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Open Thread – 09/08/2019

Since the two recent papers on Indian genetics came out, lots of people have suggested that some of the researchers are shading the nature of the results to fit in with Indian politics. To be totally honest I haven’t said much about this because who are we, in the USA, to point fingers? American scientists on Twitter were outraged and offended that some researchers studied the genetic basis for predisposition to same-sex behavior because of social and political consequences.

These are a minority. But the majority, on the whole, didn’t really engage, because they didn’t want to be put in the crosshairs of the militants.

Indian people are pretty interested in, and put a lot of stock in, their origins. Like American scientists, Indian scientists are serving the needs of their constituents. That’s what science is all about now I suppose. If you want the truth in a positivist sense, read the papers, and reanalyze the data. Don’t trust anyone, because they have their paymasters. I’ve been hearing more and more over the years American scientists talking about how they can make their science serve “social justice.” No surprise that scientists elsewhere will serve “Hindu rashtra” or whatever power they’re going to bend before.

China Says Growth Is Fine. Private Data Show a Sharper Slowdown.

Democrats Need to Get More Ruthless. Funny, but true: “Several candidates instead seem to be advocating an agenda that liberals think black, Latino and Asian-American voters support, rather than the agenda that most actually support.”

Rapid detection of identity-by-descent tracts for mega-scale datasets.

Robert Mugabe, Strongman Who Cried, ‘Zimbabwe Is Mine,’ Dies at 95.

The genetic landscape of Ethiopia: diversity, intermixing and the association with culture.

Whole Genome Tree of Life: “Deep Burst” of Organism Diversity.

The role of insect diapause in the divergence of social female castes: Insights from primitively eusocial bumble bee workers.

Selective Sweep at a QTL in a Randomly Fluctuating Environment.

Inferring whole-genome histories in large population datasets.

Britain’s Conservatives Erupt Into Civil War as Unlikely Rebels Defy Boris Johnson.

4 thoughts on “Open Thread – 09/08/2019

  1. Rocks at asteroid impact site record first day of dinosaur extinction

    Date: September 9, 2019
    Source: University of Texas at Austin
    Summary: The research centers on the asteroid impact that wiped out non-avian dinosaurs, with the researchers getting the most detailed look yet of the aftermath that followed by examining the rocks and debris that filled the crater within the first 24 hours after impact.
    URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190909160102.htm

    When the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs slammed into the planet, the impact set wildfires, triggered tsunamis and blasted so much sulfur into the atmosphere that it blocked the sun, which caused the global cooling that ultimately doomed the dinos.

    That’s the scenario scientists have hypothesized. Now, a new study led by The University of Texas at Austin has confirmed it by finding hard evidence in the hundreds of feet of rocks that filled the impact crater within the first 24 hours after impact.

    The evidence includes bits of charcoal, jumbles of rock brought in by the tsunami’s backflow and conspicuously absent sulfur. They are all part of a rock record that offers the most detailed look yet into the aftermath of the catastrophe that ended the Age of Dinosaurs, said Sean Gulick, a research professor at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics (UTIG) at the Jackson School of Geosciences.

    * * *

    The research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Sept. 9 and builds on earlier work co-led and led by the Jackson School that described how the crater formed and how life quickly recovered at the impact site. An international team of more than two dozen scientists contributed to this study.

    Most of the material that filled the crater within hours of impact was produced at the impact site or was swept in by seawater pouring back into the crater from the surrounding Gulf of Mexico. Just one day deposited about 425 feet of material — a rate that’s among the highest ever encountered in the geologic record. This breakneck rate of accumulation means that the rocks record what was happening in the environment within and around the crater in the minutes and hours after impact and give clues about the longer-lasting effects of the impact that wiped out 75% of life on the planet.

    Gulick described it as a short-lived inferno at the regional level, followed by a long period of global cooling.

    “We fried them and then we froze them,” Gulick said. “Not all the dinosaurs died that day, but many dinosaurs did.”

    Researchers estimate the asteroid hit with the equivalent power of 10 billion atomic bombs of the size used in World War II. The blast ignited trees and plants that were thousands of miles away and triggered a massive tsunami that reached as far inland as Illinois. Inside the crater, researchers found charcoal and a chemical biomarker associated with soil fungi within or just above layers of sand that shows signs of being deposited by resurging waters. This suggests that the charred landscape was pulled into the crater with the receding waters of the tsunami.

