linkfest – 04/21/13

Inbred royals show traces of natural selection – “Study suggests the Spanish Habsburgs evolved to mute the effects of inbreeding, but other geneticists are unconvinced.”

Time to get tough on the physiological causes of crime – “[V]iolent criminals are biologically different from the rest of us.” – review of The Anatomy of Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime.

Scientists find ethnicity linked to antibodies – “‘[I]t’s early days,’ emphasizes Watson, ‘but these findings could mean that past environmental exposures to certain pathogens caused DNA insertions or deletions in different ethnic groups, which could impact disease risk. Our results demonstrate that antibody studies need to take into account the ethnicity of DNA samples used.’”

Those resistant to ‘love hormone’ may also be easier to hypnotize – “Gene variants linked to social detachment may increase suggestibility.”

One Blessing Of Outbreeding – i didn’t write this, i swear! (you’ll never guess who did…)

The gay germ hypothesis – from peter frost. see also Not Final! from greg cochran.

Another reminder… – “[A] prod to certain of my smart liberal friends to start having children.” – from jayman. see also: The end of paternal investment or, more cads, fewer dads from mr. mangan.

The Strange Case of Dr. Robert Trivers – “[Trivers] has been driven off the campus of Rutgers University! He has been involved in a controversy lately over his accusation that one of his graduate students committed fraud in a scientific paper. Apparently he was banned from campus because a colleague who supports the alleged fraudster claimed Trivers had ‘frightened him in his office’.” – from helian unbound.

Women graduates of elite colleges 1/3rd more likely to be stay-at-home moms – from steve sailer.

Scent of a Man: Women Can Sniff Out a Hot Guy – “Women at their peak fertility prefer the smell of men oozing with testosterone, a new study finds.” – and speaking of testosterone: Testosterone pumps up threats for tough guys – “The higher a man’s testosterone level, the more macho he’s likely to act when his masculinity is threatened, a new study finds.”

The Real ‘Hobbit’ Had Larger Brain Than Thought

Egyptian mummies yield genetic secrets – “The ancient Egyptians could soon be getting their genomes sequenced as a matter of routine.”

Why Menopause?

Stonehenge occupied 5,000 years earlier than thought

The Pattern of Female Nuptiality in Oman – “[M]ore than half (52%) of the total marriages in Oman are consanguineous. First cousin unions are the most common type of consanguineous unions, constituting 39% of all marriages and 75% of all consanguineous marriages. About 11% of the marriages are polygynous…. [P]aternal first-cousin marriages constituted 27.7% of all marriages and 72% (565/786) of all first-cousin marriages, while maternal first-cousin marriages constituted 10.8% of all marriages and 28% (221/786) of all first-cousin marriages.”

The Ancient Greeks & Romans, Beauty and Human Biodiversity – @occam’s razor.

Could Life Be Older Than Earth Itself? – “[T]wo geneticists have applied Moore’s Law to the rate at which life on Earth grows in complexity — and the results suggest organic life first came into existence long before Earth itself.”

Chimps Communicate Like Passionate Italians – my favorite headline of the week. (^_^)

Live fast, die younger: Actors, singers and sportsman ‘die seven and a half years before other high achievers’

Historic human remains yield epigenetic tags – see also: Epigenetic Inheritance: Fact or Fiction?

Icelandic anti-incest app keeps residents from becoming kissin’ cousins – previously íslendingabók.

‘Real men wear kilts’: The anecdotal evidence that wearing a Scottish kilt has influence on reproductive potential: how much is true? – keep wearin’ yer kilt!

Did this magical little crystal help the Vikings rape and pillage across the world? – “Research suggests crystal salvaged from a shipwreck may be a sunstone”

bonus: What rights should Dzhokhar Tsarnaev get and why does it matter? – “The Obama DOJ says it intends to question the Boston bombing suspect ‘extensively’ without first Mirandizing him”

bonus bonus: Applicants wanted for a one-way ticket to Mars – let’s go! (^_^)

bonus bonus bonus: ‘Living fossil’ genome unlocked – “The genes of an ancient fish, the coelacanth, have much to reveal about our distant past.”

bonus bonus bonus bonus: Chlamydia Is Killing Koalas — Will Genetics Find a Cure?

