Not the origin of genome complexity
Over the past decade evolutionary geneticist Mike Lynch has been articulating a model of genome complexity which relies on stochastic factors as the primary motive force by which genome size increases. The argument is articulated in a 2003 paper, and further elaborated in his book The Origins of Genome Architecture. There are several moving parts […]
Chosen genes of the Chosen People
Last spring two very thorough papers came out which surveyed the genetic landscape of the Jewish people (my posts, Genetics & the Jews it’s still complicated, Genetics & the Jews). The novelty of the results was due to the fact that the research groups actually looked across the very diverse populations of the Diaspora, from […]
Size doesn’t always matter
The autosomal genome of Ötzi the Austrian “Iceman” is apparently in the pipeline (from what I can tell they’re doing the analysis right now). What can we learn from one sample? Ann Stone, who was a graduate student on the original team which recovered his body, says:
A specialist in anthropological genetics, Stone is excited by […]
Daily Data Dump – Thursday
Essential Science Fiction Movies. People always put Metropolis on the list, or bemoan the fact that they haven’t seen it. What do you think of it? I quite enjoyed, but much of the greatness of the film seems to be that it prefigured so much of what was to come.
The Real Estate Collapse. Jonah Lehrer […]
Hitler’s “Jewish genes”
A reader asked about the bizarre story of Adolf Hitler having “non-Aryan” ancestry. Specifically, The Daily Mail title is: “DNA tests reveal ‘Hitler was descended from the Jews and Africans he hated.’” Since it’s a British newspaper I frankly wouldn’t put it past them to simply pass along a hoax…but I think if they were going […]
The past in color
I don’t know about you, but I have a weird mental problem whereby my visual model of the past is strongly shaped by the constraints on the various representational modes which preserve images from a particular era. For example, the paintings of the 18th century shape how I imagine the 18th century, while the black […]
Inbreeding in the Persian Gulf
On the heels of my post on cousin marriage, I thought readers might find this article on genetic screening in the United Arab Emirates of interest. One way to tackle the problem of genetic diseases which emerge out of consanguineous unions apparently isn’t to discourage the unions themselves, but dodge the outcomes. So pre-implantation screening […]
E. O. Wilson against Hamiltonian inclusive fitness
There is a new paper in Nature which is a full frontal attack on the utility of William D. Hamilton’s inclusive fitness framework in explaining eusociality. Martin A. Nowak, Corina E. Tarnita, & Edward O. Wilson are the authors. Wilson is famous in large part for his authorship of Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, and is […]
Daily Data Dump – Wednesday
Welcome (and Welcome Back) to FiveThirtyEight. Nate Silver moves to The New York Times. Now if only we could get rid of those stupid made up “trend stories.”
Image of inflation adjusted home prices 1890-2006. Crazy! Classic case of a bubble, but it really hasn’t popped. And the government will try and make sure it doesn’t.
Moderate […]
Across North American borders
There is a border across which fertility drops by a factor of two in North America (defined as from Canada to Panama). Specifically, one nation has a TFR of ~4, and the other ~2. Can you guess the two nations? You can find the answer in the charts below.
First, linear:
Now, log-transformed:
That’s right, TFR, Guatemala (4.15) […]
The individual & social risks of cousin marriage
The map above shows the distribution of consanguineous marriages. As you can see there’s a fair amount of cross-cultural variation. In the United States there’s a stereotype of cousin marriage being the practice of backward hillbillies or …
Decline in forest cover
I’ve spent most of my life in relatively forested areas, and took forestry courses in secondary school (which is why I can still distinguish doug fir from spruce by looking at the needles). In my youth I even had friends who were loggers during the summer. But I haven’t taken a deep scientific interest in […]
Daily Data Dump – Tuesday
Glenn Beck Wrong on Darwin: How Evolution Affirms the Oneness of Humankind. I can see where the individual is coming from, but I think more people should just come out say that evolution is just science, and has no deeper moral implications besides those which humans impute to it. No one cares about the […]
The non-superstars you don’t see
Jonah Lehrer has a post up on why it might be that top-level athletes seem to come from smaller urban areas rather than larger ones. The possible reason is interesting. But I was reminded of the “10,000 hour rule” made famous by Malcolm Gladwell. You know, how Tiger Woods’ dad “turned him” into a world class […]
The oldest science blog of all?
I began blogging in April 2002 (I once had a graduate student approach me and tell me that she was a big fan of my blog back in high school!). Derek Lowe is the only science blogger I can think of off the top of my head who was around before I was, is still […]
Just pushing buttons
Mike the Mad Biologist, whose bailiwick is the domain of the small, asks in the comments:
I don’t mean to bring up a tangential point to the post, but why does the field of human genetics use PCA to visualize relationships? When I see plots like those shown here that have a ‘geometric pattern’ to […]
Changing to Feedburner
If you are subscribed to my total feed, please change the RSS address: http://feeds.feedburner.com/RazibKhansTotalFeed.
Submitting your own links to GNXP
I’ve decided to add a “user generated content” component to this weblog. The links submitted by users will now be at the top left. If you read this weblog, you know the stuff that readers (you) might find of interest. The main issue is getting to where you can submit the links. First, initially I’ve […]
Daily Data Dump – Monday
I hope you had a good weekend.
Why is Israel So Poor? Israel is a nation with a high level of human capital and moderate wealth. The author points out that Israel is a “low trust” society. It is not often remembered that Israel is arguably the most ethnically diverse developed society in the world, because […]