linkfest – 02/12/13

(sorry. the dog ate my sunday linkfest….)

And Yet Another Tale of Two Maps – from jayman.

Why are girls and boys maturing earlier? – from peter frost.

When Did Humans Come to the Americas?

Large study shows substance abuse rates higher in teenagers with ADHD – “When the adolescents were an average of 15 years old, 35 percent of those with ADHD histories reported using one or more substances, as compared to only 20 percent of teens without ADHD histories.”

Tribal societies and war – from mangan.

Crime and Twins – from dienekes.

HVGIQ: Cayman Islands – from jason malloy.

Evil Genes and the Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul – @bad data, bad!

Digging Deep in the DNA – “‘I think I’m one of the few people,’ she said, ‘who have taken the rectal temperature of a grizzly bear.’”

Men are from Mars Earth, women are from Venus Earth – “That men and women approach their social world similarly does not imply that there are no differences in average scores between the sexes. Average differences do exist, write the authors.” – yes, average differences do exist.

Exercise linked with reduced prostate cancer risk in Caucasians but not African-Americans – “Studies have also revealed that African-American men have an increased risk of developing prostate cancer and of dying from the disease compared with Caucasians.”

Gene today, gone tomorrow: Genes for autism and schizophrenia only active in developing brains – “Genes linked to autism and schizophrenia are only switched on during the early stages of brain development, according to a study in mice led by researchers at the University of Oxford.” – curioser and curioser….

The Lab Accident That Led to the Discovery of Supertasters – “A cloud of chemicals. One researcher detects a smell. The other does not. What happens next? Science.”

So THAT’s why women’s feet and hands are always cold! Why they are slaves to their hormones

On Genteels – @bloody shovel.

Oral Mystery: Are Agriculture and Rats Responsible for Tooth Decay? – “Tooth decay is a relatively modern problem. The bacteria feasting on your teeth might have originated in the mouth of a rodent, and found their way to our teeth, thanks to agriculture.”

bonus: ‘Google for spies’ draws ire from rights groups

bonus bonus: ‘It’s a boy!’ Monkey midwife delivers baby

bonus bonus bonus: What Are Dogs Saying When They Bark? [Excerpt] – “Experiments have now shown that dogs use different barks and growls to communicate different things.” – see also: Your dog really does understand you… They’re more likely to steal food if they think you can’t see, research reveals.

bonus bonus bonus bonus: Pigeons Get a New Look – “Pigeons, a Darwin favorite, carry new clues to evolution.”

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Do plants ‘veto’ bad genes? – “Latest evidence fails to quell doubt about whether plants can access “ancestral” genes outside their parents’”

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Face-to-face with the earliest ancestor of all placental mammals

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Penicillin Mold Can Reproduce Sexually, Which Could Lead to Better Antibiotics – “Penicillin-producing fungus, previously thought to be asexual, has a sexual side. The finding is the latest in a kind of sexual revolution in fungal genetics.”

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Fast Food Robot Builds the Perfect Burger – won’t need mexicans for flipping burgers anymore.

_{(note: comments do not require an email. two of earth’s moons in one picture.)}

linkfest – 11/04/12

Racial differences in narcissistic tendencies – “Study 1 (N = 367) found that Black individuals reported higher levels of narcissism than White individuals even when controlling for gender, self-esteem level, and socially desirable response tendencies.” – @steve sailer’s.

Genomics: The single life – “‘In recent years we’ve learned that there is considerable variation in the recombination rate between different populations, between the sexes and even between individuals.’”

Moment Magazine’s great (Jewish) DNA experiment – “Moment Magazine … wrote about their Great DNA Experiment, in which they look at the 23andMe results of 15 notable Americans of Jewish ancestry and make some interesting genetic connections…. The piece shows it’s not ‘six degrees’ that separates these individuals from each other, but, in all but one case, no degrees of separation.” – @race/history/evolution notes.

