Razib Khan’s Content Aggregation Site
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Marc Hauser: the end is nigh?
David Dobbs has a link roundup and commentary on what’s been going down with l’affaire Hauser. It doesn’t look good for Hauser et al., though it seems that the downfall was precipitated ultimately from within if press reports are to be believed. Part of the issue here seems to be that there’s a level of…
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Japanese as Solarians
One of the podcasts I subscribe to is Thinking Allowed from Radio 4. The most recent one was on the role which robots are envisaged to play in the future of Japan: Also, the rise of the ‘fembot’. The Japanese government is investing billions in the development of robotic technology. They think the robot will…
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Google Public Data Explorer
One of the main issues that we as human beings have is that we don’t have a gestalt understanding of social data, and its change over time. Among biologists one of the major recurring problems is the gloominess which is a consequence of the Malthusian mindset (which is understandable because of their professional bias) which…
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Daily Data Dump – Friday
Have a good weekend. Immune Responses During Pregnancy Linked to Schizophrenia Among Offspring. This is a known association, but the interesting point is that there may be conditionalities to the response based on genetics. That would explain the heritability. ‘Fused’ People Eager to Die and Kill for Their Group, Research Shows. I believe that an…
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Katz
[View with PicLens] The Two The One Almost Two
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Hybridization is like sex
One of the major issues which has loomed at the heart of biology since The Origin of Species is why species exist, as well as how species come about. Why isn’t there a perfect replicator which performs all the conversion of energy and matter into biomass on this planet? If there is a God the tree…
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Daily Data Dump – Thursday
Are you ready for a world without antibiotics?. Draws from a Lancet paper. One of the major differences between technological advances based on physics and those of biology is that biological advances may slowly be eroded by evolutionary response. But I’m curious as to what microbiologists think about assertions that antibiotics will no longer be…
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Daily Data Dump – Wednesday
Elite Isolation. This is a specific instance of a general problem. The rulers as a rule are not sampled randomly from the population. Operationally democracy often seems to turn into competitions between rival elites who are making the “best offer” to segments of the electorate. Children and Stress. The article connects childhood stress with later…
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Daily Data Dump – Tuesday
Genetic Components and Cultural Differences: The social sensitivity hypothesis. The frequency of genes and “memes” change in very different ways. As I have long observed while memes can be passed from only one parent, genes are constricted in sexual reproduction to being inherited in part from both parents. How the two may relate (e.g., lactase…
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PCA, Razib around the world (a little)
I have put up a few posts warning readers to be careful of confusing PCA plots with real genetic variation. PCA plots are just ways to capture variation in large data sets and extract out the independent dimensions. Its great at detecting population substructure because the largest components of variation often track between population differences,…
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Marc Hauser on leave from Harvard
Author on leave after Harvard inquiry – Investigation of scientist’s work finds evidence of misconduct, prompts retraction by journal: Harvard University psychologist Marc Hauser — a well-known scientist and author of the book “Moral Minds’’ — is taking a year-long leave after a lengthy internal investigation found evidence of scientific misconduct in his laboratory. The…
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Open thread – August 8th, 2010
Didn’t get to looking into papers from last week’s open thread…but I will. But as usual, comments, links, etc. While I have your attention, my twitter feed is here. I don’t post what I’m eating or anything, but it’s …
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Google Wave is dead
Did you notice that Google Wave was put out of its misery? I didn’t. I guess that says something about Wave’s impact. By the end of last year my main association with Wave was that it was a way for people I was trying to avoid in other ways to recontact me. So what’s happening…
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Daily Data Dump – Friday
Have a good weekend. DNA Dilemma, Day Five: Time to Decide. Mary Carmichael of Newsweek is going to get a personal genomics kit. I predict it will confirm that she is a female of European descent. Diabetes or Not, Dietary Habits of Aftrican-Americans Are Similar. Remember that there’s variance in white ancestry among African Americans.…
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Katz
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Republicans, the middle class party
In my post below I refuted the contention that the Democrats are the party of the rich. As I noted there is some evidence that the super-rich may tilt Democrat. There are some economic and social sectors which lean Democratic because of their social liberalism, but there is no preponderance that I have seen in…
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Republicans still the party of the rich
I notice that Roger L. Simon has an uninformed post up, The Party of the Rich, where he says: Back when I was a kid, we used to assume the Republicans were the party of the rich. It was a given — all those plutocrats with chauffeurs shuttling them between the penthouse in Sutton Place…
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Information explosion & transparent society
No anonymity on future web says Google CEO: “There was five exabytes [five billion gigabytes] of information created between the dawn of civilization through 2003,” he said. “But that much information is now created every two days, and the pace is increasing… People aren’t ready for the technology revolution that’s going to happen to them.…
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Daily Data Dump – Thursday
Why Do Foreigners Like Fanta So Much? I arrived in the USA as a pre-schooler, but the disappearance of Fanta from my life is actually something I wondered about back then. I had no idea that it was a Nazi-origin drink. Chew on This: Six Dental Myths Debunked. You probably know some of these. But…