linkfest – 05/05/13

Mental Health Diagnoses and Recidivism in Paroled Offenders – “Offenders with borderline personality disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder were significantly more likely to recidivate or be suspended.”

Psychopathic Traits Seen in Children’s Brains – “Children with severe behavioral problems have a suppressed response to others’ pain, according to new brain-scan research.”

Cultural modernity and behavioral modernity – “Some societies have gone farther than others along the trajectory that leads to cultural modernity and, in time, behavioral modernity.” – another great post from peter frost! (he forgot to mention the likely effects of mating patterns on societies, but that’s ok. (~_^) )

The Split Personality of America – “The 20 states scoring highest on Neuroticism are all bordering to the [mississippi] river or east of it. Of the 20 states that score the lowest on this trait, 16 are in the western region – including all of the bottom 10.” – nice post from staffan!

Obesity and IQ and IQ and Death – from jayman.

Music and class – from the awesome epigone.

HVGIQ: Bermuda – from jason malloy @human varieties.

Disputed Results a Fresh Blow for Social Psychology – “Failure to replicate intelligence-priming effects ignites row in research community”

and speaking of frauds: Symmetry study deemed a fraud – “University finds evidence of fakery in Jamaican dance data.”

Modern European ADMIXTURE components = Neolithic ecological zones (+ post-Neolithic in-situ expansions) – The revenge of the hunter-gatherer genes! – @eurogenes, via charles.

Monkey math – “Zoo baboons shed light on the brain’s ability to understand numbers.”

Small-bodied humans from the Terminal Pleistocene in Tanzania – @dienekes.

“Selfish Spermatogonial Selection”: A Novel Mechanism for the Association Between Advanced Paternal Age and Neurodevelopmental Disorders

Older U.S.-born Mexican-Americans have more physical limitations than Mexican American immigrants: Study

Study: How Yoga Alters Genes – not genes, but gene expression.

bonus: Suicide rate up sharply – “‘The suicide rate among middle-aged Americans climbed a startling 28 percent in a decade, a period that included the recession and the mortgage crisis, the government reported Thursday. The trend was most pronounced among white men and women in that age group.’” – from mr. mangan.

bonus bonus: Path From ‘Social Butterfly’ to Boston Suspect’s Widow – the elder tsarnaev’s wife was caught shoplifting once (before she ever met him). men always marry their mothers! (~_^)

bonus bonus bonus: If American Guns Wrecking Mexico Why Not Canada? – excellent question from parapundit.

bonus bonus bonus bonus: “Everything You Have Learned in School is Wrong” – nightmare immigration stories from norway @gates of vienna. don’t miss the follow-up.

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Skeleton of teenage girl confirms cannibalism at Jamestown colony

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: A 17th-Century Russian Community Living in 21st-Century Alaska – “This clan has traveled from Russia through China, Brazil, and Oregon to make a home in the remote north, struggling to avoid modernization.”

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Vatican uncovers ‘first Western painting of Native Americans’ – “They have remained hidden for more than five centuries, but tiny figures of naked men wearing feathered head-dresses could be the first Western depiction of Native Americans, the Vatican claims.”

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Rolling fistfight erupts in Venezuelan parliament over disputed election – i love fights in parliaments. (~_^)

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: New Study Finds Nothing That Will Actually Convince You To Change Your Lifestyle So Just Forget It

_{(note: comments do not require an email. taiwan parliament fight.)}

linkfest – 12/30/12

Monkey brain area keeps count of kindnesses – “The primates have an altruistic ‘tally chart’ that keeps track of social rewards and gifts.” – mine’s on an excel spreadsheet. (~_^)

Are Babies Born Good? – “New research offers surprising answers to the age-old question of where morality comes from.”

Xenophobia Upside: Ethnic And Religious Diversity Correlated To Less Environmental Action – “Scandinavian countries, low in ethnic and religious diversity, take more collective action than more diverse nations, like the UK, China and the United States.” – reminiscent of putnam’s findings [pdf]. via amren.

It’s not the cads, it’s the tramps – from jayman.

Latin Americans Most Positive in the World – “Singaporeans are the least positive worldwide” – from gallup.

Fluctuating environment may have driven human evolution

Shape of human hand may have evolved for fighting, scientists say

Birdsong study pecks at theory that music is uniquely human – “‘[T]he same neural reward system is activated in female birds in the breeding state that are listening to male birdsong, and in people listening to music that they like….’ For male birds listening to another male’s song, it was a different story: They had an amygdala response that looks similar to that of people when they hear discordant, unpleasant music.”