Are the cads outbreeding the dads? – “Is natural selection now favoring the ‘cads’ over the ‘dads’?” – god, i hope not! – from peter frost.

Is there an upside to anxiety? – “[S]ocial anxiety – the fear of interactions with strangers – may have evolved to enable a natural social ranking system in which some people feel most comfortable towards the bottom of the totem pole. This natural shuffling would have made for a less aggressive, more survivable living situation and reduced fighting for leadership.”

Young Children Are More Generous When Others Are Aware of Their Actions – “Adults frequently employ reputation-enhancing strategies when engaging in prosocial acts, behaving more generously when their actions are likely to be witnessed by others and even more so when the extent of their generosity is made public…. Children were consistently generous only when the recipient was fully aware of the donation options; in all cases in which the recipient was not aware of the donation options, children were strikingly ungenerous…. These findings suggest that long before they develop a rich understanding of the social significance of reputation or are conscious of complex strategic reasoning, children behave more generously when the details of their prosocial actions are available to others.”

Evidence of Viking Outpost Found in Canada – “Sharpeners may be smoking guns in quest for New World’s second Viking site.”

Archaeologists unearth 1,300-year-old Anglo Saxon feasting hall inches below village green in first major find of its kind in 30 years

bonus: NYU loses years of scientific research and thousands of mice to Hurricane Sandy – well that s*cks.

bonus bonus: darwin award winners – Celebratory gunfire at Saudi wedding cuts cable, 23 electrocuted – =/

bonus bonus bonus: Where Dragons Come From – “The villains of countless stories, the mythical beasts have roots in Rome’s Pliny — and nature.”

_{(note: comments do not require an email. dancing polar bear!)}

the hgdp samples again

i’ve written before (here, here and here) about the hgdp samples and the fact that there is very little to no provenance info connected to them. the problem with this, afaics, is that it’s difficult to know whether or not the hgdp samples are truly representative, in all ways, of the populations from which they came.

i was particularly concerned initially about the french (and the japanese) hgdp samples — and then i got over that — but now i’m concerned about them again. here’s why:

the hgdp samples from france are described thusly:

“France – French/various regions (relatives) – This sample from various regions of France is part of the Human Genome Diversity Cell Line Panel collected by the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) and the Foundation Jean Dausset (CEPH). This sample consists of unrelated individuals and was collected with proper informed consent.”

great!

hang on — which regions?

auvergne? where, in some villages in the eighteenth century, groups of families regularly inbred with one another? lorraine? which, in some areas, had consanguinity rates of up to 50% between 1810 and 1910? burgundy or brittany, both of which had reportedly higher cousin marriage rates in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries than other regions of france? or were the hgdp samples collected in places like central france which, historically, had much lower rates (in the range of 1-3.5%) of close marriages?

the thing is: we don’t know.

what we do know is that the hgdp sampling seems kinda biased towards unique little groups like basques and orcadians, sardinians and the adygei. which is understandable ’cause these are all interesting, unusual groups and there’s legitimate concern that their unique genomes might sorta disappear in our modern, outbreeding world, and it would be a shame to miss out on the chance to at least keep a record of all that human biodiversity.

but then i have to wonder how representative of the majority of french people are the french hgdp samples? do they truly represent “the french,” or did the samples come from some of those crazy little villages way up in the mountains? i dunno. and neither does anybody else (afaik).

and the reason i wonder is: if teh scientists are gonna do really awesome genetic studies to check for the relatedness between the members of different human populations — like runs of homozygosity (roh) studies or identity by descent (ibd) studies — i think they need to know if the samples they’re looking at are representative or not. do the results for “the french” in studies like this or this or this truly represent the average french, or do they represent some special sub-groups of mountain dwelling french?

in the most recent roh study i posted about, the “french” don’t appear to be much more in- or out-bred than orcadians or the basques, something which strikes me as odd. perhaps — perhaps — that’s because the french hgdp samples are not truly representative of the broader french population. perhaps. i don’t know. nor do the researchers.