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linkfest – 01/14/13

late linkfest again! sorry. (*^_^*)

Group Selection (and homosexuality) and Homosexuality, epigenetics, and zebras – from greg cochran. also, from jayman -
A Gay Germ? Is Homophobia a Clue?

The Trouble with Epigenetics (Part 1) – “[E]ven though epigenetic mechanisms may be involved in maintaining some stable traits over the lifetime of the animal, they are just that: mechanisms. Not causes. Epigenetics is not a source of variance, it is part of the mechanism whereby certain environmental factors or experiences have their effects.” (in other words, epigenetics is not magic.)

DNA ‘identichip’ gives a detailed picture of a suspect – “The VisiGen team tested the chip on more than 3000 DNA samples collected around the world, and found that it was 99 per cent accurate at predicting gender. The chip also predicted European or East Asian ancestry with an accuracy of 97 per cent, and African ancestry in 88 per cent of cases. However, it was only 63 per cent accurate at predicting blond hair….”

What did our ancestors look like? – “A new method of establishing hair and eye colour from modern forensic samples can also be used to identify details from ancient human remains….”

Black homicide rates by state – from the awesome epigone. compare to his White homicide rates by state. also, from hail: White Murder Rates by U.S. State, 1960 (vs. 2010).

People With Brown Eyes Appear More Trustworthy, But That’s Not The Whole Story – “‘Brown-eyed individuals tend to be perceived as more trustworthy than blue-eyed ones,’ explain the authors. ‘But it is not brown eyes that cause this perception. It is the facial morphology linked to brown eyes.’” – see also dienekes.

Networking Ability a Family Trait in Monkeys – “Social behaviors have been acted on by natural selection”

Cheating — and getting away with it – “Scientists have found a gene that allows amoebae to pass on more than their fair share of their genes but doesn’t make them less fit in other ways”

Banded mongooses structure monosyllabic sounds in a similar way to humans

America’s Real Criminal Element: Lead – “New research finds Pb is the hidden villain behind violent crime, lower IQs, and even the ADHD epidemic.” – maybe.

Darwin Was Wrong About Dating – maybe.

How Did Humans Figure Out That Sex Makes Babies?

bonus: #overlyhonestmethods is the PostSecret of the science world, and it is amazing – heh. (^_^)

bonus bonus: Why I Am Not an Atheist – from kanazawa.

bonus bonus bonus: Immigrant mothers in Britain could be aborting unwanted girls, ministers admit after study of birth rates

bonus bonus bonus bonus: Why is gingerism so common in Britain? – from ed west.

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: China’s one-child law: Less competitive adults?

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linkfest – 12/16/12

Finland & Japan – exceptions to “the rule”? – from jayman!

Genetic pacification in medieval Europe – from peter frost!

Scientists May Have Finally Unlocked Puzzle of Why People Are Gay – an epigenetic cause of gayness?

Restless Genes – drd4.

Reconstructed Face of Extinct “Hobbit” Species Is Startlingly Humanlike

Polymorphisms and Load – (more stuff i barely understand) from greg cochran!

Penn Study shows resistance to cocaine addiction may be passed down from father to son – in rats anyway.

Where to be born vs. where people are being born – from the awesome epigone!

The mu opioid receptor genotype may be a marker for those who drink for alcohol’s rewarding effects – OPRM1.

bonus: Lead poisoning in Samurai kids linked to mom’s makeup

bonus bonus: OU Study Suggests the Bacterial Ecology That Lives on Humans Has Changed Dramatically in the Last 100 Years

bonus bonus bonus: Microbiome: Cultural differences – “Studies of gut bacteria are beginning to untangle how diet affects health in old age — but determining cause and effect is tricky.”

bonus bonus bonus bonus: Art of cheese-making is 7,500 years old

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linkfest – 11/26/12

i should just move the linkfests to mondays … get it over with. (~_^) (then at some point i’d prolly switch to publishing them on wednesdays or thursdays … and eventually, someday, they’d migrate all the way back to sundays again!)

Are Liberal or Conservative Americans More Likely to Support Restrictions on Racist and Anti-Religious Speech?

Singapore is world’s least emotional country, poll finds – see also steve sailer (who is not the world’s least emotional country).

Does being fat make you more jolly? – “The FTO gene makes a protein associated with obesity and fat mass…. [H]aving one copy of this mutant in your genome decreases the risk of depression by 8 per cent; two copies doubles that dip…. Based on its prevalence among ethnic groups, it should prevent 6.7 per cent of the cases of depression that would otherwise afflict Africans, 5.3 per cent of cases in Europeans, and 2.2 per cent in Chinese.”

