Private Ceremonies. "Most women don’t talk about their abortions and miscarriages. Virtually none go through the experience with a loved one at their side. The greatest gift an abortion counselor can give is to bear witness, to be with a woman as she goes through this private journey, to witness her strength and weakness, her grief, her relief, her pain." A first person essay from a former abortion counselor.
posted by zarq
on May 21, 2013 -
34 comments
Is Psychometric g a Myth? - "As an online discussion about IQ or general intelligence grows longer, the probability of someone linking to statistician Cosma Shalizi's essay
g, a Statistical Myth approaches 1. Usually the link is accompanied by an assertion to the effect that Shalizi offers a definitive refutation of the concept of general mental ability, or psychometric
g."
[more inside]
posted by kliuless
on Apr 11, 2013 -
113 comments
Extinction got you down? Try de-extinction!
Our species has played a role in the extinction of ... many other species. But now some scientists are proposing a radical turn of the tables: Bringing lost species back from the dead. How to Resurrect Lost Species.
[more inside]
posted by heyho
on Mar 16, 2013 -
28 comments
November 24, 2012: analysis of extensive DNA sequencing of '
a novel hominin hybrid species, commonly called “Bigfoot” or “Sasquatch” ... suggests that the legendary Sasquatch is a human relative that arose approximately 15,000 years ago as a hybrid cross of modern Homo sapiens with an unknown primate species.' The press release claimed that the research was "currently under peer-review," except that no scientific journal would publish the research, until now:
DeNovo, an open access scientific journal. But DeNovo isn't really open access, as it costs $30 to view the article, the paper itself is brand new,
the domain was recently purchased, and the website features generic stock photos.
Ars Technica digs deeper, summarizing some of the "open access" article, and providing a link to
a particularly insightful clip on YouTube, with an odd water mark.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Feb 18, 2013 -
68 comments
Hacking the President’s DNA. "The U.S. government is surreptitiously collecting the DNA of world leaders, and is reportedly protecting that of Barack Obama. Decoded, these genetic blueprints could provide compromising information. In the not-too-distant future, they may provide something more as well—the basis for the creation of personalized bioweapons that could take down a president and leave no trace."
posted by homunculus
on Oct 26, 2012 -
45 comments
When looking for inspiration, most songwriters to go well-used emotional wells – triumph or loss, love or heartbreak. But Peter Larsen, a biologist at Argonne National Laboratory, looked to the microbes of the English Channel. He used seven years’ worth of genetic and environmental data, converting geochemical and microbial abundance measurements into notes, beats, and chords.
posted by Egg Shen
on Oct 8, 2012 -
13 comments
In 2001, we learned the sequence of our genome; now, we have amassed a vast amount of knowledge about what those sequences actually
do. Yesterday, the data from the
ENCODE project went live.
[more inside]
posted by Westringia F.
on Sep 6, 2012 -
32 comments
Ötzi the Iceman died around 3,300 B.C., yet his body was preserved frozen in the Alps until 1991.
DNA sequencing of Neandertals (who died out about 35,000 years ago) suggests modern humans with ancestry outside of Africa carry a few percent of Neandertal genes due to interbreeding. Now (in a blog post knocking down a re-interpretation of the Neandertal DNA evidence) paleontologist
John Hawks previews an upcoming publication of his examining Ötzi's DNA::
If we took as a baseline that Europeans have an average of 3.5 percent Neandertal, Ötzi would have around 5.5 percent (again, the actual percentage would be highly model-dependent). He has substantially greater sharing with Neandertals than any other recent person we have ever examined.
Previously (Ötzi),
Previously (Neandertals)
posted by Schmucko
on Aug 18, 2012 -
48 comments
A relatively small group of people from Appalachian, the dark-skinned
Melungeons (previously) have been a source for speculation and conjecture for many years. Exactly who where their ancestors? Portuguese? Turks? Roma? Cherokee? A recent
DNA study (108 page pdf) posted in the Journal of Genetic Genealogy (
site link)
says otherwise (WaPo article).
posted by edgeways
on May 24, 2012 -
95 comments
The Fat Trap (NYT pop review): Overweight individuals in Western nations (
and, increasingly, beyond) face interpersonal and
institutional stigma for their bodies*. Oftentimes, these stigmas are predicated on the belief that being overweight is a
moral failure, that being overweight is usually a result of laziness, decadence, and/or characterlogical poor impulse control. However, an emerging consensus among obesity researchers points toward
strong, common physiological and individual genetic factors as causative for heightened BMIs in the modern world and the general failure of dieting to produce BMI outcomes.
A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine (paywalled) adds to this body of evidence, suggesting that chemical messengers held to contribute to altered "efficient" metabolism and increased hunger in the wake of low-calorie dieting are (on average) significantly elevated up to a full year (if not longer) following a substantial drop in weight from dieting.
[more inside]
posted by Keter
on Dec 28, 2011 -
173 comments
How can we better understand the interplay of nature and nurture in determining our personalities, behavior, and vulnerability to disease? Perhaps we should be looking at
identical twins.
