The current study, based on the nationally representative NLSY data, follows incarceration over a 24-year period. This represents the longest prospective examination of the NLSY crime data to date, since previous analyses have been shorter and is not prospective (Herrnstein & Murray, 1994). With the aim of providing greater confidence in the results, unlike prior analyses the current study uses three major criminological outcomes (onset, incidence and frequency of incarceration), and not one (incidence of incarceration). Based on theoretically reformulated associations between the study variables, the results show that low IQ, low parental SES and their interaction modestly predict the incidence of, frequency of and time to incarceration.Related posts:Theoretically, a low IQ may make coping and decision-making difficult and increase the likelihood of crime. Taken in isolation the association between low IQ and increased risk of crime in the current results may be taken as evidence that is consistent with the Bell Curve (Herrnstein & Murray, 1994). Concurrently, however, the present results also indicate that a low parental SES increases the risk of crime, potentially through an inadequate familial environment (Bradley & Corwyn, 2002). These family characteristics may include little emphasis on social attainment. Thus, the current findings indicate that the family environment may provide a route to influence the association between IQ and crime. This possibility is not considered in the Bell Curve view on crime that emphasizes neighborhood SES (Herrnstein & Murray, 1994), and is consistent with opponents to the Bell Curve (Fischer et al., 1996).
Collectively, however, the effects of IQ and parental SES on crime are modestly amplified, as captured by the interaction reflecting unfavorable conditions (i.e., particularly if both IQ and parental SES are low). A possible explanation of this interaction is that a disadvantaged home environment does not encourage social attainment and a low IQ makes coping and decision-making difficult. Taken together this increases the likelihood of crime. Thus these findings support an interactional perspective of crime. Their interpretation is consistent with the usually competing theoretical notions that contrast low SES (Fischer et al., 1996) or low IQ (Herrnstein & Murray, 1994) as factors that increase the likelihood of crime. [. . .]
This study does not separate genetic–environmental influences, unlike past research (e.g., Koenen, Caspi, Moffitt, Rijsdijk, & Taylor, 2006). SES may not purely be an environmental factor that is unrelated to IQ. Parents may give children both genes for IQ and SES (i.e., passive gene–environment associations), and a parent’s SES is partly based on their IQ as a result of life-long active gene–environment interactions. Accordingly, IQ and SES may be moderately correlated due to common genetic influences. Also, as the participants in this study mature, they become increasingly free to create their own environments, partly due to both IQ and SES. The current study, however, affords no assessment of genetics, or upward or downward social mobility, thereby highlighting key directions for future research.
IQ, SES, and criminality
No evidence for higher testosterone in black compared to white adolescent males
Racial/ethnic differences in serum sex steroid hormone concentrations in US adolescent males. Cancer Causes & Control. April 2013, Volume 24, Issue 4, pp 817-826
OBJECTIVE: Contrary to the hypothesis that the racial/ethnic disparity in prostate cancer has a hormonal basis, we did not observe a difference in serum testosterone concentration between non-Hispanic black and white men in the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III), although non-Hispanic black men had a higher estradiol level. Unexpectedly, Mexican–American men had the highest testosterone level. Next, we evaluated whether the same patterns are observed during adolescence, the time of prostate maturation.This sample is not large, and some of the statistical adjustments may be questionable. But others have also failed to find black-white differences in testosterone among adolescents in unadjusted NHANES data; nor were they seen in a larger study of adolescents,METHODS: We measured serum testosterone, estradiol, and sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG) by immunoassay in 134 males aged 12–19 in NHANES III. Mean concentrations were compared by race/ethnicity adjusting for age, Tanner stage, percent body fat, waist, physical activity, tobacco smoke, and the other hormones.
RESULTS: After multivariable adjustment, in the 12–15-year-old males, testosterone concentration was lower in non-Hispanic blacks than whites (p = 0.043), SHBG concentration did not significantly differ between the two groups. Mexican–Americans had the highest testosterone (versus non-Hispanic black: p = 0.002) and lowest SHBG (versus non-Hispanic white: p = 0.010; versus non-Hispanic black: p = 0.047) concentrations. Estradiol concentration was lower in non-Hispanic blacks (p = 0.11) and Mexican–Americans (p = 0.033) compared with non-Hispanic whites. After multivariable adjustment, in the 16–19-year-old males, testosterone, estradiol, and SHBG concentrations did not differ between non-Hispanic blacks and whites. Mexican–Americans had the highest testosterone concentration (versus non-Hispanic white: p = 0.08), but did not differ from the other groups on estradiol and SHBG concentrations. In both age groups, these patterns were generally present, but less pronounced after adjusting for age and Tanner stage only.
CONCLUSION: In adolescent males, non-Hispanic blacks did not have a higher testosterone concentration than non-Hispanic whites, and Mexican–Americans had the highest testosterone concentration, patterns similar to adult males.
A large biracial cross-section of 1038 healthy children aged 6-18 yr with 519 blacks, 519 whites, 678 males, and 360 females was evaluated for Tanner stage and serum levels of androstenedione, dehydroepiandrosterone- sulfate, estradiol, progesterone, and testosterone. The anthropometric values of the blacks and whites were very similar at each Tanner stage with only minor differences in age, height, and weight related to an earlier onset of puberty in blacks. The hormones dehydroepiandrosterone- sulfate, progesterone, and testosterone did not exhibit any racial differences. Estradiol showed a significantly higher level among black males compared to white males (P 5 0.05) whereas androstenedione was significantly higher in both white males (P = 0.0001) and females (P I 0.01) compared with blacks.
Alan Templeton's model of human origins
The human lineage two million years ago was a population with ape-sized brains limited to sub-Saharan Africa. The human lineage expanded into Eurasia around 1.85 million years ago, and our brain size increased throughout the Pleistocene. Anatomically modern humans first appeared in Africa about 200,000 years ago, with anatomically modern forms appearing outside of Africa at more recent dates. [. . .]One powerful way of extracting this information about past evolution is through multilocus nested clade analysis (MLNCA). This method converts the evolutionary history of a DNA region with little to no recombination into a series of nested branches (clades), which captures time (the deeper the branch in a nested series, the older the time), and then overlays the spatial distribution of the currently observed genetic variation upon the nested series. In this manner, we can estimate the evolutionary history of current variation through both space and time. [. . .]