    * * *

  2. Big Day at PNAS

    “Scientists Find the Pitter Patter of Neanderthal Feet: Researchers uncover 257 preserved footprints, ‘a snapshot of the life’ of the extinct human species.” By Robert Lee Hotz on Sept. 9, 2019
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/scientists-find-the-pitter-patter-of-neanderthal-feet-11568055600

    … scientists have uncovered hundreds of footprints left by Neanderthal children, adolescents and adults as they walked the ancient wind-swept dunes of coastal Normandy in France, a new study says.

    Left by up to a dozen or so members of the extinct human species, the 80,000-year-old impressions are the largest known collection of Neanderthal tracks, documenting the movements of a group in an era when they were the only human kind in Western Europe, said scientists at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. They published their analysis of the footprints on Monday in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

    * * *

    Based on the size of the imprints, most of them were likely made by children, the youngest perhaps between two and four years old, the scientists said. The smallest footprints measured 4.4 inches long, big enough to fit a modern size 4 shoe suitable for a toddler. The largest were more adult, measuring 11 inches or so.

    * * *

    The researchers also found eight handprints imprinted in the hardened fine-grained sand. Those are the only known direct imprints of Neanderthal hands, the scientists said. …

    The sand prints were found buried under a seaside creek bottom between the beach and a cliff at Le Rozel in Normandy, about 16 miles from Cherbourg, where French anthropologists have been excavating since 2012. Between 70,000 and 115,000 years ago, the area was a broad stretch of sand dunes.

    In all, the scientists found 257 footprints preserved in several layers of sediments, indicating the site had been used off and on for many years. Windblown grit had rapidly covered and preserved the impressions left by feet in sandy mud, the scientists said.

    * * *

    … the researchers also unearthed flint blades, scraping tools, hearths, and 8,000 animal bones. They didn’t, however, find any fossil human remains, complicating their effort to identify which early species had walked there. Dozens of the tracks showed clear impressions of a well-rounded heel and individual toes, the scientists said. Generally, the footprints were broader than those typically left by modern humans, the scientists said. Based on the length and width of various tracks, the researchers estimated that the individuals ranged from about two feet (66 cm) tall to about 6 feet (189.2 cm) tall. More than half of them were less than 4 feet 2 inches tall (130 cm). Based on anatomy, the antiquity of the site and the style of stone tools at the site, the researchers concluded they could only have been made by Neanderthals.

    * * *

  3. Few interesting phys.org articles from today to various folk:

    https://phys.org/news/2019-09-earliest-evidence-consumption.html“Researchers find earliest evidence of milk consumption” – British Neolithic farmers (before the Beakers) liked milk… or at least dairy (Since no LP? If this matters as much as commonly thought for raw milk consumption).

    https://phys.org/news/2019-09-bones-roman-britons-clues-dietary.html“Bones of Roman Britons provide new clues to dietary deprivation”. High nitrogen isotope ratios may be an indicator of nutritional stress and are not straightforwardly interpretable as a richer diet enriched in meat products.

    https://phys.org/news/2019-09-cranium-oldest-human-ancestor.html – reconstruction of early AMH cranial shape from Early H Sap, Neanderthal and diverse recent people, and others. Interesting if you’re fascinated by how ancient people looked and humans have changed and diversified.

    On latter paper, they explore through PCA as well (see Fig 1 and Fig 2 here – https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-11213-w). It seems like modern Alaskans, native North Americans and Inuit are most similar of people today to Early Modern Humans on the main dimensions PC1 separating gracile modern humans from Erectus (Neanderthals mid way) and PC2 residual difference of Neanderthals from Erectus (AMH mid way). Other AMH are too gracile, with proportionately small faces relative to braincase (including Native Australians and Oceanians. Gracility maximised in Khoi-San, South Asians and North Africans). But modern Alaskan/NA/Inuit AMH also have an intra-present day North Eurasian vs African/Southern shift on PC3 which Early AMH lack (reflecting rounder crania rather than longer crania, maximised in SE Asian Bamar and Native North Americans, consistent with tendencies for rounder crania to peak in mainland Southeast Asia and the Americas relative to Northeast Asia and Canada).

    Unusually Northern Europeans (and slightly also NNA and Southern Europeans) also seem to have a slight Neanderthal shape shift relative to other AMH, which doesn’t normally show up in these things. (Above is just largest 3 PCA for 84% of variance, 1:65.6%, 2:13.1%, 3: 5.78%… so remaining regional relationships and shape and sampling biases etc will be found in remaining 16%).

  4. Who are we to point fingers?
    Outsiders!
    If not us, then who?

    Maybe I don’t know what you mean by “pointing finger.” Don’t claim it’s uniquely bad. Don’t use outrage. But do say it.

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