Author Archives: Razib

I’m reading Brotherhood of Kings: How International Relations Shaped the Ancient Near East. The book basically outlines the international state system in the ancient Near East which fostered diplomatic relationships between the monarchies of the period. It is noted that this state system and diplomatic culture did not make it through the chaos which marks […]

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OECD’s Gurría mourns death of economist Angus Maddison. I highly recommend his books such as Contours of the World Economy 1-2030 AD. I would concede that the data would sometimes be sketchy or fragmentary, but when it comes to historical models there’s a lot more jabber than legwork. It is notable how much the jabberers […]

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Remember when there was talk about how SARS might disproportionately hit Chinese in comparison to other populations? Here’s a new paper on how Swine Flu may progress in different populations, Clinical Findings and Demographic Factors Associated With ICU Admission in Utah Due to Novel 2009 Influenza A(H1N1) Infection: The ICU cohort of 47 influenza patients […]

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MTV Not Involved With ‘Jersey Shore’ Imitations: For the show he calls the “Persian Version,” his casting company wrote: “If you are at least 21 years old, appear younger than 30, and are outrageous, outspoken and a proud Persian-American, then Doron Ofir Casting and 495 Productions, the team who brought you ‘Jersey Shore,’ are looking […]

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Russ Roberts recently had a discussion on Econtalk with Arthur de Vany. A lot of it covered baseball and social science, but he also spent a lot of time on “evolutionary fitness” (see the website at the link). I agree with a lot of what he had to say, but felt that some of his […]

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Human genome at ten: Life is complicated (H/T Dr. Daniel MacArthur). This is one reason that economists are in more demand than historians in public life. Economics is reducible in a way that history is usually not, or at least historians tend not to be interested in doing. Also, the average economist is much smarter […]

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If you have a blog, and you link to http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/, I would appreciate it if you switched to http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/. I know most people don’t use blogrolls much, but it matters for PageRank, and the archives have b…

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Bryan Caplan points to a quote from Will Durant’s The Lessons of History: In the United States the lower birth rate of the Anglo-Saxons has lessened their economic and political power; and the higher birth rate of Roman Catholic families suggest that by the year 2000 the Roman Catholic Church will be the dominant force […]

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Many of you already know this, but I’ve moved from ScienceBlogs to Discover Blogs. There isn’t much to say about this, I had a good run at ScienceBlogs, but Discover Blogs offers some new opportunities. All that matters for you is this, please update your bookmarks and/or RSS feeds: Bookmarks: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/GeneExpressionBlog Also, […]

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They review the past 14 years.

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This article at The Jury Expert serves as a nice review of literature. Here’s their summary: Atheists are unique and individual (just like all of us) and we have to attend to the attitudes, beliefs and life experiences that all of us (even atheists) bring to the table as jurors. Conversely, jurors need to be […]

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The complete mitochondrial DNA genome of an unknown hominin from southern Siberia:
With the exception of Neanderthals, from which DNA sequences of numerous individuals have now been determined…the number and genetic relationships of other hominin lineages are largely unknown. Here we report a complete mitochondrial (mt) DNA sequence retrieved from a bone excavated in 2008 in […]

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Check it out, Wiring the Brain.

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Ethnic and Geographic Differentiation of Helicobacter pylori within Iran:
The bacterium Helicobacter pylori colonizes the human stomach, with individual infections persisting for decades. The spread of the bacterium has been shown to reflect both ancient and recent human migrations. We have sequenced housekeeping genes from H. pylori isolated from 147 Iranians with well-characterized geographical and ethnic […]

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I guess I should mention this. A year and a half ago someone started a Gene Expression Facebook group. Nothing much is going on there right now, but I thought I’d point to it….

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Generous Leaders and Selfish Underdogs: Pro-Sociality in Despotic Macaques:
Actively granting food to a companion is called pro-social behavior and is considered to be part of altruism. Recent findings show that some non-human primates behave pro-socially. However, pro-social behavior is not expected in despotic species, since the steep dominance hierarchy will hamper pro-sociality. We show that […]

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(here’s the context)

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We’ll never have utopia. A world in which in many nations it is normal for the poor to be fat is, is a utopia by any measure from the perspective of someone who lived in 1900. Prompted to think about this after listening to part of this diavlog between a transhumanist and Massimo Pigluicci. Sometimes […]

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Heartthrob’s Barbed Blog Challenges China’s Leaders:
Since he began blogging in 2006, Mr. Han has been delivering increasingly caustic attacks on China’s leadership and the policies he contends are creating misery for those unlucky enough to lack a powerful government post. With more than 300 million hits to his blog, he may be the most popular […]

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Did not know this:
Still, these platonic tickle sessions appear to be rare. Based on a survey he conducted for his fascinating book Laughter, neuroscientist Robert Provine notes that adults and adolescents are seven times more likely to be tickled by members of the opposite sex. When asked whom they would most like to be tickled […]

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Razib Khan