Not quite the end of the month yet, but let’s get this out of the way:

• The biggest bit of news naturally is that Chinese scientists have used the CRISPR/Cas9 technique that I talked about last month to experiment on human embryos. The news first appeared in Nature, but not as a paper since it was rejected. The team used non-viable embryos that could never have fully developed to stave off ethical concerns and the attempt to modify the gene responsible for β-thalassaemia is considered to be a failure because only a small proportion of the sample accepted the modifications and there a large number of unintended mutations. Nevertheless the wider implication is that germ-line gene editing on human samples is now no longer a secret.
• The next two articles deal with Internet culture and online behavior. The first one talks about an algorithm that can be used to identify online trolls which might be used to help police online spaces like social networks and forums.
• The second one talks about the toxicity of the comments in many online articles and posts. In particular, it discusses findings about how even reading prejudiced comments can cause other people to post more prejudiced comments themselves, leading to a downward spiral of poor quality comments.
• Continuing on in the sphere of the social sciences, this paper discusses how organizations that explicitly frame themselves as being meritocratic actually end up favoring men instead over women. This matters because I’ve often had occasion to debate people who oppose feminism on the grounds that they favor egalitarianism instead of measures that actively promote the interests of women over men.
• Finally, on a more lighthearted note, here’s an article from The Economist about a robot chef that soon become a commercial reality. The idea is to have it replicate precisely the movements of celebrity chefs. However the technology isn’t quite there yet since the robot isn’t even trusted with a knife at the moment and a human still needs to prepare all of the ingredients and put them within reach of the robot.