razib | March 5, 2009Neural Markers of Religious Conviction:
Many people derive peace of mind and purpose in life from their belief in God. For others, however, religion provides unsatisfying answers. Are there brain differences between believers and nonbelievers? Here we show that religious conviction is marked by reduced reactivity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a cortical system that is involved in the experience of anxiety and is important for self-regulation. In two studies, we recorded electroencephalographic neural reactivity in the ACC as participants completed a Stroop task. Results showed that…
razib | March 5, 2009FuturePundit has some musings on the possiblities of $100 genome sequencing in 5 years:
Cheap portable DNA sequencers will also lead to surreptitious DNA sequencing of people without their awareness. I expect to see this on the dating and bar scene. I also expect to see it in job interview and business negotiation situations. Check to see if your potential employee or business partner has genes that give them cognitive traits to avoid or embrace.
To be frank, this seems to b aiming too low. After all, why look to genetic profiles which suggest potentialities or probabilities? If you can get…
razib | March 4, 2009Geographical Affinities of the HapMap Samples:
The CHB and JPT are readily distinguished from one another with both autosomal and Y-chromosomal markers, and results obtained after combining them into a single sample should be interpreted with caution. The CEU are better described as being of Western European ancestry than of Northern European ancestry as often reported. Both the CHB and CEU show subtle but detectable signs of admixture. Thus the YRI and JPT samples are well-suited to standard population-genetic studies, but the CHB and CEU less so.
razib | March 4, 2009The author of Liar's Poker sure can write prose. Michael Lewis' massive article on Iceland is very interesting, and sheds light on a general phenomenon with a specific example.
razib | March 2, 2009The answer to the question in the title is no doubt multifactorial. Here are a few possible reasons:
1) Fewer numbers of Muslims proportionately
2) A more diverse population of Muslims, so reducing synergy between ethnicity and religion
3) An immigration policy which has resulted in a foreign-born population with higher educational qualifications than the native population, ergo, lack of synergy between socioeconomic deprivation and religion
4) America's more receptive attitude toward immigrants
5) America's economic system which has a "fluid" labor market, allowing newcomers to break into…
razib | March 2, 2009Thabet points me to this interactive map which breaks down attitudes to Creationism in the United Kingdom by region. Refreshingly the sentiment in favor of Creationism is far lower than the United States. Below the fold I've reformatted the data for easier viewing and comparison.
Below is a map with the regions labeled. Wales is blue because it is the only region where theist evolution is plural majority (all other areas have atheistic evolution as the majority position).
What's going on here? Wales & Northern Ireland fit our expectations as relatively more religious regions within…
razib | March 1, 2009If you read an older work like The History and Geography of Human Genes based on classical genetic markers Sardinia stands out on charts of genetic distance. This is probably due to the fact that Sardinia is an island and gene flow from surrounding regions is relatively limited due to the physical barriers. So the first settlers have an outsized genetic impact which is not diluted over time by intermarriage with surrounding populations. Additionally, because an island can be treated as an isolate, that reduces effective population and increases the power of random genetic drift, which will…
razib | February 28, 2009There are nearly 500 complete responses to the survey from last week. Here's a CSV file of the results. Below the fold are the frequencies as well as N's. I might report some trends in the data, but a lot of it is predictable. People who only read ScienceBlogs GNXP are way more liberal than those who do not.
Reads....
Only GNXP ScienceBlogs
Only GNXP Classic
Both
No Answer
1.83
2.08
2.87
Far Left
13.76
4.17
2.87
Left
28.44
5.56
11.48
Center Left
16.51
10.42
15.31
Center
8.26
6.94
11.00
Center Right
2.75
10.42
11.00
Right
1.83
13.19
10.05
Far Right
0.92
9.03
5.74…
razib | February 28, 2009You can watch me talk to Greg Cochran about his book The 10,000 Year Explosion on bloggingheads.tv this weekend....
There's something interesting about the front page of bloggingheads.tv right now.
Check it. Not only are the two colored people on the front not talking to each other (yeah, I'm talking about the Glenn & John duo), but both happen to be secular Bangladeshi American Republican males. Who have met each other to boot. Conspiracy? Or coincidence? You decide.
razib | February 27, 2009Matt Yglesias says:
There's no denying that this is a pretty amusing poster. Still, it reminds me that I think the film engaged in a bit of revisionism when it portrayed the Autobots as humanoid-shaped robots capable of change into cars and trucks and so forth. My understanding from my childhood is that we should think of them as car-shaped robots capable of changing into humanoid-shaped ones. After all, they're called autobots, like automobiles. Their essential property is their car-ishness.