MLNCA does not require a prespecified model of evolution; rather, the model emerges naturally out of the cross-validated statistically significant inferences. Thus, there is no inherent bias toward any a priori model of human evolution. The cross-validated MLNCA inferences produced a model of human evolution that had some features of previous models, but unique features as well (Figure).
Mass media and public opinion
How far can media undermine democratic institutions and how persuasive can it be in assuring public support for dictator policies? We study this question in the context of Germany between 1929 and 1939. Using quasi-random geographical variation in radio availability, we show that radio had a significant negative effect on the Nazi vote share between 1930 and 1933, when political news had an anti-Nazi slant. This negative effect was fully undone in just one month after Nazis got control over the radio in 1933 and initiated heavy radio propaganda.Steve Sailer: "Gay Marriage" in Ngram: Media Muscle in action
Here's a Google Ngram graph of usage in books of the terms "gay marriage" in red and "homosexual marriage" in blue from 1800 to 2008. The terms were essentially nonexistent until the early 1970s, after which there were a tiny, relatively stable number of references to "homosexual marriage" for two decades. Then there was an inflection point around 1994 and another one around 2003. (Methodology notes: The graph above reflects Ngram's default three-year moving average smoothing. If you turn off smoothing, the inflection points appear a little later than when smoothing is on. Of course, books perhaps lag behind other media because of their longer production cycles.)Nate Silver: Gay Marriage Opponents Now in MinorityI'm fascinated by the mechanics of media muscle reflected in the two inflection points. Here's a topic that had interested almost nobody, straight or gay, for, roughly, ever, yet then in two stages becomes a cultural obsession.
This is the fourth credible poll in the past eight months to show an outright majority of Americans in favor of gay marriage. That represents quite a lot of progress for supporters of same-sex marriage. Prior to last year, there had been just one survey — a Washington Post poll conducted in April 2009 — to show support for gay marriage as the plurality position, and none had shown it with a majority.As we noted last August, support for gay marriage seems to have been increasing at an accelerated pace over the past couple of years. Below is an update to the graph from last year’s article, which charts the trend from all available public polls on same-sex marriage going back to 1988.
Miscellaneous links
Audacious Epigone: Skin tone and IQ, and volunteering, too
Human Varieties: Is Psychometric g a Myth?
Jason Malloy: Cryptic Admixture, Mixed-Race Siblings, & Social Outcomes
Bruce Charlton: Harvard is a second rate research university
Staffan's Personality Blog: The Personality of Tribalism (via hbd chick)
IQ-height correlation partly attributable to pleiotropic genetic factors (not just cross-assortative mating)
In this study, we modeled the covariation between monozygotic and dizygotic twins, their siblings, and their parents (total N = 7,905) to elucidate the nature of the correlation between two potentially sexually selected traits in humans: height and IQ. Unlike previous designs used to investigate the nature of the height–IQ correlation, the present design accounts for the effects of assortative mating and provides much less biased estimates of additive genetic, non-additive genetic, and shared environmental influences. Both traits were highly heritable, although there was greater evidence for non-additive genetic effects in males. After accounting for assortative mating, the correlation between height and IQ was found to be almost entirely genetic in nature. Model fits indicate that both pleiotropy and assortative mating contribute significantly and about equally to this genetic correlation. [. . .]Related posts:Taller people tend to be smarter. Although the relationship is modest, height and IQ are consistently correlated at ~.10–.20 [24], [25], [26]. [. . .]
The importance of genetic pleiotropy on the association between IQ and height is notable. On the surface, it might seem that height and IQ involve very different functional systems with different developmental origins. Genetic pleiotropy between IQ and height (indeed, between any two complex fitness traits) is consistent with the idea that variation in these traits partly reflects genome-wide mutational loads, and that these traits are components of attractiveness because of this—i.e., they are honest signals or cues of ‘good genes’ [43], [44], [45]. The additional and substantial increase in additive genetic covariance as a function of assortative mating is consistent with both traits being attractive to the opposite sex.
A model of social class from BBC survey data
A New Model of Social Class? Findings from the BBC’s Great British Class Survey Experiment (pdf):
We analyse the largest survey of social class ever conducted in the UK, the BBC’s 2011 Great British Class Survey, with 161,400 web respondents, as well as a nationally representative sample survey, which includes unusually detailed questions asked on social, cultural and economic capital. Using latent class analysis on these variables, we derive seven classes. We demonstrate the existence of an ‘elite’, whose wealth separates them from an established middle class, as well as a class of technical experts and a class of ‘new affluent’ workers. We also show that at the lower levels of the class structure, alongside an ageing traditional working class, there is a ‘precariat’ characterised by very low levels of capital, and a group of emergent service workers. We think that this new seven class model recognises both social polarisation in British society and class fragmentation in its middle layers, and will attract enormous interest from a wide social scientific community in offering an up-to-date multi-dimensional model of social class.
Obama brain map and the sovietization of science
From Junk DNA to Junk Economics: Beware the Inexorable Sovietization of Big Science
The controversy surrounding the $400-million Encode project’s dubious public relations claims surrounding the function of ‘junk DNA’ and the Battelle Institute’s defense of the $3-billion Human Genome Project (HGP) as economically beneficial (as cited in the recent State of the Union address) make this a good time to examine President Obama’s attempts to bring more of American science under centralized direction and control. [. . .]The burden of proof for proposed mega-projects should be high, because for every research team working on a billion-dollar, centrally planned National Institutes of Health program, there are hundreds of independent scientists who will go begging. This is a tragedy, as the bulk of our scientific progress—especially in the life sciences—comes not from sclerotic bureaucracies following 10-year plans, but from the genius of independent scientists challenging the status quo.
John Hawks massive open online course announcement
Starting in January, 2014, I will be offering a massive open online course titled, "Human Evolution: Past and Future".This course and all its materials will be open and free for anyone, anywhere in the world. As of this moment, more than 6500 people have already signed up for the course. The course is still more than nine months away, and I'll be developing materials across the entire time up through January. [. . .]
With a worldwide group of thousands of students, we'll be giving people the opportunity to participate in some real research. Some will be as simple as massive measurements of body proportions. Others will be more involved, leading us to...
