Positive selection and the tip of the iceberg (1)
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John Hawks (14)
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john hawks weblog (14)
1 week, 5 days
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Razib points to a new paper by Johansson and Gyllensten, in which they develop a comparison of FST and haplotype block length as a test of positive selection. The paper is interesting enough (and open access) -- they give a list of a few variants that are likely selected in different populations. What I wanted to point to was this figure: That pretty much encapsulates the problem of detecting recent positive selection, with current methods. ...
Genomic ancestry of Mexicans (1)
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dienekesp (11)
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Dienekes' Anthropology Blog (11)
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Individuals in an admixed population inherit a fraction of their genomic ancestry from the contributing ancestral groups, with individual chromosomal segments inherited from each of them (as e.g. 23andme's ancestry painting shows) In this paper, researchers discovered that in particular regions of the genome, Mexicans, who are a 3-way mixture of Europeans, Amerindians, and Sub-Saharan Africans,
Sample sizes and the "Neandertal haplogroup" (1)
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John Hawks (14)
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john hawks weblog (14)
1 month, 2 weeks
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I have an excellent e-mail question about last week’s Neandertal mtDNA paper, which has provoked a lot of commentary. I just skimmed over your comments on the recent paper and I have a couple questions. First, how many Neanderthals did they receive mitochondrial DNA from? I think I read somewhere that it was fewer than ten. Second if that is true, what the hell does it mean? I wouldn’t try and predict anything based on ...
ASPM and cerebral cortex evolution in primates (1)
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dienekesp (11)
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Dienekes' Anthropology Blog (11)
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ASPM was initially identified in human-chimp comparisons. Since it was expressed in the brain, it was thought that it played a role in making us different from our closest relatives. This new paper shows that adaptive evolution of ASPM is not limited in the human-chimp split, but occurred in many different primate lineages. Moreover, the target of its evolution was the cerebral cortex. Note that
Interview: “The Alcove with Mark Molaro” (2)
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Mark Pesce (13)
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the human network (13)
1 month, 3 weeks
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Recorded in New York City, 23 June 2008 - the day before I delivered “Hyperpolitics, American Style” at the Personal Democracy Forum. A wide-ranging discussion on hyperconnectivity, hyperpolitics, media, hyperdistribution, and lots of other fun things. Many thanks to Mark for getting it up!
Who has the Burden of Proof? (1)
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keepfishing (4)
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KeepFishing (4)
4 months, 4 weeks
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It is often said by Atheists and similar that when talking about God, the burden of proof falls to the Theists. I guess that this is standard operating procedure in philosophy - the primary position is that things are not, so those that think something IS, have to prove it, rather than the other way round. However, it occurred to me that in the case of God, this seems counter-intuitive. I may be way off, ...
The Truth About UFOs and Aliens (1)
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Mike (248)
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Mind Control Techniques, Covert Hypnosis, and Persuasion (8)
9 months, 3 weeks
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Aliens exist. Intelligent life exists here on Earth and also in many other places in the Universe. Intelligent life is probably so widespread in the universe that it even exists on other solar systems within our Milky Way Galaxy. To most this may sound outrageous; the government vehemently denies any proof of alien contact or UFOs. Witnesses of UFOs are often publicly discredited by both the media and the government, and shunned in their social ...
