Adaptation, Plasticity, and Extinction in a Changing Environment: Towards a Predictive Theory. It’s beneficial to have a little give.
Enculturation and Wall Street. Rich, irrational herds? I think you can’t ignore the Magnetar strategy either. What may be rational for a firm or individual may result in the shrinking of the aggregate pie.
Peppers May Increase Energy Expenditure in People Trying to Lose Weight. No wonder so many people who like bland food are fat.
Y chromosomes of Northwest China. No surprise if you’ve read Empires of the Silk Road.
Crossing the Wallace Line. Patterns across species.
Razib Khan’s degrees are in biochemistry and biology. He has blogged about genetics since 2002, previously worked in software development, is an Unz Foundation Junior Fellow and lives in the western US. He loves habaneros.
April 29th, 2010 at 3:16 am
[...] Adaptation, Plasticity, and Extinction in a Changing Environment: Towards a Predictive Theory below. I am somewhat familiar with one of the authors, Russell Lande, and his work in quantitative and [...]
April 29th, 2010 at 4:35 am
The peppers story doesn’t really help to explain why Mexico has such a problem with obesity. Maybe it’s all them refried beans.
The thing I have always struggled to understand is why chillies in the diet seem far more entrenched in countries closer to the equator – with some exceptions, but as a trend, the c0untries where spicy food is the norm tend to be the hotter countries. I know the received wisdom about spices helping to prevent meat spoiling, but this story runs counter to that – raising the body temperature should be more attractive in cold climates.
Not, I hasten to add, that I have anything against people eating spicy food, and certainly not our esteemed host, but I have never really felt that I understood the modern global distribution of it.
In China, it’s weird – people in Sichuan Province make their food fiery hot, while in most of the rest of China, the food is really pretty bland. In the northeast, they go much more for garlic and spring onion than the hot stuff. Likewise Korea – land at Seoul airport, and the smell of garlic nearly knocks you over. I don’t mind, I love garlic, but it’s very noticeable. But then there’s kimchi, which is pretty hot – not for the Zeebster, but for mere mortals.
No biggie, but it’s interesting. I’d welcome a comment from anyone who understands it.
April 29th, 2010 at 5:45 am
[...] Adaptation, Plasticity, and Extinction in a Changing Environment: Towards a Predictive Theory below. I am somewhat familiar with one of the authors, Russell Lande, and his work in quantitative and [...]