Looking to the future. The course title is "Human Evolution: Past and Future." To me, the path of our evolution in the past is closely tied to where our species may be going. To that end, the course will be looking at the next hundred, thousand and ten thousand years of our evolution. I'll be interviewing people who are thinking about the impact of technology on our future evolution, and students will come up with their own scenarios based on a strong understanding of the forces that shaped human evolution in the past.
Peopling of Europe book
Description and table of contents:
Y haplogroups and aggression in humans
If a new environment favored lower (or higher) aggressiveness in males , a Y-chromosome that induced lower (or higher) aggressiveness would take off. And since different Y chromosomes do indeed affect the level of aggressiveness in mice [which I just found out], possibly by affecting testosterone production – this mechanism is plausible. [. . .]A 2009 study of 156 Pakistanis found an association opposite what one might expect, but I doubt it would replicate in a larger sample:Fortunately for all concerned, the selective value of aggressiveness, etc. has been the same for all human populations forever and ever, before and after the development of agriculture. Otherwise you might see weirdly rapid expansions of particular Y-chromosome haplogroups – common, yet only a few thousand years old.
Five Y haplogroups that are commonly found in Eurasia and Pakistan comprised 87% (n=136) of the population sample, with one haplogroup, R1a1, constituting 55% of the sampled population. A comparison of the total and four subscale mean scores across the five common Y haplogroups that were present at a frequency > or =3% in this ethnic group revealed no overall significant differences. However, effect-size comparisons allowed us to detect an association of the haplogroups R2 (Cohen's d statistic=.448-.732) and R1a1 (d=.107-.448) with lower self-reported aggression mean scores in this population.A PhD thesis published this year ("The Y chromosome in cardiovascular disease") looks at reasonably large samples of Polish men and evidently finds no associations between Y haplogroup and sex hormones or aggression:
Though no analysis of the human Y chromosome has ever been completed in the context of these \male-relateda or \sex-specifica phenotypes, evidence from animal models supports a hypothetical role for the Y chromosome in regulation of both aggression and sex hormones. Firstly, the Y chromosome has been repeatedly implicated in aggression in murine models; Gatewood et al. found that female mice carrying an SRY-deleted Y chromosome had significantly higher aggression levels than wild-type female mice, similar to those found in males (Gatewood et al. 2006). Similarly, the Y chromosome was associated with sex steroids through its function in sex determination (Wilhelm et al. 2007).(More interestingly, while I haven't looked at the thesis closely it does apparently confirm in Polish men an association between Y haplogroup I and cardiovascular disease, which I hadn't taken too seriously when it was previously reported in British men.)To identify the mechanism of association between haplogroup I of the Y chromosome and CAD, the effect of this haplogroup on \sex-associateda and \sex-specifica phenotypes was investigated in a series of experiments highlighted in this chapter. No relationship between the Y chromosome and any facet of aggression or sex steroid was identified. These data indicate that these traits are unlikely to drive the association between haplogroup I and increased predisposition to CAD.
Although a lack of convincing evidence that major extant European Y haplogroups are differentially associated with aggression doesn't rule out the possibility that Y chromosomes associated with, e.g., lower aggressiveness constituted a larger share of European male lineages in the past, I doubt this possibility as an explanation for the recent expansion of haplogroups like R1b and R1a.
Polynesian mtDNA in C19 Brazilian Amerindians
One broad group of these Palaeoamericans — the Botocudo people, who lived in inland regions of southeastern Brazil — stands out, having skull shapes that were intermediate between those of other Palaeoamericans and a presumed ancestral population in eastern Asia.The paper: Identification of Polynesian mtDNA haplogroups in remains of Botocudo Amerindians from BrazilNow, a genetic analysis sheds light on the possible heritage of the Botocudo. Pena and his colleagues studied short stretches of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) in samples drilled from teeth in 14 Botocudo skulls kept in a museum collection in Rio de Janeiro. By analysing material from inside the teeth, the team minimized the possibility of contamination with DNA from the numerous people who have probably handled the skulls since they arrived at the museum in the late 1800s.
The mtDNA from 12 of the skulls matched a well-known Palaeoamerican haplogroup. But mtDNA from two of the skulls included a haplogroup commonly found in Polynesia, Easter Island and other Pacific island archipelagos, the researchers report today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1. A separate lab confirmed the result with samples from one of the skulls, indicating that the ‘Polynesian haplogroup’ did not result from contamination, the researchers contend.
The researchers say that it is possible — but unlikely — that the DNA could have come from Polynesians who voyaged from remote islands to the western coast of South America. [. . .]
The researchers also entertain scenarios in which the haplogroup arrived in South America via the slave trade. Around 2,000 Polynesians were brought to Peru in the 1860s, and some could have ended up in Brazil, although the researchers say that they are not aware of any evidence that this occurred. And between 1817 and 1843, approximately 120,000 slaves were shipped from Madagascar to Brazil — and some of them were probably transported to areas where the Botocudo also lived. Although the researchers consider the latter scenario to be the most probable, Pena says: “We currently don’t have enough evidence to definitively reject any of these scenarios.”
“This is a pretty exciting initial result,” says Alice Storey, an archaeologist at the University of New England in Armidale, Australia. Further studies of genetic material from the skulls, including detailed analyses of nuclear DNA (which contains much longer genetic sequences than mtDNA), could offer more insight into the mysterious ancestry of the Botocudo, she says.
Inbreeding, race replacement, genetic disease, "diversity"
A no more lucid than usual Steve Jones promotes racial mixing in the name of "incest" avoidance in the Telegraph ("Why we’re having less sex with our (genetic) relatives"):
Sir Thomas Beecham – always good for a quotation – once said that “everyone should try everything once, except incest and folk dancing”. Quite where the Morris men come in, I am not certain (although Beecham much disliked the music of Percy Grainger, known for his arrangements of English folk tunes). But when it comes to incest, people are beginning to take his advice. [. . .]Two dictionary definitions of "incest":Now it is easy to pick up millions of short doubled-up differences across the whole double helix, rather than in just a few lengthy but untypical segments. A new survey of this kind involved 5,000 random (and supposedly unrelated) Europeans. It revealed hundreds of thousands of previously unknown family links among them, even if one goes back no further than ninth cousins (whose shared ancestor lived at around the time of the French Revolution).
There were, for example, around 30,000 predicted fourth-cousin pairs (a shared great-great-great-grandparent). As a result, taking all family ties into account, the person you sat next to on the bus this morning is, on average, likely to be something like your sixth cousin, which means that the two of you probably share at least one ancestor from the time of the Paris Commune.
