razib | June 5, 2009In Natural selection of a human gene: FUT2 I referred to a paper, Signals of recent positive selection in a worldwide sample of human populations (see my earlier review). Now the same group has a follow up paper which takes a slightly different tack, The Role of Geography in Human Adaptation:
Since the beginning of the study of evolution, people have been fascinated by recent human evolution and adaptation. Despite great progress in our understanding of human history, we still know relatively little about the selection pressures and historical factors that have been important over the past…
razib | June 4, 2009Classic case of "no free lunch," a new paper in Science, Did Warfare Among Ancestral Hunter-Gatherers Affect the Evolution of Human Social Behaviors?, gives rise to popular press pieces with titles such as Blood and treasure and Altruism's Bloody Roots. If for most of human existence our species has been trapped by the reality of Malthusian conditions, boxed in by fixed resources, then it stands to reason that ingroup altruism and cohesion must be balanced by more vicious between group competition. This sort of process is not necessarily most obvious biologically. Rather, consider the…
razib | June 4, 2009In the 19th & 20th centuries with the emergence of nationalism and its various scholarly subsidiaries in archaeology, philology and ethnography quite a few pan-ethnic movements rooted in language were born. Pan-Slavism, the Greater German idea (Grossdeutsch) and Pan-Arabism come to mind. As evident in their names these ideas shadowed relationships of language, but they often veered into racialist territory. In The History and Geography of Human Genes L. L. Cavalli-Sforza reported a substantial overlap between phylogenies generated from classical autosomal markers, and those of linguistic…
razib | June 3, 2009Dan MacArthur of Genetics Future is at the center of a minor controversy because of his blogging The Biology of Genomes conference. Realistically it seems updating pre-internet protocols is just a band-aid solution. And the issues aren't particular to blogging conferences, they're general to the ease and fluidity with which information can flow today.
razib | June 3, 2009It's My Ritz in a Box
Comps readings: virtual communities
Articles I want to read: May Geology edition
Confabulatory hypermnesia, or severe false memory syndrome
Evolving an Altruistic Robot
razib | June 3, 2009A few months ago I reviewed a paper which examined the various complexities of interpreting signals of natural selection from recently developed genomic tests in response to the avalanche of human sequence data. In the paper, Signals of recent positive selection in a worldwide sample of human populations, the authors state:
We find that putatively selected haplotypes tend to be shared among geographically close populations. In principle, this could be due to issues of statistical power: broad geographical groupings share a demographic history and thus have similar power profiles. However,…
razib | June 2, 2009I've been meaning to recommend Epiphenom for a while. As its subheading, "at the intersection of science, atheism and humanism" indicates, it has a perspective. But the analysis of new papers suggests a rather light touch. Remember, this isn't a blog which just opines about religion; rather, he analyzes data or analyzes the analysis of data. What's not to like?
razib | June 2, 2009On a recent diavlog between Dayo Olopade and Reihan Salam the role of minorities as integrators and catalysts for cultural ferment & change was brought up. Minorities being minorities naturally by definition would, one assumes, be the ones assimilating and integrating into the majority matrix. 70% of the American population is non-Hispanic white, so assuming a random mixing situation this segment will be preponderant. But there's a problem I have with this narrative: it ignores population structure. Integration and assimilation are real dynamics of American society, but obviously so is…
razib | June 2, 2009Two interesting papers, one which relates KITLG and cancer, and another which connects ABCC11 and cancer. These are familiar genes. KITLG has been implicated in depigmentation, both of skin and hair. ABCC11 in earwax form and body odor. If you knock around a gene there is a high probability that you'll perturb multiple traits. Somethings the relationship between variation on a gene and pathology is more straightforward. Some of the genes responsible for normal human variation in pigmentation were originally of interest due to their implication in albinism, which is a disease with some non-…
razib | June 2, 2009Nominees are now up for 3 Quarks Daily Science Prize. I have four posts up:
Genetic variation in space & time - Iceland
How Ashkenazi Jewish are you?
Inbreeding & the downfall of the Spanish Hapsburgs
The ancient origins of African pygmies
There are many great posts on the list obviously, but I want to point also to my friend Dan MacArthur's submission, Is a personal genome sequence worth $350,000?.
