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Since the first successful birth of in vitro fertilization in the late 1970s, research with human embryos has been subject to time limits and development parameters.

The essential reason for imposing these limits was that, although the practice is considered acceptable to benefit human health and improve reproduction, in vitro research must conclude 14 days after fertilization, that is, when implantation in the uterus is normally completed.

Progressive expansion

Now, however, an international team of bioethicists and scientists, led by a researcher at Case Western Reserve University, argues in a new study published in Science, which may be justified to go beyond the 14 day limit.

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Insoo Hyun, professor of bioethics at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and lead author of the article, thus urges policymakers and the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) to consider, with caution and a gradual approach, scientific exploration beyond the 14-day limit, also taking into account the benefits of doing so.

ISSCR is expected to publish soon updated guidelines for stem cell and embryo research. Potential benefits of studying human embryos beyond the 14-day limit include understanding how early developmental disorders arise and developing therapies that address the causes of infertility, developmental disorders, and failed pregnancy.

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Outlandish alternatives available to the birth control pill

From 14 days onwards, the embryo's stem cells begin to migrate from here to there and begin to form a body. By then we measured one and a half millimeters. During This process Frequent problems occur that cause malformations or miscarriages without parents or their doctors ever knowing why they happened. It is not foreseeable where this process of manipulation and destruction of human beings in an embryonic state will end, but Hyun and his colleagues They propose six principles that can be used to assess whether research on human embryos can go beyond the 14-day limit, in incremental, measured steps.

Its principles, among others, include promoting that research proposals are peer-reviewed by qualified and independent science and ethics committees. The viability of the culture over the past 14 days would also need to be first assessed and, if so, whether those newly permitted experiments were beneficial enough to justify further human use.

In other words, draw new red lines, which are still a set of ideas where culture, science, values and worldview converge:

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The limit of 14 days after fertilization should be extended in experiments with human embryos, according to bioethicists

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Xataka Science

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Sergio Parra

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Worship Onan Not only can it be qualitatively different from having intercourse, there are also other factors involved that cause our brain to process masturbation differently than sex.

That would explain that, no matter how much we practice onanism, we always aspire to have sex with another person, and that this onanism is a kind of consolation prize ("consolation" written with many quotes).

Excess masturbation

Masturbating does not blind us, nor is it immoral, it is even healthy. However, if we abuse masturbation in order to fill our lack of sexual partners, there is data that suggests that, over time, sexual well-being is spoiled, as it significantly reduces libido and the capacity for sexual arousal, as reflected this study from 2016 that analyzes the consumption of porn on the internet.

The study focuses on internet por the unique properties of pornography in this medium: unlimited novelty, potential for easier escalation to more extreme material, video format, etc.

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How much do men and women masturbate?

The positive news is that, after a period of restraint, this sexual well-being and capacity for sexual arousal returns to normal. However, as pointed out Dean Burnett in his book 'The happy brain':

But the fact that such symptoms have not been observed among those who frequently have sex with other people is indicative that, when it comes to sex, our desires and happiness are not simply based on achieving intense but fleeting pleasure.

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Masturbating is not the same as having sex and our brain knows it

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Sergio Parra

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The neonatal jaundice, a yellowing of the skin caused by high levels of bilirubin in the blood that can cause serious medical conditions in newborns, is a leading cause of death and brain damage in infants in low- and middle-income countries.

Now, Japanese researchers They have developed the first portable devices, wearables, to accurately monitor jaundice.

60 to 80% of all newborns

Jaundice occurs in 60 to 80% of all newborns. Real-time monitoring of jaundice, therefore, is essential for neonatal care. Continuous measurements of bilirubin levels can help improve the quality of bilirubin treatments.

Currently, medical professionals use portable bilirubinometers to measure bilirubin levels, but there is no device that can simultaneously measure jaundice and vital signs in real time. According to the researchers:

We have developed the world's first portable multi-vital device for newborns that can simultaneously measure neonatal jaundice, blood oxygen saturation and pulse rate.

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Directed by Hiroki Ota, associate professor of mechanical engineering at the Graduate School of Systems Integration at Yokohama National University, andShuichi Ito, a professor in the department of Pediatrics at Yokohama City University Graduate School of Medicine, the team published their results March 3 in Science Advances.

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The first wearable for babies that accurately monitors jaundice, something that affects the majority of newborns

was originally published in

Xataka Science

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Sergio Parra

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According to a research team led by the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and the Paleoenvironment at the University of Tübingen, the transition from wild wolves to domesticated dogs in Europe may have occurred in southwestern Germany. between 16,000 and 14,000 years ago.

Therefore, the team of researchers assumes that Magdalenian humans domesticated and bred animals that came from different wolf lineages.

Canidae

In the study, whose results have been published in Scientific Reports, several Canidae fossils from a cave in that Central European region were analyzed with various methods. This includes, in addition to modern domestic dogs, wolves and foxes.

