Now on ScienceBlogs: Attack of the pregnant cannibal fathers
Jake Young is a MD/PhD student at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in NYC getting a PhD in Behavioral Neuroscience. He holds a BS and MS in Biological Sciences from Stanford University. If a volcano were to erupt Pompei-style in Central Park, his body would be preserved in a scoliotic posture over his lab desk. Archeaologists would later conclude that he spent most of his day training rats to perform tricks, until he went blind building electrical equipment by hand using a dissecting microscope. But, still, he died happy...because science is cool.
Pure Pedantry is a blog about science -- social sciences and otherwise -- as well as academic and scientific culture. No one can live on science alone, so I also like to dwell on pop culture, periodically explore the humanities, and indulge in other types of geeky goodness.
DISCLAIMERS: 1) Jake Young is not a licensed physician (yet). He is merely a medical student. The information published on this site is not intended for use in medical decision-making. Please seek advice from a licensed, medical professional before making any health decisions. 2) The opinions expressed are my own. They do not represent the views of SEED magazine or the educational establishments I currently attend or attended in the past.
Category: Genetics
Razib and I have a discussion up at Bloggingheads.tv about genetics and behavior as well as a brief discussion of neuroeconomics. Check it out below the fold:...
Posted by NotoriousLTP at 1:06 PM • 3 Comments •
Category: Genetics
I have been meaning to talk about this story, but I have been busy. A study in Nature looked for genes linked with "common" obesity (more on that in a moment), and it was one of the first to link...
Posted by NotoriousLTP at 4:26 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: Genetics
An Israeli town has come up with an aggressive method to fight uncollected dog poop: DNA IDing the "originator." An Israeli city is using DNA analysis of dog droppings to reward and punish pet owners. Under a six-month trial programme...
Posted by NotoriousLTP at 5:35 PM • 0 Comments •
Category: Genetics
Wang et al., publishing in PLoS Genetics, looked at the genetic diversity in Native American populations from Canada all the way down into South America. They wanted to see whether the genetic diversity observed in Native peoples correlated in any...
Posted by NotoriousLTP at 11:56 AM • 5 Comments •
Category: History
People do remember what they use to do at CSHL, right?
Posted by NotoriousLTP at 9:50 AM • 7 Comments •
Category: Evolution
The issue of sympatric speciation -- or how to separate species emerge from a single species without geographic isolation -- is a contentious issue in evolutionary biology. How can two species emerge without reproductive isolation of two separate groups? Wouldn't...
Posted by NotoriousLTP at 9:19 AM • 5 Comments •
Category: Economics
Nicholas Wade reports in the NYTimes about a UCD professor, Gregory Clark, and his theory of the Industrial Revolution. His answer is that high fertility rates in the upper classes caused them to steadily supplant lower classes. They brought productive...
Posted by NotoriousLTP at 10:18 AM • 9 Comments •
Category: Development
It's mad, I tell you, madddd! Mad scientists these days. Always going around saying, "Hey, you know how that animal could be better? If it had another head. Muahahaha!" Anyway, the (possibly mad) scientists Wolfgang Jakob and Bernd Schierwater wanted...
Posted by NotoriousLTP at 9:50 AM • 0 Comments •
Category: Evolution
Actually that isn't fair. It isn't wrong. The percentage of difference just depends heavily on what you define as a difference. So argues an editorial by Jon Cohen in the latest issue of Science: Using novel yardsticks and the flood...
Posted by NotoriousLTP at 8:56 AM • 2 Comments •
Category: Genetics
Two big studies on genetics came out in the past couple weeks, and I want to talk about both. One of them -- the ENCODE study -- was well covered by the media. The other seems to have slipped through....
Posted by NotoriousLTP at 10:06 AM • 4 Comments •
