linkfest – 03/24/13

extra-long [insert dongle joke here] linkfest this week since there wasn’t one last sunday (sorry, dog ate it…). note that there (probably) won’t be one next sunday either, ’cause i’ll be too busy hunting for easter eggs…. (^_^)

Common DNA Markers Can Account for More Than Half of the Genetic Influence on Cognitive Abilities – “In the same sample of 3,154 pairs of 12-year-old twins, we directly compared twin-study heritability estimates for cognitive abilities (language, verbal, nonverbal, and general) with GCTA estimates captured by 1.7 million DNA markers. We found that DNA markers tagged by the array accounted for .66 of the estimated heritability, reaffirming that cognitive abilities are heritable. Larger sample sizes alone will be sufficient to identify many of the genetic variants that influence cognitive abilities.” – via race/history/evolution notes.

Genotypes over-represented among college students are linked to better cognitive abilities and socioemotional adjustment – “The present study investigated … genotype frequencies of 284 SNPs covering major neurotransmitter genes in a sample of 478 Chinese college students, comparing these frequencies with those of a community sample (the 1000 Genomes dataset)…. Results showed that 24 loci showed Hardy–Weinberg disequilibrium among college students, but only two of these were in disequilibrium in the 1000 Genomes sample. These loci were found to be associated with mathematical abilities, executive functions, motivation, and adjustment-related behaviors such as alcohol use and emotion recognition.” – via … somebody … can’t remember who. sorry!

Genes and Smarts – from the derb.

Why Bacteria Commit Suicide – “[I]nfected individuals self-destructed before they could spread the virus to others.”

Evolution via Roadkill – “Cliff swallows that build nests that dangle precariously from highway overpasses have a lower chance of becoming roadkill than in years past thanks to a shorter wingspan that lets them dodge oncoming traffic. That’s the conclusion of a new study based on 3 decades of data collected on one population of the birds. The results suggest that shorter wingspan has been selected for over this time period because of the evolutionary pressure put on the population by cars.”

‘Out of Africa’ Story Being Rewritten Again – “Our early human ancestors may have left Africa more recently than thought, between 62,000 and 95,000 years ago, suggests a new analysis of genetic material from fossil skeletons.” – see also Mitochondrial DNA tree calibrated with ancient DNA @race/history/evolution notes and Revised timescale of human mtDNA evolution from dienekes.

How Social Darwinism Made Modern China – “A thousand years of meritocracy shaped the Middle Kingdom.” – good stuff from ron unz. see also the derb and peter frost and anatoly.

Does the Clark-Unz model apply to Japan and Korea? – from peter frost.

Did evolution give us inflammatory disease? – “[S]ome variants in our genes that could put a person at risk for inflammatory diseases such as multiple sclerosis, Crohn’s disease or rheumatoid arthritis, have been the target of natural selection over the course of human history.” – original research article.

Genes may be reason some kids are picky about food – “The study looked at 66 pairs of twins between ages 4 and 7 years old, and found that genes explain 72 percent of the variation among children in the tendency to avoid new foods, while the rest was influenced by environment.”

A Tale of Three Maps – from jayman.

Dan Freedman’s babies and National Character – from greg cochran @west hunter (buy the e-book!).

HVGIQ: The Bahamas – from jason malloy.

The Personality of Tribalism – from staffan.

Remembering Stephen Jay Gould: Bully and Boob – from steve sailer.

Depicting reality or escaping from it? – the awesome epigone asks a good question/makes a good point about something in steven pinker’s Better Angels.

Assortative mating and shared life history strategy – from mr. mangan.

Uh-Oh… – malcolm pollack on why there’s not so much “diversity” in silicon valley: “It’s because Silicon Valley … *is* a meritocracy — you just can’t fake being good at writing code, solving complex engineering problems, or designing high-tech gadgetry….”

