razib | August 13, 2009A helpful invasive species?:
Introduced species can wreak havoc on the ecosystems they invade. But what happens after they've been established for centuries? A new study in the latest Proceedings of the Royal Society suggests that, in one case, an introduced species has actually become an important part of the native ecosystem -- and helps protect native species from another invader [$-a].
...
Recently a news article in Nature discussed ragamuffin earth [$-a] -- the idea that human interference in nature has so dramatically changed natural systems that it may often be impossible to restore "…
razib | August 13, 2009The use of the word "Darwinist" is to catch the attention of Creationists, normally I'm not too warm to its usage in a scientific (as opposed to philosophical or historical) context. In any case, Jerry Coyne has a post up where he states:
The "new atheists" have been on the scene for exactly five years, beginning with Sam Harris's The End of Faith, published in 2004. But American's attitudes to evolution have been relatively unchanged (with 40+% denying it) for twenty-five years. This means two things.
This is true to a first approximation, and rather depressing. So I thought I would…
razib | August 12, 2009Last week I pointed to the fact there seem to be a set of private educational institutions whose raison d'être is to feed at the trough of government-backed student loans. Mark Gimein has a follow-up at The Big Money. Here are some bits about the "college" which was sued by the graduate who couldn't get a job:
Trina Thompson's alma mater, Monroe College, is well-known to New York City commuters, thanks to glossy ads that festoon the insides (and sometimes the outside) of many subway cars. It has less of a presence, however, outside the New York public transit system. You will not find it…
razib | August 12, 2009So says the data according to Andrew Gelman. I think there is some serious issues with self-reports of whether someone is a conservative or liberal which don't occur with political parties. People know whether they are Republican or Democrat in a more concrete manner because they have often realized their preferences through voting.
razib | August 12, 2009I was a bit surprised by these data, Political Self-characterization of U.S. Medical Students:
Among these medical students, 5% self-characterized as politically very conservative, 21% conservative, 33% moderate, 31% liberal, and 9% as very liberal." Being male, white, Protestant, intending to specialize in Surgery or anesthesiology/pathology/radiology, or currently or previously being married significantly... increased the likelihood that a student self-identified as very conservative or conservative. Disagreement or strong disagreement with the statements, "I'm glad I chose to become a…
razib | August 11, 2009'It Was All Fake,' Madoff Aide Tells Court:
Frank DiPascali was an 18-year-old "kid from Queens" with a high school education when he landed a job with a rising star on Wall Street named Bernard L. Madoff.
...
"No purchases or sales of securities were actually taking place in their accounts," Mr. DiPascali said. "It was all fake. It was all fictitious. It was wrong, and I knew it was wrong at the time."
He said he used data from the Internet to create fake trade blotters, sent out fraudulent account statements to clients and carried out wire transfers between Mr. Madoff's London and New York…
razib | August 11, 2009Dan MacArthur has the details. What, no bailout from the government of Iceland?
razib | August 10, 2009Last spring there was a false alarm about a noninvasive form of prenatal testing, in particular for Down syndrome. But if The Guardian is right then the British NHS is pushing forward on a more general program in this direction:
The early signs are so promising that the professor leading the programme says that the risk-free test could be the standard method of detecting babies with some genetic conditions inherited from the father within two to three years and those with Down's syndrome within five - and in the process save the lives of an estimated 265 mostly normal babies a year.
The life-…
razib | August 10, 2009Pew has a new report, A Portrait of Mormons in the U.S.. Most of it is is unsurprising, but this caught my eye:
Converts are more likely than lifelong members to come from minority racial and ethnic groups. One-in-ten converts to Mormonism are black, and nearly all black Mormons are converts. An additional one-in-ten Mormon converts are Hispanic, and just 72% are white; by contrast, 91% of lifelong Mormons are white. Converts are also more than three times as likely as lifelong members to be immigrants to the U.S. (14% vs. 4%).
The sample size may be small, so the 1 in 10 figure could be a…
razib | August 7, 2009A comment below asks:
Well, good for you for getting me to click through by using an interesting post title. But how do you know women who "know god exists" aren't assuming a female god?
In a vacuum of all knowledge about this sort of topic this is a reasonable question. But there's plenty of social science data showing that American women tend to be more religiously conservative & "orthodox" as a whole than men (in contrast to female ministers or rabbis, who are more likely to be progressive than their male counterparts from what I gather). But I decided to see how textually "…
razib | August 7, 2009On another weblog someone alluded to the sex difference in religious belief among black Americans, to the effect that it was more pronounced than among whites. Is this true? I decided to check the GSS, and found something interesting, though not too surprising. It's a robust cross-cultural finding that women are more religious than men, and it holds for the United States. But how does it break down across demographics?
Know God Exists
Male
Female
Difference
Proportional Difference
All
55.3
70.7
15.4
28%
Whites
52.4
67.8
15.4
29%
Blacks
73.7
86.6
12.9
18%
College+
44.7
58.9…
razib | August 6, 2009Calculated Risk points out that you can look up foreclosure status on Google Maps. Pretty weird. Had no idea that a house 2 blocks away was being foreclosed on....
razib | August 6, 2009Stories and Stats: The truth about Obama's victory wasn't in the papers:
Our story of the 2008 campaign confirms some parts of the journalistic narrative and refutes others. Yes, the economy was important; yes, young voters swung to Obama and the Congressional Democrats; yes, Obama did particularly well among minorities (Latinos and Asians as well as African Americans), even beyond the Democrats' usual strength among these groups; yes, the Democrats made new inroads among the most affluent voters. But no, working-class whites did not run away from Obama; and no, Obama did not redraw the…
razib | August 6, 2009Genetic Future says basically what I was going to say about report about genetic testing for abilities in China. Dan MacArthur notes:
Unlike a lot of commentators on this story, I've got nothing fundamentally against the idea of using genetics to make predictions about a child's future, and on guiding the activities a child engages in based on those predictions. Here's the thing, though: this only makes sense if the predictions are both accurate and relevant, and right now the predictions from genetics regarding complex traits are neither. Parents should save their money for more useful ways…
razib | August 5, 2009New rankings of Wikio Top Blogs for Science are up....
1
Wired Science - Wired Blog
11
Next Generation Science
2
Watts Up With That?
12
RealClimate
3
Climate Progress
13
FuturePundit
4
Environmental Capital
14
A Blog Around The Clock
5
Dispatches from the Culture Wars
15
Greg Laden's Blog
6
TierneyLab - New York Times blog
16
Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted
7
Gristmill
17
Gene Expression
8
Respectful Insolence
18
Cognitive Daily
9
Effect Measure
19
Uncertain Principles
10
The Frontal Cortex
20
BPS Research Digest
Ranking by Wikio.
razib | August 4, 2009Olivia Judson has an interesting column up, Dawn at the Museum. Worth checking out since it talks about DNA extraction from specimens long deceased.