Longer life link to low vitamin D – in some dutch people. h/t sean!

Meat, Cooked Foods Needed for Early Human Brain

The Evolutionary Mystery of Homosexuality – i know, i know. greg cochran would say there’s no mystery here. (~_^)

Conservatism is white men – from the awesome epigone.

Why Is Intelligence the Measure of Ultimate Human Worth? – from kanazawa.

Mitochondrial DNA in Ancient Human Populations of Europe (der Sarkissian 2011) – “This work presents direct evidence that Mesolithic eastern Europeans belonged to the same Palaeolithic/Mesolithic genetic background as central and northern Europeans. It was also shown that prehistoric eastern Europeans were the recipients of multiple migrations from the East in prehistory that had not been previously detected and/or timed on the basis of modern mtDNA data. Ancient DNA also provided insights in the genetic history of European genetic outliers; the Saami, whose ancestral population still remain unidentified, and the Sardinians, whose genetic differentiation is proposed to be the result of mating isolation since at least the Bronze Age.” – @dienekes’.

Archaeologists discover 10,000 year-old home – in scotland.

People who live in tropics more likely to die seven years earlier – “Overall mortality in the region was affected by disease, conflict, poverty and food insecurity….”

Improved Water Supplies In Africa Increase Poverty – ’cause of lower death rates. that s*cks. – from parapundit.

bonus: Fraud fighter: ‘Faked research is endemic in China’

bonus bonus: The Black Cat Analogy – from jayman!

bonus bonus bonus: Think twice before using “mankind” to mean “all humanity,” say scholars – scr*w that!

bonus bonus bonus bonus: Camel Genome Holds Desert Survival Secrets – “[M]any of the Bactrian genome’s rapidly evolving genes regulate the metabolic pathway…. [C]amels can withstand massive blood glucose levels owing in part to changes in genes that are linked to type II diabetes in humans.”

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Larry Hagman: the superstar who made history – “In 1991, a Bedouin tribe delayed its annual migration across the Sahara because its elders were not prepared to miss the last episode of Dallas.” – heh.

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nonwhites more likely to identify as lgbt

gallup surveyed 120,000 american adults and found that blacks, hispanics, and asians (in that order) are all more likely to say that they are gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender than whites. the national average was 3.4%:

and, women more than men, but the difference wasn’t so great:

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linkfest – 02/19/12

A Facial Attractiveness Account of Gender Asymmetries in Interracial Marriage – “Studies suggest that there is considerable agreement regarding what makes a face attractive. Much of this agreement is common even across cultures. Further, just as not all races are equal in terms of their average height, not all races of people are equal in terms of their average rated facial attractiveness.” – black males found to be most attractive, east asian women found to be most attractive.

Gaps around the world – chuck the occidentalist is on a mission.

Depths of Madness – greg cochran and the gay-germ theory. quote of the week: “As for Freudian explanations, exotic-becomes-erotic, etc: just reading the social-science literature on the subject is enough to make you wonder if the human brain really does exist to cool the blood.” (^_^)

Y-chromosomes and coronary artery disease in Britain – [A]t least some of the dramatic shifts in Y-haplogroup frequencies between modern and ancient populations may have been driven — at least in part — by natural selection.” – from dienekes.

Were there Neanderthals in Africa? – from peter frost.

Maternal depression and bilingual households can impact infant language development – “[D]uring the first months of life, babies rapidly attune to the language sounds they hear and the sights they see (movements in the face that accompany talking) of their native languages. After this foundational period of language recognition, babies begin focusing on acquiring their native tongues and effectively ignore other languages…. [T]his key developmental period – which typically ends between the ages of eight and nine months … lasts longer for babies in bilingual households than in monolingual babies, particularly for the face recognition aspects of speech.” — the researchers don’t know if that’s a good or bad or neutral thing.

Jews and vegetarianism – from the inductivist.