Was inbreeding common among early humans? 100,000-year-old deformed skull adds evidence to theory of ‘very small’ communities – “The discovery adds to growing evidence that early humans inbred often” – prolly because populations were small. see also Abnormalities in Pleistocene Homo from dienekes.

Moral Matter – the neuroscience of morality.

Crime and punishment: From the neuroscience of freewill to legal reform

Men programmed to avoid sex with best friends’ wives: study – “Researchers suggest guys may have a biological predisposition against hitting on their best friends’ partners…. A University of Missouri study has found that adult males’ testosterone levels dropped when they were interacting with the marital partner of a close friend.”

Downton Abbey: Earl of Grantham maximizes inclusive fitness – @occam’s razor.

Experts Say Food May Contribute To Anger, Violent Behavior – “Pace and other nutritionists say if you eat plenty of fish, eggs, beans, fruits and green leafy vegetables, you should have the nutrients you need. However, people who tend to eat a diet loaded with processed or packaged foods could find themselves more easily irritated.”

Women abused as children likelier to bear autistic child

One of Us – animals are people, too.

Text mining uncovers British reserve and US emotion – “An analysis of the digitized texts of English-language books over the past century concludes that, since the 1980s, words that carry emotional content have become significantly more common in US books than in British ones.”

Evolution and Existentialism, an Intellectual Odd Couple – “On the basis of evolutionary existentialism, I would therefore like to suggest the heretical and admittedly paradoxical notion that, in fact, we need to teach more disobedience. Not only disobedience to political and social authority but especially disobedience to some of our troublesome genetic inclinations.” – hmmmm….

Forbidden City – “The left-wing stranglehold on academia.”

bonus: Life found deep under the sea – “Oceanic-crust microbes survive on hydrogen and carbon dioxide.” in other microbial news: Mariana Trench: Deepest ocean ‘teems with microbes’ – “The deepest place in the ocean is teeming with microscopic life, a study suggests.”

bonus bonus: Palestinian Mother Speaks Out About Daughter’s Honor Killing – “[H]onor killing defendants [are] usually given light sentences. Three years in prison was the stiffest in these cases. Life sentences or execution were never a consideration…. Offenders receive reduced sentences pursuant to Article 18 of Penal Code no. 74 of 1936, which is entitled ‘Necessity.’ The article provides for ‘leniency in punishment for crimes that offenders have committed in order to avert consequences, which could cause irreparable damage to their honor, money, or the honor of those such offenders are obliged to protect.’”

bonus bonus bonus: The Hate List – “[T]he [$]PLC’s site explains that it counts counted ’1,007 active hate groups in the United States in 2012,’ including ‘organizations and their chapters.’ But ‘The Year in Hate and Extremism’ did not make the ‘chapter’ distinction explicit. It is rarely drawn out in the organization’s frequent media appearances, nor was it mentioned in a letter from the SPLC to the Justice Department warning of the growing threat.” – see also What’s hate got to do with it? @bad data, bad!

bonus bonus bonus bonus: Amazing photographs reveal the lost world of the Omo tribes of Ethiopia

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: A Tiny Village Where Women Chose to Be Single Mothers – “30 years ago in this bucolic village in northern Vietnam, the fierce determination of one group of women to become mothers upended centuries-old gender rules….”

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Cannibals of the Past Had Plenty of Reasons to Eat People

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Phallus-shaped fossils identified as new species [insert dongle joke here]

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Global Internet Porn Habits Infographic – ‘sup finnish people?! and romanians and hungarians (“mom and son”?!)?!

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: i love the ukrainian parliament. no, i really do! (~_^)

_{(note: comments do not require an email. double dongle.)}

linkfest – 01/20/13

Feeling Threatened Makes Us Nicer – “Perceived menace makes people kinder to their kin but nastier to outsiders. Whether they use this strategy depends on family size.” – hmmm. maybe. part of the study was done on WEIRD students, so … hmmm.

