There is a graphic novel that is near and dear to my hearts by Warren Ellis called Planetary, the tagline of which is "It's a strange world. Let's keep it that way." This first article immediately made me go back and reread that graphic novel...

The field of deep learning has been around for just a short period of time insofar as computer science is concerned. To put it in a nutshell deep learning systems are software systems which attempt to model highly complex datasets in abstract ways using multiple layers of other machine learning and nonlinear processing algorithms stacked …

A couple of years ago I did an article on the disclosure that mitochondrial genetic modifications were carried out on thirty embryos in the year 2001 to treat mitochondrial diseases that would probably have been fatal later in life. I also wrote in the article that this does not constitute full scale genetic modification ala the movie Gattaca. It is true that mitochondria are essential to human life but they do not seem to influence any traits that we usually think about, such as increased intelligence or hair color, as they are primarily involved in metabolism. In other words, mitochontrial …

Disclaimer: I am not a geneticist. If I got some bits wrong let me know and I'll correct my post.

It is a basic fact that DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is the fundamental mechanism of complex life on this planet. DNA encodes the structure of every protein used by complex life in much the same way that a Turing machine would use a paper or magnetic tape to store data. The codon (triplet of base pairs) ATG means that the amino acid methionine goes first, the codon TCT means that serine goes next, then histidine, and so on and so forth …