No surprise that Matt is being ahistorical, and relying on analysis of terminology, instead of…
razib | February 26, 2009
Polish Genetics & Anthropology points out that the Estonian Genetics Project is reporting:
The more than 25,000 blood samples collected already make it possible to conduct various background studies. For example, comparing the genetic data of Estonians with other European nations has revealed that Latvians, Lithuanians, Poles and some Russians are genetically much more similar to Estonians than the Finns with whom Estonians share a similar language.
The genetic maps I post on now and then are real popular (invariably they are the ones that sites like reddit pick up), but the sample sizes…
razib | February 26, 2009I just got pointed to Confronting Evolution's Racists Roots via my RSS. This is a common tactic. And it might work for unsophisticated people on the margins. Just like a tract like "Christianity's racist past" would also sell. Or, "Socialism's white supremacist heritage." But intellectually it's a rather low-brow tactic. The real question is: Is It True? The racism of European intellectuals and the racialist inferences made from evolutionary theory are of historical interest, but not of scientific ones. It isn't as if a tract with the title "Jesus Christ, Semitic Supremacist," would…
razib | February 25, 2009How bank bonuses let us all down:
...Because banking is not about true risks but perceived volatility of returns: you earn a stream of steady bonuses for seven or eight years, then when the losses take place, you are not asked to disburse anything. You might even start again, after blaming a "systemic crisis" or a "black swan" for your losses. As you do not disgorge previous compensation, the incentive is to engage in trades that explode rarely, after a period of steady gains.
...
If capitalism is about incentives, it should be about true incentives, those resistant to blow-ups. And there…
razib | February 25, 2009A few days ago I mentioned that the story about a bumper crop of twins in a German town in southern Brazil was notable because of the elevated frequency of identical, not fraternal, twins. A reader points out that that was an error, and The New York Times has appended a correction:
The Cândido Godói Journal article on Monday, about the unexplained proliferation of twins born in the farming town of Cândido Godói in southern Brazil, misstated the type of twins usually associated with a genetic tendency of the mother. They are fraternal twins -- like a majority of those born in the town.…
razib | February 25, 2009Mark Chu-Carroll has an excellent smack-down, Financial Morons, and Quadratics vs. Linears. Mark notes:
There's one minor problem with that argument: it doesn't work. A couple of weeks ago, some idiot at JP Morgan circulated a chart that was supposed to summarize just how bad the financial disaster has been. The chart circulated for a couple of weeks - bounced from mailbox to mailbox, sent from one financial genius to another.
Only the chart was blatantly, obviously, trivially wrong, and anyone who had the slightest damned clue of the assets those businesses managed - i.e., the kind of thing…
razib | February 24, 2009Just a heads up, the old "AlphaPsy" weblog is now Cognition & Culture. One of the contributors is Dan Sperber, who I interviewed a few years ago.
razib | February 24, 2009Daniel Gross of Slate has a piece up, Dumb Money: The villains of the financial catastrophe aren't criminals. They're morons. I just love the use of the term "morons." As Gross notes though there was plenty of g to go around, but that didn't prevent moronic behavior. But, I do think it is worth considering whether the behavior was really that stupid. After all it isn't as if wizards of high finance are going to go through the same sort of crash toward subsistence or penury of middle class borrowers who recklessly increased consumption during the bubble years. Remember that the individuals…
razib | February 24, 2009New Safety, New Concerns In Tests for Down Syndrome:
The new tests take advantage of techniques that can isolate and analyze tiny bits of genetic information from the fetus that circulate in a woman's bloodstream, in this case from cells or free-floating snippets of DNA or the related molecule RNA.
At least four companies are developing such tests, including Sequenom of San Diego, which plans to be the first on the market in June. The other companies hope to have their versions on the market within a year.
"For 50 years, folks have been working to develop a noninvasive genetic test for Down…
razib | February 24, 2009Association Between Serum 25-Hydroxyvitamin D Level and Upper Respiratory Tract Infection in the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey:
The median serum 25(OH)D level was 29 ng/mL...and 19%...of participants reported a recent URTI [recent respiratory tract infections]. Recent URTI was reported by 24% of participants with 25(OH)D levels less than 10 ng/mL, by 20% with levels of 10 to less than 30 ng/mL, and by 17% with levels of 30 ng/mL or more...Even after adjusting for demographic and clinical characteristics, lower 25(OH)D levels were independently associated with recent…