Can at-home DNA tests predict how you'll respond to your medications? Pharmacists explain the risks and benefits of pharmacogenetic testing

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Can at-home DNA tests predict how you'll respond to your medications? Pharmacists explain the risks and benefits of pharmacogenetic testing     Have you ever wondered why certain medications don’t seem to work as well for you as they do for others? This variability in drug response is what pharmacogenomic testing hopes to explain by looking at the genes within your DNA. Pharmacogenomics, or PGx, is the study of how genes affect your response to medications. Genes are segments of DNA that serve as an instruction manual for cells to make proteins. Some of these proteins break down or transport certain medications through the body. Others are proteins that medications target to generate a desired effect. Continued here

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How the Pandemic Changed Marketing Channels     The pandemic undoubtedly changed how marketers approach channel strategy, and there is no single route to success. With more channels than ever, marketers need to map which channels add clear value and forget the rest. It can be tempting to enter a channel because your competitors are there. But with limited customer time and attention, marketers must strategically determine in which channels they can have the greatest impact. The authors look at five post-pandemic channel strategies gleaned from The CMO Survey and offer analysis on how marketers can operationalize these trends. Continued here

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Using AI to Build Stronger Connections with Customers     As companies learn to use generative AI to create value, there’s a risk that they take the wrong approach when applying the technology to the customer experience. In fact, research shows AI can help boost customer satisfaction when it’s used to offer customers more personalized solutions or to help human employees provide better service than they would without the technological assist. Some examples of companies experiencing early success with this are in the financial services industry. Continued here

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What did Stonehenge sound like?     Through the doors of a university building, down a concrete hallway and inside a foam-covered room stands a shin-high replica of one of the most mysterious monuments ever built: Stonehenge. These miniature standing stones aren't on public display, although they might help give the million annual visitors who come to the real site a better understanding of the imposing, lichen-covered stone structure built roughly 5,000 years ago. Instead, this scale model is at the centre of ongoing research into Stonehenge's acoustical properties, and what its sound might tell us about its purpose.  Continued here

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Did Australia's boomerangs pave the way for flight?     The aircraft is one of the most significant developments of modern society, enabling people, goods and ideas to fly around the world far more efficiently than ever before. The first successful piloted flight took off in 1903 in North Carolina, but a 10,000-year-old hunting tool likely developed by Aboriginal Australians may have held the key to its lift-off. As early aviators discovered, the secret to flight is balancing the flow of air. Therefore, an aircraft's wings, tail or propeller blades are often shaped in a specially designed, curved manner called an aerofoil that lifts the plane up and allows it to drag or turn to the side as it moves through the air.   Continued here

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15 Great Deals From Samsung's Discover Fall Sale Event     if you've been eyeing Samsung's latest devices but simply can't stomach the prices, you're in luck. The company is currently holding its Discover fall sales event, with discounts on smartphones, tablets, TVs, and more through September 17. While some of these discounts exist on Samsung's own site, we've also included additional deals through retailers like Amazon and Best Buy—all of which you can find below. Updated September 16: We've added the QN800C 8K TV, Odyssey G4 gaming monitor, Odyssey G7 gaming monitor, Galaxy Buds 2 earbuds, and 970 Evo Plus M.2 SSD.  Continued here

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A Global Surge in Cholera Outbreaks May Be Fueled by Climate Change     In early 2022, nearly 200,000 Malawians were displaced after two tropical storms struck the southeastern part of Africa barely a month apart. Sixty-four people died. Amid an already heavy rainy season, the storms Ana and Gombe caused tremendous devastation to homes, crops, and infrastructure across southern Malawi.“That March, we started to see cholera, which is usually endemic in Malawi, becoming an outbreak,” said Gerrit Maritz, a deputy representative for health programs in Malawi for the United Nations Children’s Fund. Cholera typically affects the country during the rainy season, from December to March, during which time it remains contained around Lake Malawi in the south and results in about 100 deaths each year.  Continued here

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The Best Projectors (and 2 Great Screens)     If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIREDThere's nothing like watching your favorite films in a dark room on a massive screen. For that authentic movie theater experience at home, you’ll need a projector (and a popcorn maker). Continued here

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The psychology behind why identical twins inspire fascination--and fear     The twins in Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film The Shining were never supposed to be identical. In Stephen King’s 1977 book, the Grady sisters are just sisters, eight and 10, and “cute as a button,” at least until spirits and isolation turned their father murderous (you know, just a regular Thursday at the Overlook Hotel). Soon after the book’s rise to the bestseller lists, Kubrick began production on the film, and auditioned numerous young actors to play the sisters. But when identical twins Lisa and Louise Burns waltzed in, they won the part. One of cinema’s greatest auteurs decided there was just something scarier about twins, the twins themselves told the Daily Mail in an interview.The Burns twins’ turn as the Grady sisters is an iconic moment in a film full of them: “Come play with us, Danny.” Whether he considered it or not, Kubrick was playing with a stereotype that goes back centuries and continues to be a staple of the horror genre today. But what is it about identical twins that make them a subject of both fascination, fear, and oh so many stereotypes? Maybe a better question is what is it about the rest of us that makes this the case? Continued here

