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 – 10/29/12

a day late. sorry! sometimes sh*t just happens. (~_^)

Ethnic disparities in breast cancer survival remain despite socioeconomic similarities – “All-cause survival was worse for African-Americans and better for Latinas and Asian-Americans compared with non-Latina whites after adjusting for age, study and tumor characteristics. When the researchers additionally adjusted for treatment and reproductive and lifestyle factors, they found that African-Americans had similar survival rates to non-Latina whites, but the survival rates of Latinas and Asian-Americans remained better.”

Diversity may be fatal, says new government health study – “[P]eople suffer less cancer and heart disease when they live among their racial or ethnic peers.” – via mangan’s.

If Smart Is the Norm, Stupidity Gets More Interesting – “Human intelligence varies.” – you don’t say?! (it’s in the nyt, believe it or not!)

Do Intelligent People Drink More Alcohol? – yes. yes, we do. (*hic*)

A detour through Europe? – “The lithic technology of southwestern France (c. 22,000-17,000 BP) strangely resembles that of the first paleo-Amerindians (c. 12,000). Some people speculate that early Europeans reached North America by crossing the Atlantic. The truth is even more incredible. Early Europeans spread eastward and became the ancestors not only of the Amerindians but also of East Asians.” – from peter frost.

Secular change in the B/W IQ gap (in the US) – from chuck. see also steve sailer.

Penis size and infant mortality – from the autistic nerdling epigone.

Placebo effect may be ‘down to genes’ – “Those with a particular version of the COMT gene saw an improvement in their health after placebo acupuncture.”

The Evolution of Female Bisexuality – from jayman.

Pitch Perfect: It’s All In The Genes” – maybe/prolly. see also you, too, can have perfect pitch!

Hispanic Bio-Diversity: A Primer – from nelson.

Smoking causes asthma in second generation offspring – epigenetic effects in rats.

Epigenetic inheritance is a wild goose chase – “Epigenetics matters, but not between generations.”

Appearance-based politics: Sex-typed facial cues communicate political party affiliation – republican women more feminine looking than democrat women.

Men better multi-taskers than women: study

Who Would Win in a Fight: a Modern Human or a Neanderthal? – “We beat them at evolution. But what about fisticuffs?”

The Island Where People Forget to Die – “[P]eople on Ikaria were, in fact, reaching the age of 90 at two and a half times the rate Americans do. (Ikarian men in particular are nearly four times as likely as their American counterparts to reach 90, often in better health.) But more than that, they were also living about 8 to 10 years longer before succumbing to cancers and cardiovascular disease, and they suffered less depression and about a quarter the rate of dementia.”

bonus: More Intelligent Birds (Like More Intelligent Humans) Have Evolutionarily Novel Preferences

bonus bonus: Electric Bugs: New Microbe Forms Living, Deep-Sea Power Cables

bonus bonus bonus: New study sheds light on how and when vision evolved – “Opsins, the light-sensitive proteins key to vision, may have evolved earlier and undergone fewer genetic changes than previously believed….”

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

linkfest – 10/21/12

Study documents early puberty onset in boys – “Pediatricians recorded the earliest stage of puberty as occurring in non-Hispanic white boys at age 10.14 years; in non-Hispanic African-American boy at age 9.14 years, and in Hispanic boys at age 10.4. Overall, African-American boys were more likely to start puberty earlier than white or Hispanic boys.”

When Europeans turned white – ” White European skin evolved relatively fast during the last ice age, specifically from 19,000 to 11,000 years ago…. These color traits—white skin and a diverse palette of hair and eye colors— are not adaptations to a cooler, less sunny climate. They are adaptations by early European women to intense mate competition, specifically a shortage of potential mates due to a low polygyny rate and a high death rate among young men.” — from peter frost.

Intelligence and fertility by class, over time – from the awesome epigone.

The Stupidity of the Discontented? — higher iq people are happier on average — @the breviary.

What Are You So Scared of? Saber-Toothed Cats, Snakes, and Carnivorous Kangaroos – “The evolutionary legacy of having been prey.”

Roots of Post-Trauma Resilience Sought in Genetics and Brain Changes – genetics and ptsd.

