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Posts made in May, 2013

Euthanasia: Slope For Newborns Not That Slippery Yet

The Groningen Protocol, introduced in Holland in 2005, was devised to create a standard for doctors who had families that wanted to end the suffering of sick newborns for humanitarian reasons. It outlined parameters to help identify situations in which euthanasia is warranted and wouldn't land anyone in jail.  read...

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Who is Fiercer: Yanomamö Indians or Dueling Tribes of Anthropologists?

Writing at Slate, Greg Laden gives a terrific overview of anthropology and also the war on Napoleon Chagnon:Our way of being is certainly tied to our biological heritage, but the differences we see across cultures are the products of lived experience, with cultural norms shaped by our environment and how we are brought up. It also seems true that within academia, there are subfields into which we...

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Prediction: ‘Dark Genome’ Popularity May Make ‘Dark’ The Top Science Media Cliche Of 2013

With the popularity of dark matter and dark energy as blanket terms for 'this is weird and we don't understand it but we are studying it, ain't science awesome?' in physics, it was only a matter of time before it caught on elsewhere. So we have dark lightning and the life sciences made sure they caught the wave, migrating non-coding DNA (factual = booooring) from the colloquially misunderstood...

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