Finns (who have a history separate from that of the rest of the continent) and Ashkenazi Jews are even more likely to have close family ties; while in parts of Pakistan, the average relationship of two random people is that of second cousins, with their common ancestor alive at the time of the fall of France.
Sir Thomas Beecham (had he ever met a Pakistani, or even a Welshman) would no doubt have been outraged. But he can begin to cheer up, for in the Western world incest (or at least inbreeding) is on the way out. The proportion of people who identify themselves as of mixed race in Britain has almost doubled in the past couple of decades, and one household in eight contains members of different ethnic origins. For about half of the nation’s children with an Afro-Caribbean parent, the other parent is white, so that on these islands the pedigrees of two continents will soon merge.
Possibly Steve Jones (a Welshman married to a Jewess) would like to see intraethnic marriages among the English outlawed. But I can be fairly certain most English feel otherwise, and it takes extreme vileness to conflate normality (intraethnic mating) and incest.sexual intercourse between two persons commonly regarded as too closely related to marry
the crime of sexual intercourse, cohabitation, or marriage between persons within the degrees of consanguinity or affinity wherein marriage is legally forbidden.
Yes, as basic math would inform us, some degree of inbreeding will exist in any population of finite size. No, the level of inbreeding present in the British population does not represent a cause for concern (and even if it did, it would not be solved in the long run by mulattoizing Britain). Empirically, mild inbreeding (yet more extreme than seen in the typical intra-English marriage today) appears to be associated with greater fitness in Europeans:
Our results, drawn from all known couples of the Icelandic population born between 1800 and 1965, show a significant positive association between kinship and fertility, with the greatest reproductive success observed for couples related at the level of third and fourth cousins.As for deleterious recessives, outbreeding may temporarily mask harmful alleles but provides no help in the long run. Neel:
A second obvious genetic departure of most of the civilized world from tribal societies is the relaxation of inbreeding. A discussion of the consequences of such relaxation rapidly becomes complex, and we will consider only the simplest case, involving diseases due to completely recessive genes with quite deleterious effects, incompatible with reproduction. [. . .] When inbreeding is relaxed, as is now particularly the case for Christian communities, homozygosity for genes of this type decreases, and there should be a decrease in the diseases associated with these genes. This, however, is only temporary. Mutation pressure continues, and the gene frequency will very slowly build up, until finally the frequency of homozygotes will again come into balance with mutation pressure. However, the relative frequency of the heterozygotes in the population is now greater than before. Should this population ever revert to high levels of inbreeding, it would, so to speak, "pay the bill," i.e., the gene frequency would have risen above the frequency consistent with the new level of inbreeding, and there would now temporarily be more of whatever disease is associated with the genes in question than would be the case had inbreeding continued at the original levels. Furthermore, there is evidence from experimental genetics that the heterozygotes for these recessive genes are sometimes themselves slightly disadvantaged, so that a relative increase in the frequency of the heterozygous carriers of a deleterious recessive gene is not to the advantage of the population.One might almost be driven to question the sincerity of Jones' concern with the genetic welfare of the British. Prospective parents can already check their carrier statuses (and/or screen embryos) for most "common" Mendelian diseases, and this sort of thing will only become cheaper and more broadly applicable in the future.
Also note that basic math doesn't cease to be true just because you mongrelize a population. Turn Britain mulatto, and (besides the fact that, again by basic math, humans as a species are obviously "inbred" -- just like every other species) only the first generation will be maximally outbred. Mate two mulattoes, and you can expect them to have both segments European or both segments African across much of their genome, meaning any benefits of heterosis received by F1 mulattoes (and none to my knowledge have ever actually been demonstrated) will be greatly reduced in the next generation. Inbreeding will also commence building up in the new mulatto population just as it would in any other population with similar a demographic profile, with lineages being lost over time.
Or possibly Jones would like to maintain high levels of immigration from Africa, which ultimately would have the effect of simply replacing the English with Africans. That again would fail to solve the (non-)problem of inbreeding -- though it would certainly solve the English problem, which would appear to be the important thing to people who share Jones' politics.
Make the entire world panmictic, and you still do not "solve" inbreeding. Basic math continues to apply. Lineages will still be lost. It's just that now when a lineage is lost, it will be lost from the entire human population. As it happens:
V.13 Avoiding Inbreeding.
Interestingly enough, the systems of “maximum avoidance of inbreeding” do not have the lowest ultimate rates of approach to homozygosity. With the same number of individuals, it is possible to devise circular half-sib mating systems which, although they inbreed faster initially, have a lower rate of approach to total homozygosity. This was shown by Kimura and Crow (1964), who treated such systems in generality. Robertson (1964) provided a more general framework for this result. He showed that, in general, regular systems of mating with a given number of individuals will have a lower rate of approach to homozygosity the more closely related are the individuals who mate!
Of course, the best system of all for avoiding the loss of alleles from a population of fixed size involves the most intense inbreeding of all. If we divide a population of size 20 into 10 full-sib lines, and keep those lines isolated from each other, we stand a good chance of retaining a reasonable fraction of the common alleles present initially. For even though each such line reaches fixation for an allele, different lines may well fix for different alleles. So although each individual becomes homozygous, we can restore a good fraction of the initial heterozygosity of the base population by crossing different lines. By contrast, a repeated mating system which does not break the population into isolated lineages is certain to fix for one allele or another sooner or later, however small its rate of approach to homozygosity.
[Joe Felsenstein. Theoretical Evolutionary Genetics.]
Mitochondrial DNA tree calibrated with ancient DNA
The team analyzed 10 well-dated fossils, including a medieval man who lived in France 700 years ago; the 4550-year-old Iceman; two 14,000-year-old skeletons from the tombs of Oberkassel in Germany; three related, modern humans from 31,000 years ago in Dolni Vestonice in the Czech Republic; and an early modern human from 40,000 years ago in Tianyuan, China. [. . .]The paper:The team's method for checking the mutation rate is clever, says geneticist Aylwyn Scally of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton, U.K., co-author of one of the studies that calculated the slower mutation rate in living humans. "It's excellent that they have been able to get a better baseline for calibrating the mtDNA mutation rate by looking at ancient DNA."
