Botany of boredom
We flipped the channel to "The Botany of Desire" on PBS. The show is a documentary based on ">the book of the same name by Michael Pollan. After watching the show for four minutes, I decided it had...
View ArticleDenisova microcephalin status
I'm still doing quick mining of the Denisova sequence for obvious things. One of the simplest is the polymorphism in microcephalin (MCPH1) that Evans and colleagues [1] suggested may represent...
View ArticleA large mystery in historical genetics
Gina Kolata writes an interesting story about the genetics of a pituitary giant ("New Story Writ by a Giant's DNA"). The individual in question is a man known as the "Irish Giant" who lived in 18th...
View ArticleSecond grant life
Would you participate in a "virtual" NSF review panel in Second Life? As John Bohannon describes, NSF has been running them for two years, saving $10,000 per panel in the process ("Meeting for Peer...
View ArticleQuote: Peter Wood on anthropology
Peter Wood, in a review of Paul Shankman's book, The Trashing of Margaret Mead: Anatomy of an Anthropological Controversy: So which is it? The Mead vs. Freeman controversy doesn’t look like it has much...
View ArticleDenisovans did not have red hair
At least, the Denisova sequence does not have any of the variants in humans that are associated with red hair. Nor does it share the unique Neandertal variant argued to affect hair color in that group....
View ArticleGenomes too cheap to meter
Matthew Herper is a science and medicine contributing writer at Forbes.com. He has just written a series of posts themed as "Gene Week", focusing on advances in genomics. One of the most provocative,...
View ArticleMembership has its privileges
A new paper in PNAS by Erik Trinkaus covers the mortality patterns of old versus young adults in Neandertals, early modern humans in the Levant and early Upper Paleolithic people of Europe [1]. The...
View ArticleQuote: Washburn on early theories of human evolution
Sherwood Washburn, in a lecture published in 1982 [1] The early theories of human evolution are really very odd, if one stops to look at them. David Pilbeam has described the early theories as...
View ArticleKerfufflists or kerfufflers?
Anthropologist Hugh Gusterson writes about the #AAAfail controversy in the Chronicle of Higher Education, from his perspective as one of the board members who purged science from the long-range plan....
View ArticleGood science writing helps make good science
More than most will admit, scientists today depend on good science writing. What they read is coming from other scientists, from bloggers and students, and from traditional journalists embedded in a...
View ArticleMan's best friend
Here's a quote you don't see every day: "It just so happens this person who lived 9,400 years ago was eating dog," Belknap said. Amazing what they can do with coprolites nowadays.
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Neandertal anti-defamation files, 8
OK, at ScienceOnline2011 I did a little bit of talking about Neandertals represented in art. So this entry in the NAD files truly pains me. You see, Britney Spears Watcher picked up that story from...
View ArticleNo worries, DNA testers
I've started teaching my course in anthropological genetics again this semester. I'll be posting relevant material here every so often, particularly as we continue to make progress on the Neandertal...
View ArticleTomb raiders
Cracked.com features "8 Famous Fictional Archaeologists Who Suck At Their Job". OK, yes, this is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel, what with Lara Croft, Brendan Fraser and the like. The list is so...
View ArticleDinosaur Wars
Brian Switek reviews the American Experience program, Dinosaur Wars, which covered the scientific rivalry between paleontologists Othniel Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope. We watched it this week, I love...
View ArticleMummy troubles
Mummies are always trouble. I hate to say it. You see, in my line of work we can do an awful lot with a skeleton. We're usually down to a few pieces of bone, so that a skeleton is an unimaginable...
View ArticleOpen access megajournals
The Occasional Pamphlet reflects on the new megajournal trend in open access: "A ray of sunshine in the open-access future". PLoS ONE is being joined by SAGE Open and Scientific Reports from Nature...
View ArticleNorth by Northeast
An essay by Michael Balter in Science[1] asks the question, "Was North Africa the launch pad for modern human migrations?". This question seems to have an obvious answer. If you're in Africa and...
View ArticleWinter's Bone
Before anyone asks: Yes, I'm aware of the Academy's unfortunate misspelling. UPDATE (2011-01-25): On the subject of John Hawkes, I just love this quote from John Hawkes the novelist: "The writer should...
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