HENRY

Robert Samuelson in Newsweek laments the endangered comma:

But the comma’s sad fate is, I think, a metaphor for something larger: how we deal with the frantic, can’t-wait-a-minute nature of modern life. The comma is, after all, a small sign that flashes PAUSE. It tells the reader to slow down, think a bit, and then move on. We don’t have time for that. No pauses allowed. In this sense, the comma’s fading popularity is also social commentary.

Assorted interesting posts for nice lazy Sunday:

1. John Hawks provides the best discussion of the recent identification of the FoxP2 gene in Neanderthals without any of the stupid journalistic hype that others have succumbed to (although he does use the term “neandercooties”). Go read his The amazing talking Neandertals.
2. Creek Running North has identified that
   Evolutionary Psychology may be genetically hardwired…

   Biologists have long assumed that evolutionary psychology, a controversial branch of psychology that ascribes many common social behaviors to genetics, is a muddled blend of half-understood evolutionary biology, selective data mining and resentment of women’s changing roles in society.

   A new study, published in today’s issue of the German publication Unwirklichen Genetikjournal, does not challenge that assessment. But it does suggest that some men may be genetically predisposed to believe in evolutionary psychology, a finding that may well suggest future methods of treatment of the psychological malady.

3. Scientist debunks nomadic Aborigine ‘myth’:
   

   Before white settlers arrived, Australia’s indigenous peoples lived in houses and villages, and used surprisingly sophisticated architecture and design methods to build their shelters, new research has found.

4. More ammunition inn the punctuated evolution debate, this time it’s Punctuated genome size evolution in Liliaceae:
   

   Most angiosperms possess small genomes (mode 1C = 0.6 pg, median 1C = 2.9 pg). Those with truly enormous genomes (i.e. ≥ 35 pg) are phylogenetically restricted to a few families and include Liliaceae – with species possessing some of the largest genomes so far reported for any plant as well as including species with much smaller genomes. To gain insights into when and where genome size expansion took place during the evolution of Liliaceae and the mode and tempo of this change, data for 78 species were superimposed onto a phylogenetic tree and analysed. Results suggest that genome size in Liliaceae followed a punctuated rather than gradual mode of evolution and that most of the diversification evolved recently rather than early in the evolution of the family.

5. The Evolutionary Origins of Human Patience: Temporal Preferences in Chimpanzees, Bonobos, and Human Adults:
   

   To make adaptive choices, individuals must sometimes exhibit patience, forgoing immediate benefits to acquire more valuable future rewards. Although humans account for future consequences when making temporal decisions, many animal species wait only a few seconds for delayed benefits. Current research thus suggests a phylogenetic gap between patient humans and impulsive, present-oriented animals, a distinction with implications for our understanding of economic decision making and the origins of human cooperation.

   On the basis of a series of experimental results, we reject this conclusion. First, bonobos (Pan paniscus) and chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) exhibit a degree of patience not seen in other animals tested thus far. Second, humans are less willing to wait for food rewards than are chimpanzees. Third, humans are more willing to wait for monetary rewards than for food, and show the highest degree of patience only in response to decisions about money involving low opportunity costs.

   These findings suggest that core components of the capacity for future-oriented decisions evolved before the human lineage diverged from apes. Moreover, the different levels of patience that humans exhibit might be driven by fundamental differences in the mechanisms representing biological versus abstract rewards.

6. Finally, there’s a fun review and historical perspective of neutral theory in the latest Journal of Evolutionary biology:

   To resolve a panselectionist paradox, the population geneticist Kimura invented a neutral theory, where each gene is equally likely to enter the next generation whatever its allelic type. To learn what could be explained without invoking Darwinian adaptive divergence, Hubbell devised a similar neutral theory for forest ecology, assuming each tree is equally likely to reproduce whatever its species. In both theories, some predictions worked; neither theory proved universally true.

   Simple assumptions allow neutral theorists to treat many subjects still immune to more realistic theory. Ecologists exploit far fewer of these possibilities than population geneticists, focussing instead on species abundance distributions, where their predictions work best, but most closely match non-neutral predictions.

   Neutral theory cannot explain adaptive divergence or ecosystem function, which ecologists must understand. By addressing new topics and predicting changes in time, however, ecological neutral theory can provide probing null hypotheses and stimulate more realistic theory.

Following James Watson’s unfortunate choice of words the other day, he’s apologised publicly:

I cannot understand how I could have said what I am quoted as having said (…) I can certainly understand why people, reading those words, have reacted in the ways that they have.(…)

To all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologize unreservedly. That is not what I meant. More importantly from my point of view, there is no scientific basis for such a belief

This has not, however, stopped his employers, the Cold Spring Harbor Lab from suspending him pending further deliberation.

Today in Nature, Early human use of marine resources and pigment in South Africa during the Middle Pleistocene:

Genetic and anatomical evidence suggests that Homo sapiens arose in Africa between 200 and 100 thousand years (kyr) ago and recent evidence indicates symbolic behaviour may have appeared approx135–75 kyr ago. From 195–130 kyr ago, the world was in a fluctuating but predominantly glacial stage (marine isotope stage MIS6); much of Africa was cooler and drier, and dated archaeological sites are rare.

Here we show that by approx 164 kyr ago (+/-12 kyr) at Pinnacle Point (on the south coast of South Africa) humans expanded their diet to include marine resources, perhaps as a response to these harsh environmental conditions. The earliest previous evidence for human use of marine resources and coastal habitats was dated to approx 125 kyr ago.

Coincident with this diet and habitat expansion is an early use and modification of pigment, probably for symbolic behaviour, as well as the production of bladelet stone tool technology, previously dated to post-70 kyr ago. Shellfish may have been crucial to the survival of these early humans as they expanded their home ranges to include coastlines and followed the shifting position of the coast when sea level fluctuated over the length of MIS6.

James “I discovered *DNA” Watson has stuck his foot in his mouth (again) by saying that he’s “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really”…“people who have to deal with black employees find this not true”. Oh dear….

* (..the structure of..)

Jennifer Washburn in Discover Magazine discusses Science’s worst enemy: Corporate funding:

In recent years there have been a number of highly visible attacks on American science, everything from the fundamentalist assault on evolution to the Bush administration’s strong-arming of government scientists. But for many people who pay close attention to research and development (R&D), the biggest threat to science has been quietly occurring under the radar, even though it may be changing the very foundation of American innovation. The threat is money—specifically, the decline of government support for science and the growing dominance of private spending over American research.

Derek Bickerton’s got an interesting paper on his website, Language Evolution: A brief guide for linguists:

While most linguists were looking the other way, so many books, articles and collections on the evolution of language have been appearing that one can hardly keep pace with them.  Accordingly, many linguists have a lot of catching-up to do, and their task is not made any easier by the fact that knowledge of linguistics alone won’t get them far.  This is an interdisciplinary game, played by biologists, neurologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, computer scientists, philosophers, and more–as well as, or maybe I should say a good deal more than, by linguists.  Therefore as a player with twenty years’ experience I feel it incumbent on me to provide, for any linguists who might feel like joining the game, a rough map of this unfamiliar terrain, and to give them the kind of information guide-books usually give on the value of the various goods and services available there.   People can, of course, study whatever they choose, but there is perhaps no other field of human inquiry which has been so vitiated by a failure to get priorities straight.