rinse and repeat above discussion for the other samples, too.

previously: hgdp samples and relatedness and more on the hgdp samples and why i care about the hgdp samples and meanwhile, in france… and runs of homozygosity and inbreeding (and outbreeding) and ibd and historic mating patterns in europe and runs of homozygosity again

_{(note: comments do not require an email. not out on a limb, am i?)}

runs of homozygosity again

**update below**

here’s an exciting new paper!: Genomic Patterns of Homozygosity in Worldwide Human Populations. i don’t have access to the paper itself, but there are lots o’ neat figures and tables in the supplemental data [opens pdf] that relate to runs of homozygosity (roh). roh are identical stretches of dna within an individual’s genome (i.e. identical on each of the dna strands, paternally and maternally inherited). (roh shouldn’t be confused with blocks of identity by descent [ibd], which i did once! ibd blocks are identical stretches of dna as compared between different individuals, iiuc.)

recall that possessing lots of long roh indicates that one’s parents are/were quite similiar genetically speaking. that can be as a result of a couple of different genetic scenarios like (as greying wanderer has brought up a lot recently) simply being from a small sized population (i.e. having a small effective population size) and/or from regular inbreeding (consanguineous/endogamous mating). so, a population having a lot of long roh is either small and/or inbreeds a lot. populations having LOTS of short roh have probably been through some sort of bottleneck (see previous post).

in the paper i looked at in that previous post, the researchers had looked at the different roh lengths for large, regional populations like “europeans” or “east asians.” amongst other things, they had found that some of my regular inbreeders — the fbd marriage folks — had some of the highest numbers of medium and long roh, a state of genetic affairs which likely reflects their long-term close mating patterns. interestingly, the researchers had found that east asians had roh lengths similar to those of europeans across the board, something which surprised me since, at least according to what i’ve been reading, east asians (i.e. the chinese) have been inbreeding for a much longer time than europeans. one drawback of that previous study, though, was that, apart from the french, most of the european populations they looked at were peripheral groups who have had a tendency to inbreed more than my “core” europeans (see mating patterns in europe series below ↓ in left-hand column).

the new paper suffers from some of the same problems since the data come from the same sources (hgdp-ceph and hapmap phase 3 populations), so northern europeans — apart from the french — aren’t included in this paper either. (what can you do? it’s early days yet. i look forward to when there’s lots more genetic data available out there for teh scientists to work with! (^_^) )

what the researchers in this paper have done, though, is to look at both the different mean lengths of roh in each of the different populations sampled AND they looked at total numbers of roh within individuals for each population. this has, i think, drawn out some interesting differences between the populations.

first, here are two graphics from the supplmental data (linked to above). click on each for LARGER views (they should open in new tabs/windows — you might have to click on them again there to super-size them).

i’ve highlighted a handful of populations i want to focus on ’cause i know a little something about their historic mating patterns: the bedouin (as a proxy for the arabs — note that the bedouin have probably inbred more than more settled arabs); italians (not sure if they’re northern or southern italians or a mix of both — however, there are tuscans in the samples with which these “italians” can be compared); pathan or pastuns (more fbd marriage folks, like the bedouins/arabs); and han chinese (there are some northern han chinese with whom this groups can be compared). ok. here are the charts:

as you can see, the researchers have split up the roh into three classes (note that the short and medium classes here are a lot shorter than those in the paper looked at previously):

- A: 0.25-0.40 Mb (short)
- B: 0.6-1.2 Mb (medium)
- C: 0-35 Mb (long)

the interesting thing in the first chart above (Fig. S3 – Mean ROH Length for Each of the Three Size Classes in Each Population), is that the han chinese have lower means of roh length in all of the size classes compared to the other populations i’ve highlighted. in the previous study, the researchers found that east asians had similar means to europeans for all roh lengths. i found this surprising since, from what i’ve read, the han chinese have been inbreeding for a longer period of time than europeans. what might be confounding the results though, once again, is the fact that nw europeans (the outbreeders extraordinaire) are not really included in either of these studies apart from a handful of french samples.

