Neanders got no reason
Razib Khan raises the question whether Neandertal cloning could be ethical, and a varied comment thread quickly ensues. People seem to confuse "ethics" with "ick factor". My favorite line from the...
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Photo: Leaving Indonesia
Mount Merapi, the active volcano outside Yogyakarta, at sunset as our car dropped us at the Solo airport: Tags: travelphotography
View ArticleFusing chromosomes
Carl Zimmer recounts recent research by Evan Eichler's group on the evolution of human chromosome 2, which represents a fusion of two separate chromosomes in ancient apes, which still remain separate...
View ArticleModern humans in with a whimper
A short, open access review paper by Isabel Alves and colleagues [1] registers two important points: Until recently, the out-of-Africa model of human evolution was favoured by most genetic analyses,...
View ArticleWorking in anthropology
Mark Dawson's story, "Why I chose not to get a PhD", has been online for a few months and is well worth reading for prospective anthropology students. Was all my education and training a waste? Hardly....
View Article"Hair-pullingly frustrating to read"
Greg Downey and Daniel Lende ponder the rhetorical evils of NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman and why anthropologists should be better writers: "Thomas Friedman’s Lessons for Anthropologists". The...
View ArticlePolar bear mtDNA replacement
Jerry Coyne uses the occasion of polar bear genetics to give a biology lesson I've been trying to teach for 15 years: "A new study of polar bears underlines the dangers of reconstructing evolution...
View ArticleInto Africa
I have a lot to say about the new study of African genomes by Joseph Lachance and colleagues [1], which I think is tremendously exciting, along with the new preprint from Joseph Pickrell and colleagues...
View ArticleDo we need an offshore data haven for genomes?
Razib Khan comments on 23andMe's pursuit of FDA clearance for their genome service: I still believe that on a deep level regulatory agencies don’t “get it.” Our own genotype and genome is going to be a...
View ArticleCeramics in the Epigravettian of Croatia
I've had a paper on my desktop for more than a week expecting to write a comment on it, and now happily I discover that the first author, Becky Farbstein, has described the work in a blog post: "First...
View ArticleSpreading preprints in population biology
Ewen Callaway reports on the increasing use of the arXiv preprint server by geneticists and biologists: "Geneticists eye the potential of arXiv". With the near-arrival of the PeerJ system, which...
View ArticleKoobi Fora perspectives
I'm in Kansas and my internet is spottier here than it was in Africa. So I have a bunch of thoughts about the new Koobi Fora fossils published by Maeve Leakey and coworkers this week [1], and I have to...
View ArticleAstrobiology editorial
Nature has a short opinion piece about NASA's astrobiology initiative [1]. A common misconception is that astrobiology is equivalent to the search for life elsewhere. Some people have even gone so far...
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Neandertal ancestry "Iced"
I've been mobbed with e-mails from readers asking about my reaction to the new paper by Anders Eriksson and Andrea Manica in PNAS, titled "Effect of ancient population structure on the degree of...
View ArticleStudents and technology in the classroom
Another school year is about to start for those of us who teach college courses. More and more, students are coming to classrooms and actively using technology -- laptops, smartphones, tablets -- for...
View ArticleEntrepreneurship versus scholarship
Zen Faulkes: "Does a Ph.D. train you to head a lab?" The big one, though, is bookkeeping and budgeting. I didn’t have to worry about tracking money in any significant way as a grad student or post-doc....
View ArticleThoroughbreds and bourbon
John Timmer: "Kentucky lawmakers shocked to find evolution in biology tests". Given that evolution is extremely well supported and provides the central organizing idea of biology, ACT's tests featured...
View ArticleFifty paradigms of grey
The Guardian has a retrospective in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of publication of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (and you can buy an anniversary edition: The Structure of Scientific...
View ArticleDigestive evanescence
Also in The Guardian, "Strange but true: science's most improbable research" includes some taphonomy: If you like shrews, especially if you like them parboiled, you'll want to devour a 1994 study...
View ArticleThe costs of publication delays
Joe Pickrell has written a valuable post on Genomes Unzipped about the future of publication in genetics: "The first steps towards a modern system of scientific publication". One thought-provoking...
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