At the end of November 2018, Chinese biophysicist He Jiankui reported at a symposium in Hong Kong that he had conceived two children through artificial insemination. The big news: he had manipulated their genetic material with the help of the CRISPR/Cas9 "genetic scissors" before implanting the embryo. This is probably the world s first case in which the human germline has been genetically manipulated. Changes like this will be passed on to future generations.

The artificial intelligence is called Philyra - and its developers and users agree on one thing: It is female. "I spent a lot of time with her and see the programme as a she , that makes it easier," perfumer David Apel says jokingly. But of course artificial intelligence has neither consciousness nor gender. It s just a computer system, a network of artificial neurons, created to store, process, and recombine large amounts of data. It can t smell or analyse fragrances in the air. Nevertheless, Philyra is the new employee at fragrance manufacturer Symrise in New York.

There you are, driven to discover and explain the universe. You ve got people around you, a team of disciples, all following a similar ideology. An assumption. Hypothesis. Or prediction. But there s no way of knowing whether what you see, or this thing you think could there if only the technology would let you see it, is... indeed there. Until you prove it.

When your partner is content, you can be sure of pleasant company. But not only that — a study suggests when your partner s happy, you live longer too. So what s to do if you live with a sourpuss? A couple in bed: A pouting womand and a grumpy man (picture-alliance) Imagine these two types: One happy, one not. First: The archetypal couch potato. He only ever gets up to smoke a cigarette, because he has to go outside. And when he eats, it s a pre-packed TV dinner. Why? He s unhappy. Everything annoys him: His job, his friends, life in general.

The body of water long immortalized in Johann Strauss II s famous waltz "The Blue Danube" received an edgy new superlative on Monday: Along with being Europe s second-longest river, the Danube is now the continent s most drug-polluted. Rivers from the Thames in England to the Tigris in Iraq host concentrations of antibiotics exceeding safe levels by up to 300 times, which could play a role in human drug resistance, according to the first international study of its kind presented on Monday.

David Anderson is pipetting a yellowish liquid into conical flasks, anxious not to spill anything. The liquid contains yeast cells, which, thanks to a bit of genetic engineering, are able to produce a precursor of insulin — the hormone that people with Type 1 diabetes need to administer to themselves to survive. "We are doing a test today with an enzyme that s going to create the insulin from the proinsulin," David explains. "The enzyme did show activity before, so we are hopeful."

It was a "wonderful event," said Diethelm Wallwiener, the medical director of the University Women s Hospital in Tübingen. In March and May of this year, two healthy children were born at the hospital whose mothers had transplanted uteruses. "We succeeded in helping two children to see the light of day who would otherwise never have been born," said Wallwiener of the medical success. This is also a breakthrough and a "new chapter in transplant surgery" for medical research.

It was a "wonderful event," said Diethelm Wallwiener, the medical director of the University Women s Hospital in Tübingen. In March and May of this year, two healthy children were born at the hospital whose mothers had transplanted uteruses. "We succeeded in helping two children to see the light of day who would otherwise never have been born," said Wallwiener of the medical success. This is also a breakthrough and a "new chapter in transplant surgery" for medical research.

By-DWIt was crazy. I had to get myself prepared for an exam, but the 10-year-old daughter of my Japanese host family had a cold and was sniffing and snorting loudly — nonstop. "Blow your nose, drink hot water with lemon juice, and don t walk barefoot through the house," I advised her. Because that s how I d learned to do it.

When it comes to unprovoked attacks on humans, tiger sharks are in the same class as great whites and bull sharks. Still, the statistical likelihood of a swimmer, surfer or diver actually getting bitten by one is rather low. Just over a hundred tiger shark attacks have been recorded since the late 16th century. Less than a third ended fatally. That equates to one deadly attack roughly every 20 years.

Time to abandon the Huawei phone? That was what some owners asked after US tech giant Google said it would suspend its business with China s top mobile maker, threatening future access to Gmail, YouTube and Chrome. Google said on Monday it would comply with an order by US President Donald Trump to stop supplying Huawei, meaning it would no longer be able to offer its popular Android apps to buyers of new Huawei phones.