Implicit Race Bias Increases the Differences in the Neural Represen-tations of Black and White Faces – “[T]he ways in which Black and White faces are represented in this brain region [fusiform face area] differ for people with a stronger, implicit race bias compared to people with less or no bias. This implies that people with stronger, negative implicit race attitudes may actually perceive Black and White faces to look more different.” – or maybe people who perceive black/white faces to look more different have stronger, negative race attitudes? – original research article here.

Gene flow between Indian populations and Australasia ~4,000 years ago – from dienekes. see also A Three-Hour Tour from greg cochran. (i loved that show! (^_^) )

Genealogy Databases Enable Naming of Anonymous DNA Donors – oops. see also: Matching names to genes: the end of genetic privacy?

HBD: An Abbreviated History of Quisqueya and the Rise of Today’s Dominicans (and Haitians) – from nelson!

The Human Varieties Global IQ Dataset – “I’m going to try and use Human Varieties to tabulate a more thorough, immediate, and accurate dataset of international intelligence studies. A dataset that is participatory, updated frequently, and available for download.” – jason malloy’s excellent goal to (single-handedly!) make global iq data open source. yay! (^_^)

Study Discovers DNA That Tells Mice How to Construct Their Homes – “The research could eventually lead to a better understanding of what kind of internal reward system motivates mice to dig, or tells them to stop. And although humans do not dig burrows, that, said the leader of the three-person research team, Hopi E. Hoekstra of Harvard, could ‘tell us something about behavioral variation in humans.’”

‘Adventurous’ Woman Needed as Surrogate for Neanderthal Baby – holy cr*p! – via charles!

The Danger of Making Science Political – “Many more scientists identify as Democrats than as Republicans…. [B]y some polls only 6 percent of scientists are Republican, and in the recent U.S. Presidential election, 68 science Nobel Prize winners endorsed the Democratic nominee Barack Obama over the Republican candidate Mitt Romney.”

People with low risk for cocaine dependence have differently shaped brain to those with addiction – “New research from the University of Cambridge has found that recreational drug users who have not developed a dependence have an abnormally large frontal lobe, the section of the brain implicated in self-control.”

Many researchers taking a different view of pedophilia – “Pedophilia once was thought to stem from psychological influences early in life. Now, many experts view it as a deep-rooted predisposition that does not change.”

Scientific evidence that you probably don’t have free will

Like Lance Armstrong, we are all liars, experts say – “During a 10-minute conversation between two strangers, 60% lied at least once, Feldman reported in a 2002 study in the journal Basic and Applied Social Psychology…. Though men were more likely to lie to make themselves feel good, women more often lied to make their conversation partner feel good. Either way, Feldman said, the urge to make oneself likable and competent was a powerful motivator.”

Got milk? Then you might get a Nobel Prize, study suggests – “[C]ountries in which people drink the most milk, per capita, also win the most Nobel Prizes, per capita….” – (~_^)

The Truth behind the HBD cult prt 1 – << only good for a laugh. no, really! – via jayman!

bonus: Portraits of ‘sworn virgins’ of Albania fascinate – “Northern Albanian women … live and dress as men in order to provide for their families.”

bonus bonus: Great Oxidation Event: More oxygen through multicellularity

bonus bonus bonus: There Are Whales Alive Today Who Were Born Before Moby Dick Was Written – cool!

bonus bonus bonus bonus: Chinese migration to Angola tops 250,000

_{(note: comments do not require an email. albanian sworn virgin.)}

linkfest – 08/05/12

Genetic Data and Fossil Evidence Tell Differing Tales of Human Origins – neanderthals in africa?

It’s in our genes: Why women outlive men

If Allah Wills It – why so little science (or reading for that matter) in the muslim world? @those who can see.

Out-of-Wedlock Births, Liberals and Conservatives – “[U]nintelligent men are less encumbered by bachelorhood when it comes to producing offspring. On the flip side, intelligent men generally are childless if they are not married.” – from jayman.