Virtual women reveal more skin, regardless of body proportions – “71% of male avatars covered between 75-100% of their skin, while only 5% of females did. In contrast, 47% of the virtual females they studied covered between 25-49% of their skin, compared to 9% of males.”

Indonesia’s Islamic spirit of tolerance – “Indonesia is rather middling in terms of attitudinal religious tolerance.” – from the awesome epigone.

Are fathers necessary? – @mangan’s.

DNA of Sandy Hook killer Adam Lanza to be examined for ‘evil’ gene in first study of its kind ever conducted on a mass murderer – “The study of the killer’s DNA has been ordered by Connecticut Medical Examiner H. Wayne Carver who carried out the post mortems on all the victims. He has contacted geneticists at University of Connecticut’s to conduct the study.”

bonus: Judeo-Christian, Not So Much – from assistant village idiot.

bonus bonus: No heir to run the company? Why adult ‘adoption’ is big business in Japan

bonus bonus bonus: Why Do We Blink So Frequently? – “[B]riefly closing our eyes might actually help us to gather our thoughts and focus attention on the world around us.”

bonus bonus bonus bonus: Even in same vineyard, different microbes may create variations in wine grapes – “Yeast species may cause differences in otherwise identical grapes from the same vineyard.”

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Buried Christian Empire Casts New Light on Early Islam – “Archeologists are studying the ruins of a buried Christian empire in the highlands of Yemen.”

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Unsexing the Language – “Every day, the left is beavering away at the language. Fight back. Proudly use such sentences as ‘Man is a mammal so he suckles his young.’” – heh! i love jared taylor. (^_^)

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no frickin’ way!

via amren, “Does Music Affect a Fetus?” i woulda said yes, but look at the difference between these two babies when they listen to hip-hop! obviously, n only equal 2, but still — no frickin’ way! used to what they hear at home?

_____

_{(note: comments do not require an email. hip-hop.)}

beat blindness

speaking of musical ability, some researchers have found a guy who apparently has “beat blindness” — kinda like face blindness but re. music.

poor mathieu — he can’t hear the beat AT ALL!

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music’s biological basis

dennis posts on some recent research (that i linked to here) about how, it turns out (surprise, surprise to anyone not paying attention), that listening to music is biological; specifically that individuals with certain variations of a gene related to the hormone, vasopressin, listen to music more frequently than other individuals with different variations of the gene. (btw, the same gene variations have been associated with musical ability.)

that same gene has also been associated with monogamy (or not) in prairie voles (they’re so cuuuuuute!), and so it’s not too much of a stretch, i think, to say that this is obviously one of the genes involved in singing (or making some other sort of musical noise) and mate attraction|retention. yeah, just like the birdies.

and, while that’s all extremely interesting, i think dennis asks the most interesting (rhetorical) question: “How could music not have a biological or evolutionary basis?”

exactly!

in fact, how could all sorts of “cultural” things that we humans do NOT have a biological or evolutionary basis?

in case you haven’t noticed, that has been, and will prolly continue to be (don’t say i didn’t warn you!), an ongoing theme here on this blog: where does culture come from? (hint: i think a helluva lot of it is from our biologies. at the same time, of course, there are clearly many aspects of our cultures that are pure happenstance.)

and now, for your viewing enjoyment, “why do voles fall in love?”:

~ ~ ~

(p.s. you just know that there’s gotta be differences in the frequencies of these vasopressin gene types, as well as any other genes related to pair-bonding, in different human populations. ¿sí?)

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linkfest – 03/06/11

Happy children make happy adults – “New research links well-being in adolescence with life satisfaction in adulthood”

Binge-drinking is in the genes: Scientists isolate brain chemical that makes us crave alcohol – TLR4 gene

Skull in Underwater Cave May Be Earliest Trace of First Americans

Is Romantic Love a Western, Heterosexual Construct? from the neurocritic.

Science explains why humor turns women on

Men who glare angrily when someone spills their pint are ‘reverting to their caveman instinct’

Ape or Human? Fossils’ Link to Evolution Questioned – “In a paper published Feb. 19 in the science journal Nature, two paleoanthro-pologists argue that some recently discovered primate fossils may not be as human as everyone thinks.” see also Ancestor Worship

Listening to music is biological

Factors influencing the temporal patterns of dyadic behaviours and interactions between domestic cats and their owners or The Science of Women and Cats: The Bond Is Real

how musical r u?

more genUine science being done online! really!

how musical are you? over @the beeb.

apparently i’m pretty musical even tho i never got past the recorder in 4th grade music class. but my “social creativity” is low. i coulda told ‘em that. (~_^)

take the test. go on! it’s fer SCIENCE! (^_^)