However, Scally notes, mtDNA is a single genetic lineage, which is not typical of the genome, partly because the mutation rate of mtDNA could be higher because it has a higher proportion of genes under selection than the entire nuclear genome. Krause and one of his collaborators, paleogeneticist Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, agree that future work will be needed to resolve the differences in mutation rates in the mtDNA and nuclear genomes. "It is possible that there are things we do not understand about mitochondrial inheritance and mutation patterns," Pääbo says. [. . .]
And that matters, Krause says, because a sense of timing is critical in human evolution. Knowing when modern humans spread out of Africa and into Europe and Asia, for example, allowed Krause and his collaborators to show that the same modern humans were in Europe before and after the glaciers covered that continent—and had the ability to adapt to changing climates. They found that modern humans before and after the last major ice age in Europe share the same mtDNA lineage, making them direct descendants of the same linage. "Out of Africa is one of the major events within human evolution," Krause says. "We need to know when it happened."
A Revised Timescale for Human Evolution Based on Ancient Mitochondrial Genomes
Qiaomei Fu, Alissa Mittnik, Philip L.F. Johnson, Kirsten Bos, Martina Lari, Ruth Bollongino, Chengkai Sun, Liane Giemsch, Ralf Schmitz, Joachim Burger, Anna Maria Ronchitelli, Fabio Martini, Renata G. Cremonesi, Jir(à Svoboda, Peter Bauer, David Caramelli, Sergi Castellano, David Reich, Svante Pääbo, Johannes Krause
Background
Recent analyses of de novo DNA mutations in modern humans have suggested a nuclear substitution rate that is approximately half that of previous estimates based on fossil calibration. This result has led to suggestions that major events in human evolution occurred far earlier than previously thought. Results
Here, we use mitochondrial genome sequences from ten securely dated ancient modern humans spanning 40,000 years as calibration points for the mitochondrial clock, thus yielding a direct estimate of the mitochondrial substitution rate. Our clock yields mitochondrial divergence times that are in agreement with earlier estimates based on calibration points derived from either fossils or archaeological material. In particular, our results imply a separation of non-Africans from the most closely related sub-Saharan African mitochondrial DNAs (haplogroup L3) that occurred less than 62–95 kya.
Conclusions
Though single loci like mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) can only provide biased estimates of population divergence times, they can provide valid upper bounds. Our results exclude most of the older dates for African and non-African population divergences recently suggested by de novo mutation rate estimates in the nuclear genome. [. . .]
We were able to reconstruct three complete and six nearly complete mitochondrial genomes from ancient human remains that were found in Europe and Eastern Asia and span 40,000 years of human history. All Paleolithic and Mesolithic European samples belong to mtDNA hg U, as was previously suggested for pre-Neolithic Europeans [15]. Two of the three individuals from the Dolni Vestonice triple burial associated with the pre-ice age Gravettian culture, namely, 14 and 15, show identical mtDNAs, suggesting a maternal relationship. Furthermore, both individuals display a mitochondrial sequence that falls basal in a phylogenetic tree compared to the post-ice age hunter-gatherer samples from Italy and central Europe, as well as the contemporary mtDNA hg U5 (Figure 1). It has been argued that hg U5 is the most ancient subhaplogroup of the U lineage, originating among the first early modern humans in Europe [18]. Our results support this hypothesis because we find that the two Dolni Vestonice individuals radiocarbon dated to 31.5 kya carry a type of mtDNA that is as yet uncharacterized, sits close to the root of hg U, and carries two mutations that are specific to hg U5. With our recalibrated molecular clock, we date the age of the U5 branch to approximately 30 kya, thus predating the LGM. Because the majority of late Paleolithic and Mesolithic mtDNAs analyzed to date fall on one of the branches of U5 (see also [15]), our data provide some support for maternal genetic continuity between the pre- and post-ice age European hunter-gatherers from the time of first settlement to the onset of the Neolithic. U4, another hg commonly found in Mesolithic hunter-gatherers [15], has so far not been sequenced in a Paleolithic individual, and we find hgs U8 and U2 in pre-LGM individuals but not in later hunter-gatherers. At present, the genetic data on Upper Paleolithic, and especially pre-ice age, populations are too sparse to comment on whether or not this is representative of a change in the genetic structure of the population, perhaps caused by a bottleneck during the LGM and a subsequent repopulation from glacial refugia.
James Neel and early human population structure
The press release: Skulls of early humans carry telltale signs of inbreeding, study says
Some related comments from James V. Neel's 1994 autobiography:Buried for 100,000 years at Xujiayao in the Nihewan Basin of northern China, the recovered skull pieces of an early human exhibit a now-rare congenital deformation that indicates inbreeding might well have been common among our ancestors, new research from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Washington University in St. Louis suggests. [. . .]
Traces of genetic abnormalities, such as EPF, are seen unusually often in the skulls of Pleistocene humans, from early Homo erectus to the end of the Paleolithic.
"The probability of finding one of these abnormalities in the small available sample of human fossils is very low, and the cumulative probability of finding so many is exceedingly small," suggests study co-author Erik Trinkaus, the Mary Tileston Hemenway Professor of Anthropology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.
"The presence of the Xujiayao and other Pleistocene human abnormalities therefore suggests unusual population dynamics, most likely from high levels of inbreeding and local population instability." It therefore provides a background for understanding populational and cultural dynamics through much of human evolution.
More from Neel:With our long-established interests in inbreeding, it was inevitable that we should try to establish how frequent it was amongst Amerindians. The Yanomama recognize male-descent lineages; a man should marry outside his lineage. A highly preferred for of marriage is for men of two lineages to exchange younger sisters as brides. In the following generation, the female offspring of such an exchange must marry outside the lineage. [. . .] Thus, the preferred marriage involves certain types of first cousins. When such a marriage is not possible, a man (or a woman) will try to marry within the village, which of course contains many of the man's more remote kin. This marriage system, if observed, should result in a high level of inbreeding. [. . .] Despite Chagnon's best effort, he could only establish the identity of the 4 grandparents in 37 of the 124 marriages represented in the 4 villages where he new the genealogies best. Thirteen of these 34 marriages involved first cousins. This was a high frequency, but was it representative? Again, we resorted to computer simulation, to try to determine how rapidly inbreeding would build up under these circumstances. The answer was, quite rapidly, by our contemporary standards. The key was the small geographical extent of the marital quest and the differential fertility we have just discussed. For instance, the "grandchildren" of the more prolific headmen would all be first cousins, and they would be concentrated in several adjacent villages.