Gnirshöhle is a small two-chambered cave in southern Baden-Wuerttemberg that is located in the immediate vicinity of two additional caves from the Magdalenian era. Therefore, an origin of European domestic dogs could be found in southwestern Germany.

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As explained Chris Baumann from the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and the Paleoenvironment at the University of Tübingen:

We linked morphology, genetics and isotopic characteristics, leading to the discovery that the bones examined originated from numerous different genetic lineages, and that the new genomes sequenced from the samples cover the entire genetic range from wolf to domestic dog.

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It was in Germany, between 16,000 and 14,000 years ago, when the European dog was born, according to a new study

was originally published in

Xataka Science

by
Sergio Parra

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The number of attendees at any mass protest It is usually inversely proportional to the number of people who know what they are saying (or they simply know what it is doing there, like sheep led to the fold, because they lack the necessary information to understand a complex problem).

At least, the educational level of the protesters is significant after consulting the sociodemographic profile of protesters between the years 1980 and 2008, according to the CIS.

If the element “violence” is added, then the number of the second group may even reach zero; giving rise to the paradox that it is precisely the most gregarious and staid people who protest most energetically, and the most critical and free, those who do not.

This is the first idea, pam, on the forehead, that the environmental activist slips Michael Shellenberger in his book There is no apocalypse: Why environmental alarmism hurts us all.

Shellenberger thus alludes in his first pages to the violent and bitter environmental protests of Extinction Rebellion in London, at the beginning of October 2019. "The Earth is dying," they said. Which, obviously, justified any misdeeds on his part.

Rational and enlightened environmentalism

This anecdote was, among other things, what motivated Shellenberger to write this book: because the conversation about the environment has gotten out of control over the last few years.

There is no apocalypse: Why environmental alarmism harms us all (No collection)

Today on Amazon for €21.80

Her intention, then, is to put an end to the exaggeration, alarmism and extremism typical of a girl with braids, which are the enemy of positive, humanist and rational environmentalism ("I don't want you to have hope, she said Greta Thunberg, "I want you to panic"). And the people, even those who were much more educated than her, nodded ruefully. Or at least he pretended he did.

Within the current panorama, then, books like this are necessary. Of course, we are not before the Bible, but it is a counterweight that allows us to balance the balance of other publications that do pass for being the Bible, and that are also too inclined towards alarm, a very specific inseparable ideological pack and a kind of romanticization of protest (as if the massive and very bitter protest, in itself, legitimized an idea).

And, above all, this book allows for a more in-depth reading of what scientists and ecologists (not ecologists) point out about what is happening in the world and to what extent can they predict what is going to happen.

Like any thorny issue, we would be wrong if we did not have a multifaceted vision of the solutions to the problem that concerns us: nothing less than the survival of the human species, or at least its well-being and prosperity.

Because, in most developed countries, carbon emissions have been declining for more than a decade after peaking. Deaths due to extreme weather, even in poor nations, have fallen by 80 percent over the past four decades. And the risk of the Earth warming to very high temperatures is increasingly unlikely, thanks to slowing population growth and abundant natural gas. What is really behind the rise of apocalyptic environmentalism? Powerful financial interests. Desire for status and power. But above all there is a desire for transcendence among supposedly secular people. This spiritual impulse can be natural and healthy. But by preaching fear without love, and guilt without redemption, the new religion is failing to satisfy our deepest psychological and existential needs.

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Books that inspire us: 'There is no apocalypse' by Michael Shellenberger

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Xataka Science

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Sergio Parra

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We are more or less expeditious in applying our justice to others depending on whether we are in front of other people or not, that is, whether our punishment is carried out from a public pulpit or a private one.

In fact, according to This studio, people punish three times as harshly in the presence of their peers, because punishment is a way of tacitly saying: I find this behavior very reprehensible and my anger makes it clear that not only do I not tolerate it in others, but eventually I wouldn't do it on myself either..

virtue signaling

Punishment is fundamental to two distinctively human phenomena: cooperation in groups and morality. There is currently no consensus on which evolutionary model best explains this phenomenon in humans.

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But in the aforementioned study, two experiments have been presented in which participants are induced to commit moral violations and then present third parties with the opportunity to pay to punish the wrongdoers in order to verify which weighed more, morality or cooperation. in groups.

The presence of an audience, even if only that of the experimenter, was enough to provoke an increase in moralistic punishment.

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People who play victims tend to lie and deceive more than the rest

Part of the idea of virtue display originates in the scientific study of signaling theory, initially conceived by Charles Darwin and your work, The origin of man and selection in relation to sex, published in 1871.

But then, is this indignation real or fake? The psychologists Jillian Jordan and David Rand argue that virtue signaling as feigned indignation is separable from real indignation toward a particular belief, but that most cases of display of virtue swith in fact simultaneously real indignation.

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We care more about our public image than justice, which is why we are harsher when applying it in the presence of others.

was originally published in

Xataka Science

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Sergio Parra

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