razib
Posts by this author
December 6, 2008
Analysis of East Asia Genetic Substructure Using Genome-Wide SNP Arrays:
In this study, population differentiation (Fst) and Principal Components Analyses (PCA) are examined using >200 K genotypes from multiple populations of East Asian ancestry. The population groups included those from the…
December 5, 2008
Adaptive Complexity takes issue at a post over at Information Processing over race & genetics. On that specific topic, let me just quote Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza:
[my question] Question #3 hinted at the powerful social impact your work has had in reshaping how we view the natural history of…
December 5, 2008
The Genetic Legacy of Religious Diversity and Intolerance: Paternal Lineages of Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula:
Most studies of European genetic diversity have focused on large-scale variation and interpretations based on events in prehistory, but migrations and invasions in…
December 3, 2008
I've been doing some political blogging at the Secular Right site for about a week. I have to say that production is way easier when it comes to political blogging, but maintenance is way more exhausting.
December 3, 2008
The Etruscan timeline: a recent Anatolian connection:
The origin of the Etruscans (the present day Tuscany, Italy), one of the most enigmatic non-Indo-European civilizations, is under intense controversy. We found novel genetic evidences on the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) establishing a genetic link…
December 3, 2008
Though Barbara Oakley's Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed, and My Sister Stole My Mother's Boyfriend is ostensibly about Machiavellian behavior, it is also a testament to her intellectual ambition. The subheading is a clear pointer to this. Oakley attempts to synthesize a wide…
December 2, 2008
Romania removes theory of evolution from school curriculum:
Romania's withdrawal of the theory of evolution from the school curriculum could be evidence of a growing conservative tendency in teaching. Evolution has been removed from the school curriculum in a move which, pressure groups argue,…
November 30, 2008
A few years ago I blogged about prosopagnosia, "face blindness." Nature Neuroscience now has a new paper finding some correlates with brain architecture, Reduced structural connectivity in ventral visual cortex in congenital prosopagnosia:
Using diffusion tensor imaging and tractography, we found…
November 30, 2008
FuturePundit points me to a research paper, Impact of a new national screening policy for Down's syndrome in Denmark: population based cohort study:
Results The number of infants born with Down's syndrome decreased from 55-65 per year during 2000-4 to 31 in 2005 and 32 in 2006. The total number of…
November 30, 2008
I was waiting for Dan MacArthur to comment on the "ACTN3 sports gene" story because I knew he had done research on this very locus. As usual, he's rather diplomatic, with a post titled The ACTN3 sports gene test: what can it really tell you?. He says:
Kevin Fischer has already noted that from a…
November 25, 2008
If the title piques your interest, check out a new ScienceBlog of that name. The contributors are familiar faces....
November 25, 2008
Since the Right is roiling with faction, I thought I'd point you to a new weblog, Secular Right. No need to explain what it's about, the title says it all. John Derbyshire recounts an interesting experience at the H. L. Mencken Club:
Well, so there I was sitting down to dinner on the first…
November 23, 2008
An editorial in The New York Times, Bring Back the Woolly Mammoth?:
No one is quite sure why the woolly mammoths died out toward the end of the last ice age, some 10,000 years ago. Theories include warmer temperatures that gradually displaced the plants on which they fed, overhunting by primitive…
November 22, 2008
Andrew Gelman has commented on his interview performance....
November 22, 2008
After reading American Colonies: The Settling of North America, I was struck by the incredible similarities in British modus operandi in North America and India the 17th and 18th centuries. These two imperial domains seem very different, but recall that Lord Cornwallis plays a prominent role in…
November 21, 2008
The Elf pointed me to Typealyzer where it supposedly analyzes the personality of the weblog. Well, this blog is....
...INTJ - The Scientists:
The long-range thinking and individualistic type. They are especially good at looking at almost anything and figuring out a way of improving it - often with…
November 21, 2008
In my post yesterday where I compared Catholics & Protestants in New England with Southerners in the McCain Belt, I was struck on the evolution question that in New England Protestants exhibited much more variance than Catholics. More Protestants rejected evolution or definitely believed it…
November 21, 2008
Another paper on European phyogeography, Investigation of the fine structure of European populations with applications to disease association studies:
An investigation into fine-scale European population structure was carried out using high-density genetic variation on nearly 6000 individuals…
November 21, 2008
Gene Regulation in Primates Evolves under Tissue-Specific Selection Pressures:
Regulatory changes have long been hypothesized to play an important role in primate evolution. To identify adaptive regulatory changes in humans, we performed a genome-wide survey for genes in which regulation has likely…
November 20, 2008
OK, not really, but I have a new piece in The Guardian's Comment Is Free on polygamy.
November 20, 2008
At my other weblog I have a post which presents dozens of charts gleaned from the GSS. The intent was to compare Catholics and Protestants of New England origin to whites from the McCain Belt, and adduce whether the various Catholic immigrant groups such as the Irish and Italians in New England…
November 20, 2008
Regenerating a Mammoth for $10 Million:
If the genome of an extinct species can be reconstructed, biologists can work out the exact DNA differences with the genome of its nearest living relative. There are talks on how to modify the DNA in an elephant's egg so that after each round of changes it…
November 19, 2008
That's the question being asked at The Personal Genome. Over at Genetic Future Dan "The Man" MacArthur notes the difficulties which might emerge if we start engaging in widespread embryo screening. So how exactly is the average American voter going to interpret the myriad of genes responsible for…
November 18, 2008
The Dead Tell a Tale China Doesn't Care to Listen To:
An exhibit on the first floor of the museum here gives the government's unambiguous take on the history of this border region: "Xinjiang has been an inalienable part of the territory of China," says one prominent sign.
But walk upstairs to the…
November 18, 2008
Refugee program stayed after feds confirm fraud:
DNA testing conducted earlier this year by the government to verify blood ties between anchor refugees and their supposed family members revealed that fewer than 20 percent of those checked could confirm their biological relationships, the fact sheet…
November 18, 2008
A new working paper, Do More Expensive Wines Taste Better? Evidence from a Large Sample of Blind Tastings. After some regressions:
In sum, in a large sample of blind tastings, we find that the correlation between price and overall rating is small and negative. Unless they are experts, individuals…
November 18, 2008
Andrew Gelman has a post up which reports an analysis of the votes for Obama by county as a function of the black percentage. In chart below the circles are counties where size is proportional to turnout.
Click here for a larger version.
November 17, 2008
Richard Lawler pointed me to a new paper by Sean Rice, A stochastic version of the Price equation reveals the interplay of deterministic and stochastic processes in evolution. The Price Equation is the generalization of selective evolutionary dynamics by the amateur evolutionary biologist George…
November 17, 2008
A few days ago I suggested that it is folly to expect Europeans would elect a person of color to their highest office when so few Europeans are persons of color. Today in Slate a piece basically suggests that Americans should not be so full of themselves, Only in America? The wrongheaded American…