer suspended International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) rules prohibiting athletes who exceed a testosterone threshold from competing in women’s track and field events, clearing the way for Semenya to compete in Rio. The CAS ruling claimed...

Life came to ice-free Canadian corridor too late to sustain migrations of Clovis and pre-Clovis people. Archaeologists need a new theory for the colonization of the Americas. Plant and animal DNA buried under two Canadian lakes squashes the idea that the first Americans travelled through an ice-free corridor that extended from Alaska to Montana.The analysis, published online in Nature on 10 August and led by palaeo­geneticist Eske Willerslev of the University of Copenhagen, suggests that the passageway became habitable 12,600 years ago1. That’s nearly 1,000 years after the formation of the Clovis culture — once thought to be the first Americans — and...

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg (North Carolina) School System had to temporarily put its HB2-defying transgender bathroom plan on hold due to a recent Supreme Court ruling. But the ruling hasn't stopped the slow roll-out of other controversial gender-related recommendations that it is set to make to the local school board on Tuesday night. Charlotte news station WSOC-TV reports:

A new study reveals that genetic manipulation of mice, rats, cows and pigs has increased threefold since 2004. Between 2004 and 2013, the number of tests conducted using genetically modified animals in Germany nearly tripled, according to reports by Funke Mediengruppe, citing a study by research group Testbiotech, which investigates the “consequences of genetic engineering”. In total nearly 950,000 animals, mainly mice and rats, were genetically tested in 2013 alone — one third of all animals on which scientific testing was conducted during that year in Germany. …

A CMS presentation to principals and counselors recommends kids are not referred to as boys and girls, but instead as scholars and students. DOCUMENT: CMS transgender student presentation Eliminating boy and girl references is one of several policies included in the CMS bully prevention regulations. One policy allows students to participate in extracurricular activities and overnight field trips based on their gender identity. A student who identifies as a girl would be allowed to participate in an "all-girl" overnight trip. Another policy says CMS must evaluate all gender-based activities and "maintain only those that have clear and sound pedagogical purpose."

If you've ever seen a friend have good results from a diet but then not been able to match those results yourself, you may not be surprised by new findings in mice that show that diet response is highly individualized. "There is an overgeneralization of health benefits or risks tied to certain diets," said William Barrington, Ph.D., a researcher from North Carolina State University who conducted this work in the laboratory of David Threadgill, Ph.D., at Texas A&M University. "Our study showed that the impact of the diet is likely dependent on the genetic composition of the individual eating the...

Scientists have analysed the DNA of ancient giant European wild cattle that died out almost 400 years ago. They have determined the first mitochondrial genome sequence from aurochs (Bos primigenius) from bone found in a cave in England. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is passed down from a mother to her offspring....... One of the researchers involved, Dr Ceiridwen Edwards, has previously investigated the remains of a polar bear found in the Scottish Highlands.... The species became extinct when a female animal died in a forest in Poland in 1627. Roman general and dictator Julius Caesar was said to have been impressed...

Scientists have analysed the DNA of ancient giant European wild cattle that died out almost 400 years ago.They have determined the first mitochondrial genome sequence from aurochs (Bos primigenius) from bone found in a cave in England. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is passed down from a mother to her offspring. One of the researchers involved, Dr Ceiridwen Edwards, has previously investigated the remains of a polar bear found in the Scottish Highlands. The work was carried out at the University College Dublin's Animal Genomics Laboratory and Conway Institute using new technology that allows billions of base pairs of DNA to be...

Scientists have studied a rare skeleton from the Silla culture, which ruled over part of the Korean Peninsula from 57 B.C. to A.D. 935. “The skeletons are not preserved well in the soil of Korea,” bioanthropologist Dong Hoon Shin of Seoul National University College of Medicine told Live Science. The skeleton, of a woman in her late 30s, was found in a traditional coffin that had been buried near the historic capital of the Silla Kingdom, Gyeongju. Analysis of her mitochondrial DNA suggests that she belonged to a genetic lineage that is present in East Asia today. Carbon isotopes in...

Engineering immune cells to attack cancer is a form of treatment that is showing great promise, but it is complex because it involves extracting and modifying T cells before injecting them back into the body. Scientists have now demonstrated a way to not just arm immune cells while still inside the body, but equip them with the ability to fight any kind of cancer, providing an early proof-of-concept for a cheap, universal vaccine for the deadly disease. ............Snip............ But German scientists are now reporting an immunotherapy breakthrough that is significant in more ways than one. Led by Professor Ugur Sahin...

This is the first ancient DNA to be obtained from Phoenician remains. Known as “Ariche,” the young man came from Byrsa, a walled citadel above the harbor of ancient Carthage. Byrsa was attacked by the Roman general Scipio Aemilianus “Africanus” in the Third Punic War. It was destroyed by Rome in 146 B.C. Analysis of the skeleton revealed the man died between the age of 19 and 24, had a rather robust physique and was 1.7 meters (5’6″) tall. He may have belonged to the Carthaginian elite, as he was buried with gems, scarabs, amulets and other artifacts. Now genetic...

We asked several Muslims in Saudi Arabia why they marry their first cousins. All of them told us it’s to keep the wealth within the family and that the Prophet allows them to do this. There is one town in Saudi Arabia where there are only two last names listed for all its citizens. This came from a Lockheed employee who has had three assignments to Saudi Arabia. Worth the read! During the pilot transition program with the KV-107 and C-130 with Lockheed, we found that most Saudi pilot trainees had very limited night vision, even on the brightest of...

Animal behaviorist Dr. Kale Crumlin didn't know how close he was to the truth when a few months ago he first shared his observations with a small circle of colleagues in a paper titled, "The Behavior and Habits of Hillary Clinton," in which he compared the former First Lady to the dominant female in a clan of spotted hyenas, also known as laughing hyenas. "The cackle, the facial expressions, and the predisposition to dominate males were the first behavioral clues," wrote Dr. Crumlin, referring to a known scientific fact that spotted hyena society is matriarchal; females are larger than males...