The genetics of the Kusunda
Kusunda: The Kusunda or Ban Raja (“people of the forest”), known to themselves as the Mihaq or Myahq (< *Myahak), are a tribe of former hunter-gatherers of the forests of western Nepal, who are now intermarried with neighboring peoples and settled in villages. The Kusunda are followers of animism, though Hindu overtones may be seen […]
China & Pakistan
Pakistan Pulls Closer to a Reluctant China: Amid the anti-American rage in Pakistan after the killing of Bin Laden in May, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani flew to China in what was portrayed in the Pakistani news media as a major snub to the United States. But Mr. Gilani, at least publicly, was unable to […]
When did population genetics emerge?
I recently heard an eminent geneticist declare that population genetics began with Theodosius Dobzhansky’s Genetics and the Origin of Species in 1937. My immediate reflex was to be skeptical of this, at least going by Will Provine’s treatment in The Origins of Theoretical Population Genetics, which seemed to push back the timing to the 1920s. […]
Political correctness in 1900 and 2000
In my post yesterday I made the comment that it seems that British media in particular seems to have a fascination with “different race twins.” The generalization derives from the fact that people who email me these stories tend to point to British sources, but I decided to Google it. I think I’ll stick by […]
Mixed-race people are mildly complicated
I was pointed today to a piece in the BBC titled What makes a mixed race twin white or black?. The British media seems to revisit this topic repeatedly. There are perhaps three reasons I can offer for this. First, it tends toward sensationalism. Even though the BBC is relatively staid, when it comes to […]
Mixed-race people are mildly complicated
I was pointed today to a piece in the BBC titled What makes a mixed race twin white or black?. The British media seems to revisit this topic repeatedly. There are perhaps three reasons I can offer for this. First, it tends toward sensationalism. Even though the BBC is relatively staid, when it comes to […]
The genetics of hair texture: a mystery
Lauryn Hill, Image credit: Lisa Lang I received an email today from a friend about speculation on the genetics of hair texture. More specifically, curly vs. straight hair. I know that there are a few SNPs which are correlated with straight vs. curly hair (23andMe has actually been involved in this), but the architecture hasn’t […]
Half-Indian actress not half-Indian?
I don’t follow this stuff, but this is interesting, I have my own destiny and life: Katrina Kaif: What she does talk about is how Katrina got her last name. “Her passport says Turquotte. We created an identity for her. She was this pretty young English girl, and we gave her the Kashmiri father and […]
Latitudes and longitudes and spherical cows
A new paper in The American Journal of Physical Anthropology surveys the variation of genes across latitudes and longitudes. The authors found that both latitude and longitude were significant in the Americas, while only latitude was significant in Eurasia. They used microsatellites, which is fine by me. The main issue which they acknowledge is that […]
Decency not by law alone
Rasmus Nielsen has a long response below to the issue of the getting some sort of consent from Aboriginals in the local region in regards to a specimen from a deceased individual. He has a full entry on this at the new weblog of his research group. As an aside, let me say that it […]
John Wayne as Genghis Khan
From the 1956 movie The Conqueror:
Saturday Stuff – October 1st, 2011
1) Weird search query of the week: “choropleth of jehovah witness population.”
2 Your weekly fluff fix:
Sequencing everyone in the Faroe Islands
There was some speculation last week about which nation would have everyone sequenced first. We now have a contender, the Faroe Islands, a self-governing Danish dependency (they’re not part of the E.U.) is going to try and sequence most of the population of ~50,000 over the next five years: Around 100 people who are likely […]
Up with nurses! Down with doctorates!
In light of growing health care costs and the demographic reality of an aging profession stories like this one in The New York Times are both depressing and hopeful. Calling the Nurse ‘Doctor,’ a Title Physicians Oppose: But while all physician organizations support the idea of teamwork, not all physicians are willing to surrender the […]
A story behind the story
David Dobbs points me to a story in Popular Science which tracks the controversy around the “arsenic life” hypothesis, and its effects on Felisa Wolfe-Simon. Back in the days before the internet you’d read the story as an outsider and get a particular take. A long narrative by its nature primes us in a certain […]