Dec 07 2009
Esther Dyson is a Director of 23andMe and an investor in numerous Internet, private aviation, space and health care ventures. She has also shared her genetic data, medical records and other personal information with the research community and the general public as a research subject for the Personal Genome Project, an initiative led by Harvard’s [...]
Nov 04 2009
The Kaiser Permanente Research Program on Genes, Environment and Health (RPGEH) is an exceptional study that has the potential to transform medicine. As someone who proudly spent over 25 years as a patient with Kaiser, I would be excited to see my family’s medical records used for such a worthy cause. I was disappointed, however, [...]
Sep 03 2009
We may be another step closer to discovering what makes us human.
A new study published online this week in Genome Research has pinpointed three genes in humans that may genetically differentiate us from chimps and other primates. Genetically we are very similar to chimps, so most of the differences researchers have observed to date regard [...]
Sep 02 2009
There are many examples around the world of two distinct ethnic groups living side by side.
Sometimes these groups co-exist peacefully. Other times they do not.
Often two groups’ differences – along with circumstantial factors – lead to tension between them and sometimes violence. The Hutus and Tutsis of Rwanda, the Sunnis and Shiites of Iraq, and [...]
Jul 01 2009
On August 20, 79 AD, a series of small tremors and earthquakes began to shake the two ancient Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Lying in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius — about 150 miles south of the Roman capital — the two cities were often hit by tremors and earthquakes, so most residents were [...]
Jun 22 2009
Each one of us carries in our cells the vital genetic data, compliments of our parents, that code for many of our traits and attributes. Whether it’s our eye color, height or the ability to consume dairy products, the variations in our genes contribute to making us ‘one of a kind’. Unfortunately, these variations can [...]
Jun 19 2009
Only 250 miles separates the island of Madagascar from the southeast coast of Africa. The short distance between the two land masses traditionally led the outside world to assume that the native inhabitants of Madagascar – known as the Malagasy – originally came from the west, probably from the present day southeast African nation of [...]
Jun 18 2009
It’s no secret that obesity rates are rising — quickly. Between 2000 and 2005 the prevalence of obesity rose by 24%. Extreme obesity increased by more than 50%. If current trends continue, more than half of all Americans will be clinically obese by the year 2030.
Rapid changes in the prevalence of a disorder suggest that [...]
Jun 04 2009
Great apes really do giggle when tickled, new research says – just like you and me.
Researchers from the University of Hannover in Germany recorded the tickle-induced vocalizations from three human infants and 21 infant and juvenile orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos and analyzed this acoustic data to find similarities and differences among the five species. [...]
May 28 2009
Type 1 diabetes is on the rise in European children, says a new report.
Researchers studied type 1 diabetes data collected between 1989 and 2003 at 20 centers in 17 European countries. Their results, published online yesterday in the Lancet, show that more children, especially younger children, are being diagnosed with the disease each year. Based [...]