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Study: The Indo-European language family was born south of Caucasus     Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is a language that gave rise to many others. About 46% of humans, well over three billion people, are native speakers of an Indo-European language. But where did PIE first arise, and who spoke it: pastoralists from the Pontic steppe straddling eastern Europe and west Asia or agrarians from Anatolia in Turkey? The answer to that question has been eluding anthropologists for ages. And now, researchers in the journal Science suggest a third place: the Lesser Caucasus, primarily found in Armenia, Azerbaijan, and parts of eastern Turkey and southern Georgia. PIE is both the deadest and most alive of languages. The last speaker died thousands of years ago, and if it was ever written down, we don’t know about it. The only evidence of PIE’s existence are the traces it left in the languages that descended from it. Continued here

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At least 5 people have been cured of HIV. Is the AIDS pandemic ending?     This article is an installment of Future Explored, a weekly guide to world-changing technology. You can get stories like this one straight to your inbox every Thursday morning by subscribing here.Being diagnosed with AIDS used to be a death sentence — in the US, more than half of those diagnosed with the disease between 1981 and 1992 died within 2 years.  Continued here

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NASA clears the air: No evidence that UFOs are aliens     NASA’s independent study team released its highly anticipated report on UFOs on September 14, 2023. Continued here

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The Undoing of a Great American Band     Sly and the Family Stone suggested new possibilities in music and life—until it all fell apart.Is there a way to look at Sly Stone—a musical genius and, for a couple of years, an avatar of spiritual freedom—that isn’t dualistic, split-brained, one thing in opposition to another? That isn’t about light versus darkness, up versus down, Logos versus Chaos, good drugs versus bad drugs, having it all versus losing it all, and on and on? “Without contraries is no progression,” William Blake said, but still—I find myself groping for another plane of understanding. I want to see him as the angels do. We might need to evolve a little bit to get a handle on this man. Continued here

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The Mysterious Return of a Soviet Statue in Russia     A monument to Feliks Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Bolsheviks’ feared secret police, has been quietly rehabilitated. Why?The thunder of war in Ukraine drowns out a lot of other news from Russia. A few days ago, however, the Russian foreign intelligence service quietly did something rather odd. Sergei Naryshkin, the director of the Sluzhba Vneshnei Razvedki, or SVR (the Russian version of the CIA), unveiled a statue of Feliks Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Soviet secret police. Continued here

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Ukraine Isn't the Reason the U.S. Is Unprepared for War     A lack of defense production has created an alarming gap between America’s strategy and its capabilities.Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the United States has provided Kyiv with more than $43 billion worth of security assistance. Opponents of aid to Ukraine have argued that the United States is drawing down inventories of systems and ammunition that are already in short supply for its own forces, and which would be needed in any high-intensity conflict. Continued here

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Nobody Should Care About a Woman's 'Body Count'     Popular internet personalities are peddling repressive, misogynistic ideas to their young male fans.Ever since Elon Musk’s lackeys began fiddling with the algorithms of X (formerly Twitter), I have noticed a distinct shift in the content that is pushed onto users. My “For you” tab is now a nest of tradwives, shoplifting videos, and that guy who has strong opinions on trouser creases. It is also home to the kind of old-fashioned misogyny that I once thought was on the decline. Continued here

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The Biden Impeachment Is Benghazi All Over Again     Both inquiries are based far more on vibes and political machinations than they are on hard evidence.Once upon a time, presidential impeachment was a rare event. But with four of the five inquiries in U.S. history coming in the past 25 years, people seeking to understand and explain the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, launched Tuesday, have looked to the 2019 impeachment of President Donald Trump as an analogy. Both center on allegations of using elected office for personal gain, and both have been divided sharply along partisan lines. Continued here

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Scientists Have Spent 40 Years Trying to Understand Salt     We’ve all heard of the five tastes our tongues can detect: sweet, sour, bitter, savory-umami, and salty. But the real number is actually six, because we have two separate salt-taste systems. One of them detects the attractive, relatively low levels of salt that make potato chips taste delicious. The other registers high levels of salt—enough to make overly salted food taste offensive.Exactly how our taste buds sense the two kinds of saltiness is a mystery that’s taken some 40 years of scientific inquiry to unravel, and researchers haven’t deciphered all of the details yet. In fact, the more they look at salt sensation, the weirder it gets. Continued here

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How Siblings Shape Who We Are     This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.For those of us who have siblings, these relationships will likely be the longest of our life. That fact is a basic statistical one, but it’s also an emotional one. These are human beings who will see us at many more stages of growth than most others will: the awkward braces years, the sullen teenage years, and whatever happens after that. Continued here