in this latest study, both the bedouin and the pashtun, for instance, have higher means — and wider spreads — of long (class C) roh than the italians, which is what i would’ve expected since those two groups (the bedouins and the pashtuns) are, being fbd marriage folks, serious inbreeders. perhaps the reason the han chinese long roh mean is comparatively low is partly due to the fact that they historically practiced mother’s brother’s daughter (mbd) marriage which doesn’t push towards such close inbreeding as fbd marriage. still, i would’ve expected to see greater means of roh for the chinese than the italians — or, at least, around the same. not so much lower. (unless the italians practiced fbd marriage, too — or fzd marriage — but i don’t think so.)

if you look at the second chart (Fig. S4 – Total Number of ROH in Individual Genomes), however, you’ll see that, overall, the han chinese have more short, medium and long roh totally in individual genomes than any of the other three populations i’ve highlighted. both the bedouins and the pashtuns have greater numbers/wider total spread of long roh than the italians, but the han chinese have a much greater total number of long roh than any of the other three groups — three or four times as many.

but they’re, on average, shorter long roh don’t forget. (confusing, eh?!)

perhaps this is what you get when you have — as the chinese have had — a pretty good-sized effective population size for such a long time. there have been a LOT of han chinese for — wow — millennia.

so, it looks like this (in this order of inbrededness — i think):

- bedouins: highest mean, and very wide spread, of long roh; high total numbers, and widest spread, of long roh.
- pashtun: low mean, but widest spread, of long roh; low total number, but very wide spread, of long roh.
- han chinese: very low mean, and very narrow spread, of long roh; highest total numbers, and wide spread, of long roh.
- italians: low mean, and rather wide spread, of long roh; very low total number, and very small spread, of long roh.

other interesting points are that:

- the tuscans/tsi (toscani) appear to have lower short, medium and long mean roh than the generic “italian” category. however, the tuscans have lower total numbers of long roh than the “italians” while the toscani (tsi), on the other hand, appear to have a greater total number of long roh than the “italians.” while the tuscan samples and the toscani/tsi samples are from different studies (hgdp vs. hapmap), they are all supposed to be from tuscany, so it’s surprising that they’re so different. perhaps the individuals in the toscani/tsi sample were more closely related somehow?

- the northern han samples have lower short, medium and long mean roh than the generic “han” category. this would fit my general impression that historically inbreeding has been greater in southern china than in the north. however, the total number of long roh are greater in the northern han sample than in the “han” sample. not sure what that means.

don’t forget that there can be all sorts of reasons for differences in roh: inbreeding vs. outbreeding, yes, but also effective population size, population movement (migration in or out), bottlenecks, etc. i just happen to be interested in trying to pick out the effects of inbreeding/outbreeding — if possible.
_____

**update - here are a couple of excerpts from the article (thnx, b.b.!) [pgs. 277, 279-281]:

“Size Classification of ROH

“Separately in each population, we modeled the distribution of ROH lengths as a mixture of three Gaussian distributions that we interpreted as representing three ROH classes: (A) short ROH measuring tens of kb that probably reflect homozygosity for ancient haplotypes that contribute to local LD [linkage disequilibrium] patterns, (B) intermediate ROH measuring hundreds of kb to several Mb that probably result from background relatedness owing to limited population size, and (c) long ROH measuring multiple Mb that probably result from recent parental relatedness….