Too darn hot? – “Does higher IQ correlate with colder temperatures? Not among people belonging to the same cultural system, such as the Chinese.” – from peter frost.

The problem with high IQ – mental illness. from secular blood.

Family Type and Fertility – @hail to you.

Human cycles: History as science – cliodynamics. 2020 – the next bad year.

Research links sexual imagery and consumer impatience – “[S]exual cues cause us to be impatient and can affect monetary decisions.” — “us” meaning men. (~_^)

Conservatives and perversity – from the inductivist.

Did Your Brain Make You Do It?

bonus: ‘Bullingdon Club’ dolphins form elite societies and cliques, scientists find – “Dolphins form cliques based on their skills, scientists have found, suggesting they could be the only non-human mammals to indulge in elite societies.”

bonus bonus: C’est Chick – i had to link to it. you see that, don’t you?

bonus bonus bonus: Double Jeopardy – “In China, the rich and powerful can hire body doubles to do their prison time for them.” – this one’s for luke. (^_^)

bonus bonus bonus bonus: High-Profile Geneticists Post Findings on Popular Pre-Publication Site – arXiv – “‘It’s wonderful if biologists are belatedly joining the late twentieth century,’ he [Paul Ginsparg] quips. ‘Welcome to the party; better late than never.’”

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Beak Heat – Evolutionary Theory of Bird Bills May Need Revision – “[B]eak size may also be an adaptation to regulate temperature and conserve water.”

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: forget the paleo-diet, try the chimp diet! (not as many bananas as you would think.)

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Australian Billionaire Wants To Build Jurassic Park-Style Resort – i’m going!

_{(note: comments do not require an email. cute overload alert! don’t say you weren’t warned.)}

linkfest – 03/11/12

Why the British are free-thinking and the Chinese love conformity: It’s all in the genes claim scientists – “The study, by the department of psychology at Northwestern University in Illinois, suggests that the individualism seen in western nations, and the higher levels of collectivism and family loyalty found in Asian cultures, are caused by differences in the prevalence of particular genes. ‘We demonstrate for the first time a robust association between cultural values of individualism–collectivism and the serotonin transporter gene,’ said Joan Chiao, from the department of psychology at Northwestern University.” — i know. it’s the daily mail. but it looks like the research will be coming out in the proceedings of the royal society: “Culture-gene coevolution of individualism-collectivism and the serotonin transporter gene (5-HTTLPR)” [in press]. see comments.

Insects have personality too, research on honey bees indicates – “A new study in Science suggests that thrill-seeking is not limited to humans and other vertebrates. Some honey bees, too, are more likely than others to seek adventure. The brains of these novelty-seeking bees exhibit distinct patterns of gene activity in molecular pathways known to be associated with thrill-seeking in humans….”

Heart disease drug ‘combats racism’ – “Volunteers given the beta-blocker, used to treat chest pains and lower heart rates, scored lower on a standard psychological test of ‘implicit’ racist attitudes.” – explain to me again about free will?

Strong Family Ties Reduce Trust Of Non-Family — from parapundit. here’s the original research article: Do Strong Family Ties Inhibit Trust? [pdf]

Sexual selection and small female feet – from the inductivist.

Puzzle of European hair and eye color – “Hair and eye color diversity is unusual in two ways. It’s confined to Europeans. And it seems to be linked to prenatal feminization.” – why? from peter frost.

Get Smart – from greg cochran @west hunter.

Rebuttal to Richard Lynn’s Reply — new iq study from italy suggests southern iqs are not lower than northern ones. (i’m a bit worried about the “group sessions” though — hope there was no answer sharing going on!). — @italianthro blog.

