razib | April 28, 2009Swine influenza, seasonality, and the northern hemisphere:
This history demonstrates the seasonality of pandemic influenza, and suggesta that spread of A/California/09/2009 in the northern hemisphere is not imminent. Based on this regularity, the epidemic in Mexico should be over no later than the end of May. While it is not 'impossible to see the current contagion spreading in the northern hemisphere over the following months', it would be unprecedented.
razib | April 28, 2009Carl Zimmer points out that Marianne Williamson is making some real strange suggestions in regards to the swine flue in The Huffington Post:
l) Pray it away. Just pray it away, asking God as you understand Him, the Divine Physician, Jesus or whatever other form of divine imagery works for you. Simply ask that it be removed from our midst.
2) Send love to Mexico. Between what's actually been happening there with the drug wars, plus all the "Mexico is dangerous" thoughts we've loaded onto it over the last several weeks, it needs a major dose of love - the most powerful medicine of all - to…
razib | April 28, 2009That's what Sandy at Digital Biology is suggesting from her analyses.... (also see Tara of Aetiology's response)
razib | April 28, 2009In the wake of my post on Predictably Irrational, The Last Temptation of Risk:
THE GREAT Credit Crisis has cast into doubt much of what we thought we knew about economics. We thought that monetary policy had tamed the business cycle. We thought that because changes in central-bank policies had delivered low and stable inflation, the volatility of the pre-1985 years had been consigned to the dustbin of history; they had given way to the quaintly dubbed "Great Moderation." We thought that financial institutions and markets had come to be self-regulating--that investors could be left largely if…
razib | April 28, 2009Dan MacArthur has a post, Genetics of complex traits in Europeans and East Asians: similarities and differences:
With those goals in mind, you can expect to see many more GWAS of non-European populations over the next couple of years, and some explicit comparisons of the differing genetic architecture of complex traits between populations. Exciting times for those of us interested in the genetic and evolutionary basis of between-population differences...
This reminds me of A variant of the gene encoding leukotriene A4 hydrolase confers ethnicity-specific risk of myocardial infarction:…
razib | April 28, 2009
I first encountered Dan Ariely on the radio show Marketplace, where he offers up little nuggets of research data from the new field of behavioral economics. Because of the individual scale of the research many of Ariely's findings have some personal finance implications. Consider the pain of paying. This is the finding that when people pay with credit as opposed to cash for dinner, they are willing to spend more. Why? Because credit cards decouple the psychic "pain" of payment from the specific act. The act of deferring reduces our pain at the damage done, and allows consumption with less…
razib | April 28, 2009OK, it's from Onion News Network. I really like the touch of the vapid hostess.
Autoworkers Compete to Keep Jobs, Livelihoods on New Reality Show
razib | April 27, 2009Matt Springer's comment that while differences in regards to abortion remain important among the young, but that there no deep fissure in regards to homosexuality, rings true. I decided to look at the same variables as I did below across the years, but limited to the age group 18-30. In other words, each year from the early 1970s to the 2000s you are looking at the opinions of individuals who are in the age range 18-30 during that year. An interesting trend popped up.
The trends for abortion and opposition to interracial marriage are familiar (though the latter exhibits differences by…
razib | April 27, 2009Serum Vitamin D Levels and Markers of Severity of Childhood Asthma in Costa Rica. See ScienceDaily. Anecdote: my own asthma has gotten much better since I started Vitamin D supplementation. Not only have I had many fewer bouts of bronchitis the past few years, but my basal respiratory functioning is much improved.
razib | April 27, 2009On the order of ~1 million years ago humans seem to have evolved dark skin. While light skin evolved several times, it looks like dark skin exhibits an "consensus sequence," so that all dark skinned peoples seem to have the same genetic architecture.
This chart (from Signatures of Positive Selection in Genes Associated with Human Skin Pigmentation as Revealed from Analyses of Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms) shows that when it comes to skin color related genes the populations of Bougainville Island (off the eastern coast of Papua New Guinea) and Sub-Saharan Africa are far closer than you…
razib | April 26, 2009Since the post on anti-miscegenation laws got a lot of attention, I was curious about analogs in the World Values Survey. There are two such questions of interest:
Important for succesful marriage: Same ethnic background(D042)
and
Important for succesful marriage: Religious beliefs(D031)
These data are skewed toward European nations. Below the fold are data are % who assert that same ethnic background is NOT very important, or that same religious beliefs are NOT very important. I will admit that the international pattern is surprising to me.
Same Religion Not Very Important…
razib | April 26, 2009The episode is titled "your brains & your genes." There's more emphasis on economics than you think.
razib | April 26, 2009One of the arguments of some younger social conservatives (e.g., Ross Douthat) is that while the abortion wars are in stasis, the Right is losing ground when it comes to opposition to gay marriage. Is this true? Below are charts from the GSS with each column representing a year, from the mid-1970s to the 2000s (not necessarily every year, but every few years).
Looks like Ross is right.
razib | April 26, 2009Thankfully. Familial Resemblance of Borderline Personality Disorder Features: Genetic or Cultural Transmission?:
Borderline personality disorder is a severe personality disorder for which genetic research has been limited to family studies and classical twin studies. These studies indicate that genetic effects explain 35 to 45% of the variance in borderline personality disorder and borderline personality features. However, effects of non-additive (dominance) genetic factors, non-random mating and cultural transmission have generally not been explored. In the present study an extended twin-…
razib | April 26, 2009Fortune has a massive profile of Bernie Madoff's life, career and scam. Some new material too.
razib | April 25, 2009One of the major problems in most societies, subject to "great sorts" of various kinds, is the fact that people observe correlations of attitudes & beliefs, and infer from those necessary relations. For example, if one of the first things that someone finds out about me is that I am an atheist, there is a general presupposition that I am a Left-Liberal. It is true that there is a robust relationship between atheism and liberalism in the United States, the problem I have, as an admittedly illiberal atheist, are those who believe that atheism entails liberalism. In a specific instance I…
razib | April 24, 2009See FuturePundit & Effect Measure. Also see H5N1. CDC recommends (especially for residents of California & Texas):
* Cover your nose and mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze. Throw the tissue in the trash after you use it.
* Wash your hands often with soap and water, especially after you cough or sneeze. Alcohol-based hands cleaners are also effective.
* Try to avoid close contact with sick people.
* If you get sick, CDC recommends that you stay home from work or school and limit contact with others to keep from infecting them.
* Avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth. Germs…
razib | April 24, 2009What If Vitamin D Deficiency Is a Cause of Autism?:
As evidence of widespread vitamin D deficiency grows, some scientists are wondering whether the sunshine vitamin--once only considered important in bone health--may actually play a role in one of neurology's most vexing conditions: autism.
The idea, although not yet tested or widely held, comes out of preliminary studies in Sweden and Minnesota. Last summer, Swedish researchers published a study in Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology that found the prevalence of autism and related disorders was three to four times higher among Somali…