Round-up: Could gene editing really work?

The most interesting articles that came to our attention this week

Household Responses to Guaranteed Income: Experimental Evidence from Compton, California. Sidhya Balakrishnan and colleagues report results from an RCT in which low-income residents of Compton, California, were randomly assigned to receive an unconditional cash transfer of $500 per month for two years. They find that, compared to the control group, recipients became less likely to work and earned lower incomes.

Pan-European atmospheric lead pollution, enhanced blood lead levels, and cognitive decline from Roman-era mining and smelting. Joseph McConnell and colleagues examine the impact of blood lead pollution on the Roman Empire. Analysing data from Arctic ice cores, they estimate that mining and smelting led to a significant rise in childhood blood lead levels. This, in turn, may have led to a fall in average IQ of up to 3 points.