Bioethics News

June 26, 2025

Top Headlines

Acid-Busting Diet Triggers 13-Pound Weight Loss in Just 16 Weeks

June 26, 2025 — Swap steaks for spinach and you might watch the scale plummet. In a 16-week crossover study, overweight adults who ditched animal products for a low-fat vegan menu saw their bodies become less acidic and dropped an average of 13 pounds—while the ...

DNA Floating in the Air Tracks Wildlife, Viruses -- Even Drugs

June 3, 2025 — In the heart of Dublin, scientists have discovered that the air holds more than melodies and Guinness-infused cheer it carries invisible traces of life, from wildlife to drugs and even human diseases. Using high-powered air filters and environmental ...

Attachment Theory: A New Lens for Understanding Human-AI Relationships

June 2, 2025 — Human-AI interactions are well understood in terms of trust and companionship. However, the role of attachment and experiences in such relationships is not entirely clear. In a new breakthrough, researchers from Waseda University have devised a ...

The EU Should Allow Gene Editing to Make Organic Farming More Sustainable, Researchers Say

May 30, 2025 — To achieve the European Green Deal's goal of 25% organic agriculture by 2030, researchers argue that new genomic techniques (NGTs) should be allowed without pre-market authorization in organic as ...

A Cheap and Easy Potential Solution for Lowering Carbon Emissions in Maritime Shipping

May 29, 2025 — Reducing travel speeds and using an intelligent queuing system at busy ports can reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from oceangoing container vessels by 16-24%, according to researchers. Not only ...

Nearly Five Million Seized Seahorses Just 'Tip of the Iceberg' in Global Wildlife Smuggling

May 28, 2025 — Close to five million smuggled seahorses worth an estimated CAD$29 million were seized by authorities over a 10-year span, according to a new study that warns the scale of the trade is far larger ...

AI Is Here to Stay, Let Students Embrace the Technology, Experts Urge

May 26, 2025 — A new study says students appear to be using generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) responsibly, and as a way to speed up tasks, not just boost their ...

Why We Trust People Who Grew Up With Less

May 26, 2025 — When deciding whom to trust, people are more likely to choose individuals who grew up with less money over those who went to private schools or vacationed in Europe, according to new ...

Cannabis Study: Legalization Reduces Problematic Consumption, Particularly Among Certain Individuals

May 9, 2025 — Researchers are investigating how the legal supply of cannabis affects consumption and mental health among participants. In a first academic publication, the study team has now reported on the direct ...

Groundbreaking Device Instantly Detects Dangerous Street Drugs, Offering Hope for Harm Reduction

May 7, 2025 — Groundbreaking device instantly detects dangerous street drugs, offering hope for harm reduction A portable device that instantly detects illicit street drugs at very low concentrations, thereby ...

Exposure to Extreme Heat and Cold Temperature Is Leading to Additional Preventable Deaths, New 19-Year Study Suggests

May 4, 2025 — Urgent action must be taken to reduce the ever-rising number of people killed by extreme temperatures in India, say the authors of a new 19-year study which found that 20,000 people died from ...

New Research Reveals How Physiology-Inspired Networks Could Improve Political Decision-Making

May 1, 2025 — A new study has unveiled a groundbreaking framework for rethinking political decision-making -- drawing inspiration from how the human body maintains stability and ...

Latest Headlines

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New Test Unmasks Illegal Elephant Ivory Disguised as Mammoth

June 26, 2025 — Poachers are using a sneaky loophole to bypass the international ivory trade ban—by passing off illegal elephant ivory as legal mammoth ivory. Since the two types look deceptively similar, law ...

Warming Climate Making Fine Particulate Matter from Wildfires More Deadly and Expensive

May 7, 2025 — Scientists say human-caused climate change led to 15,000 additional early deaths from wildfire air pollution in the continental United States during ...

Data Collection Changes Key to Understanding Maternal Mortality Trends in the US, New Study Shows

May 1, 2025 — A new study offers fresh insight into trends in maternal mortality in the United States. For the first time, the study disentangles genuine changes ...

Scientific Path to Recouping the Costs of Climate Change

Apr. 23, 2025 — A new study lays out a scientific framework for holding individual fossil fuel companies liable for the costs of climate change by tracing specific damages back to their emissions. The researchers ...

What If Mother Earth Could Sue for Mistreatment?

Apr. 21, 2025 — The study highlights the transformative potential of the Rights of Nature, which views nature as a rights-bearing entity, not merely an object of regulation and subjugation by extractive industries. ...

Police Officers Face Twice the Risk of Traumatic Brain Injuries and PTSD, Survey Finds

Apr. 14, 2025 — Police officers are more than twice as likely to have traumatic brain injuries compared to the general ...

Proteins Shown to Act as 'Guardians' to Keep Cells' Energy Making Mitochondria Safe

Apr. 13, 2025 — Scientists say they have discovered how a group of proteins linked to Parkinson's disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis act as 'guardians' of ...

Role of Social Workers in Addressing Marginalized Communities Bearing Brunt of Climate Disasters

Apr. 8, 2025 — A researcher spent a year living in a jjokbang-chon, an extremely impoverished neighborhood in Seoul, South Korea. While there, he calculated ...