We believe that the level of inbreeding that we encountered in the Yanomama was not a recent development, but one that goes far back in time. Accordingly, aided by the computer program, we could ask the question, if this pattern of inbreeding was in place when the Indian entered the Americas, just how inbred had these populations become by now? Our best estimate was that the average marriage in an Indian village represented a level of inbreeding at least five times as large as the inbreeding in a first-cousin marriage. This is, in fact, greater than the inbreeding in a brother-sister union. This conclusion was so surprising that we have gone back to reexamine it from every possible vantage point, and from every possible vantage point it seems to hold. [. . .]
A second obvious genetic departure of most of the civilized world from tribal societies is the relaxation of inbreeding. A discussion of the consequences of such relaxation rapidly becomes complex, and we will consider only the simplest case, involving diseases due to completely recessive genes with quite deleterious effects, incompatible with reproduction. [. . .] When inbreeding is relaxed, as is now particularly the case for Christian communities, homozygosity for genes of this type decreases, and there should be a decrease in the diseases associated with these genes. This, however, is only temporary. Mutation pressure continues, and the gene frequency will very slowly build up, until finally the frequency of homozygotes will again come into balance with mutation pressure. However, the relative frequency of the heterozygotes in the population is now greater than before. Should this population ever revert to high levels of inbreeding, it would, so to speak, "pay the bill," i.e., the gene frequency would have risen above the frequency consistent with the new level of inbreeding, and there would now temporarily be more of whatever disease is associated with the genes in question than would be the case had inbreeding continued at the original levels. Furthermore, there is evidence from experimental genetics that the heterozygotes for these recessive genes are sometimes themselves slightly disadvantaged, so that a relative increase in the frequency of the heterozygous carriers of a deleterious recessive gene is not to the advantage of the population.
[Physician to the Gene Pool, pp. 184-188]
"De-Extinction" startup and embryo screening
Two of biotechnology’s most prolific and far-sighted researchers say they’re teaming up to start a company that intends to rewrite the rules of animal reproduction.
The company, provisionally named Ark Corporation, is being cofounded by stem-cell pioneer Robert Lanza and Harvard Medical School DNA expert George Church. [. . .]
But here’s the deal: the very same biotechnologies needed to reanimate lost species are going to have far, far greater financial and social impact when they’re applied to commercial breeding of livestock, pets, and even humans. [. . .]
Ark’s key technology is going to be induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells (see “Growing Heart Cells Just for You”). To make iPS cells, researchers take an ordinary skin cell and, by modifying it or adding certain chemicals, turn it into a potent stem cell that’s able to grow into any other tissue of the body, including eggs and sperm.
It’s exactly this ability to make sperm and eggs in the lab that opens the commercial possibilities Lanza and Church say their startup company will exploit. [. . .]
Beyond farm animals, iPS cells have even more mind-boggling possibilities in human reproduction. With this technology, it may be possible to create functional eggs and sperm for people who are infertile because of age or other issues.
Note that in the China Is Engineering Genius Babies stories statements like "embryo screening will allow parents to pick their brightest zygote and potentially bump up every generation's intelligence by five to 15 IQ points" refer to what's plausible with current IVF technology. Here, a relatively restricted number of embryos would be produced; they'd be sequenced or genotyped; and estimates of genomic IQ or other traits of interest would be used in choosing one or two of the embryos to implant. Again, there's nothing (beyond presently insufficient sample sizes) that prevents this from happening with our current understanding of genetics and existing reproductive technology.
Projecting forward very minimally, if it becomes possible to effectively and cheaply produce hundreds or thousands of eggs from skin cells, besides likely increasing the uptake of IVF with embryo screening by couples with normal fertility (ovarian hyperstimulation, etc., is not something I expect most women would rush to volunteer for in exchange for the promise their children will average 5 points higher in IQ) it should make possible much higher levels of selection per generation. A similar and potentially even greater increase in selective power might come from genetic screening of individual sperm cells prior to fertilization, which has now been demonstrated in mice. Beyond IQ, it should be similarly straightforward to select for any other heritable quantitative trait or for combinations of traits (height, longevity, physical ability, etc.).
"Common DNA Markers Can Account for More Than Half of the Genetic Influence on Cognitive Abilities"
For nearly a century, twin and adoption studies have yielded substantial estimates of heritability for cognitive abilities, although it has proved difficult for genomewide-association studies to identify the genetic variants that account for this heritability (i.e., the missing-heritability problem). However, a new approach, genomewide complex-trait analysis (GCTA), forgoes the identification of individual variants to estimate the total heritability captured by common DNA markers on genotyping arrays. In the same sample of 3,154 pairs of 12-year-old twins, we directly compared twin-study heritability estimates for cognitive abilities (language, verbal, nonverbal, and general) with GCTA estimates captured by 1.7 million DNA markers. We found that DNA markers tagged by the array accounted for .66 of the estimated heritability, reaffirming that cognitive abilities are heritable. Larger sample sizes alone will be sufficient to identify many of the genetic variants that influence cognitive abilities.Contra confused people on twitter and elsewhere, one need not speculate about what the BGI study will or will not find. The Visscher study convincingly demonstrated a year and a half ago that breeding values for IQ could be estimated from SNP microarray data. No new technology or theoretical breakthroughs are required to capture most of the genetic component of IQ -- only larger sample sizes.
In summary, GCTA estimates confirmed about two thirds of twin-study estimates of heritability for cognitive abilities, using the same measures at the same age in the same sample. This finding implies that, with sufficiently large sample sizes, many genes associated with cognitive abilities can be identified using the common SNPs on current DNA arrays. Whole-genome sequencing might help to close the rest of the missing-heritability gap by identifying rare DNA variants that contribute to the heritability of cognitive abilities, although other possibilities remain, including the possibility that twin and adoption studies have overestimated heritability. GCTA might also mark the beginning of the end of the nature-nurture controversy because it is much more difficult to dispute DNA-based evidence for genetic influence than it is to question the results of twin and adoption studies.