“In each population, the size distribution of ROH appears to contain multiple components (Figure 2A). Using a three-component Gaussian mixture model, we classified ROH in each population into three size classes (Figure 2B): short (class A), intermediate (class B), and long (class C). Size boundaries between different classes vary across populations (Table S1); however, considering all populations, all A-B boundaries are strictly smaller than all B-C boundaries (Figure 2C). The mean sizes of class A and B ROH are similar among populations from the same geographic region (Figure S3), with the exception that Africa and East Asia have greater variability. The class C mean is generally largest in the Middle East, Central/South Asia, and the Americas and smallest in East Asia (Figure S3), with the exception that the Tujia population has the largest values. In the admixed Mexican population (MXL), mean ROH sizes are similar to those in European populations. In the admixted African American population (ASW), however, mean ROH sizes are among the smallest in our data set, notably smaller than in most Africans and Europeans.

“Geographic Pattern of ROH

“Several patterns emerge from a comparison of the per-individual total lengths of ROH across populations (Figure 3). First, the total lengths of class A (Figure 3A) and class B (Figure 3B) ROH generally increase with distance from Africa, rising in a stepwise fashion in successive continental groups. This trend is similar to the observed reduction in haplotype diversity with increasing distance from Africa. Second, total lengths of class C ROH (Figure 3C) do not show the stepwise increase. Instead, they are higher and more variable in most populations from the Middle East, Central/South Asia, Oceania, and the Americas than in most populations from Africa, Europe, and East Asia. This pattern suggests that a larger fraction of individuals from the Middle East, Central/South Asia, Oceanis, and the Americas tend to have higher levels of parental relatedness, in accordance with demographic estimates of high levels of consanguineous marriage particularly in populations from the Middle East and central/South Asia, and it is similar to that observed for inbreeding-coefficient and identity-by-descent estimates. Third, in the admixed ASW and MXL individuals, total lengths of ROH in each size class are similar to those observed in populations from Africa and Europe, respectively (Figure 3).

“The total numbers of ROH per individual (Figure S4) show similar patterns to those observed for total lengths (Figure 3). However, in East Asian populations, total numbers of class B and class C ROH per individual are notably more variable across populations than are ROH total lengths.”

previously: runs of homozygosity and inbreeding (and outbreeding) and ibd and historic mating patterns in europe

_{(note: comments do not require an email. ribbit!)}

linkfest – 08/19/12

The genetic history of Europeans – from dienekes.

The DNA Olympics — Jamaicans Win Sprinting ‘Genetic Lottery’ — and Why We Should All Care – in which jon entine sneaks the phrase “human biodiveristy” into forbes online. (^_^)

Neandertal ancestry “Iced” – “The genome of this Neolithic-era individual [Ötzi] shows a substantially higher degree of Neandertal ancestry than living Europeans.” – from john hawks.

Analysis Of China’s PISA 2009 Results – anatoly concludes that china’s pisa-derived iq is ≈ 102.5.

What predicts college grades better than IQ score? – “At the university level, introversion predicts academic performance better than cognitive ability.” – from barking up the wrong tree, via foseti.

Parents also choose – “[I]n many if not most societies, men, i.e. fathers, decide which man is allowed to mate with his daughter or other female relative.” – @the breviary.

A GPS in Your DNA – “Using a probabilistic model of genetic traits for every coordinate on the globe, the researchers have developed a method for determining more precisely the geographical location of a person’s ancestral origins.”

Early birds have the best temperament profile – but night owls have higher iqs. (~_^) – from the inductivist.

Fertile Gals Have All the Right Dance Moves – “Women in the fertile phase of their menstrual cycle are judged as more attractive dancers by men than are women in a less-fertile phase, a new study finds.”

Genetically engineering ‘ethical’ babies is a moral obligation, says Oxford professor – “‘Indeed, when it comes to screening out personality flaws, such as potential alcoholism, psychopathy and disposition to violence, you could argue that people have a moral obligation to select ethically better children.’” – hmmm. who’s going to go first? mightn’t their kids be at a disadvantage in some situations? see also: The wrongs, and rights, of genetic screening for children.

