razib
Posts by this author
July 27, 2007
Rapid evolution in early trilobites fueled by high variation:
Webster compiled morphological data for nearly 1,000 of the 17,000 different species of trilobites, a class of marine arthropods that died out by 250 million years ago, from 49 previously published sources. By tracking different…
July 27, 2007
How bacteria evolve into superbugs:
"Bacteria that can mutate fast will quickly adapt to harsh environments containing antibiotics. Our study showed that a high rate of immigration significantly augments the regular process of genetic mutation commonly used to explain the evolution of antibiotic…
July 26, 2007
Looks like there might be a recantation of the argument against death for apostasy by the Grand Mufti of Egypt. Abu Aardvark has the details.
July 26, 2007
Viral Epizootic reveals inbreeding depression in a habitually inbreeding mammal:
Inbreeding is typically detrimental to fitness. However, some animal populations are reported to inbreed without incurring inbreeding depression, ostensibly due to past "purging" of deleterious alleles. Challenging…
July 25, 2007
If you find the material on this blog of interest, I highly recommend that you subscribe to Jason Malloy's de facto clipping service: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/gnxpforum/. A far number of the articles I blog about I find via that entry on my RSS....
July 25, 2007
Check out a long piece on bonobos in The New Yorker. Now, I've read a fair amount of Frans de Waal's work, and I think the piece is making him out to be a little more PC than he is. Nevertheless, I am a bit disturbed by the fact that hasn't seen a Bonobo in the wild! I just happened to have…
July 25, 2007
I was putting off commenting on this, and wondering whether I had any value to add. But a reader pointed me to Noah Feldman's Orthodox paradox, a piece in The New York Times Magazine where the author, a young Harvard law professor, reflects on his journey from the Modern Orthodox subculture into…
July 24, 2007
Update II: John Hawks leaves a comment.
Update: Kambiz has much more comment.
Were neandertal and modern human cranial differences produced by natural selection or genetic drift?:
... Here we use a variety of statistical tests founded on explicit predictions from quantitative- and population-…
July 24, 2007
Ali Eteraz points me to the fact that the Grand Mufti of Egypt seems to have offered the opinion that 'Muslims can choose their own religion'. This is important, because as Wikipedia says:
All five major schools of Islamic jurisprudence agree that a sane male apostate must be executed. A female…
July 23, 2007
Most of you could probably guess that my first post on Harun Yahya was meant to highlight what a joke the whole affair was. You see, making fun of Harun Yahya and his fellow travelers is a guiltless pleasure: you get to be snobby and elitist toward those idiotic moronic knuckle-draggers, and, you…
July 23, 2007
The Mastodon paleogenomics paper is out on PLOS:
We obtained the sequence from a tooth dated to 50,000-130,000 years ago, increasing the specimen age for which such palaeogenomic analyses have been done by almost a complete glacial cycle. Using this sequence, together with mitochondrial genome…
July 21, 2007
Science makes DNA breakthrough in the tooth of a mastodon:
...after finding DNA preserved in the fossilised tooth of a beast that died up to 130,000 years ago.
...
Researchers were hoping its teeth might have preserved enough of the DNA for them to recover lengthy chunks of it, and this week they…
July 21, 2007
Mike offers his 2 cents on the levels of selection debates. He says:
If it doesn't provide me with testable hypotheses and the conceptual tools to do so, it's just not useful. That's what happened the last go around with this in the late 80s and early 90s. Do the experiments and I'll be interested…
July 20, 2007
A reader points out that Fields Medalist Terrence Tao has a post on introgression in Darwin's Finches.
July 20, 2007
Update: John Hawks weighs in. Here is the abstract.
Several people have asked about a new paper coming out that uses the diversity in skulls to "prove" the Out of Africa hypothesis. The paper is going to be out in Nature yesterday. Yes, you read that right, it was supposed to be on the site on…
July 19, 2007
Natural polymorphism affecting learning and memory in Drosophila:
Knowing which genes contribute to natural variation in learning and memory would help us understand how differences in these cognitive traits evolve among populations and species. We show that a natural polymorphism at the foraging (…
July 18, 2007
Go Ahead, Everyone Talk at Once:
People who can't follow a movie when someone else is talking can blame their genes. The ability--or inability--to listen to more than one thing at once is largely inherited, according to a study of twins. The finding could help scientists better understand disorders…
July 18, 2007
We know that the Magyars originated from Inner Eurasia. They were one of the long line of steppe peoples who conquered and settled central Europe, the Avars being their local predecessors. But unlike the Avars, or the Bulgars or the Huns, the Magyars left a cultural imprint: their language. And…
July 17, 2007
As a follow up to my post mocking Harun Yahya, check out Ali Eteraz's impressive post exploring his possible sources of funding and affiliations. My own immediate instinct was to assume that he was a front for Saudi $$$; Ali points to reasons why this is unlikely. The argument is circumstantial…
July 17, 2007
Widely distributed noncoding purifying selection in the human genome (PNAS):
It is widely assumed that human noncoding sequences comprise a substantial reservoir for functional variants impacting gene regulation and other chromosomal processes. Evolutionarily conserved noncoding sequences (CNSs) in…
July 16, 2007
The New York Times has a funny article up, Islamic Creationist and a Book Sent Round the World, which recounts the mass distribution (gratis) of Harun Yahya's latest tract, a lavishly illustrated and packaged glossy book which aims to show that evolution didn't occur. This is chuckle worthy:
He…
July 16, 2007
You might not be able to do controlled experiments on humans for evolutionary biological purposes (not only is it unethical, the leisurely rate of human reproduction doesn't make it viable for cranking out Ph.D.s), but you can analyze our pedigrees! Scientific American has a long article, What…
July 14, 2007
I think the answer to the question posed in the title is "Yes." But I'm more interested in the break down of disciplines. Below the fold is some data I've collated.
Source:
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July 13, 2007
Ethiopia unveils new find of ancient fossils:
Ethiopian scientists said on Tuesday they have discovered hominid fossil fragments dating from between 3.5 million and 3.8 million years ago in what could fill a crucial gap in the understanding of human evolution.
July 12, 2007
About one month ago Ruchira Paul posted on the ecology around Chernobyl and the surprising bounce back of some taxa. The Economist has some interesting detail about the nature of this revival:
...they found that species which relied on a class of chemicals called carotenoids to tint their feathers…
July 11, 2007
Wired has a blog entry up where they reproduce the text of an email exchange with Bert Hoelldobler, an entomologist who is collaborating with E.O. Wilson on a new book which will argue for the relevance of higher levels of organization in evolutionary processes. In The Cooperative Gene…
July 11, 2007
Ancient Americans Liked It Hot: Mexican Cuisine Traced To 1,500 Years Ago:
Plant remains from two caves in southern Mexico analyzed by a Smithsonian ethnobotanist/archaeologist and a colleague indicate that as early as 1,500 years ago, Pre-Columbian inhabitants of the region enjoyed a spicy fare…