Tag Archives: drugs

The DEA Ran a Massive Database of People Who Bought Money-Counting Machines for Years

The Drug Enforcement Administration maintained a database of people who purchased money-counting machines as part of a “legally questionable” effort to identify suspected drug dealers for further surveillance and enforcement efforts, the New York Times reported on Saturday. Continue reading The DEA Ran a Massive Database of People Who Bought Money-Counting Machines for Years

GINKGO BIOWORKS IS TURNING HUMAN CELLS INTO ON-DEMAND FACTORIES

FROM THE WINDOWS of Ginkgo Bioworks’ Boston offices you can peer down into a grimy vestige of the city’s past. Across the street, workers in yellow-slicker overalls scrub, scrape, and repair the decks of worn-out warships and ocean tankers parked in a drydock. During World War II, 50,000 people worked the docks and the eight-story waterside warehouse that Ginkgo now calls home. Inside the synthetic biology company’s glass-walled foundries, humans are now less obvious, with algorithms designing industrial organisms and robot armies building them in humming, hypnotic synchronicity. Continue reading GINKGO BIOWORKS IS TURNING HUMAN CELLS INTO ON-DEMAND FACTORIES

Addictive behavior could trace back to an ancient retrovirus in our DNA

Millions of Americans struggle with substance abuse and tens of thousands die each year, according to the American Society of Addiction Medicine. Though treating addiction has become a vast (and at times abusive) industry, the underlying causes of drug or alcohol dependency—and how to successfully treat these debilitating conditions—are still poorly understood by science. Now, researchers think they’ve found the germ of an answer in our genetic past. Continue reading Addictive behavior could trace back to an ancient retrovirus in our DNA