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Bringing the wholly mammoth back to life
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Before you get any ideas that we're cloning wholly mammoths back into the 21st century, it's not that. An American geneticist has extracted DNA from the frozen remains of a long-dead mammoth found on Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean (shown above), created a synthetic replica of it, and implanted it into elephant cells that have been isolated in a petri dish, using a new technique of DNA splicing that allows for unprecedented accuracy. The technique used to join synthetic mammoth DNA fragments with the genetic code of an elephant is called CRISPR/Cas9, and while it’s been recently used to create transgenic organisms, this is the first time it’s been used on the DNA of an extinct organism. Way to go! Source: http://www.sciencealert.com/mammot ...
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23659 |
duddy |
9 years ago |
Could I borrow your head for a second?
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A 30-year-old Russian man has announced that he will volunteer to transplant his head onto another person's body. Earlier this year, Italian surgeon Sergio Canavero outlined the transplant technique he intends to follow in the journal Surgical Neurology International, a procedure that is predicted to last 36 hours, and requiring the assistance of 150 doctors and nurses. "I would not wish this on anyone," says top surgeon. Watch Dr. Sergio Canavero speak about head transplantation below. ...
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14272 |
duddy |
9 years ago |
Highest average IQ is found within this ethnic group
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It doesn't take a genius to recognize the vast number of contributions the people of Jewish ancestry have made in modern history. According to a 2005 scientific paper, "Natural History of Jewish Intelligence", Jews as a group inherit higher verbal and mathematical intelligence than other ethnic groups, on the basis of inherited diseases and the peculiar economic situation of Jews in the Middle Ages. Specifically, the Ashkenazi Jews - those who originated in Eastern Europe, such as Albert Einstein (left) and Carl Sagan (right) - tend to have higher intelligence than other ethnic groups; in fact, about 80% of modern Jews have Ashkenazi ancestry. One observational basis for inferring that Jews have high intelligence is their prevalence in occup ...
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12645 |
duddy |
7 years ago |
According to Pascal, it's healthy to believe in God
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Many great minds have sought proof for God's existence. For French philosopher and scientist, Blaise Pascal, God's existence was beside the point. He conceded that nobody knows whether or not God exists, but because it's in our own best interests to behave as if He does, that's the most rational choice. This is what's known as Pascal's Wager, since it argues that it's your best bet to believe in God. (Pascal wrote of the Christian God, but this same argument could apply to any god). If God doesn't exist and you behave as if he does, you haven't lost much - just some sleep on Sunday and a few opportunities for sin. But if God does exist, you have everything to lose or gain: act as if he does exist and you spend eternity in heaven; act as if h ...
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9494 |
duddy |
7 years ago |
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