New study shows that in US ‘hot spots,’ HIV infection among African-American women is 5-times higher than national estimate – “Women constitute roughly one-quarter of new HIV infections in the U.S. with 66% of these infections occurring among black women, despite the fact that black women constitute only 14% of the U.S. female population.”

bonus: Brown bear exfoliates using rock as a tool – tool using bears. we’re in trouble!

bonus bonus: Oldest organism with skeleton discovered in Australia

_{(note: comments do not require an email. on academia. (~_^) )}

linkfest – 11/27/11

Gene Variants May Factor into Impulsivity, Substance Abuse – nrxn3.

Vitamin D and Northern Natives – “[B]ecause northern natives have long inhabited high latitudes, natural selection should have progressively reduced their vitamin-D requirements. There is in fact evidence that the Inuit have compensated for decreased production of vitamin D through increased conversion to its most active form and through receptors that bind more effectively.” – from peter frost. cool!

Nudge thyself – “Economists have more to learn from the natural sciences if they are to claim a realistic model of human behaviour.”

Climate change actually boosts human evolution as it forces us to move to new areas and work together

Neuroscience Challenges Old Ideas about Free Will – “‘New questions also seem silly many times until a new perspective is accepted. I think we will get over the idea of free will and and accept we are a special kind of machine, one with a moral agency which comes from living in social groups. This perspective will make us ask new kinds of questions.’”

Brain cell genomes show their individuality

IQ Affirmation and Denial in the Times – from dennis the menace mangan.

Deliberate Practice – Necessary But Not Sufficient – “We found strong evidence that abundant DP is necessary (but not sufficient) and estimated that the minimum requirement to achieve master level is 3,000 hours of DP. We also review evidence showing that other factors play a role in chess skill: general cognitive abilities, sensitive period, handedness, and season of birth.”

When Humans First Plied the Deep Blue Sea – 40,000 year old tuna catch in east timor.

Genome-wide Association of Copy-Number Variation Reveals an Association between Short Stature and the Presence of Low-Frequency Genomic Deletions – “Our results suggest that in individuals undergoing copy-number analysis for clinical indications, short stature increases the odds that a low-frequency deletion will be found. Additionally, copy-number variation might contribute to genetic variation in stature in the general population.”

The First North American Migration—Not a Strait Route? – clovis = soul-train solutrean?

The ABCC9 of Sleep: A Genetic Factor Regulates How Long We Sleep – “ABCC9, a known genetic factor in heart disease and diabetes, also influences the duration of sleep in humans.”

bonus: Alabama Law Pays Off: Unemployment Down Sharply After Crackdown on Illegal Aliens via amren.

bonus bonus: Life began with a planetary mega-organism – “[I]n order to cope, the early cells must have shared their genes and proteins with each other. New and useful molecules would have been passed from cell to cell without competition, and eventually gone global. Any cells that dropped out of the swap shop were doomed. ‘It was more important to keep the living system in place than to compete with other systems,’ says Caetano-Anollés. He says the free exchange and lack of competition mean this living primordial ocean essentially functioned as a single mega-organism.”

bonus bonus bonus: Diversity of Life Snowballed When Ancient Earth Was Frozen Solid

_{(note: comments do not require an email. great moments in evolution.)}

ghost in the machine

there was a little discussion (starting here) in the recent linkfest comments about whether or not the brain runs on autopilot and what that means for concepts like responsibility and free will and all that.

benjamin libet was the first guy to experimentally document that the subconscious brain seems to decide upon an action before the conscious mind “decides” to do it. his experiment has been successfully repeated many times, most recently using a different methodology (but winding up with the same, or a similar, result — i.e. subconscious decides what to do first). the wikipedia page on the neuroscience of free will has some excellent descriptions of the experiments. from that page:

“One significant finding of modern studies is that a person’s brain seems to commit to certain decisions before the person becomes aware of having made them. Researchers have found delays of about half a second. With contemporary brain scanning technology, scientists in 2008 were able to predict with 60% accuracy whether subjects would press a button with their left or right hand up to 10 seconds before the subject became aware of having made that choice…. It may be possible, then, that our intuitions about the role of our conscious ‘intentions’ have led us astray; it may be the case that we have confused correlation with causation by believing that conscious awareness necessarily causes the body’s movement. This possibility is bolstered by findings in neurostimulation, brain damage, but also research into introspection illusions.”

