razib
Posts by this author
October 31, 2007
Statistical evaluation of alternative models of human evolution:
An appropriate model of recent human evolution is not only important to understand our own history, but it is necessary to disentangle the effects of demography and selection on genome diversity. Although most genetic data support the…
October 31, 2007
OK, last update on this obviously because it is the last day of the month. A few readers really went wild in the last few days (in a good way) and from only 5 donors 508 students were impacted! (check the Leaderboard for the breakdown) Thank you very much! So if you have any spare cash and…
October 29, 2007
Until recently archeologists held to a model called Clovis First which posited that the Amerindians were descended from Siberian hunters who swept down from Beringia 13,000 years ago and spread rapidly north to south. Findings such as Monte Verde have thrown a cloud over the cleanliness of this…
October 28, 2007
Over at Ross Douthat's blog, a giggle-inducing comment:
It seems to me that Mormonism is indeed a lot more illogical than mainstream Christianity. It suffers from logical contradictions that Christianity does not- for example, how can someone be retroactively baptized? Why would God say that…
October 27, 2007
Just listened to an interview on NPR with the author of Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy. She mentions how she had a reflexive prejudice against nuclear energy and generally opposed its use because of her environmentalist impulses. That's not surprising of course, people…
October 26, 2007
Interesting piece which chronicles the decline in the DVD driven profits of porn companies due to "user generated porn." Porn is in some ways sui generis, so this is an interesting trend. Check out the traffic of YouPorn vs. Facebook.
October 25, 2007
Sometimes science is just too cool! A Melanocortin 1 Receptor Allele Suggests Varying Pigmentation Among Neanderthals:
The melanocortin 1 receptor (MC1R) regulates pigmentation in humans and other vertebrates. Variants of MC1R with reduced function are associated with pale skin color and red hair…
October 23, 2007
If you like the science on this weblog, I highly recommend Laelaps, Brian Switek's contribution to the ScienceBlogs network. Where I am more micro and anthro oriented he is more macro and spans the whole tree of life. I'm really glad he's on ScienceBlogs; Laelaps adds to the diversity in an…
October 23, 2007
The death of an Indian politician due to a monkey mob is getting a lot of attention. But Ruchira Paul points me to an older story which I think is even more interesting:
They have invaded the prime minister's office and the Defence Ministry, helping themselves to top secret military files.
...…
October 23, 2007
Another day, and another genome-wide association study. Genetic determinants of hair, eye and skin pigmentation in Europeans:
...We carried out a genome-wide association scan for variants associated with hair and eye pigmentation, skin sensitivity to sun and freckling among 2,986 Icelanders. We…
October 22, 2007
Some of you know that Bobby Jindal was just elected as the governor of Louisiana. Jindal has an interesting story, he's the son of Indian immigrants, received degrees in biology and public bolicy from Brown, passed on Harvard Medical School for a Rhodes Scholarship, and took over the Louisiana…
October 22, 2007
An Empirical Examination of Adaptationists' Attitudes Toward Politics and Science. You can find a full preprint at Geoffrey Miller's site. The abstract:
Critics of evolutionary psychology and sociobiology have advanced an adaptationists-as-right-wing-conspirators (ARC) hypothesis, suggesting that…
October 20, 2007
Carl Zimmer interviews Craig Venter (video). They're talking most genomics and creating life from "scratch." Also, Esther Dyson talks about the personal genome.
October 18, 2007
About a year ago Tim Lambert asked ScienceBloggers to check out a political quiz and collected the responses. 29 of us responded, and below the fold I've placed two graphs which display a smoothed out frequency distribution across the two axes generated by the survey. As noted by the author of…
October 18, 2007
Every now and then I take political quizzes to see where I am. Below the fold are my results for three surveys....
Political Survey:
The World's Smallest Political Quiz:
Political Compass:
Politopia:
Enhanced Political Quiz:
October 18, 2007
Alu Recombination-Mediated Structural Deletions in the Chimpanzee Genome:
Here, by scanning the chimpanzee genome for such deletions, we determined the role of the Alu recombination-mediated deletion process in creating structural differences between the chimpanzee and human genomes. Using a…
October 18, 2007
The Derived FOXP2 Variant of Modern Humans Was Shared with Neandertals:
...Here, we find that our closest extinct relatives, the Neandertals, share with modern humans two evolutionary changes in FOXP2, a gene that has been implicated in the development of speech and language. We furthermore find…
October 17, 2007
In case you didn't notice, the latest Nature is heavy on human evolutionary genetics. Go here and control-f "Human genetics: Genes tell our evolutionary tale."
October 17, 2007
Researchers find earliest evidence for modern human behavior in South Africa:
"Our findings show that at 164,000 years ago in coastal South Africa humans expanded their diet to include shellfish and other marine resources, perhaps as a response to harsh environmental conditions," notes Marean, a…
October 17, 2007
The genetic map maker. Read the whole thing, but this is interesting:
How did you feel about being accused of racism?
Well, many mistakes are made and that was a very curious one. I'd argued for decades that the concept of 'race' defined by external characteristics -- such as skin colour, size…
October 17, 2007
OK GNXP readers...Donors Choose update. Been quiet about this. First, the good news. ScienceBlogs has raised A LOT of money. And Seed is throwing in matching funds (and possible prizes). The "bad" news is that my challenge is really not going too well :-) Page down on the leader-board, will you…
October 16, 2007
Maternal Immune Activation Alters Fetal Brain Development through Interleukin-6:
Schizophrenia and autism are thought to result from the interaction between a susceptibility genotype and environmental risk factors. The offspring of women who experience infection while pregnant have an increased…
October 16, 2007
Antagonistic pleiotropic effects reduce the potential adaptive value of the FRIGIDA locus:
....Here we investigate the importance of pleiotropy and epistasis in determining the adaptive value of a candidate gene using the gene FRI (FRIGIDA), which is thought to be the major gene controlling…
October 16, 2007
Sort of. I assume that part of this is delivery and the nature of a short interview format. But, I think it is important to highlight a point of mild disagreement between Steven Pinker and Rebecca Goldstein in their Salon interview:
PINKER: Exactly. I would be opposed to a requirement on astrology…