Bodily symmetry: origins and lifecourse associations with cognition, personality, and status
Symmetry – measured as the size asymmetry of a group of symmetrical body traits such as ear height or elbow circumference – has often been used as an index of the capacity to develop normally despite stress and correlates with a wide range of outcomes including intelligence, health and aspects of behaviour. [. . .] The present work advances the existing empirical literature in six separate domains. It also improves upon past methodology by using novel methods of digital measurement of asymmetry as well as for the first time digitally measuring endogenous asymmetry as indexed by the bones and linking bone asymmetry to intelligence. The research was conducted on four samples. [. . .] Firstly, a sample of elderly participants from the Lothian Birth Cohort 1921 (LBC1921, n = 216) tested around ages 11, 79, 83, and 87. Secondly, the Science Festival Sample (SFS), a group of children recruited at a public science event aged between 4 and 15 (n = 856). Thirdly, a group of Orkney residents aged 18 to 86 (the ORCADES, n = 1200). Fourthly the Berlin Sample (BS), a group of Berlin residents (n = 207) between 20 and 30 years old. In the LBC 1921, men with poorer socioeconomic status in childhood had higher facial asymmetry in old age ( = -.25, p = .03). While investigating issues related to asymmetry in the same sample it was found that relatively more severe digit curvature – a minor physical anomaly – was associated with relatively greater cognitive decline ( = -.19, p = .02). Within the SFS asymmetry decreased across human childhood ( = -.16, p = .01), and more asymmetrical children exhibited slower choice reaction times ( = .0.17, p = .002). In the ORCADES sample, the more asymmetrical participants (as indexed by bone asymmetry) were less intelligent ( = -.24, p = .01). In the Berlin Sample and the LBC 1921 no consistent associations were found between personality traits and asymmetry. Collectively, these findings suggest symmetry functions as a measure of overall well-being as the trend is for higher asymmetry to be associated with a relatively poorer score on a variety of outcome measures. The findings considerably expand the number of existing studies in these empirical areas and in several cases – particularly asymmetry’s association with socioeconomic status in the elderly and reaction times among children – represent the first work on those areas. The present work confirms the finding that asymmetry is linked to adverse outcomes. However, the underlying mechanisms by which symmetry is linked to such outcomes remain underexplored and require clarification.
Unrelated articles on Harvard meritocrats
Harvard University has turned out more graduates who have reached ultra-high-net-worth status than any other university in the world, according to Wealth-X, the educational and research business development organization of ultra-high-net-worth (UHNW) individuals.The Fall of Academics at HarvardWealth-X defines this demographic as those with $30 million or more in assets. All but three of the universities with the highest number of UHNW individuals are in the United States.
Harvard has the highest number of billionaires with 52 and the largest number of UHNW individuals with 2,964. That group has $622 billion in net worth. The University of Pennsylvania, which has 1,502 UHNW graduates with a total of $242 billion in assets, is a distant second in aggregate UHNW assets. [. . .]
“American universities dominate the rankings largely because these prestigious institutions have been able to attract global talent,” says Wealth-X President David S. Friedman. “Most of the ultra-high-net-worth alumni have self-made fortunes, underscoring how these institutions have served as launching pads for many of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs and companies.”
This prevalence of academic dishonesty is symptomatic of a pervading mentality on campus that neglects the classroom. [. . .]The Harvard People I Know Who Are Breaking The Law (Again)“Nowadays there’s much less willingness on the part of the students to take courses or to have majors for which they don’t see the utilitarian application,” he says. Students take less time to explore intellectually, worried more about carving out a tangible path for their futures.
Gardner cites the extensive recruitment for investment banking, management, and consulting firms as potentially adding fuel to the fire. This emphasis on what he calls a “one-way race to Wall Street, Silicon Valley, or Hollywood” comes with an “inordinate” worry about maintaining near-perfect grades—the only foreseeable path to weighty titles and even heavier paychecks.
When an education holds less value than the prestige that follows, dishonesty can be more easily justified as a means to an end. Harvard becomes simply a pit-stop on the way.
Along with these new definitions of success comes its reckless pursuit, by which, Gardner believes, students have become “hollow” in an ethical sense that plays out in an educational setting: They are not only more inclined to cheat, but are also more likely to see it as acceptable. He cites the example of Marilee Jones, former Dean of Admissions at MIT, who resigned in 2007 after admitting that she had lied on her own resume regarding her education. In a group of 15 students from another school to which Gardner spoke, none thought she should have been fired. Jones, they said, had been doing a good job—and everyone lies on their resume, after all.
The first name of one of my freshman-year roomates was Nathan. Nathan's last name was Blecharczyk. Nathan is now the Chief Technology Officer of Airbnb, Inc., a company that raised $112 million from Andreesen-Horowitz, a prominent venture capital firm, and was recently valued at over $1 billion. Just after the company announced this enormous round of funding in mid-2011, news broke that Airbnb had been sending fraudulent, misleading e-mail spam via Craigslist, in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act, to thousands of individuals, and possibly many more. The company effectively denied responsibility, blaming a contractor. Nonetheless, the press releases from Andreesen-Horowitz citing Airbnb's amazing traffic already sounded suspect. Gawker's Ryan Tate asked, "Did Airbnb Scam Its Way To $1 Billion?", as did other major news publications.The answer is most likely yes. What most people don't know is that during our freshman and sophomore years of college, Nathan was one of the top 100 spammers in the world. This key fact, which I'm guessing was not disclosed to Airbnb's investors, does not appear on Google or any major search engine because of ROKSO's good behavior de-listing policy, but if you know where to look, it's crystal clear. While we were roommates, Nathan ran a sort of enterprise called Data Miners out of Grays M-54 in Harvard Yard using a variety of aliases for himself. Data Miners would hop from service provider to service provider each week, sending millions of messages at a time. Nathan was clearly brilliant—he had designed both custom hardware and software to send these messages in bulk as efficiently as possible—and he paid his way through college thanks to these endeavors, but what he possessed in engineering skill he obviously lacked in morals. [. . .]
Airbnb isn't the only darling of Silicon Valley violating state money transmission law, however. If you've ever played Farmville, you know how tempting it is to buy items that will keep your farm going strong. Facebook has recently decreed that all games must use its Facebook Credits system, which allows customers to—you guessed it—pre-fund accounts that are denominated in credits, rather than dollars, so that those funds can be distributed to companies other than Facebook. Those accounts can be used now at third-party web sites (including international sites) and have long been used to compensate third-party game developers, who presumably convert the credits back into dollars on their end. This, too, is money transmission. Like Airbnb, Facebook doesn't have a license, and that's a shame, because Mark Zuckerberg, his directors, and investors could all find themselves in federal prison for violating forty-seven money transmission statutes, including California's.
