1) Weird search query of the week: “145 iq can’t hold job”
2) Fluff below the fold….
Month: October 2011
In the year 2015….
Recently I was having a discussion with some friends about getting the full genomes of everyone in my immediate family when the price point comes down to $1,000, just as I have had my immediately family genotyped. You can find some interesting stuff just from the genotype alone, which for current affordable platforms aims for ~1 million variant markers out of ~3 billion base pairs. For example, I inferred that two of my siblings have a coefficient of relatedness of ~0.41, 3 standard deviations below the expectation of 0.50. Another way to put it might be that they’re 1/3rd of the way to being half-siblings! With whole genomes the opportunities are even greater. You could for example ascertain the distribution of novel mutations by comparing parental genomes to offspring. I also began to consider the fact that we might start developing intuitions about the expected number of new mutations a child should have based on how old their parents are.
This led me to reread Armand Leroi’s 2006 piece, The future of neo-eugenics. Now that many people approve the elimination of certain genetically defective fetuses, is society closer to screening all fetuses for all known mutations? One particular section jumped out at me because it is surprisingly dated for a five-year-old essay:
At the American Antipode
Argentina has famously gone from being the 10th wealthiest to the 60th wealthiest nation in the world over the past 100 years. But I was curious about the trends for its neighbors as well in a world context.
The Betsileo of Madagascar are Malay and Bantu
A month ago I posted the genetic results of a Malagasy individual of Merina identity. Today I post those for someone of Betsileo heritage. All the technical details are the same. You can find all the ADMIXTURE and PCA files here.
This genotyping was paid for by readers. I’ll update the post with the names of those who contributed below the fold later. If you contributed but don’t want to be named, email me at contactgnxp -at- gmail -dot- com, and I’ll leave you off the list.
Which Hispanics identify as white?
I wanted to clarify a few issues with the Census’ American Community Survey. These data come from the interval of 2006-2008, and they allowed me to query the proportional of various Latino/Hispanic groups who identified as white. I knew in the aggregate that the majority of America’s Latinos identified as white, but I was curious about two things:
1) The variation in white identification by group (by national origin)
2) The variation in white identification of Mexican Americans by selected states
Results below. There are stories in these data….
Gene Expression DonorsChoose
I haven’t raised that much money this year on DonorsChoose. No idea why that is. Perhaps I didn’t pick projects appealing to my readers? Also, I’ve frankly been too busy to bring notice to it very often. It’s great that Phil is doing the heavy lifting for Discover, but I’d like to help a little more. Especially since I got this notification:
The DonorsChoose.org Board of Directors wants to thank you for your hard work, and to encourage readers to give, by matching all donations to Science Bloggers for Students between the first moment of Thursday October 20th and the last moment of Saturday, October 22nd (midnight to midnight Eastern time).
If you were involved in last year’s campaign, the mat ch will work the same way the HP match did:
-At the end of the three day period, all dollars donated will be totaled, and the Board of Directors will match those dollars.
-The number of dollars will be divided by the number of people who donated, and gift codes will be issued to every donor (via e-mail) for an equal share of the matching dollars. So, if 100 people donate $10,000, each donor will receive a $100 DonorsChoose.org gift code.
-Individuals will, in turn, have the chance to apply the funds to whatever classroom project they choose.
In other financial news, John Wilkins of Evolving Thoughts is going through a rough patch. He’s asking for donations via PayPal. John has produced a lot of great content over the years. Tipping him some would be more of a payment for services rendered than a charitable contribution.
Why do we still vary?
I notice that last summer Karl Smith asked “Why Are There Short People?” His logic is pretty good, except for the fact that the fitness variation seems to be much starker in males than females (there is some evidence I’ve seen that shorter women can be more fertile, though that’s balanced by the fact that larger women seem to be able to manage gestation better). In any case, height seems to be a fitness enhancing trait which is highly heritable, and yet the variation in height remains!
Ötzi tidbits
The genome of Ötzi the Iceman is floating around somewhere, but for now we only have to go on what leaks out via the media. From National Geographic, Iceman Autopsy:
The modern human coordination miracle
Thanks to Ed Yong several people on twitter have encountered my post, The point mutation which made humanity. My broader concern which I was attempting to highlight is that too often when we attempt to ascertain the origins of modern human success in relation to our archaic cousins/ancestors we presume that there must be a qualitative species-wide difference. So, for example, it used to be bandied about that a large effect mutation conferred upon the ancestors of modern humans the ability to speak with the fluency which we take for granted. For various reasons that seems less and less plausible.
Individual differences don't lie
Over at Think Progress there’s a piece titled Why We Can’t Dismiss The NBA Labor Dispute As ‘Millionaires Versus Billionaires’, where the author argues that the players are fundamentally different than the owners in relation to the acquisition of their wealth. There’s a whole lot of prose there, but the first commenter really hit the nail on the head: Chris Rock solved this shit years ago (and you just read that in his voice) – “The guys on the court are RICH. The guy sitting up in the box is WEALTHY.” If you magically multiplied the players’ salaries by a factor of two all that would do is that push back the likelihood of bankruptcy by 5 years or so. An added cushion would take more time to burn through, but that would be compensated for the fact that signalling consumption would increase. In other words, instead of 8 cars in the garage, 16. Instead of an entourage of 6, 12.