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Meta
Monthly Archives: January 2013
Endocardial fibroelastosis
Endocardial Fibroelastosis (EFE) is a heart disorder of young children. It’s characterized by a thickening of the inmost lining of the heart chambers, usually occurring in children under 2. Back in the day, a few decades ago, it was halfway … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
11 Comments
By-blows, paternal age, and all that.
Once upon a time, people often said that ~10% of children had a biological father other than their nominal father, usually called false paternity or nonpaternity. This notion was particularly common in sociobiological circles. There were others who thought the … Continue reading
Posted in Genetics
72 Comments
What’s the catch?
if someone were to try to create a Neanderthal a few years from now, starting with ancient DNA, they’d have to have worry a lot about data errors, because such errors would translate into mutations, which might be harmful or … Continue reading
Posted in Genetics, Neanderthals
64 Comments
Nasty, brutish, but not that short
Average life span is pretty short for contemporary foragers (30-35 years). For that matter, it was short for agricultural peoples until fairly recently. Most people probably don’t know this. Most of the people who do know fundamentally misunderstand it. Today … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
36 Comments
Dirty Old Men
An interesting PLOS ONE paper from a few years back has been brought to my attention Why Men Matter: Mating Patterns Drive Evolution of Human Lifespan, by Shripad D. Tuljapurkar, Cedric O. Puleston, and Michael D. Gurven. They begin with … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
32 Comments
A Three-Hour Tour
New genetic analysis indicates that Australian Aboriginals, at least those in the northern part of Australia, picked up about 11% of their ancestry from India, relatively recently – about 140 generations ago. 4000-5000 years, depending on generation length. Lots of … Continue reading
Posted in Australian Aboriginals
58 Comments
Homosexuality, epigenetics, and zebras
The recent article in the Quarterly Review of Biology has some good points. It does not argue that homosexuality is adaptive, which would be silly. It does not argue for Lamarckian epigenetics, which would also be silly. I should also … Continue reading
Posted in Homosexuality
172 Comments
Group Selection (and homosexuality)
You can imagine situations in which natural selection would favor an increase in frequency for a trait that aided group survival while hurting individual reproductive success – but it’s not all that easy. Here’s the problem: imagine a situation in … Continue reading
Posted in Homosexuality
137 Comments
Paternal Age and Homosexuality
There’s something interesting about the paternal age effect in homosexuality – apparently there isn’t one. It certainly exists for autism, schizophrenia, manic-depression, and mental retardation, which suggests that de novo mutations play an important role in all of them. But … Continue reading
Posted in Homosexuality
119 Comments
War Before Civilization
When you think of war, you usually think of organized states, or at minimum peoples with moderately sophisticated modes of production, agriculturalists or pastoralists. But hunter-gatherers manage as well. Not just war, but decisive war, the kind that that obliterates … Continue reading
Posted in European Prehistory
21 Comments