After reading these posts you can vote up until June 8th.
razib | June 1, 2009G.M. to Seek Bankruptcy and a New Start:
It also places the government in uncharted territory as a business owner, as it takes a 60 percent ownership stake in the company during its restructuring.
The commanding heights are back. We're socializing the means of production. Meanwhile, California is going back to the 19th century:
Nearly all of the billions of dollars in cuts the administration has proposed would affect programs for poor Californians, although prisons and schools would take hits, as well.
There wasn't even a mention of bankruptcy, but many American states did go into default in…
razib | June 1, 2009Family axes wedding plans, Egyptian cuts off organ:
A 25-year-old Egyptian man cut off his own penis to spite his family after he was refused permission to marry a girl from a lower class family, police reported Sunday.
This kind of reminds me of self-castration for religious reasons. It is a reality that in many parts of the world children are property a very tangible way. Their marriages are arranged for the benefit of the lineage, as determined by the pater familias. Honor killings in fact show a face of this reality which comports with the most grisly functions of the classical Roman…
razib | May 29, 2009The AP, 13-year-old Kansas girl wins National Spelling Bee:
Cool and collected, Kavya Shivashankar wrote out every word on her palm and always ended with a smile. The 13-year-old Kansas girl saved the biggest smile for last, when she rattled off the letters to "Laodicean" to become the nation's spelling champion.
Here are the next 10 runner ups....
Tim A. Ruiter of Centreville, Va.
Aishwarya Eshwar Pastapur of Springfield, Ill.
Kyle Mou of Peoria, Ill.
Anamika Veeramani of North Royalton, Ohio
Kennyi Kwaku Aouad of Terre Haute, Ind.
Ramya Auroprem of San Jose, Calif.
Neetu Chandak of Seneca…
razib | May 29, 2009Felix Salmon pointed me to The Myth of the Rational Market: A History of Risk, Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street today. There really is a boom in these sorts of books recently! Are we overdoing the "irrationality" bit? Probably. Mike offers up some skepticism about the creeping of irrationality as an explanation for everything.
razib | May 28, 2009
Nick Wade in The New York Times reports on new research where they inserted human FOXP2 genes into the mouse genome. Here are some of the findings:
Despite the mammalian body's dependence on having its two FOXP2 genes work just right, Dr. Enard's team found that the human version of FOXP2 seemed to substitute perfectly for the mouse version in all the mouse's tissues except for the brain.
In a region of the brain called the basal ganglia, known in people to be involved in language, the humanized mice grew nerve cells that had a more complex structure and produced less dopamine, a chemical…
razib | May 28, 2009BusinessWeek, The Tough Road Ahead for GM and Chrysler:
The upshot is that some 30 significant players worldwide are fighting over a pie that has shrunk by more than 30% in the past 12 months. The industry can make about 90 million cars worldwide, but it's selling only about 55 million. Not exactly a forgiving environment for a pair of wounded car companies. That, partly, is why Chrysler's rescue has struck some as misguided. Speaking of the government's decision to save the weakest and smallest Detroit player, industry consultant Michael Robinet says: "We needed to take a patsy out, and we…
razib | May 28, 2009A few weeks ago I was pointed to Scitable, part of the Nature media empire. Here's how it's introduced:
A free science library and personal learning tool brought to you by Nature Publishing Group, the world's leading publisher of science.
Scitable currently concentrates on genetics, the study of evolution, variation, and the rich complexity of living organisms. As you cultivate your understanding of modern genetics on Scitable, you will explore not only what we know about genetics and the ways it impacts our society, but also the data and evidence that supports our knowledge.
Due to the…
razib | May 27, 2009
I was at the supermarket today and saw some some before and after pictures of Kate Gosselin on the cover of Us Weekly. Pretty crazy, though not as extreme as some of the "pre" and "post" makeup photos of celebrities you always see in Star. I don't know much about the show but I get really interested in the couple's story whenever I'm at at the supermarket (Us Weekly should be renamed The Gosselin Weekly). Now whenever I randomly run across a story about the Gosselins on the internet Fuji apples come to mind.
On a somewhat genetically related note some people have commented that it's…