razib
Posts by this author
August 9, 2007
Hung with old college friends last night. We kept referring to South Park episodes to illustrate a point or make an analogy so as to clarify an issue. Interesting that this is a common touchstone for my generation.
August 9, 2007
Update: Another post on this topic at my other blog.
A few days ago I pointed to a new paper, Evidence of Still-Ongoing Convergence Evolution of the Lactase Persistence T-13910 Alleles in Humans. Knowing my interest in the topic you might assume that I would be "all over this." Well, I finally…
August 8, 2007
/. has a post with the title Humanity's Genetic Diversity on the Decline, drawing from a recent paper which found that the mtDNA haplotype diversity in England was lower than 1,000 years ago. The authors were surprised because of course one presumes England is more cosmopolitan today than in the…
August 8, 2007
The New York Times has an article up reiterating the fabled "bushiness" of hominid phylogenetic trees:
Scientists who dated and analyzed the specimens -- a 1.44 million-year-old Homo habilis and a 1.55 million-year-old Homo erectus -- said their findings challenged the conventional view that these…
August 8, 2007
In High-wire Act:
Before agreeing to work on the opera, Albarn and Hewlett made two trips to China with Shi-Zheng. While visiting the city of Yinchuan, in Ninzxia Province, Albarn spent an afternoon lying on the floor of his hotel room recording the sound of horns in the street.
There is no "…
August 7, 2007
I mentioned earlier that Google News had kicked ScienceBlogs off their news feed, but left the Discovery Institute's blog. Well, look at what showed up today in my "Google Alerts" for the query "human evolution":
August 7, 2007
A few weeks ago the study about obesity being socially contagious was all the rage. For anyone interested in human behavior this shouldn't be surprising, we are a social creature and our peer group is an essential part of our 'extended phenotype'. The psychologist Judith Rich Harris has famously…
August 7, 2007
TNR has a piece by one of the writers for Buffy and the Vampire Slayer (and an assorted other sci-fi shows) about the appeal of some stories (e.g., Harry Potter) and the lack of others. Her basic thesis is that the story needs a "Chosen One" central spoke to anchor the axis of the narrative. That…
August 6, 2007
Stumbled upon this survey from Britain which shows that 'Asians' are the most averse to interracial relationships. I put Asian in quotes because that means something different on the other side of the pond then in the USA; here Asian is a catchall group with East Asians as the most representative…
August 5, 2007
Update III: John Hawks comments.
Update II: Here is the paper. The abstract:
A common assumption in the evolutionary scenario of the first Eurasian hominin populations is that they all had an African origin. This assumption also seems to apply for the Early and Middle Pleistocene populations, whose…
August 5, 2007
Gene For Left-handedness Identified in ScienceDaily. The original paper is LRRTM1 on chromosome 2p12 is a maternally suppressed gene that is associated paternally with handedness and schizophrenia:
Left-right asymmetrical brain function underlies much of human cognition, behavior and emotion.…
August 4, 2007
In many parts of the Muslim world people claim to be descendants of the Prophet. Generally these are Sayyids:
Sayyid (سÙد) (plural Saadah) is an honorific title that is given to males accepted as descendants of the Islamic prophet Muhammad through his grandsons, Hassan and Husayn, who were the…
August 4, 2007
I saw The Bourne Ultimatum today. Good movie, only checked the time once (10 minutes before the film ended). Julia Stiles looks totally Asian with black hair.
August 3, 2007
Note: I got this article via AJHG's RSS. It doesn't seem to have gone live on the site so there might be temporary problems accessing the link.
Evidence of Still-Ongoing Convergence Evolution of the Lactase Persistence T-13910 Alleles in Humans:
A single-nucleotide variant, C/T-13910, located 14 kb…
August 2, 2007
So I go in and get the exact same coffee at a particular coffee shop usually. Today I wanted a juice. So I ask for the juice, and the barista gets me some coffee (the usually mild brew) and then charges me for the juice. After a few moments, he realizes that he hasn't gotten me the juice, he got…
August 1, 2007
In biological anthropology there is a Grandmother Hypothesis as an explanation for why adult human females live so long after their reproduction ceases, and, why menopause occurs in the first place (male fertility tapers off over time, while women undergo a concerted physiological change which…
August 1, 2007
There has been a lot of comment on the blogosphere about eugenics. From the Right, Ross Douthat here, here & here, from the Left Ezra Klein here, here & here, Kevin Drum here & Henry Farrell here. And from the libertarian angle the Elf here. Since a few of my posts were referenced I…
July 31, 2007
As Kevin Beck points out Google News dropped ScienceBlogs.com, but kept the Discovery Institute's blog. If you have issues this with particular pair of decisions, tell Google.
July 31, 2007
Gene Duplications Give Clues to Humanness:
All told, the researchers found more than 4000 genes that showed lineage-specific changes in copy number, with the numbers steadily increasing over evolutionary time. Humans, for example, only had 84 genes with increased copy numbers over those of our…
July 30, 2007
Zack talks about his personal Dell Hell. I took had a Inspiron 5100, and it exhibited all the issues he has noted.
July 30, 2007
Carl Zimmer has a fascinating profile of Martin Nowak, whose work I have talked about before. Carl saves the best for last:
Dr. Nowak sometimes finds his scientific colleagues astonished when he defends religion. But he believes the astonishment comes from a misunderstanding of the roles of…
July 30, 2007
Were Neanderthals our enemies or lovers?:
One difficulty in working out how these ancient humans rubbed along is that there is a lack of clear evidence of close encounters. That changed two years ago when a paper was published by Prof Paul Mellars, of Cambridge University, and his student Brad…
July 30, 2007
Steven Pinker explores The Genealogy Craze in America in TNR. He covers most of the angles, and expands a bit out from a laser-like focus on scientific genealogy toward the relevance of relatedness in the evolution of social behavior.
July 30, 2007
Circumcision doesn't reduce sensation: study:
The study, published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine, looked at a group of 40 men, half of them circumcised. Using sensory testing, the men were monitored at two points on the penis and the forearm while viewing erotic films. Thermal imaging was used…
July 28, 2007
Ancient and continuing Darwinian selection on insulin-like growth factor II in placental fishes:
...We found that IGF2 is subject to positive Darwinian selection coincident with the evolution of placentation in fishes, with particularly strong selection among lineages that have evolved placentation…