razib | July 25, 2009Tyler Cowen linked to a Time article on the phenomenon of Southern Americans being relatively overweight vis-a-vis Americans from other regions of the country. Several reasons are offered, from the lower per capita income of Southern states, to the fact that Southern food tends to be fried and less healthful. But the article doesn't mention one very salient fact: black Americans are heavier than white Americans, and are disproportionately concentrated in Southern states. What is a regional disparity could be accounted for by underlying differences in the distribution of races.
State Health…
razib | July 25, 2009Love in 2-D:
Nisan didn't mean to fall in love with Nemutan. Their first encounter -- at a comic-book convention that Nisan's gaming friends dragged him to in Tokyo -- was serendipitous. Nisan was wandering aimlessly around the crowded exhibition hall when he suddenly found himself staring into Nemutan's bright blue eyes. In the beginning, they were just friends. Then, when Nisan got his driver's license a few months later, he invited Nemutan for a ride around town in his beat-up Toyota. They went to a beach, not far from the home he shares with his parents in a suburb of Tokyo. It was the…
razib | July 24, 2009Shanghai urges 'two-child policy':
Officials in Shanghai are urging parents to have a second child, the first time in decades the government has actively encouraged procreation.
A public information campaign has been launched to highlight exemptions to the country's one-child policy.
H/T Aziz
razib | July 24, 2009With the whole Henry Louis Gates affair there has been some talk about how racist Boston is. This is a joke. I am aware that the North has a checkered history, from busing in Boston in the 1970s to Bensonhurst in the 1980s. But calling Boston the Alabama of the North is an insult to our intelligence. Part of the issue here I think is that it is easy to show how racist the North is, and how far the South as come, by using as a counterpoint a cartoon model of race relations as a function of geography which never existed. It is a fact that in much of the North blacks were excluded from…
razib | July 23, 2009The Economist has a review up of a book about Richard Dawkins' influence, The Selfish Genius: How Richard Dawkins Rewrote Darwin's Legacy. But it would really be nice to know who wrote something like this:
Her argument that the selfish-gene model is being superseded by other forms of evolutionary explanation relies on an overinterpretation of those alternatives.
In disputed areas of science perspective matters, and who someone is is a critical part of the information in judging their argument. I'm assuming this book review was written by someone who knows some evolutionary biology, in fact,…
razib | July 23, 2009Earlier today I linked to a Jonah Leher post on food that hooks into the role that dopamine plays in our decision making. Dopamine looms in the neuroscience angle of Jonah's book How We Decide because the chemical's role in cognition is established. Dopamine related genes are often fingered in behavior genetic studies as the causal root of some observed psychological variation. So a new paper in Nature Neuroscience is in perfect position to stand astride the literal slush pile of this research, Prefrontal and striatal dopaminergic genes predict individual differences in exploration and…
razib | July 22, 2009In China, a Rocky Ascent for Basketball. I love this quote:
Chinese players like Wang Yong of the Dongguan Leopards support the increased participation of foreign players. "Chinese and foreign players are a harmonious blend," he said. "I've learned a lot from them this season and feel I am a better player."
razib | July 22, 2009Rocket Science
Irreplaceable data
The Neuroscience of McGriddles
Very off topic: Why I won't be at my high school reunion
The Best Eclipse of the Century is Tomorrow!
razib | July 22, 2009Why 2024 Will Be Like Nineteen Eighty-Four:
The power to delete your books, movies, and music remotely is a power no one should have. Here's one way around this: Don't buy a Kindle until Amazon updates its terms of service to prohibit remote deletions. Even better, the company ought to remove the technical capability to do so, making such a mass evisceration impossible in the event that a government compels it. (Sony and Interead--makers of rival e-book readers--didn't immediately respond to my inquiries about whether their devices allow the same functions. As far as I can tell, their terms…
razib | July 22, 2009
BMC Evolutionary Biology has a new paper which will be up soon (not on site), Reconstructing Indian-Australian phylogenetic link. ScienceDaily has a preview:
Dr Raghavendra Rao worked with a team of researchers from the Anthropological Survey of India to sequence 966 complete mitochondrial DNA genomes from Indian 'relic populations'. He said, "Mitochondrial DNA is inherited only from the mother and so allows us to accurately trace ancestry. We found certain mutations in the DNA sequences of the Indian tribes we sampled that are specific to Australian Aborigines. This shared ancestry suggests…
razib | July 21, 2009We know that dogs can read human faces, it turns out that babies can infer the meaning of different dog barks:
New research shows babies have a handle on the meaning of different dog barks - despite little or no previous exposure to dogs.
Infants just 6 months old can match the sounds of an angry snarl and a friendly yap to photos of dogs displaying threatening and welcoming body language.
razib | July 21, 2009I just listened to a radio segment on public sentiments toward the Apollo space program expenditures in hindsight. The polling had a small N, 3 people in Los Angeles on the street. But it got me wondering: who supports the space program? There is a variable in the GSS, NATSPAC, with a large sample size, which states:
We are faced with many problems in this country, none of which can be solved easily or inexpensively. I'm going to name some of these problems, and for each one I'd like you to tell me whether you think we're spending too much money on it, too little money, or about the right…
razib | July 21, 2009
I was mentioning to a friend that Whoopi Goldberg is apparently a semi-moon landing denialist. At least Goldberg isn't a Creationist like fellow View co-host Sherri Shepard. In fact Goldberg took issue with Shepard's stance when it came up. Rather disappointing when it comes to the moon landings then, though of course attitudes toward evolution for most people are cultural markers, not genuine assessments of the scientific consensus. It is interesting that both Shepard and Goldberg are black. The black community is more Creationist than the American popualtion as a whole, and have less…
razib | July 20, 2009Shanidar 3 Neandertal rib puncture wound and paleolithic weaponry:
Since its discovery and initial description in the 1960s, the penetrating lesion to the left ninth rib of the Shanidar 3 Neandertal has been a focus for discussion about interpersonal violence and weapon technology in the Middle Paleolithic. Recent experimental studies using lithic points on animal targets suggest that aspects of weapon system dynamics can be inferred from the form of the bony lesions they produce. Thus, to better understand the circumstances surrounding the traumatic injury suffered by Shanidar 3, we…
razib | July 20, 2009Derek Thompson at The Atlantic passes on this awesome chart:
OK, OK, obesity is more complex than that. But check out The Big Max:
Using New York's calorie-disclosure regulation to get the most for your money.
razib | July 20, 2009Felix Salmon has been at the center of a discussion on the merits and value-add of financial innovation. He notes:
Then there's the more purely financial innovation. There are good things here too -- fractional reserve banking, factoring, common-stock limited-liability companies, tradable fungible bonds, stock-market index funds, that sort of thing. But on this front I think the low-hanging fruit was plucked decades if not centuries ago, and that we've long since entered a world of diminishing returns when it comes to the positive developments. Meanwhile, the negative developments, from…
razib | July 20, 2009Genotyping of five single nucleotide polymorphisms in the OCA2 and HERC2 genes associated with blue-brown eye color in the Japanese population:
Human eye color is a polymorphic phenotype influenced by multiple genes. It has recently been reported that three single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within intron 1 of the OCA2 gene (rs7495174, rs4778241, rs4778138) and two SNPs in intron 86 (rs12913832) and the 3 UTR region (rs1129038) of the HERC2 gene - located in the upstream of the OCA2 locus - have a high statistical association with human eye color. The present study is the first to…