exactly.

given what we also know about all the cognitive biases that we humans have, along with the heritability of certain traits like religiosity and political persuasion — aspects of ourselves and our lives that we all just feel that we’ve really thought about and independently made up our minds about, even though … heh … the truth is that we’ve prolly just inherited a certain package of genes from our parents — all of these things make me distrust what our conscious minds tell us. the conscious mind, pardon the antropomorphism, wants us to feel that we’re making all the decisions, but that’s probably just a useful adaptation — an illusion of our neocortex, a more recently developed brain structure which has been jerry-rigged on top of more ancient brain structures.

as an hbd-ist, i would guess that probably some individuals have more “free will” than others — some people can probably use their conscious minds as more of a veto on automatic behaviors, for instance, although that that happens at all is by no means certain either. i would also guess that some populations have more “free will” than others, too.

see also: youarenotsosmart.com and Neuroscience, free will and determinism: ‘I’m just a machine’ and The human brain: turning our minds to the law and The uncomfortable truth about mind control: Is free will simply a myth?

_{(note: comments do not require an email. responsibility?)}

linkfest – 09/18/11

Neuroscience vs philosophy: Taking aim at free will

Are genes our destiny? – “Salk scientists discover ‘hidden’ code in DNA evolves more rapidly than genetic code” – epigenetics.

Why fathers are faithful: Becoming a dad causes a testosterone drop that makes men less likely to stray – “Scientists have discovered fatherhood can halve testosterone levels – and stop men from straying.” – the study was of filipino guys.

Serotonin levels affect the brain’s response to anger – “Research provides new insight into why some individuals may be more aggressive than others”

Earliest Known Use of Marine Resources by Neanderthals – neanderthals eating shellfish ca. 150,000 years ago.

Neanderthals vs Humans? German Scientists Bring Fossils into the Computer Age

Lesbian cops? – @the inductivist.

Moms who eat high-fat diet before, during pregnancy ‘program’ babies to be fat, at risk – “This is the first study to demonstrate that a long-term maternal high-fat diet results in the deposition, in utero, of excess body fat in the newborn.”

How dark chocolate ‘boosts fitness in the same way as jogging’ – YAAAAAAAAAAY! (oh. in mice. squeak?)

bonus: Scientists on trial: At fault? – “In 2009, an earthquake devastated the Italian city of L’Aquila and killed more than 300 people. Now, scientists are on trial for manslaughter.”

bonus bonus: The most surreal sunset in the universe – they’ve discovered tatooine kepler 16b!

bonus bonus bonus: It’s All in the Head: Songbirds With Bigger Brains Have Benefited from the End of Communism – of course they have! via diversity is chaos.

_{(note: comments do not require an email. high iq bird!)}

linkfest – 09/04/11

Gender and creativity – @the inductivist.

Gender Gap Vanishes in Female-Empowered Cultures

Human Brains Are Primally Wired to Notice Animals – “The effect is large and consistent, and ‘may reflect the importance that animals held throughout our evolutionary past,’ wrote researchers led by California Institute of Technology neurobiologist Florian Mormann in an Aug. 29 Nature Neuroscience paper.”

It’s official… chocolate IS good for you: Treats ‘cut’ diabetes, heart disease and stroke risk – YAAAAAAAAAAY!!!

Fathers’ Presence Linked to Enhanced Intellect, Well-Being Among Children – via diversity is chaos.

Autoimmunity Is From Venus – “Why do women have more problems like Sjögren’s syndrome and lupus?”

Monkey-nomics: Scientists claim capuchins ‘understand using money’ – and can even sniff out a bargain

Brain scans reduce murder sentence in Italian court

bonus: California Museum opening exhibit on 100th anniversary of day Ishi was found