Nextgov | Source URL You’re in search of your roots, on a quest to uncover your ancestors. You submit DNA to a public genealogy service and in exchange get information about your people. Success! But from a constitutional perspective, in the U.S., you’re also abandoning evidence, which means criminal investigators […]
Gary Robbins | San Diego Union-Tribune | Source URL Feel like earning a little extra money and maybe improving your health at the same time? Consumers will soon be able to sell or rent their DNA to scientists who are trying to fight diseases as different as dementia, lupus and […]
Cory Doctorow | Boing Boing | Source URL Uganda’s social media tax may be an unenforceable mess, but that doesn’t make it harmless (it opens the door to selective enforcement and invites programs of censorship and mass surveillance in the name of fighting “tax evasion”) but that’s only half of dictator Yoweri […]
Victoria Allen | The Daily Mail | Source URL It is a nightmarish science fiction scenario, in which two people’s memories can be swapped between their brains. But fiction has become reality, after neuroscientists were able to transfer a memory from one animal into another. The memory was the recollection […]
Joe Pinkstone | The Daily Mail | Source URL An awe-inspiring video reveals the moment a man uses his mind to move his new bionic prosthetic hand for the first time. In the footage, the lucky recipient can be seen testing out his new hand as he executes a perfect […]
Tim Cushing | TechDirt | Source URL Recently, a genealogy service provided law enforcement with the information they needed to locate a murder suspect they’d been hunting for over forty years. GEDMatch admitted it was the service investigators used to find a familial match to DNA samples it had taken from crime […]
AP via Daily Mail | Source URL Wanted: A million people willing to share their DNA and 10 years of health habits, big and small, for science. On Sunday, the U.S. government will open nationwide enrollment for an ambitious experiment: If they can build a large enough database comparing the […]
Seamus Bellamy | Wired | Source URL According to Engadget, America’s futurist military think tank, DARPA, wants to figure out the means to slow down the biological functions of the human body to provide more time for medics and doctors to treat their wounded patients. If the notion of biostasis sounds like the […]
Luke Dormehl | Digital Trends | Source URL Google’s artificial intelligence technology may sometimes seem like it’s reading our mind, but neuroscientists at Canada’s University of Toronto Scarborough are literally using A.I. for that very purpose — by reconstructing images based on brain perception using data gathered by electroencephalography (EEG). […]
Henry Bodkin The Telegraph A device that gives the brain electric shocks has prompted hope for Alzheimer’s patients after an initial trial showed it could improve memory by 15 per cent. The US study was described as “promising” by British Experts, but they cautioned it was too early to say for sure if […]
Tia Ghose LiveScience Using magnetic fields, scientists can activate specific brain cells in mice and make them run, spin and freeze, new research shows. This could help scientists pinpoint the specific brain circuits animals use for certain behaviors, which could in turn help scientists pinpoint with greater accuracy which brain […]