Broccoli, Brussels sprouts and kale all have something in common, and it s not the fact that that they re the vegetables you re most likely to guilt yourself into buying only to leave rotting in your fridge (or dousing and frying with a hefty amont of olive oil). Harvard researchers recently discovered that the three green vegetables, along with a variety of other cruciferous counterparts such as cauliflower and cabbage, contain a molecule that blocks a gene known to play a role in a variety of common human cancers.

SpaceX and its celebrity-leader, Elon Musk, have a reputation for being fast and first in all manner of technologies — from digital payments to cars, rockets, hyperloops, energy grids, missions to Mars, and now the internet itself. When it comes to space-based global broadband, however, SpaceX is in second position. The company is kickstarting its Starlink project with 60 satellites.

When one starts typing the phrase "Tomatoes taste like…", in Google, the six most common auto-complete suggestions are "blood," "dirt," "fish," "pumpkin," "chlorine" and "wet dog." If you, too, have ever lamented tasting wet dog (or, uh, blood) as you ve bitten into a store-bought tomato-and-cheese sandwich for lunch, you may be in luck.

The 23-story tall Falcon Heavy, carrying a cherry red Tesla Roadster automobile into space as a mock payload, roared off its launch pad at 3:45 p.m. (2045 GMT) at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral. It launched from the same site used by NASA s towering Saturn 5 rockets to carry Apollo missions to the moon more than 40 years ago. The two side-boosters successfully separated from the center main-stage rocket and flew back to Earth for safe simultaneous touchdowns on twin launch pads at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The center booster was expected for a return landing on a drone ship floating at sea, but its fate was not immediately known. The launch had been delayed for more than two hours due to wind-shear conditions.

Facebook is suing South Korean data analytics firm Rankwave to make sure it isn’t breaking the leading social network’s rules, the US company said Friday. A lawsuit was filed against Rankwave in a California State court in Silicon Valley to enforce terms the company agreed to in order to operate apps on the social network, according to director of platform and litigation, Jessica Romero.

The levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the main driver of climate change, have hit a new record high, the UN said Thursday, warning that the time to act was running out. Ahead of the COP 24 climate summit in Poland next month, top United Nations officials are again trying to raise the pressure on governments to meet the pledge of limiting warming to the less than two degrees Celsius, enshrined in the 2015 Paris accord.

Asthmabegins with an inflammation in the lungs. The airways inside the lungs swell up, obstructing the airflow, which impedes gas exchange in the lungs. Especially exhaling becomes difficult for patients. Carbon-dioxide-enriched air in the lungs can no longer be properly discharged. The patients feel difficulty in breathing while the stimulus — the desire to get fresh oxygen into the lungs — becomes stronger and stronger. However, when they inhale, they cannot ventilate the lungs properly because the stale air in the lungs has not been completely released yet. This leads to dyspnea, a vicious circle which the patients can only break out of through conscious and calm exhalation excercises. Graph: How asthma develops What to do in the event of an asthma attack? It s important to keep calm. The patient should sit upright and place their forearms on their thighs. When standing, they should adopt a broad-legged, forward-leaning "goalkeeper position." This helps them to use all the auxiliary breathing muscles in the shoulder, chest and back area.

Uncomfortable for your boss and uncomfortable for you, workplace feedback is often associated with the classic dread one experiences before a visit to the dentist. In the same way that staring numbly into the abyss of the dentist s ceiling while getting cavities filled is essential to the vitality of a pearly white smile, feedback is essential to the vitality of a successful career.

RTS,S is also limited because it s protective effect decreases considerably within four years. This is because the vaccine uses a single protein of the malaria pathogen Plasmodium falciparum (which occurs most frequently in Africa) to direct the immune system against the parasite. However, an immune reaction to only one protein of the pathogen also means that the immune system repeatedly allows intruders to invade and malaria gets through anyway. In addition to Plasmodium falciparum, there are other malaria pathogens against which the RTS,S vaccine does not work.

At the age of 20, many people still don t know exactly what they want to do with their lives. The same seems to apply to sexual orientation. This, at least, is a result of a survey of almost 7,000 American students. They were interviewed three times about their sexual preferences between 1995 and 2009: as teenagers, in their early twenties and in their late twenties. Especially for young women, the early twenties are a sexually dynamic time. In contrast to young men, out of whom 90 percent said that they were heterosexual, only two thirds of young women would place themselves in this category. Ten percent felt they were mostly heterosexual and 7.5 percent epressed a clear interest in both sexes.