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.)