(National Geographic January 2012 cover story) [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Dec 19, 2011 -
89 comments
After decades of breeding, the complexity of
cat color genetics is quite well understood. Genes which control
pigmentation,
hair length,
color dilution,
banding (agouti),
white fur (dominant, spotting, or albino, sometimes linked with
deafness),
tabby patterns, and more combine to create a
wide spectrum of possibilities. Specific traits such as
white gloving among Birman cats and the amber color found only in Norwegian Forest Cats (which comes from a single female born in 1981!) have also been isolated and studied, and can be affordably
tested for.
On top of all that, fur color is
epigenetic as well as genetic, and sometimes responds to the cat's environment. If you clone a calico cat, you get a kitten which
doesn't have a similar coat due to
X-inactivation, and pointed cats (such as Burmese, Siamese, and Tonkinese) have
temperature-sensitive coloration.
[more inside]
posted by vorfeed
on Aug 28, 2011 -
90 comments
Split Family Faces. "How much do you and members of your family really look alike? Quebec, Canada-based graphic designer and photographer Ulric Collette has created a shockingly cool project where he's exploring the genetic similarities between different members of the same family. By splitting their faces in half and then melding them together, he creates interesting new people that are sometimes quite normal looking and other times far from it. He calls this series Genetic Portraits."
posted by Bunny Ultramod
on Aug 17, 2011 -
43 comments
Larry Gonick is a veteran American cartoonist best known for his delightful comic-book guides to science and history, many of which have previews online. Chief among them is his long-running
Cartoon History of the Universe (later
The Cartoon History of the Modern World), a sprawling multi-volume opus documenting everything from the Big Bang to the Bush administration. Published over the course of three decades, it takes a truly global view -- its time-traveling Professor thoroughly explores not only familiar topics like Rome and World War II but the oft-neglected stories of Asia and Africa, blending caricature and myth with careful scholarship (cited by
fun illustrated bibliographies) and tackling even the most obscure events
with intelligence and wit. This savvy satire carried over to Gonick's
Zinn-by-way-of-
Pogo chronicle
The Cartoon History of the United States, along with a bevy of
Cartoon Guides to other topics, including
Genetics, Computer Science, Chemistry, Physics, Statistics, The Environment, and (yes!)
Sex. Gonick has also maintained a few sideprojects, such as
a webcomic look at Chinese invention,
assorted math comics (
previously), the
Muse magazine mainstay
Kokopelli & Co. (featuring the shenanigans of his
"New Muses"), and
more. See also
these lengthy interview snippets, linked
previously. Want more? Amazon links to the complete oeuvre inside!
[more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Jun 6, 2011 -
29 comments
The Xenotext Experiment is
Christian Bök's [
Previously],"nine-year long attempt to create an example of “living poetry.” I have been striving to write a short verse about language and genetics, whereupon I use a “chemical alphabet” to translate this poem into a sequence of DNA for subsequent implantation into the genome of a bacterium (in this case, a microbe called Deinococcus radiodurans—an extremophile, capable of surviving, without mutation, in even the most hostile milieus, including the vacuum of outer space)."
[Via] [more inside]
posted by Fizz
on Apr 4, 2011 -
25 comments
Should you be allowed unrestricted knowledge of your own genetic makeup? Or should your doctor be the one to decide how much you can know about your own genes? Currently
direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing companies (such as 23andMe) allow consumers to discover which genes they have inherited. But some influential people are arguing that the general public is harmed by the ability to freely access this type of information. The American Medical Association is
urging the FDA to make it so that genomic information is only available to a person through a personal physician or medical counselor. As a counterpoint the geneticists at the Genomes Unzipped website provide a six point statement on why
People Have A Right To Access Their Own Genetic Information.
[more inside]
posted by Jason Malloy
on Mar 13, 2011 -
98 comments
The Someone You're Not: "Our packed prisons are starting to disgorge hundreds of mostly African-American men who, over the last few decades, we wrongly convicted of violent crimes. This is what it's like to spend nearly thirty years in prison for something you didn't do. This is what it's like to spend nearly thirty years as someone you aren't. And for Ray Towler, this is what it's like to be free." Via. [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Feb 25, 2011 -
18 comments
This is a game about breeding flowers. Each flower's traits are determined by its genes. Pick two flowers and their genes combine to create new variations. There is no aim in this game... Feel free to set yourself one. --
Rare Breeds: Petunia. (Flash.)
[more inside]
posted by Gator
on Jan 30, 2011 -
44 comments
Our minds boggle at how the wolf could become the chihuahua, the Saint Bernard, the poodle and the
Komondor. Artificial selection was likewise responsible for transforming the humble wild mustard plant
Brassica oleracea into cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts and the breathtaking fractal
Romanesco, all in the span of a few centuries.
[more inside]
posted by overeducated_alligator
on Aug 23, 2010 -
54 comments