In Guatemala, Painted Altar Found at Tikal Adds New Context to Mysterious Maya History

Apr. 8, 2025 — Just steps from the center of Tikal, a 2,400-year-old Maya city in the heart of modern-day Guatemala, a global team of researchers has unearthed a ...

Is AI in Medicine Playing Fair?

Apr. 7, 2025 — As artificial intelligence (AI) rapidly integrates into health care, a new study reveals that all generative AI models may recommend different treatments for the same medical condition based solely ...

Existing International Law Can Help Secure Peace and Security in Outer Space

Apr. 2, 2025 — World leaders should look to existing international law on the use of force to address the threat of space becoming ever more militarized, a new study ...

My Robot Therapist: The Ethics of AI Mental Health Chatbots for Kids

Mar. 31, 2025 — AI mental health apps may offer a cheap and accessible way to fill the gaps in the overstretched U.S. mental health care system, but ethics experts warn that we need to be thoughtful about how we use ...

We Must Not Ignore Eugenics in Our Genetics Curriculum, Says Professor

Mar. 27, 2025 — To encourage scientists to speak up when people misuse science to serve political agendas, biology professor Mark Peifer of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill argues that eugenics should ...

Children of Moms Who Smoked or Were Obese Are More Likely to Become Obese Adults

Mar. 26, 2025 — A study finds that factors beyond a person's control, like socioeconomic status and whether their mom smoked or was obese, can influence whether they are overweight or obese as teenagers or ...

Philosophy: Cultural Differences in Exploitation of Artificial Agents

Mar. 26, 2025 — A new study shows that people in Japan treat robots and AI agents more respectfully than people in Western ...

Kansas, Missouri Farmers Avoid Discussing Climate Change Regardless of Opinions, Study Finds

Mar. 18, 2025 — Researchers conducted interviews with farmers in Missouri and Kansas about their thoughts on climate change. Even though they are on the front lines of the topic, the farmers reported they avoid ...

New Research Explores Mental Health Costs of Emotional Labor at Work

Mar. 12, 2025 — 'Fake it till you make it' might be common advice to climb the corporate ladder, but new research shows that this attitude could also adversely affect job satisfaction and mental ...

Study Quantifies Loss of Disability-Free Years of Life from COVID-19 Pandemic

Mar. 11, 2025 — Among 289 million adults in 18 European countries, more than 16 million years of life were lost from 2020 through 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new ...

What's in a Label? It's Different for Boys Vs. Girls, New Study of Parents Finds

Mar. 10, 2025 — Research has shown that adults instinctively think of men when asked to think of a person -- they describe the most 'typical' person they can imagine as male and assume storybook characters ...

Who Gets the Lion's Share? Ecologists Highlight Disparities in Global Biodiversity Conservation Funding

Mar. 3, 2025 — The extensive loss of biodiversity represents one of the major crises of our time, threatening not only entire ecosystems but also our current and future livelihoods. As scientists realize the ...

An Emissions Tale of Two Cities: Salt Lake City Vs. Los Angeles

Feb. 26, 2025 — Salt Lake City and Los Angeles, the major population hubs of their respective states, are much different places, but they both experience poor air quality and share valley topography that traps ...

New AI-Powered Tool Could Enhance Traumatic Brain Injury Investigations in Forensics and Law Enforcement

Feb. 26, 2025 — A team of researchers has developed an advanced physics-based AI-driven tool to aid the forensic investigation of traumatic brain injuries ...

Underlying Rules of Evolutionary Urban Systems in Africa

Feb. 24, 2025 — From the perspective of complex systems, the study reveals the universality, specificity, and explanatory power of underlying rules governing urban system ...

Telemedicine May Help Reduce Use of Unnecessary Health Tests

Feb. 24, 2025 — A research team has found that telemedicine may help to reduce the use of low-value ...

Researchers Outline New Approach for Better Understanding Animal Consciousness

Feb. 20, 2025 — A team of researchers has outlined a new approach for better understanding the depths of animal consciousness, a method that may yield new insights into the similarities and differences among living ...

U.S. Facing Critical Hospital Bed Shortage by 2032

Feb. 19, 2025 — The new post-pandemic national hospital occupancy average is 75% -- a full 11 percentage points higher than the pre-pandemic average, largely due to a reduction in staffed hospital beds. This puts ...

Advances in AI Can Help Prepare the World for the Next Pandemic, Global Group of Scientists Find

Feb. 19, 2025 — Scientists across Africa, America, Asia, Australia, and Europe outline for the first time how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can transform the landscape of infectious disease research and improve ...

We Are No Longer Living Longer: Study Across Europe

Feb. 18, 2025 — The rise in human life expectancy has slowed down across Europe since 2011, according to new research. A new study reveals that the food we eat, physical inactivity and obesity are largely to blame, ...

Are We Trusting AI Too Much? New Study Demands Accountability in Artificial Intelligence

Feb. 18, 2025 — Are we putting our faith in technology that we don't fully understand? A new study comes at a time when AI systems are making decisions impacting our daily lives -- from banking and healthcare ...

New Study on Drug Checking: Trend Warnings and Alerts

Feb. 10, 2025 — A new study analyses how other countries' drug checking services use and share data, as a way of helping Australia's policymakers decide what to do with ours. The researchers also spoke ...