Some sources/influences on my previous post, and my thinking in general, are listed below. I’m not recommending that everyone run off and buy all of these books, but they might pique your curiosity. Of course, to the extent one has time, it’s always good to read and re-read the classic h-bd/evolutionary psychology writers such as […]

[this is a slightly edited version of what was originally a haloscan comment] I have come to believe that it is crucial to realize that there are other factors in intelligence besides g and its subfactors (e.g. math/performance, visuospatial, verbal, short-term memory). This is important not only factually and scientifically, but politically as well; a […]

Slate has been having a debate on sex differences. Along the way, they hit on a key Summers issue: The apparent higher male variability of math scores. Shaffer, the author, refers to the classic Feingold piece, a cross-cultural meta-study of the variability of mental abilities across genders. Shaffer makes the common claim that there are […]

A Gene Wiki for Community Annotation of Gene Function.

While showing that the super-popularity of blonds is recent, I saw an apparent reversal of the upward trend around 2000, suggesting that perhaps Playboy readers are becoming fatigued by blonds. To get a better feel for what the younger generations prefer, let’s look at Maxim magazine (US edition), whose average reader is 27.5 years old […]

Ben G in the comments points to COMMON GENETIC VARIANTS UNDERLYING COGNITIVE ABILITY, a dissertation. I don’t have time to read the whole thing right now, but comments welcome. Labels: Genomics

That’s what Daniel is asking at Genetic Future, and he is soliciting the input of the economically informed. I’ve closed comments on this post so as to encourage you to leave comments there if you have something intelligent to say. Also, Dan posted last year. FWIW I am moderately skeptical of health benefits for the […]

I assume most readers know about SNPedia, but I started noticing some traffic from it recently, so it must be gaining some traction.

Continuing my series of notes on Sewall Wright’s population genetics, I come to the subject of migration. This is important in understanding the differences between Wright and R. A. Fisher on the role of genetic drift in evolution. Fisher and Wright both agreed that genetic drift would be too weak a process to be of […]

More religious demographics from Pew: Conservative blacks and Mitt Flanders.

In discussions of nature vs. nurture a common assumption is that if it is in the genes then we can’t fix it. Or we can only change it by eugenics or bioengineering babies. I wish to suggest a different approach. The following links provide background:Bioengineered Stem Cells Rejuvenate Muscles In Mice Stem Cell Review Series: […]

Recent advances in genotyping have made genome-wide association studies the standard way to study the genetics of a phenotype in humans (model organisms, for various reasons, are suddenly lagging behind). In terms of simply identifying loci underlying disease, this approach has led to a number of notable successes, but there’s been a nagging concern that […]

Trait-Like Brain Activity during Adolescence Predicts Anxious Temperament in Primates. ScienceDaily summary: We all know people who are tense and nervous and can’t relax. They may have been wired differently since childhood. …. “We’re looking for better ways to diagnose and treat mental illness,” explains Kalin, about his ongoing work at HealthEmotions. “We’re trying to […]

PLoS stays afloat with bulk publishing: Science-publishing firm struggles to make ends meet with open-access model. In Nature News.

When The Inductivist observed that the unchurched tend more toward criminality, I asked whether social matrix would be a major factor here. In other words, in an area where church going is a major signal of social conformity antisocial oddballs would be far more likely to break the the norm. With a follow up The […]

Pardis Sabeti on The Future of Genomics (video). Via Sandy.