Young blood really is the key to youth – “[G]iving young blood to old mice can reverse some of the effects of age-related cognitive decline.”

Seeking a Chief Exec with the Right Stuff?: Look for a Touch of Psychopathy – “An Emory University psychologist recounts why ‘fearless dominance,’ a personality trait used to screen for psychopaths, may be a quality to consider in our next chief executive.”

Desire for revenge, not anger, helps explain why men are more physically aggressive – from the inductivist.

Head and Heart: Are Conservatives More Moral? – “‘Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second.’”

What Is War Good for? Ask a Chimpanzee. — some interesting points in this article — and the cuuuuutest picture of a baby spider monkey! aaaaawwww! (^_^)

bonus: Seed shrimp thought extinct has been living in cave for 40 mil. years – coooooool!

bonus bonus: First life may have survived by cooperating

bonus bonus bonus: Martian genome: Is there DNA on the Red Planet?

bonus bonus bonus bonus: Corruption Continues Virtually Unchecked in Greece – “‘We Are Greedy and Asocial’”

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: No Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership – “This week, for the third time in four years, the Mo Ibrahim Foundation announced that its prize for achievement in African leadership would not be awarded.” — well, at least they’re not completely crazy like the peace prize people. *roll eyes*

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: British man arrested for punching Darth Vader’s wife — really!

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

linkfest – 09/30/12

Europeans did not inherit pale skin from Neanderthals – “By analysing the genomes of 50 people with European ancestry and 70 people with sub-Saharan African ancestry, Beleza’s team could estimate when the three genes – and pale skin – first became widespread in European populations. The result suggested that the three genes associated with paler skin swept through the European population only 11,000 to 19,000 years ago.”

Is castration the secret to a long life? – “Scientists believe they may have discovered the secret to longevity for men – but it comes at a painfully high price.” – yikes!

Inside the Cold, Calculating Libertarian Mind – “[W]hen libertarians reacted to moral dilemmas and in other tests, they displayed less emotion, less empathy and less disgust than either conservatives or liberals. They appeared to use ‘cold’ calculation to reach utilitarian conclusions about whether (for instance) to save lives by sacrificing fewer lives. They reached correct, rather than intuitive, answers to math and logic problems, and they enjoyed ‘effortful and thoughtful cognitive tasks’ more than others do. The researchers found that libertarians had the most ‘masculine’ psychological profile, while liberals had the most feminine….”

Study: Having a Male Child Leaves Male DNA in Women’s Brains – “The presence of the DNA persisted into old age and correlated with a slightly decreased risk of Alzheimer’s disease.” – original research article: Male Microchimerism in the Human Female Brain. see also greg cochran: Insidekick.

The Myth of Random Mating: Evidence of ancestry-related assortative mating across 3 generations in Framingham, MA. – via race/hist/evo notes.

Republican women judged more feminine than Democratic women – @the breviary.

Arab Autumn? – “The Arab Spring, eighteen months on. Has a passion for freedom of speech, separation of religion and State, and the ‘free marketplace of ideas’ seized the Arab world?” – @those who can see.

Sex ratios of atheists, agnostics, and believers – from the awesome epigone.

The Leaks in the Pipeline Found? – jayman on the gender bias in science.

Couples who share the housework are more likely to divorce, study finds – “Divorce rates are far higher among ‘modern’ couples who share the housework than in those where the woman does the lion’s share of the chores, a Norwegian study has found.” – hmpf. (^_^)

Mystery of Britain’s ‘Franken-mummies’ – “Two 3,000-year-old human skeletons dug up in the Outer Hebrides have been found to be a jigsaw of at least six different people who died hundreds of years apart.”

bonus: Cambridge librarian finds forgotten fungus Charles Darwin brought back on the Beagle (and it was still wrapped in his newspaper)

bonus bonus: The Weaker Sex – “The sexual revolution’s legacy … ‘the paradox of declining female happiness.’”

bonus bonus bonus: Bitcoin ‘Pirate’ scandal: SEC steps in amid allegations that the whole thing was a Ponzi scheme

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

linkfest – 02/05/12

Brains of addicts are inherently abnormal: study – “Drug addicts have inherited abnormalities in some parts of the brain which interfere with impulse control, said a British study published in the United States on Thursday…. Scientists at the University of Cambridge compared the brains of addicts to their non-addicted siblings as well as to healthy, unrelated volunteers and found that the siblings shared many of the same weaknesses in their brains. That indicates that the brain vulnerabilities had a family origin….”

