Happy Sunday! Did you get enough sleep, or is that lost hour already messing with your day?
Let’s say, come November, we keep the clocks where they are instead of setting them back an hour: That’d mean permanent daylight saving time. A bill now in Congress – the Sunshine Protection Act – would do just that, and it has support from such politically and latitudinally distant U.S. senators as Florida’s Marco Rubio and Massachusetts’ Edward Markey. Permanent DST would mean later sunsets in the winter months – which sounds like something everyone might enjoy.
But many sleep researchers and physicians say keeping DST would be moving the clock hands in the wrong direction. One recent study found an increase in hospitalizations for atrial fibrillation after the spring transition. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the American Medical Association argue that instead of staying on daylight saving time, we should be on standard time all the time.
For a decade now, researchers have used a gene-editing tool called CRISPR to modify human DNA, leading to breakthroughs in treatment for some genetic conditions. Most notably, several dozen patients have essentially been cured of a form of sickle cell disease. But what if you could stop genetic diseases before they even start – by modifying genes inside of sperm, eggs or embryos?
Last Wednesday in London, organizers of an international conference on gene-editing said editing heritable genes is not ethical at this time, arguing that the risk of introducing new mutations that could harm children and get passed down through generations is too great. Some critics also fear it could open a slippery slope to "designer babies" and other dystopian fears about creating a kind of super-race of humans. Some people question whether heritable gene editing will ever be ethical. Another ethical concern about any kind of gene therapy: The exorbitant cost of such treatments could push them beyond the grasp of people and nations who could most benefit.
The origin of penicillin was famously an accident. British bacteriologist Alexander Fleming returned from a vacation in 1928 to discover that one of the petri dishes in his lab had a mold growing in it that wasn't supposed to be there. On closer inspection, he saw that the area around the mold was free of bacteria. A decade later, chemists at Oxford used the fungus, Penicillium notatum, to create the world's first antibiotic. A chance discovery changed history by making previously serious diseases like bacterial pneumonia easily treatable. Other accidental inventions of note include the microwave, potato chips and Coca-Cola.
A recent discovery about monkey behavior has archeologists pondering whether one of the key technological innovations in human history – the making of sharp stone tools – might have been an accident as well. It has to do with the way some macaques in Thailand crack nuts for food.
According to Yale paleoanthropologist Jessica Thompson, this discovery could have “ramifications that range from, ‘when did the first ever stone tools get made by early humans?’ all the way to ‘when did people begin to move into South America?’ ” Here’s why our early ancestors may not have been as ingenious as we like to think.
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