Gene Expression

Dog and man: a 30,000 year friendship

To the left is a figure which illustrates the phylogenetic inferences from a new paper in Nature Communications, The genomics of selection in dogs and the parallel evolution between dogs and humans (see Carl Zimmer’s coverage in The New York Times). Why is this paper important? The first thing that jumped out at me is that because they’re using whole genomes (~10X coverage) of a selection of dogs and wolves the results aren’t as subject to the bias of using “chips” of polymorphisms discovere …

Collide-a-Scape

The Forces that Narrow the Climate Debate

Last week on Twitter I lamented the simplistic public discourse on climate change, how it’s often framed by those who dismiss the legitimate concerns of a warming planet and those who play up those concerns. American Politicians, especially those with leadership positions in the Republican and Democratic parties, could steer the debate into calmer waters if they chose, since what they write and say on controversial issues usually makes news.

You can stop laughing now.

A recent Washingt …

Neuroskeptic

A Machine to Weigh the Soul

Newly discovered papers have shed light on a fascinating episode in the history of neuroscience: Weighing brain activity with the balance

The story of the early Italian neuroscientist Dr Angelo Mosso and his ‘human circulation balance’ is an old one – I remember reading about it as a student, in the introductory bit of a textbook on fMRI – but until now, the exact details were murky.

In the new paper, Italian neuroscientists Sandrone and colleagues report that they’ve unearthed Mosso’s ori …

Water Works

Video: Global Water Changes Help Define the Anthropocene

The Global Water System Project at the University of Bonn, in Germany, just released a video on water in the Anthropocene. If you can get past the melodramatic narration, there is a pretty stellar data visualization, based on a lot of federal agency data, that illustrates how the human footprint has changed the global water cycle.

Some of the ways civilization has made its mark on the hydrosphere:

Rainfall patterns are changing
Wet areas are becoming wetter
Dry areas are becoming  …

Gene Expression

Human mutation unveiled

What a great age we live in. Until recently critical parameters in population genetics such as mutation rates had to be inferred and assumed, even though they served as bases for much more complex inferences. Now with humans (and humans are only the beginning!) much of what was inferred is being assessed in a more direct fashion. Caterina Campbell and Even Eichler have a review in Trends in Genetics which surveys the field as it stands now, Properties and rates of germline mutations in human …

The Crux

Citizen Science Ventures Into Space

by Kiki Sanford

Inside a nondescript office building in Mountain View, California, a gathering took place recently that might have been a glimpse into the future.

At first, the people, like the building, didn’t offer many hints of what that future might look like. They came from all walks of life: young, old, students, businesspeople, men and women.

Then they started talking.

Rockets, microgravity, space planes, moon bases, gas stations in orbit – if you didn’t know better …

Seriously, Science?

Just like babies, mouse pups calm down when carried around.

It’s probably a good thing that babies scream, or else they might never get fed. But carrying a screaming, kicking infant can make it difficult to outrun the lion that’s chasing you. So, it makes sense that animal babies have evolved to calm down when being carried. But just because it makes sense, doesn’t make it true! How does one test this? Well, if human babies have evolved to be calm when carried, you would expect other mammals’ babies would also calm down when carried. These scientists …

Science Sushi

"You'll Do": Lack of Choosiness in Female Strawberry Poison Dart Frogs

Mate choice is one of the most well-studied aspects of evolution. To prove that they’re worth the effort, animals will do just about anything. They dance, prance, sing, bellow, and fight for attention. When you look around the animal kingdom, the wild results of mate choice boldly stand out, from the impractically beautiful tails of peacocks to the ostentatious antlers of elk and deer. With so much focus placed on quality, you might assume that every species has their own complex way of conv …

Collide-a-Scape

The Zen Master of Statistics

You may not know this, but there is a celebrity data geek who isn’t named Nate Silver. This other famous statistician is a rock star in the global health and development world. He captivates audiences with innovative presentations that illuminate abstract facts and figures. Last year, Time magazine called Hans Rosling one of the 100 most influential people in the world, writing:
His 2006 TED talk, in which he animated statistics to tell the story of socio-economic development, has been viewed …

Gene Expression

10,000 hours may gain you little if you have no talent

A few years ago Malcolm Gladwell made the “10,000 hour rule” famous in his book Outliers. In practice (e.g., discussions with people day to day or on this blog) the rule gets translated into the inference “practice is what matters.” When talking about genetics this often implicitly also entails that “genes don’t matter.” I’m not saying that this is necessarily what Gladwell’s own exposition taken literally would suggest, but ideas have a way of evolving once they’re outside of the pages of a …