However unlikely—and to be clear, it's "unlikely" because no State would bother prosecuting wealthy campaign donors and job providers, so for both companies the licenses are effectively optional, leaving your money at risk—this fate would be fitting given Mark's actions around the same time that Nathan was considering what to do about the FTC. As I've noted in the past, the scene that you didn't see in The Social Network was the one where he broke into Crimson reporters' e-mail accounts using failed Facebook sign in attempts, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1030, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and common sense.
Misc. links
Facial Structure Is Indicative of Explicit Support for Prejudicial Beliefs
Our results indicate that males with a greater fWHR are more likely to explicitly endorse racially prejudicial beliefs, though fWHR was unrelated to implicit bias. NN
"Ironically" (according to Vice blogger) a Man's Face Can Tell You If He's Likely to Act Racist
There’s an obvious irony to a study that says we can tell if a man will act bigoted based on the shape of his face. But the logic underpinning the study, conducted by researchers at the University of Delaware and soon to be published in the journal Psychological Science, is a circuitous and unexpected one, and makes a persuasive case.Charlton: Modern sub-fertility may be a pathologically slow life history, triggered by a supernormal stimulus of modernityTurns out it’s all about the testosterone.
Recent research indicates that men with high levels of testosterone have certain facial characteristics that set them apart from men with less testosterone. In particular, they have what researchers call a higher facial Width-to-Height Ratio (fWHR) which compares the distance between cheekbones to the distance between the upper lip and midbrow.
The Human Varieties Global IQ Dataset / HVGIQ
Human Varieties: Colorism in America?
Light skin color does not seem to cause higher IQ or educational achievement either through pleiotropy or because of color discrimination — otherwise the within-families correlations would have been similar to those obtained between families. Colorism, the theory that discrimination based on skin color is a major source of socioeconomic differences, appears to not apply within the African American population, at least as far as IQ and educational attainment are concerned.Genetic Influences on the Overlap Between Low IQ and Antisocial Behavior in Young Children
The well-documented relation between the phenotypes of low IQ and childhood antisocial behavior could be explained by either common genetic influences or environmental influences. These competing explanations were examined through use of the Environmental Risk Longitudinal Twin Study 1994–1995 cohort (Moffitt & the E-Risk Study Team, 2002) of 1,116 twin pairs and their families. Children’s IQ was assessed via individual testing at age 5 years. Mothers and teachers reported on children’s antisocial behavior at ages 5 and 7 years. Low IQ was related to antisocial behavior at age 5 years and predicted relatively higher antisocial behavior scores at age 7 years when antisocial behavior at age 5 years was controlled. This association was significantly stronger among boys than among girls. Genetic influences common to both phenotypes explained 100% of the low IQ–antisocial behavior relation in boys. Findings suggest that specific candidate genes and neurobiological processes should be tested in relation to both phenotypes.Toxoplasma gondii infection enhances testicular steroidogenesis in rats (pdf)
The genetic origin and history of speed in the Thoroughbred racehorse and a related talk
Selective breeding for speed in the racehorse has resulted in an unusually high frequency of the C-variant (g.66493737C/T) at the myostatin gene (MSTN) in cohorts of the Thoroughbred horse population that are best suited to sprint racing. Here we show using a combination of molecular- and pedigree-based approaches in 593 horses from 22 Eurasian and North-American horse populations, museum specimens from 12 historically important Thoroughbred stallions (b.1764-1930), 330 elite-performing modern Thoroughbreds and 42 samples from three other equid species that the T-allele was ancestral and there was a single introduction of the C-allele at the foundation stages of the Thoroughbred from a British-native mare. Furthermore, we show that although the C-allele was rare among the celebrated racehorses of the 18th and 19th centuries, it has proliferated recently in the population via the stallion Nearctic (b.1954), the sire of the most influential stallion of modern time, Northern Dancer (b.1961).Alistair Overeem's testosterone level at dangerously low levels in Antonio Silva fight
Overeem's test, taken the morning after the fight, was low enough that most doctors would recommend him to be on a testosterone replacement plan even if he was not an athlete [. . .]Overeem went from being a 205-pound light heavyweight who lost frequently, to looking like a different human being, gaining nearly 60 pounds of competitive weight with no increase in body fat. Due to that, he probably had more suspicion over steroids than nearly any MMA competitor, even before he tested positive the first time he was tested on a date he wasn't told about well in advance.
Pygmy slavery is a wide range from being held to gunpoint by rebel militia's in the gold, diamond, and coltan mines to being slaves because of no possibility of monetary gain or obtaining land ownership. The Pygmies that we have been seeing released are not being held to gunpoint or in shackles. The kind of slavery we are immediately putting an end to is slavery due to having no other option to survive. The easiest way to end this kind of slavery has been to see them be placed on their own land, and then showing them how to work it for themselves instead of their slavemasters. This year in Congo will give more insight into all the unique kinds of slavery and what action can be taken for the Pygmies of Africa (Meaning a future goal to expand into other countries where the Pygmy people reside). The main reason for Pygmy slavery is due to extreme racism where surrounding tribes believe the Pygmy people are still in the transitional stage from monkey to human. This belief accounts for the hunting, killing, cooking, and cannibalism against the tribe as well as other atrocities against humanity in recent years.Gene flow and the limits to natural selection
In general, individuals who survive to reproduce have genotypes that work relatively well under local conditions. Migrating or dispersing offspring elsewhere is likely to decrease an individual's or its offspring's fitness, not to mention the intrinsic costs and risks of dispersal. Gene flow into a population can counteract gene frequency changes because of selection, imposing a limit on local adaptation. In addition, the migrant flow tends to be higher from densely populated to sparsely populated areas. Thus, although the potential for adaptation might be greatest in poor and sparsely populated environments, gene flow will counteract selection more strongly in such populations. Recent papers, both theoretical and empirical, have clarified the important role of migration in evolution, affecting spatial patterns, species ranges and adaptation to the environment; in particular, by emphasizing the crucial interaction between evolutionary and demographic processes.Keywords
local adaptation; gene swamping; migration rescue; migration meltdown; gene flow; natural selection