razib | July 17, 2007As 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 and based on elimination of possibilities, but at least it pushes the ball forward.
razib | July 17, 2007Widely 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 the human genome have attracted considerable attention for their potential to simplify the search for functional elements and phenotypically important human alleles. A major outstanding question is whether functionally significant human noncoding variation is concentrated in CNSs or distributed…
razib | July 16, 2007The 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 said people who had received copies were "just astounded at its size and production values and equally astonished at what a load of crap it is.
"If he sees a picture of an old fossil crab or something, he says, 'See, it looks just like a regular crab, there's no evolution,' " Dr. Padian said. "…
razib | July 16, 2007You 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 Finnish Grandmothers Reveal about Human Evolution, about Virpi Lummaa's research program. It's a "sexy" one, I've blogged her research several times, it has pretty deep appeal, focusing on humans & evolution. For you religion haters out there, I do have to point out that it is enabled by the…
razib | July 14, 2007I 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:
Source:
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razib | July 13, 2007Ethiopia 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.
razib | July 12, 2007About 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 fared worse when there was more radioactivity around. Intriguingly, that did not apply to birds that used melanin....
Besides acting as pigments, carotenoids are antioxidants that have an important role in protecting DNA from harm. One of the ways that radiation causes harm is by generating…
razib | July 11, 2007Wired 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 evolutionary biologist Mark Ridley elucidates how multicellular organisms emerge from a coalition of genes all with the same interest because of their imprisonment within the individual (their replication being mediated by the sex gametes). I'm assuming that Wilson & Hoelldobler are going to attempt…
razib | July 11, 2007Ancient 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 similar to Mexican cuisine today. The two caves yielded 10 different cultivars (cultivated varieties) of chili peppers.
"This analysis demonstrates that chilies in Mexican food have been numerous and complex for a long period of time," said lead author Linda Perry, of the Smithsonian's National Museum…
razib | July 10, 2007A commenter below observed that both the Sami and the Finns are cases where females tend to have darker eyes than males. He chalked this up to sexual selection. I was skeptical a priori because 3/4 of the time the variation between blue and brown eyes within the population can be explained by one genetic locus, and this is a region (OCA2) that seems to have been under massive recent selection. Sexual dimorphism tends to emerge slowly within populations because it takes time for modifier loci which express themselves conditionally in response to sex hormones to scaffold the initial gene…
razib | July 10, 2007Chad's response to Dave Ng's meme attempt asking people about their own field and relationship to other fields included this:
I'm particularly not envious of biology, in which every result seems to be messy and contingent. Everything has a hundred confounding factors, and all the results seem to be statistical. Clean and unambiguous results are rare, and that would drive me absolutely crazy. They're one small step removed from social science.
Chad admitted in the comments that he was just trying to foment some conflict for entertainment value. But I'll bite because this is a "teachable…
razib | July 10, 2007Someone asked below if the Sami are actually darker than the Finns. Since I've been making this assumption in previous posts I thought I'd check this out. I found this source for the Finnish Sami where they cite a 1936 paper written in German. I've translated the relevant table (hair and skin color) below. The source above also has data on some provinces of central and southern Finland where one presumes the Sami presence is minimal, though I can't vouch for proper calibration of the metrics, I've included the appropriate snippets.
Eye color
Hair color
Light
Mixed
Brown
n…
razib | July 9, 2007Over the past two days I've posted about the problems with Vitamin D deficiency that can crop up at high latitudes because of low UV levels. In Civilization Felix Fernandez-Armesto quotes a source stating about the Sami of Finland:
...They are blow-legged from rickets....
The argument I made earlier was that the Sami did not become very light because selective pressure was far weaker upon them than upon the Finns to their south. But this anecdote suggests that rickets is a problem for the Sami. What gives? A little searching led me to this story about the Inuit of Canada:
But as the Arctic…
razib | July 9, 2007Apropos of the recent drift vs. selection debates in regards to the driving forces of evolution, I thought I'd pass on this press release about the pervasiveness of neutral genetic elements. You can read the full provisional paper in PLOS Genetics:
Using sequence analysis and fossil dating, we also show a probable burst of integration of numts in the primate lineage that centers on the prosimian-anthropoid split, mimics closely the temporal distribution of Alu and processed pseudogene acquisition, and coincides with the major climatic change at the Paleocene-Eocene boundary. We therefore…
razib | July 9, 2007In my previous post I highlighted the possibility that extremely light skin might have evolved in Europeans relatively recently due to selection for Vitamin D production in the context of a nutritional deficiency prompted by the shift from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to an agricultural one. I want to emphasize that the phenotype I was highlighting (skin color) was likely not the only response prompted by this selective force. For example, OCA2 seems responsible for about 75% of the variation in eye color in Europeans:
The TGT/TGT diplotype found in 62.2% of samples was the major genotype…
razib | July 8, 2007Recently I had some blood work done for a routine check up and it turned out that I had vitamin D deficiency. The doctor explained to me that this is common amongst darker skinned people who live at high latitudes, especially in areas where cloudiness is the norm. That would fit the bill for my own ecological surroundings for these past few years, but I never believed that I would be susceptible to vitamin D deficiency because I perceived myself as someone who got sufficient sun. To the left you see a photo of my foot. I normally wear sandals, so please note the contrast between my exposed…