Sex-specific behaviors traced to hormone-controlled genes in the brain – “The new evidence shows that the sex hormones – testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone – act in a key region of the brain, switching certain genes on and others off. ‘What this means is that complex behaviors like male mating or maternal care in mice can be deconstructed at the genetic level.’”

Gene related to fat preferences in humans found – “A preference for fatty foods has a genetic basis, according to researchers, who discovered that people with certain forms of the CD36 gene [the AA form] may like high-fat foods more than those who have other forms of this gene.” – i betcha i don’t have that allele. fat. yuck! (^_^)

Jonathan Haidt Decodes the Tribal Psychology of Politics – “Humans are 90-percent chimp, but also 10-percent bee—evolved to bind together for the good of the hive.” – bzzz. (^_^)

Shocker: Women’s rights do not bloom in Arab Spring – from mr. a. epigone.

DNA Turning Human Story Into a Tell-All – “[F]aster and cheaper genetic sequencing technology, is helping scientists draw a surprisingly complex new picture of human origins. The new view is fast supplanting the traditional idea that modern humans triumphantly marched out of Africa about 50,000 years ago, replacing all other types that had gone before. Instead, the genetic analysis shows, modern humans encountered and bred with at least two groups of ancient humans in relatively recent times: the Neanderthals, who lived in Europe and Asia, dying out roughly 30,000 years ago, and a mysterious group known as the Denisovans, who lived in Asia and most likely vanished around the same time.”

Y-chromosome admixture in self-identified Australian Aboriginals – “In total, ∼70% of Y chromosomes in the Aboriginal database could be classed as non-indigenous, with only 169 (129 unique haplotypes) or 22% of the total being associated with haplogroups denoting Aboriginal ancestry….” – @dienekes’ blog.

What’s Wrong With the Teenage Mind? – “Children today reach puberty earlier and adulthood later. The result: A lot of teenage weirdness.”

Strength by outbreeding – “‘US history has many virtues, among which is the fact that the US population is reconstituted every generation through a roughly 10 percent admixture by external immigration from throughout the world.’” – that’s a quote from robert trivers’ new book @evolving economics.

Castaway Lizards Offer New Look at Evolutionary Processes – “Differences caused by ‘founder effect’ persist when populations adapt to new environments”

bonus: Quiet, Please: Unleashing ‘The Power Of Introverts’ – this might be the one and only time i’ll link to npr. ever. (~_^)

bonus bonus: ruh roh.

_{(note: comments do not require an email. or hard work and originality. (~_^) )}

the boob tube again

(no, still not a post about pr0n. sorry! (~_^) )

i dunno why i like these polls about what tv show republicans and democrats prefer, but i usually wind up reading them whenever i see them. here’s a new one:

“Republicans vs. Democrats TV survey results: Lefties want comedy, right wingers like work”

LIBERAL-DEMOCRAT FAVORITES:
– The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report (Comedy Central): As you might expect.
– 30 Rock and Parks and Recreation (NBC): Literate media-savvy comedies score high among Dems in general, notes Experian-Simmons senior marketing manager John Fetto. “Sarcastic humor is always a hook for them,” he adds.
– The View (ABC): Shows that skew female tend to do better among Dems, while male-friendly shows tend to do perform higher among Republicans.
– Glee (Fox)
– Modern Family (ABC): Last year, the progressive Glee and Modern Family scored surprisingly strong among both political leanings. Among conservatives this year, the shows still do fairly well, but have dropped out of their top ranks.
– It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (FX)
– Treme (HBO): GOP Kryptonite. Not only a Dem favorite, but so unpopular among Republicans that the report scores the show with a “*” because not enough conservatives in the study group had actually watched it.
– Cougar Town (ABC)
– The Late Show With David Letterman and The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson (CBS): Dems favor late-night programming, with one big exception that we’ll see below.