Sporting aggression more common in opponents of a similar ability than in contests between unequal teams – “The same is also true of aggressive contests between individuals in the animal kingdom, whether it is rutting deer stags or quarrelsome Siamese fighting fish. Now scientists believe they have found evidence for the same trait in competing groups of sportsmen.”

bonus: ‘Who’s Your Daddy’ Truck Rolls Through NYC, Offers Answers With DNA Tests

bonus bonus: Gorillas certainly show emotion – but what do they feel?

bonus bonus bonus: What you don’t know can hurt you – “In 1972, the U.S. passed the Clean Water Act, despite a presidential veto by Richard Nixon. Did this act also end an era of unusually high estrogen levels in the environment?” – from peter frost.

_{(note: comments do not require an email. boo!)}

eugenics in the news

from the u.k.’s telegraph (links added by me):

“Euroscience Open Forum 2012: DNA gene testing ‘will screen out lovers’”
13 Jul 2012

“Couples will soon be able to choose their life partner solely based on the compatibility of their genes instead of through love, a scientific conference has heard.

“Due to the falling cost of DNA testing Britain is on the cusp of a new era of eugenics, according to a leading British scientist.

“Prof Armand Leroi, of Imperial College London, said that within five to ten years it will be common for young people to pay to access their entire genetic code.

“He told the Euroscience Open Forum 2012, in Dublin, that a desire to have a healthy baby will lead more to request access to the view the genes of any prospective partner.

“Armed with this information, the couple could then use IVF to screen babies with incurable diseases.

“While it was unlikely people will have the ‘luxury’ of using the technology to design babies, by their intellect or eye colour, they would instead focus on stopping genetic diseases.

“Addressing a session titled ‘I human: are new scientific discoveries challenging our identity as a species’, he said the cost of genetic sequencing was falling so quickly that ‘it is going to become very, very accessible, very, very soon’….

“He said eugenics were already available, with tens of thousands of unborn babies with Down’s syndrome and other illnesses being aborted every year.

“He told the conference on Thursday: ‘These processes are very well established in most European countries.

“‘Many of the ethical problems that people raise when they speak of neoeugenics are nought once you offer gene selection or mate selection as a eugenic tool.’”
_____

meanwhile, in tonga:

“Tonga’s Crown Prince Tupouto’a Ulukalala marries cousin”
12 July 2012

“The heir to the throne of Tonga in the South Pacific has married his second cousin in the capital Nuku’alofa.

“Crown Prince Tupouto’a Ulukalala and his bride, Sinaitakala Fakafanua, both in their 20s, waved to cheering crowds as they left church after the wedding…..

“Marriage between cousins is seen as a way of keeping the royal bloodline strong in Tonga….”

felicitations to the happy couple! (^_^) (seriously!)

previously: ivy league selective breeding

_{(note: comments do not require an email. tonga – the friendly islands?)}

not so many luddites after all

over the weekend, one of my younger first cousins once removed declared that he absolutely, definitely will be a fireman when he grows up (he’s three). his father, one of my in-laws, (half-)jokingly said that, no, you’ll be a lawyer or a doctor or a professor. i chimed in with: “get into genetics, kid. that’s where all the money will be.” (heh! as if i would know.)

my cousin-in-law responded: “genetics? but that’s unethical.” this from a man with a marketing degree. (~_^)

i have to admit i was pretty flummoxed and didn’t really know how to respond or even where to start. our follow up discussion was brief so i didn’t get a satisfactory explanation as to what’s “unethical” about “genetics,” but i got to wondering what the rest of america thinks. thankfully, they’re not so skeptical:

Survey finds wide public support for nationwide study of genes, environment and lifestyle
Nov 12, 2008

Four in five Americans support the idea of a nationwide study to investigate the interactions of genes, environment and lifestyle, and three in five say they would be willing to take part in such a study, according to a survey released today. The research was conducted by the Genetics & Public Policy Center at Johns Hopkins University with funding from the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)….

“Our survey found that widespread support exists in the general public for a large, genetic cohort study. What’s more, we found little variation in that support among different demographic groups,” said David Kaufman, Ph.D., lead author of the paper and project director at the Genetics & Public Policy Center, which is located in Washington….

