razib | August 23, 2008Islam on Campus: A survey of UK student opinions. N = 632 for Muslims. Remember that this is an elite sample of the youth insofar as they're polling university students.
You might wonder what exactly Sharia law is in regarding to apostasy. Perhaps these students have a different interpretation than the majority consensus that apostates should be killed. Well....
In other words, 1 out of 33 Muslim British university students believe that apostates should be killed. Little wonder that many Europeans feel a little Islamophobia....
Additionally,
* Muslims have far less respect for atheists…
razib | August 23, 2008Tropic Thunder is worth watching again at a matinee price just for a closer observation of Tom Cruise's scenes.
Pineapple Express is not worth a matinee price.
razib | August 22, 2008Hey, so everyone's saying that it's Biden. From my rather politically uncomitted and unobsessed perspective, one word: anti-climactic.
razib | August 22, 2008My previous post, Weird lands of the tails, had some concepts implicit which I didn't elucidate in detail. For example, I assumed that the speed is a quantitative trait, and the many genes which control its variation have pleiotropic effects. That is, gene 1 has effect on phenotypes 1 through n. Gene 2 has effect on phenotype 1 through n. Speed may be just one of those phenotypes. More formally what I'm thinking about is a genetic variance-covariance matrix, or G matrix. If you keep the G matrix in mind I think it's kind of ludicrous to expect that speed was actually what was being selected…
razib | August 22, 2008Yesterday's post on the speed of Jamaican sprinters, and Genetic Future's skepticism of a one-gene answer for their dominance. The discussion brought up some adaptive talk; I'm not against adaptation, and I think it's entirely plausible that populations differ enough in the distribution of phenotypes that there are different genetic potentialities...but, I have some issues with the intersection of the two in this particular case. Here's my logic....
Sprinters at the Olympic level are the best of the best. They're not just good, they're not just superior, they are the pushing the limits of…
razib | August 20, 2008I haven't been watching the Olympics, but my news feeds are broad enough that I get a general sense of who is winning, and who is not. Over at Genetic Future Dan MacArthur has a post up, The gene for Jamaican sprinting success? No, not really:
And Bolt is not the only Jamaican to impress in short distance events in Beijing: the country's women's sprint team took all three medals in their 100 metre dash.
Naturally, these performances have provoked widespread speculation about the basis of Jamaica's sprinting success, and the short-distance prowess of other populations of West African ancestry…
razib | August 18, 2008A personal experience of mine is that many apostates from religion have...issues. On the other hand, people who were raised, or always were, atheists tend to mostly be almost confused by religion. But I was curious as to possible differences between these two groups, and those believe in God, or were unbelievers and now believed in God. So I decided to check the GSS. Here's the bottom line for the GODCHNG variable:
64 DON'T BELIEVE NOW, NEVER HAVE
116 DON'T BELIEVE NOW, USED TO
174 BELIEVE NOW, DIDN'T USED TO
2,610 BELIEVE NOW, ALWAYS HAVE
In the tables below you read from left to right…
razib | August 17, 2008p-ter points me to a new paper in Trends in Ecology, Pleiotropy in the melanocortin system, coloration and behavioural syndromes:
In vertebrates, melanin-based coloration is often associated with variation in physiological and behavioural traits. We propose that this association stems from pleiotropic effects of the genes regulating the synthesis of brown to black eumelanin. The most important regulators are the melanocortin 1 receptor and its ligands, the melanocortin agonists and the agouti-signalling protein antagonist. On the basis of the physiological and behavioural functions of the…
razib | August 16, 2008In the United States we have the free speech built into the law, so it is somewhat a moot point. Of course, as evidenced by comments in many other Western countries the limits to speech are bounded by public consensus. So I decided to look at the GSS in terms of response to one question:
After I read each statement, please tell me if you strongly agree, aggee, neither agree nor disagree, disagree, or strongly disagree with the statement.
a. Under the First Amendment guarnateeing free speech, people should be allowed to express their own opinions even if they are harmful or offensive…
razib | August 16, 2008France Reaffirms Its Faith in Future of Nuclear Power:
Nuclear power provides 77 percent of France's electricity, according to the government, and relatively few public doubts are expressed in a country with little coal, oil or natural gas.
...
France generates half of its own total energy, up from 23 percent in 1973, despite increased consumption.
Electrical power generation accounts for only 10 percent of France's greenhouse gases, compared with an average of 40 percent in other industrialized countries, according to EDF.
There is No Free Lunch, and life is about trade offs. Those who…
razib | August 15, 2008MHC-correlated odour preferences in humans and the use of oral contraceptives:
Previous studies in animals and humans show that genes in the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) influence individual odours and that females often prefer odour of MHC-dissimilar males, perhaps to increase offspring heterozygosity or reduce inbreeding. Women using oral hormonal contraceptives have been reported to have the opposite preference, raising the possibility that oral contraceptives alter female preference towards MHC similarity, with possible fertility costs. Here we test directly whether…
razib | August 15, 2008Brain Size and the Diversification of Body Size in Birds:
Large brains are associated with increased cognitive skills, enabling animals to use new environments and resources more successfully. Such behavioral flexibility is theoretically expected to have macroevolutionary consequences. First, populations of big-brained individuals should more easily become established in new locations, increasing opportunities for allopatric speciation and decreasing chances that the species as a whole becomes extinct. Second, the ability to use new resources should place new selection pressures on…
razib | August 14, 2008According to assman (yes, that's his name), porn has not become mainstream. The post is totally work-safe FYI.
razib | August 14, 2008Pubmed + RSS + iGoogle = Easy Lit Updates:
...The idea is to use the combined power of Pubmed, RSS feeds and iGoogle to create a page of RSS feed boxes that will keep you continually updated on articles containing your keywords of interest, or from specific authors or journals. It is nice and simple, but I find it an incredibly powerful and fast method of literature scanning compared to email updates or browsing each journal individually.
razib | August 13, 2008
The figure above comes from the an article in The New York Times, The Genetic Map of Europe, which draws from a new paper, Correlation between Genetic and Geographic Structure in Europe. The authors sampled 2,500 Europeans across 300,000 points of genetic variation, then extracted out the components of that variation, and plotted the individual data points along the two largest independent dimensions. You note that various samples tend to cluster geographically with each other; i.e., Finns tend to cluster with other Finns, Italians with Italians. This makes sense since Europe hasn't been a…
razib | August 13, 2008The Daily Star in Bangladesh has published a profile I wrote of Reihan Salam.
razib | August 13, 200825-Hydroxyvitamin D Levels and the Risk of Mortality in the General Population:
In cross-sectional multivariate analyses, increasing age, female sex, nonwhite race/ethnicity, diabetes, current smoking, and higher body mass index were all independently associated with higher odds of 25(OH)D deficiency...while greater physical activity, vitamin D supplementation, and nonwinter season were inversely associated. During a median 8.7 years of follow-up, there were 1806 deaths, including 777 from CVD. In multivariate models (adjusted for baseline demographics, season, and traditional and novel CVD…
razib | August 12, 2008Reed Elsevier caught copying my content without my permission:
Scientists provide the content for Elsevier's journals. They donate their time to review, and often edit, the articles that appear in the journals. They make up the bulk of the audience for the journals. Yet Elsevier has, time after time, demonstrated a complete lack of respect for scientists and the scientific community. It's not a surprise that they would decide to grab my post, while ignoring my rights to my own material. It's simply another example of where their focus is: intellectual property matters if and only if it's…