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Occasionally, I come across the term “designer baby,” and I am reminded that some parents now have the option to screen or modify the genes of their unborn children to ensure or avoid certain traits. It always gives me a feeling of unease. Obviously, I did not take this route — partly because, at least with my son, I never had to actually make the decision. My third child, Eliza, was a late midlife accident. I chose to have her despite the possibility she would have XLH, but would I have made the same decision in a planned pregnancy or if given a choice much earlier in the process? I can’t help suspecting that because of advances in genetic mapping, genetic testing, the sheer range of prenatal choices, chances are that in a generation or two, there will be no one in the world who has XLH, no one who looks like me or my children — at least not in the so-called developed world — and I don’t know how to feel about that.

What Dr. Brown and a fellow Caltech professor, Konstantin Batygin, have not done is actually find that planet

An exhibition at the British Library in London reveals the importance that visualising data has had on the scientific process – from 19th Century ship logs that still influence climate science, to models used to forecast the 2009 influenza pandemic.These images not only aid scientific progress, but also help to change the world.

The true size of ...

“Just as with the physical world, where hurricanes, tornadoes, and other ‘acts of God’ just happen, the same is true of the social world,” he wrote. “Some people just do things. They assassinate world leaders, act on poorly thought out ideologies, and leave clues at the scene of the crime. Too strong a belief in the rationality of people in general, or of the world, will lead us to seek purposive explanations where none exists.”

He says conspiracy theorists rely on what he calls “errant data,” or random minutiae within a terror attack or major event that can—and maybe should—go unexplained in reality. Those pushing conspiracies, however, seize on that unexplained info and attempt to explain it in full.It is an effort to connect every dot on the map—every blade of grass on the Grassy Knoll—even if some dots have nothing to with the larger event at all

Crisis class theory is a weirdly hopeful, terribly reductionist coping mechanism, a way to explain a world that can be unjust and needlessly cruel—but wouldn’t be if the “bad guys” controlling it all were vanquished.“There is surely some psychological comfort in believing that a horrific event like a mass murder of schoolchildren never really happened at all—that it was all fake,” he writes.

The drone operator who said 'No' 21 January 2015 Last updated at 00:57 GMT For almost five years, Brandon Bryant worked in America's secret drone programme bombing targets in Afghanistan and elsewhere.He was told that he helped to kill more than 1,600 people, but as time went by he felt uneasy with what he was doing. He found it hard to sleep and started dreaming in infra-red. Brandon Bryant told Witness about his doubts and the mission that convinced him it was time to stop. Witness is a World Service programme of the stories of our times told by the people who were there.

What's ConflictMap? This site aims to help shed light on wars and other armed conflicts around the globe. It contains summary information, links to more resources, and, most importantly, continuously updated lists of relevant news articles. We hope to make it easier to learn where wars are happening, who's involved, and what's going on right now, especially for smaller conflicts that may not be well covered in large media outlets. For those with a specific interest in conflicts, we hope to make it easier to follow the large volume of news in this field.

A new artwork painted by artist Banksy on the treatment of people in the Calais camp known as the Jungle has been removed from a site in Knightsbridge, London opposite the French Embassy. Before its removal, Google decided to preserve it digitally for its Cultural Institute Project and Street View to allow other people to see the work.