The online survey of 4,659 U.S. adults was conducted between December 2007 and January 2008. When asked about their support for and willingness to participate in a large genetic cohort study, 84 percent of respondents supported the study and 60 percent indicated they would definitely or probably participate in such a study if asked.

Survey respondents were carefully selected to reflect the demographic makeup of the United States. No significant differences in support or willingness to participate were observed between whites, Hispanics, African Americans and Asians. American Indian and Alaska Native respondents expressed less support for the study (65 percent), but were just as likely to be willing to participate (63 percent) as other respondents….

the pew folks also conducted a “town hall meeting” about genetics in 2008 — a set of five focus group sessions held around the country. from the report [pg. 11]:

“Participants were asked to consider what types of research should and should not be done with the information collected by the proposed study. Research aimed at curing disease was commonly cited as acceptable, and some participants named conditions such as cancer, birth defects, and diabetes….

“Human cloning was cited in every town hall as an unacceptable use of the proposed biobank, although in one case participants differentiated between reproductive cloning (unacceptable) and cloning aimed at regenerating organs or otherwise curing disease (acceptable). Participants frequently named research aimed at altering humans or creating ‘designer babies’ as unacceptable. Another area of concern was ‘things that point out differences between gender, or race, or anything like that that people use to discriminate.’ Other areas mentioned included weapons development, intelligence, alcoholism, and sexual orientation….”

so a lot of americans don’t like the idea of cloning. personally, i’m looking forward to being able to clone myself. i mean, how great a world would it be with more MEs in it? (~_^) and why should bacteria and some lizards have all the fun anyways?

and a lot of americans don’t like “designer babies” either. the funny thing is, of course, that they don’t realize that that’s what they’re aiming for when they look for that perfect someone to marry, i.e. kids to match their heart’s desire. in fact, a lot of americans don’t like anything that smacks of eugenics. i guess that’s not too surprising at this point in time.

at least the majority haven’t written off the whole discipline of genetics as “unethical” though.

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

linkfest – 04/22/12

Why Kenyans Make Such Great Runners: A Story of Genes and Cultures – somebody’s picked up on the phrase human biodiversity! check out the last sentence in paragraph two. (^_^) h/t to luke for pointing out the article to me!

Why Chimpanzees Kill – “[K]ills occurred in most of the chimpanzee communities and that victims tended to be infant and adult males outside the killer’s social group. Most of the killings were conducted by groups of males…. What did appear to be a factor was the number of males in a group: the higher the number of males in a group, the higher the number of kills.”

People prefer male politicians with lower voices – @the inductivist.

Analysis of surname origins identifies genetic admixture events undetectable from genealogical records – @race/history/evolution notes.

Impact of Carnivory on Human Development and Evolution Revealed by a New Unifying Model of Weaning in Mammals – “Since early weaning yields shorter interbirth intervals and higher rates of reproduction, with profound effects on population dynamics, our findings highlight the emergence of carnivory as a process fundamentally determining human evolution.”

Women focus on their children, not their men, as they age – of course. @dennis’.

Women Are Twice As Likely To Hit The Gas By Mistake – that’d be pretty funny if it weren’t so dangerous.

bonus: When Memory Commits an Injustice – “[W]hen it comes to human memory, more deliberation is often dangerous.”

bonus bonus: Evolution seen in ‘synthetic DNA’ – “Researchers have succeeded in mimicking the chemistry of life in synthetic versions of DNA and RNA molecules. The work shows that DNA and its chemical cousin RNA are not unique in their ability to encode information and to pass it on through heredity.”

bonus bonus bonus: The Emergence and Early Evolution of Biological Carbon-Fixation – “Here we reconstruct the complete early evolutionary history of biological carbon-fixation, relating all modern pathways to a single ancestral form.”

_{(note: comments do not require an email. orwell court. heh.)}