razib
Posts by this author
May 7, 2007
I have stated before that additive genetic variance is the relevant component of variance when modeling the response to selection in relation to a quantitative trait. In other words:
Response = (additive genetic variance)/(total phenotypic variance) X Selection
Consider height, which is about 80%…
May 7, 2007
I'm reading Derek Roff's chapter in Evolutionary Genetics: Concepts and Case Studies about quantitative genetics and the G Matrix. He revisits some of the territory covered in Evolutionary Quantitative Genetics, but his tone is strikingly pessimistic on both theoretical and empirical grounds. I'm…
May 5, 2007
I don't follow non-science news very closely. Most of my RSS feeds are science related. Nevertheless, I'm starting to get the sense that a recession is in the offing, and that we might be in the beginning of one right now. Anyone else get that feeling???
May 4, 2007
Here's an article on The Grandmother Hypothesis. Personally, I didn't take the idea seriously until a biological anthropologist told me that menopause was a tightly integrated proactive cascade of biochemical changes which shuts down female procreative capacity. In contrast, human males exhibit…
May 4, 2007
The post below about the decline of biological anthropology as a concentration at Harvard elicited many responses. To some extent the columnist was framing the argument in a Two Cultures fashion. This is an expansive and thoroughgoing argument. I am personally unaware of the direct benefits of…
May 3, 2007
Check out this Harvard Crimson column on the death of the biological anthropology concentration:
The root cause is a language barrier. Faculty members of the sciences and the humanities strongly adhere to the belief that the world can either be exclusively expressed in math or in words. Social…
May 2, 2007
I've talked about "the breeder's equation," R = h2S, before.
R = response
S = selection differential
h2 = narrow sense heritability
For example, if you have a population where the mean phenotypic value is 100, and you select a subpopulation with a mean value of 125 to breed the next generation,…
May 2, 2007
The Washington Post has an article up on recent controversies regarding the relationship between Neandertals and our own lineage. Nothing too surprising, though I did note one point:
But one genetic trait of modern Europeans makes him [Chris Stringer] doubt there was any major Neanderthal input…
May 1, 2007
Apparently Toxoplasma gondii, a parasite implicated in human behavior modification, might have its origins in South America. This puts a whole new spin on The Columbian Exchange. One of the underemphasized aspects of the meeting of "Old" and "New" World, to my mind, are the first order biological…
May 1, 2007
There's a local "wrap" bistro
where I often get my lunch, and they offer a wide selection of hot sauces for condiments. I always pick out Frank's RedHot Original because it's the hottest of the bunch. By "hot" I'm talking on a relative scale, it's a typical cayenne sauce, powerful enough to…
May 1, 2007
The post yesterday where I reflect David Dobb's departure from ScienceBlogs made me reconsider why I blog. There are many sorts of blogs out there. Some, like The Daily Kos, are involved in affecting social and political change. Others are basically notepads for personal hobbies. Many blogs are…
April 30, 2007
Below is why I haven't been blogging much....
~70 degrees fahrenheit, light breeze, no humidity....
April 30, 2007
Today we debuted the Denialism Blog, while David Dobbs of Smooth Pebbles bids farewell to ScienceBlogs. David offers cogent rationales for why he decided to leave ScienceBlogs (the proximate reason is that he just isn't posting much as far as bloggers go). One thing to note that is I don't think…
April 26, 2007
Via Dienekes, a new possible historical genetic story on the horizon: the extent of "European"-origin settlers in pre-modern China. The biography of the individual sequenced:
Yu Hong (d. 592 [C.E.]) was a high-ranking member of a community of Sogdians who had settled on the northern border of…
April 25, 2007
Final Update: Victory Day! In response to Shelley's request I've removed the text of the original email.
Update III: Shelly has another post on what she wants out of this:
Some have called for the boycott of all Wiley journals. While I appreciate the sentiment (more than any of you can know), I'm…
April 24, 2007
Erick Trinkaus has a new article in PNAS, European early modern humans and the fate of the Neandertals:
A consideration of the morphological aspects of the earliest modern humans in Europe (more than ~33,000 B.P.) and the subsequent Gravettian human remains indicates that they possess an anatomical…
April 23, 2007
The April 16th issue of The New Yorker had an article by John Colapinto, The puzzling language of an Amazon tribe. It's in print, so I can't post it, but the short of it is that the tribe might lack recursion, a hammer blow to Chomskyan universal grammar. Overall the tribe seems to have a rather…
April 23, 2007
A few weeks ago, Andrew Brown (author of The Darwin Wars) stated:
I'm not sure that Boyer, Atran and Wilson regard their explanations as complementary. I have talked to all three of them about it. My feeling is that while all three of them understand that the explanations might be complementary,…
April 22, 2007
Chris of Mixing Memory rips into the usual suspects for analogizing atheist activism with the women's suffrage movement. I have basically taken a sabbatical from these SB intramural debates about religion, Creationism, etc. So I'll let you comment over there. But, I will offer that I've never…
April 20, 2007
Obviously a sex-linked trait. All males seem to exhibit the trait but none of the females. It can't just be the lack of something on the X, otherwise some of the females would have exhibited this trait as well. No, perhaps a mutant on the Y which acts in a trans & "dominant" acting manner to…
April 20, 2007
I was at the local food co-op when I saw Brother Bru Bru's African Hot Sauce. It said it was "very hot!" on the label, and since some of you had recommended African hot sauces to me earlier I decided to check it out. The label suggests that there were assorted peppers mixed into this concoction…
April 20, 2007
Here is a report on some developments on the hypothesis that humans are very well evolved to run in the heat. A physical anthropologist told me that while cold adapted peoples can acclimate to tropical conditions, heat adapted peoples are not as good at the reverse. That suggested to me that as a…
April 18, 2007
It's been a cold & rainy April. This morning I got up and walked down the block to take an unobstructed photo of the mountains which loom over my apartment. When I visit the Midwest I am always struck by the 2-dimensional topography....
Update: Later in the day....