razib
Posts by this author
In some of the popular press pieces on the genetic variant which is implicated in heart disease among South Asians there are references to the fact that only 1% of the world's population carries it. Actually, that's obscuring an important piece of information: that 1% is almost exclusively South…
A common MYBPC3 (cardiac myosin binding protein C) variant associated with cardiomyopathies in South Asia:
Heart failure is a leading cause of mortality in South Asians. However, its genetic etiology remains largely unknown1. Cardiomyopathies due to sarcomeric mutations are a major monogenic cause…
There's a new paper, The Peopling of Korea Revealed by Analyses of Mitochondrial DNA and Y-Chromosomal Markers:
Methodology and Results
We analyzed mitochondrial DNA...sequence variation in the hypervariable segments I and II...and haplogroup-specific mutations in coding regions in 445 individuals…
I have a big round up of various responses to my posts on Judeo-Christianity at Secular Right. Ross Douthat responds:
Indeed, the only real problem with the term for his purposes may be that it isn't intellectually lazy enough - that it doesn't create an umbrella big enough for liberal-…
Pervasive Hitchhiking at Coding and Regulatory Sites in Humans. Here's the author summary:
There is much reported evidence for positive selection at specific loci in the human genome. Additional papers based on comparisons between the genomes of humans and chimpanzees have also suggested that…
A neat new paper on Icelandic genetics, then and now, Sequences From First Settlers Reveal Rapid Evolution in Icelandic mtDNA Pool:
A major task in human genetics is to understand the nature of the evolutionary processes that have shaped the gene pools of contemporary populations. Ancient DNA…
About 3 years ago a paper was published on pigmentation which heralded the breaking of the dam when it comes to skin color genetics, SLC24A5, a Putative Cation Exchanger, Affects Pigmentation in Zebrafish and Humans. The zebrafish, a model organism familiar to evo-devoists the world over, played an…
Ross Douthat (also, James Poulos) makes an intelligent, well-informed defense of the term using the general framework that I began with (as opposed to some people who simply insist on digressing immediately to forward their own position). There are also intelligent comments below. Instead of…
Arnold Kling put up a chart which shows how the Masters of the Universe were empty suits. He says:
The pattern is big egos, big money, and big power offering big promises, getting big media play, and making big mistakes (Spitzer's mistakes were relatively small, to be honest). To me, the fiscal…
Vitamin D and Diabetes:
Diabetes is a leading cause of cardiovascular disease. Persons with diabetes are at greater risk for early cardiac mortality, and for repeat events if they survive their first cardiac event. Recently, low serum concentrations of vitamin D have been associated with increased…
Afghan Schoolgirls Under Attack:
One morning two months ago, Shamsia Husseini and her sister were walking through the muddy streets to the local girls school when a man pulled alongside them on a motorcycle and posed what seemed like an ordinary question.
"Are you going to school?"
Then the man…
One of my more quixotic quests has been to dispute the use of the term "Judeo-Christian" in normal conversation. Many people who use the term do so without much forethought, it's just one of the definitions you use to point to the bracketing of the two traditional religions of Western civilization…
The Man Who Made Too Much:
Hedge fund manager John Paulson has profited more than anyone else from the financial crisis. His $3.7 billion payday in 2007 broke every record, and he made it all by betting against homeowners, shareholders, and the rest of us. Now he's paying the price.
There's a lot…
Sleep Habits and Susceptibility to the Common Cold:
There was a graded association with average sleep duration: participants with less than 7 hours of sleep were 2.94 times...more likely to develop a cold than those with 8 hours or more of sleep. The association with sleep efficiency was also…
Over at Culture11, Will Wilson (a mathematics student at Yale) has an interesting article up, Screaming Shapes & Seven-Dimensional Donuts:
It is clear that reductionist and demiurgic approaches to science have stood unchallenged on the intellectual landscape for too long, and their profound…
Our local White Male Patriarch has a post up, What is science?, where he offers a very succinct definition. I have no great disagreements with his definition, but I will add my own overly simple one just to offer another dimension from the perspective of a non-Patriarchal Person of Color:
Science…
This Joe Klein post where he points out that there is a lack of ethnic balance in Obama's rumored Middle East advisors is getting some play:
I suppose that it falls to Jewish males like Cohen (and me) to point out this discrepancy since anyone else making the observation would immediately be…
More ancient DNA, Hair Of Tasmanian Tiger Yields Genes Of Extinct Species:
All the genes that the exotic Tasmanian Tiger inherited only from its mother will be revealed by an international team of scientists in a research paper to be published on 13 January 2009 in the online edition of Genome…
While The Cat's Away: How Removing An Invasive Species Devastated A World Heritage Island:
Removing an invasive species from sub-Antarctic Macquarie Island, a World Heritage Site, has caused environmental devastation that will cost more than A$24 million to remedy, ecologists have revealed.…
Genetic Future (and again), John Hawks and FuturePundit have all touched upon a new Steven Pinker piece in The New York Times Magazine, My Genome, My Self. If you read all the weblogs which talk about personal genomics, I suspect we'll look back at this era like those who read PC Magazine in the…
I have a piece up at Taki's Magazine, The Limits of Certitude. It might be read along with a post at ScienceBlogs, Science is rational; scientists are not.
Turns out that the man who waged a one-man crusade against Bernard Madoff, Harry Markopolos, wants to be left alone. But here's the interesting point:
"Why would people think I feel good about this?" the past president of the Boston Security Analysts Society was quoted as telling the Boston Globe…
There is a new blog on ScienceBlogs, Blogging the Origin, which is going over The Origin of Species. Because this is the Darwin bicentenary there is going to be a lot of the reflection upon the legacy of the great man; e.g., Blog For Darwin. I have to admit that I haven't read The Origin of…
One of the more interesting an robust survey datum in the United States is the low opinion of atheists, and, the finding that atheists are less popular than Mormons or Muslims or Homosexuals when it come to a vote for high office. Secular Right points out that the Inductivist has posted data from…
Language Log has a fascinating post up, The Linguistic Diversity of Aboriginal Europe. The distribution of language families, and their relationships, are not arbitrary. They tell us something about human history. Here is the interesting part for readers of this weblog:
It follows that the…
The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution, has a website up, http://the10000yearexplosion.com. If there is an accelerating wave of media coverage that would probably be the place to track it....