{"id":14168,"date":"2015-04-29T09:07:55","date_gmt":"2015-04-29T01:07:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/?p=14168"},"modified":"2015-04-29T09:07:55","modified_gmt":"2015-04-29T01:07:55","slug":"recent-interesting-science-articles-april-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/?p=14168","title":{"rendered":"Recent Interesting Science Articles (April 2015)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Not quite the end of the month yet, but let&#8217;s get this out of the way:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The biggest bit of news naturally is that Chinese scientists have used the <strong>CRISPR\/Cas9<\/strong> technique that I talked about last <a href=\"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/?p=13865\">month<\/a> to experiment on human embryos. The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/news\/chinese-scientists-genetically-modify-human-embryos-1.17378\">news<\/a> first appeared in <em>Nature<\/em>, 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\u00a0\u03b2-thalassaemia is considered to be a failure because only a small proportion of the sample accepted\u00a0the 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.<\/li>\n<li>The next two articles deal with Internet culture and online behavior. The first <a href=\"http:\/\/thestack.com\/cornell-justin-cheng-troll-behavior-130415\">one<\/a> talks about an algorithm that can be used to identify <strong>online trolls<\/strong> which might be used to help police online spaces like social networks and forums.<\/li>\n<li>The second <a href=\"http:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1111\/hcre.12059\/abstract\">one<\/a> talks about the <strong>toxicity of the comments<\/strong> in many online articles and posts. In particular, it discusses findings about how even reading prejudiced\u00a0comments can cause other people to post more prejudiced comments themselves, leading to a downward spiral of poor quality comments.<\/li>\n<li>Continuing on in the sphere of the social sciences, this <a href=\"http:\/\/dspace.mit.edu\/handle\/1721.1\/65884#files-area\">paper <\/a>discusses how organizations that explicitly frame themselves as being <strong>meritocratic<\/strong> actually end up favoring men instead over women. This matters because I&#8217;ve often had occasion to debate people who\u00a0oppose feminism on the grounds that they favor egalitarianism instead of measures that actively promote the interests of women over men.<\/li>\n<li>Finally, on a more lighthearted note, here&#8217;s an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\/news\/science-and-technology\/21648474-ultimate-kitchen-gadget-home-has-everything-robotic\">article<\/a> from <em>The Economist<\/em> about a <strong>robot chef<\/strong> that soon become a commercial reality. The idea is to have it replicate precisely the movements of celebrity chefs. However the technology isn&#8217;t quite there yet since the robot isn&#8217;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.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Not quite the end of the month yet, but let&#8217;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 &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/?p=14168\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Recent Interesting Science Articles (April 2015)<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14168"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14174,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14168\/revisions\/14174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}