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Cross Post: If you can screen for brown eyes, you should be able to edit out genetic disease
Written by Dr Christopher Gyngell, This Article was originally published in The Conversation Not everyone’s choice of scarf. Shutterstock It has long been known that cognitive diversity is important to collective performance. Diverse groups are more productive, more innovative and better at solving complex problems than less diverse groups. And recent research suggests that cognitive
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Brexit: lessons from the law
37% of the UK electorate voted to leave the European Community – slightly more than voted to remain. There is evidence that some of them regret their votes. The former editor of the Sun, Kelvin Mackenzie, who voted ‘Leave’, has spoken publicly about his ‘buyer’s remorse’. Others have indicated that they would not vote ‘leave’
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Cross Post: Next time you ask the doctor for some antibiotics – consider whether you’re being immoral
Written by Alberto Giubilini, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics This article was originally published in The Conversation Antimicrobial resistance is the ability of microorganisms causing infections to survive exposure to antimicrobial drugs such as antibiotics. This is considered by some to be a slowly emerging disaster. According to the recently released Review on
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Announcement: 2016 Effective Altruism Global Research Meeting Call for Abstracts
Location: August 5th to 7th, University of California, Berkeley Abstract Deadline: July 10th Contact: researchmeeting@centerforeffectivealtruism.org Overview The 2016 Effective Altruism Global Research Meeting is an opportunity for Postgraduate students and early stage academics from a variety of disciplines to present research relevant to Effective Altruism. The meeting will take place on August 5th to 7th,
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Why is chemical castration being used on offenders in some countries?
Written by Dr Jonathan Pugh This article was originally published on The Conversation The answer for some. Shutterstock Following a horrific act of sexual violence against a 14-year-old girl, the president of Indonesia, Joko Widodo, recently signed a decree into law, which, among other things, authorised the death penalty for convicted child sex offenders, and
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Three Black Teenagers
Written by Dr Joshua Shepherd Yesterday the term ‘three black teenagers’ trended heavily on twitter. (see https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/09/three-black-teenagers-anger-as-google-image-search-shows-police-mugshots) The trend began when @iBeKabir tweeted the results of two Google searches. A search for three white teenagers turned up images of wholesome smiling white teenagers. A search for three black teenagers turned up images of mugshots. (Google
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Organ Mules
Julian Savulescu While politicians wring their hands about sensible solutions to the organ shortage, scientists are progressing with genetic manipulations that may see human organs grown in pigs. US scientists are creating novel life forms: “human pig chimeras”. These are a blend of human and pig characteristics. They are like mules who will provide organs
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Affirmative Action for Women in Mathematics: Fighting Discrimination with Discrimination?
The University of Melbourne (the most prestigious university in my hometown) has advertised three senior positions in mathematics. Like some (but not all) other STEM subjects, mathematics has a low proportion of female academics. In part, this is a pipeline problem: women are significantly less likely to do mathematics degrees than men (28% of maths
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Hide your face?
A start-up claims it can identify whether a face belongs to a high-IQ person, a good poker player, a terrorist, or a pedophile. Faception uses machine-learning to generate classifiers that signal whether a face belongs in one category or not. Basically facial appearance is used to predict personality traits, type, or behaviors. The company claims
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Love by design: when science meets sex, lust, attraction and attachment
A version of this post was originally published in the Conversation You are on holiday with your partner of several years. Your relationship is going pretty well, but you wonder if it could be better. It’s Valentine’s Day and you find a bottle on the beach. You rub it. A love genie appears. He (or