Month: August 2012
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The heritability of impulse control
The above figure is from a paper I stumbled upon, Genetic and environmental influences on impulsivity: a meta-analysis of twin, family and adoption studies: A meta-analysis of twin, family and adoption studies was conducted to estimate the magnitude …
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The heritability of impulse control
The above figure is from a paper I stumbled upon, Genetic and environmental influences on impulsivity: a meta-analysis of twin, family and adoption studies: A meta-analysis of twin, family and adoption studies was conducted to estimate the magnitude …
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America, these are (some) your graduate students
If you haven’t, you should check out The Shadow Scholar, The man who writes your students’ papers tells his story. This is the conclusion: “Thanx u so much for the chapter is going very good the porfesser likes it but wants the folloi…
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Eat smarter, don’t work out harder?
There have been several recent studies reemphasizing diet over exercise (timely because Americans are kind of fat, on average). A new piece in The New York Times looking at the Hadza of Tanzania, who are hunter-gatherers, seems to reiterate this point,…
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Consent and genomics
Interesting story in The New York Times, Genes Now Tell Doctors Secrets They Can’t Utter: One of the first cases came a decade ago, just as the new age of genetics was beginning. A young woman with a strong family history of breast and ovarian cancer…
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Neil Armstrong and the end of the Whig conceit
It has been 40 years since he last human being set foot on the moon. I was not alive when this occurred. The Whig views history as a progression. When we recall the past we remember, perhaps pity, a less developed age. Overall I disagree with declinis…
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Genes & geography – the great correlation
A paper is out in PLoS Genetics which attempts to formalize the relationship between genes and geography, A Quantitative Comparison of the Similarity between Genes and Geography in Worldwide Human Populations. They found a reasonable correlation, but …
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There are more things in prehistory than are dreamt of in our urheimat
A new paper in Science claims to have ascertained the locus of origin of the Indo-Europeans, Mapping the Origins and Expansion of the Indo-European Language Family. These are bold claims, and naturally have triggered a firestorm. No surprise, the same …
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The “Hey girl” shaped hole in our brains?
One of the positive aspects about interacting with the rest of the world in more than a professional or nerd capacity is that sometimes I find out what’s happening in popular culture. Therefore I’m now clued in to the fact that a new gener…
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Beware of the ancient of days!
By now you have probably read in The New York Times, or on the blogs, about the new paper in Nature which reports on the empirical trend toward the children of older fathers carrying more de novo mutations. Really all you need is this figure: It’…
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Mischlinge brown pop
My wife, who has become a connoisseur of all things half-brown, brought to my attention the two new boy bands storming Britain have a “brown one” slot (i.e., “the cute one,” “the tough one,” “the innocent one,&…
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Open thread 8/22/2012
The nature of the restrictions of the comments are relatively free-form on this post. You should maintain some decorum as usual. But you can post links, ask me or other readers questions, etc.
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Who rejects right to abortion in cases of rape?
It’s basically impossible to avoid hearing about Todd Akin right now. My Twitter and Facebook feeds are kind of swamped. But it did make me wonder: what percentage of Americans reject abortion in cases of rape and incest? The GSS has a handy vari…
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The Sardinian meter
I cropped the image above from the paper Inference of Population Structure using Dense Haplotype Data. The main reason was emphasize the distinctiveness of the Sardinian cluster, on the bottom right. As you can see this population exhibits a lot of co…
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Rimsha
Over the past few weeks Pussy Riot has been quite in the news. But there’s been one reaction which surprised me: I actually appreciate that Russia is not quite as illiberal as Westerners may sometimes portray it. After all, there was a trial, an…
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Harry Harrison, R.I.P.
The New York Times has an obit. Found out via Fred Pohl. I read some of Harrison’s work, but probably most memorable to me was the series which began with Hammer and Cross series in particular captured my imagination. With hindsight it’s pr…
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Two weeks until the Unz Contest closes
Wanted to ping by readers on this: As a means of publicizing the vast quantity of high-quality content material uniquely available on its recently released website, UNZ.org is announcing a historical research competition. A First Prize of $10,000 a…
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More GSS, less speculation!
Long time readers know that one of my pet hobby-horses is to try and convince more pundits that they should use the GSS. Opinions based on opinions may be fun, but opinions based on facts may be useful. In general my appeals have fallen on deaf ears. B…
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Inter-population difference in European height
A quick mea culpa. Yesterday I put up a post on the difference in height between northern and southern Europe, following the lead of the heading of the paper which I blogged. But, in the text they do note that their sample is skewed toward northern Eur…
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Why northern Europeans are taller than southern Europeans?
In part, genes. Luke Jostins reported this from a conference last year, so not too surprising. Evidence of widespread selection on standing variation in Europe at height-associated SNPs. Let me jump to the summary: In summary, we have provided an empir…