biology
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Male Trees, Ranked
For the past week or so, the wild idea that high concentrations of “male trees” in cities are the reason that people experience intense allergies has been gaining renewed traction in certain circles online. This and the concept of exclusively “male” trees being planted in cities in order to rob urbanites of free fruit from…
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Will We Ever Be Able to Edit or Delete Memories?
Impossible even to broach this subject without reference to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, in which an unkempt Jim Carrey enlists a legitimate if shoddily run medical firm to erase the memory of his ex-girlfriend. If that film had a message, it was almost certainly not “erasing memories is good,” but that is not…
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This Butterfly May Have Been the First Insect Driven Extinct by U.S. Urbanisation
Scientists say they’ve confirmed a decades-old suspicion about the loss of the Xerces blue butterfly in the U.S by the 1940s. Based on genetic analysis of a 93-year-old specimen and others, they say the Xerces blue really was a distinct species of butterfly, rather than a sub-group of another existing species, as some scientists have…
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Genetically Modified Babies Are Still a Bad Idea, WHO Committee Concludes
An expert committee says heritable genome editing of humans is still too risky and that the World Health Organisation should take on a leading role when it comes to regulating this emerging biotechnology.