Losing Interest in Attention Deficit Disorder – “The main problem is that these ‘diseases’ are not caused by germs or viruses or, as far as it seems, anything remotely resembling indisputable chemical or brain-scan evidence. This is nothing more than speculation that diseases exist based on the act of describing common symptoms.” – from jim goad.

bonus: Plucking a Strand of Genetic Insight From the Sea – “[T]hough the organism itself has never been isolated or seen, its genome is now complete.”

bonus bonus: The ‘Undue Weight’ of Truth on Wikipedia

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linkfest – 02/12/12

Research shows genes influence criminal behavior – “‘The overarching conclusions were that genetic influences in life-course persistent offending were larger than environmental influences….’”

The Upside of Dyslexia – “[M]any people with dyslexia possess distinctive perceptual abilities.”

The Voice of the People II: Arab Democracy – “[W]ill any democracy taken up by Arab Muslims inevitably become authoritarian?” – @those who can see.

Hidden Games – from greg cochran.

Were they right after all? – from peter frost.

Which population in the 1000 Genomes Project samples has the most Neandertal similarity? – from john hawks.

42,000 year old art from Andalusia – neanderthal cave paintings? @dienekes’ blog.

Did Easter Islanders Mix It Up With South Americans?

Homosexuality: What’s Choice Got to Do With it? – “But as an inveterate mocker of leftist contradictions, I will note that the SAME people who are INSISTING homosexuality is entirely genetic are precisely those who for generations now have denied and dismissed the idea that ‘race’ or ‘gender’ are anything more than ‘social constructs.’ When it comes to race and gender, they will only accept environmental explanations; but when it comes to what you do with your naughty bits, they will only permit biological alibis. For race and gender, it’s 100% ‘nurture’; for sexuality, it’s 100% nature. Like always, they make no sense. But I enjoy watching how they struggle to fit straight pegs into gay holes.” – from jim goad. (who else? (~_^) )

bonus: John Derbyshire’s CPAC Speech: Will Our Multicultural Elites Ever Become Race Realists?

bonus bonus: Some blacks insist: ‘I’m not African-American’

bonus bonus bonus: How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy – more cool stuff on t. gondii, but check this out – “Colorado State University’s Janice Moore … and Chris Reiber, a biomedical anthropologist at Binghamton University, in New York, strongly suspected that the flu virus might boost our desire to socialize. Why? Because it spreads through close physical contact, often before symptoms emerge—meaning that it must find a new host quickly. To explore this hunch, Moore and Reiber tracked 36 subjects who received a flu vaccine, reasoning that it contains many of the same chemical components as the live virus and would thus cause the subjects’ immune systems to react as if they’d encountered the real pathogen. The difference in the subjects’ behavior before and after vaccination was pronounced: the flu shot had the effect of nearly doubling the number of people with whom the participants came in close contact during the brief window when the live virus was maximally contagious.” – heh!

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linkfest – 10/02/11

Tea Leaves – “Denisovans may stem from Homo erectus, at least in part….” – from greg cochran, via race/history/evolution notes. see also: All One Species.

and on that note: We Are All Laurasians – from the reluctant apostate.

The Spread of Inequality – “In variable environments, stratified societies spread more and are also better able to survive resource shortages by sequestering mortality in the lower classes.”

Willingness to lie manipulated with magnets – “Magnetic stimulation of parts of the prefrontal cortex can influence the propensity to lie or tell the truth”

The Level and Nature of Autistic Intelligence II: What about Asperger Syndrome? – “Asperger individuals’ scores are much higher when they are evaluated by a test called Raven’s Progressive Matrices, which encompasses reasoning, novel problem-solving abilities, and high-level abstraction.” [source] – from the research article: “We have proposed that autistic patients’ cognitive processes function in an atypically independent way, leading to ‘parallel, non-strategic integration of patterns across multiple levels and scales’ and to versatility in cognitive processing.” – our brains are parallel processors, not serial processors. (~_^)

“The Emperor’s New Clothes” book review/critique – from jay.

Neurotics experience more immersion when watching films – yes. yes, we do.

Some South Caucasian perspectives on female exogamy – from ahnenkult.

Schizophrenia And The Developing World Revisited

bonus: the propaganda is working – Americans move dramatically toward acceptance of homosexuality – “Young people lead the changes.”

bonus bonus: The euro delusion – goodbye to the third stupid, utopian idea of the last century – “Contrary to what proponents of this delusion claim, it is not about xenophobia or racism; the issue, as Charles Moore wrote on Saturday, is one of sovereignty, and sovereignty relies on the legitimacy that only nations can provide.” – wow. see also: Europe’s problem is that no one knows who’s in charge.

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