CRISPR, Adult Beginners, and Grandmothers: Lux Recommends #261

Editor
2 min readJan 15, 2021

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By Sam Arbesman, PhD

Welcome to Lux Recommends #261, this week’s edition of what we at Lux are reading and thinking about (want to receive this by email? Sign up here).

Articles

How Much Did Grandmothers Influence Human Evolution? “Scientists debate the evolutionary benefits of menopause” — Deena

The joys of being an absolute beginner — for life: “The phrase ‘adult beginner’ can sound patronising. It implies you are learning something you should have mastered as a child. But learning is not just for the young” — Deena

How We Discovered the Number Zero: “Zero as a concept was something that didn’t always exist in human cultures. We had to find it for ourselves — more than once.” — Bilal

Entertainment robots the latest craze worldwide as the pandemic rages onAdam K

Lost Passwords Lock Millionaires Out of Their Bitcoin Fortunes: “Bitcoin owners are getting rich because the cryptocurrency has soared. But what happens when you can’t tap that wealth because you forgot the password to your digital wallet?” — Sam

Once you and your friends are vaccinated, can you quit social distancing? “Expect life to return to normal in 3 stages — not all at once.” — Sherry Kalish, proud Lux mom

CRISPR and the Splice to Survive: “New gene-editing technology could be used to save species from extinction — or to eliminate them.” — Deena

Little Boxes at the Edge of Mexico CityAdam K

Facial recognition technology can expose political orientation from naturalistic facial imagesDeena

And The International Obfuscated C Code Contest—friend of Lux Guy Perelmuter

Podcasts

When IS Post Corona, anyway? Part 1 — Vaccination Nation” in Post Corona — friend of Lux Mike Granoff

Videos

How the Bellagio fountain worksAdam K

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