Also in the mix: The Soup (E!), Aqua Teen Hunger Force (Adult Swim), Raising Hope (Fox), Saturday Night Live (NBC), The Office (NBC), Project Runway (Lifetime), Shameless (Showtime), Parenthood (NBC), Conan (TBS).

i’ve seen the daily show, of course. while i can appreciate that jon stewart leibowitz is funny, it’s obviously not my sort of politics. (i’m not even sure what IS my sort of politics!) i’ve also seen, down through the years, a segment or two from the view, but a bunch of liberal ladies (and i use the term loosely) sitting around b*tching and gossiping?! NOT my kind of show. have also seen david letterman and conan, too, of course. and snl back in the day. the rest of them i’ve never watched, and some of them i’ve never heard of: treme?

CONSERVATIVE-REPUBLICAN FAVORITES:
– Swamp Loggers (Discovery) and Top Shot (History): Gritty documentary-style work-related reality shows on cable index really strongly with conservative Republicans. Swamp Loggers is particularly polarizing.
– The Bachelor (ABC): They also tend to gravitate toward broadcast reality competition shows.
– Castle (ABC): Ranks fairly high among Dems, too.
– Mythbusters (Discovery)
– Only in America With Larry the Cable Guy, American Pickers, Pawn Stars, Swamp People (History): If you’re a Republican candidate looking to raise money, put ads on History.
– The Middle (ABC): Does well among libs, too.
– The Tonight Show With Jay Leno (NBC): “Did you hear about this? Yeah, this is true: Jay Leno is the late-night choice among conservatives… “
– The Biggest Loser (NBC)
– Hawaii Five-O, NCIS, The Mentalist (CBS): Popular crime dramas — except the left-wing Law & Order franchise — tend to draw a conservative crowd.

Also: Dancing With the Stars results show (ABC), Man vs. Wild (Discovery), Auction Kings (Discovery), Wheel of Fortune (syndi), Top Gear (BBC America).

mythbusters!!! (^_^) how can ANYONE not like mythbusters? dirty jobs is also fun to watch. (^_^)

leave me alone with a television machine and i will invariably watch pretty much anything on the discovery channel or animal planet (or some other nature channel). the bachelor (or any “reality” program?)? – nuh uh. jay leno – meh. he’s ok. the crime dramas listed are alright in a pinch if there’s nothing else on, but they’re usually too low-iq in their plot-lines. i dunno what the middle or the biggest loser is — oh, wait. is the biggest loser the weight loss show?

one show that i think is pretty ok is boardwalk empire. good acting, good scripts (if you look away from the pc stuff), nice sets and filming. i can easily waste an hour watching that (mind you, if i do watch tv, which is not very often ’cause we don’t have one, it’s not an entire waste of my time ’cause i’m usually knitting something at the same time. i am a chick — i can multi-task. (~_^) )

previously: the boob tube

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

correlations

“David Wasserman, of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, recently calculated that 89 percent of the Whole Foods stores in the United States were in counties carried by Barack Obama in 2008, while 62 percent of Cracker Barrel restaurants were in counties carried by John McCain.”

heh. [source]

_{(note: comments do not require an email. you want gravy with that?)}

linkfest – 07/03/11

Is Rape Natural?

Why Faces of Other Races Look Alike

Strange Science: Menstruation Causes Prejudice? – “At their most fertile, women are more suspicious of men they see as outside of their social or racial group and who they perceive as being physically threatening. Which means that prejudice could, at least partially, be a byproduct of our biology.” – heh. not strange at all.

Asian and Hispanic Americans, regardless of religiousness, are more likely to identify as Democrats than Republicans – @diversityischaos.

Finding showing human ancestor older than previously thought offers new insights into evolution – “Homo erectus probably did not share habitats with modern humans.”

Neuro-Opto-Genetics and the New Cyborg Future – @al fin.

The first non-human meat farmers – one species of ant farms other insects for meat! maybe.

Family ties doubted in Stone Age farmers

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Black Women with Herpes, and More! – @the unsilenced science.

bonus: The Loading Dock Manifesto