razib | September 17, 2009I asked readers to fill out a survey a week and a half ago. Results are in.
razib | September 17, 2009Tyrannosaurid Skeletal Design First Evolved at Small Body Size:
Tyrannosaurid dinosaurs comprised nearly all large-bodied predators (>2.5 tons) on northern continents during the Late Cretaceous. We show that their most conspicuous functional specializations--a proportionately large skull, incisiform premaxillary teeth, expanded jaw-closing musculature, diminutive forelimb, and a hindlimb with cursorial proportions--were present in a new small-bodied, basal tyrannosauroid from Lower Cretaceous rocks in northeastern China. These specializations, scaled up in Late Cretaceous tyrannosaurids…
razib | September 16, 2009The Big Money has a profile of Felix Salmon up. Here is why I reckon that Salmon has some rank, every few weeks he shows up as a guest on Marketplace. And he consistently pronounces Kai Ryssdal's first name as if it is really the female name "Kay."
razib | September 15, 2009The origin of Neandertals:
Western Eurasia yielded a rich Middle (MP) and Late Pleistocene (LP) fossil record documenting the evolution of the Neandertals that can be analyzed in light of recently acquired paleogenetical data, an abundance of archeological evidence, and a well-known environmental context. Their origin likely relates to an episode of recolonization of Western Eurasia by hominins of African origin carrying the Acheulean technology into Europe around 600 ka. An enhancement of both glacial and interglacial phases may have played a crucial role in this event, as well as in the…
razib | September 15, 2009
One of the problems with human genetics where it resembles economics are the ethical issues involved in experimentation. Luckily for science, but unluckily for individuals, medicine offers many "natural experiments." But in the area of population genetics and history analyses of pedigrees or family based studies centered around particular traits and genes have limitations of scale. Luckily for science again, and unluckily for millions of Amerindians and black Africans, Latin America offers a cornucopia of possibilities when it comes to exploring the outcomes ensuing from admixture between…
razib | September 14, 2009A British film about Charles Darwin has failed to find a US distributor because his theory of evolution is too controversial for American audiences, according to its producer:
"The film has no distributor in America. It has got a deal everywhere else in the world but in the US, and it's because of what the film is about. People have been saying this is the best film they've seen all year, yet nobody in the US has picked it up.
"It is unbelievable to us that this is still a really hot potato in America. There's still a great belief that He made the world in six days. It's quite difficult for…
razib | September 14, 2009Nearly 50 years ago W. D. Hamilton published two papers, The genetical evolution of social behaviour - I & The genetical evolution of social behaviour - II, which helped revolutionize our conception of how social and genetic process might work in concert. It opened up a field of research which was highlighted in Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, and helped make inclusive fitness a general idea which allows us to view specific phenomena through a powerful theoretical lens. Hamilton's original work was broad in its implications and abstract in method, but concretely utilized various…
razib | September 13, 2009U.S. Is Finding Its Role in Business Hard to Unwind:
Between financial rescue missions and the economic stimulus program, government spending accounts for a bigger share of the nation's economy -- 26 percent -- than at any time since World War II. The government is financing 9 out of 10 new mortgages in the United States. If you buy a car from General Motors, you are buying from a company that is 60 percent owned by the government.
If you take out a car loan or run up your credit card, the chances are good that the government is financing both your debt and that of your bank.
And if you buy…
razib | September 13, 2009At my other weblog, two reviews of books on Eurasia. First, Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present. Second, China's Cosmopolitan Empire: The Tang Dynasty.
razib | September 13, 2009I'm reading Justin Fox's The Myth of the Rational Market: A History of Risk, Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street, which is on many "To Read" lists because of its topical relevance. I think it is especially illuminating when examined in light of another work, Toward Rational Exuberance: The Evolution of the Modern Stock Market by B. Mark Smith. As made clear by the title Fox's stance is generally skeptical of the efficient-market hypothesis (though Fox does often distinguish between weak and strong forms of the hypothesis, and is naturally not as hostile to the former as the latter). In…
razib | September 12, 2009Keep reading stuff like this, A Year After a Cataclysm, Little Change on Wall St.:
Simon Johnson, a professor at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, said that the seeds of another collapse had already sprouted. If major banks are allowed to keep making bets that are ultimately backed by taxpayer guarantees, they will return to the practices that led them to underwrite trillions of dollars in bad loans, Professor Johnson said.
This isn't really an ideological issue. Arnold Kling (who opposed…
razib | September 12, 2009The Evolutionary Origin of Man Can Be Traced in the Layers of Defunct Ancestral Alpha Satellites Flanking the Active Centromeres of Human Chromosomes. The authors are Russian, so I think the somewhat grand and archaic first portion of the title can be explained as a mater of translation. Here's the author summary:
The primate centromere evolves by amplification of alpha satellite sequences in its inner core, which expands and moves the peripheral sequences sideways, forming layers of different age in the "pericentromeric" area. The expanding centromere model poses two main questions: (1)…
razib | September 10, 2009I don't usually say much about September 11th because I don't have much original to say. Bu I realized recently that to a great extent September 11th was one of the reasons I got into blogging in the spring of 2002. Obviously I don't talk much about foreign policy or politics in any substantive manner, but in the wake of those events in September the media ecosystem seemed ill-equipped to respond to the changes in the story fast enough, and so non-tech related weblogs arose to fill the vacuum. And arguably that is why you are reading this right now (I actually had a blog for 1 week in the…
razib | September 10, 2009Disgraced California lawmaker denies affairs:
A pro-family values California lawmaker who resigned after being caught on tape boasting about his sexual conquests denied Thursday that he had extramarital affairs, saying "my offense was engaging in inappropriate storytelling.
Shaggy-It wasn't me
razib | September 10, 2009She seems to have liked it, with caveats and reservations. It's a narrative film, not a scientific biography, so appropriate shifts in emphases are to be expected.
razib | September 9, 2009Will Wilkinson points me to an interesting paper with some interesting figures, Income, Health and Wellbeing Around the World: Evidence from the Gallup World Poll:
razib | September 8, 2009Creation, a biopic about Charles Darwin, premiers tomorrow at the Toronto International Film Festival. Trailer below....
razib | September 8, 2009Update: Author comments below.
PLoS ONE has an interesting paper out, Genetic Ancestry, Social Classification, and Racial Inequalities in Blood Pressure in Southeastern Puerto Rico. They're exploring the topic of African ancestry and hypertension, which seems to have a positive correlation, but where there is dispute as to whether that correlation is driven only by genes, or environment, or a combination. Puerto Rico is characterized by a wide range in admixture between Europeans & Africans (with a minor but significant amount of Amerindian). Additionally, because most variance in…
razib | September 8, 2009If you have a minute, I'd appreciate it if you fill out this survey, the 6 questions should take 30 seconds (2 optional questions about where you came from to take the survey). This is for a friend's research project. The results will be posted next week.