/pdfs/ - 8kun's largest library

>Gender differences exist in abilities, interests, and occupations. According to the Empathizing-Systemizing theory, the reason for all gender differences lies in the relative weights of two cognitive processes: women empathize more, which is useful in understanding people, while men systemize more, which means interpreting phenomena as rule-based systems. The terms “male and female brain type” refer to a heightened preference for one process over the other. We aimed to find out whether the gender atypical groups of male brain type women and female brain type men are more similar to the opposite sex than to their own in terms of a range of social, cognitive and personality variables. Female and male brain type groups were identified and compared within both genders in an online study (N = 2983). The results show there are female brain type men and male brain type women, who are characterized by qualities more often associated with the opposite sex, and who have not been reached by prior research. Thus, these findings demonstrate that cognitive type is a more powerful predictor of certain characteristics than is biological sex.

>Execution, Violent Punishment and Selection for Religiousness in Medieval England

Frost and Harpending, Evolutionary Psychology,

13 (2015), have argued that the increasing use of capital punishment

across the Middle Ages in Europe altered the genotype,

helping to create a less violent and generally more lawabiding

population. Developing this insight, we hypothesise

that the same system of violent punishments would also have

helped to genotypically create a more religious society by

indirectly selecting for religiousness, through the execution

of men who had not yet sired any offspring. We estimate the

selection differential for religiousness based on genetic correlation

data for conceivably related traits, and compare that to

the actual increase in religiosity across the Middle Ages. We

further explore other mechanisms by which religiousness was

being selected for in Medieval England, and conclude that

executions most likely contributed substantially to the increase

in religiosity, but that other selection pressures also

played a role.

>Evidence from the American Time Use Survey 2003-12 suggests the existence of small but statistically significant racial/ethnic differences in time spent not working at the workplace. Minorities, especially men, spend a greater fraction of their workdays not working than do white non-Hispanics. These differences are robust to the inclusion of large numbers of demographic, industry, occupation, time and geographic controls. They do not vary by union status, public-private sector attachment, pay method or age; nor do they arise from the effects of equal-employment enforcement or geographic differences in racial/ethnic representation. The findings imply that measures of the adjusted wage disadvantages of minority employees are overstated by about 10 percent.

>This research utilises a content analysis methodology to examine the issue of male rape among prison populations within the United States. The physical and psychological aspects of rape are described by professionals, victims, and aggressors. The inmate terminology related to prison rape such as Punk and Jocker are defined to show the social structure of the prison sexual subculture. Previous theories of prison rape concerning racism, power, and sexual deprivation are discussed and analysed. Racism perpetrated against white inmates by black inmates is indicated to be the single causal factor in prison rape. Both quantitative and qualitative data indicate a prevalence of predominantly black rapists and white victims nationwide for the last 40 years. The controversial issues of conjugal visits, home furlough release, or allowing homosexual behaviour in prisons are debated as possible solutions to remedy prison sexual assault. The debate concerning the issuance of condoms in prison to prevent the transmission of the AIDS or HIV virus during rape attacks is discussed. The inmate classification system is presented as one viable solution to reduce the number of prison rapes. The scheme of inmate classification is to identify violent sexual aggressors and separate them from the general non-violent prison population. The author also considers separation by racial and ethnic categories since literary evidence shows ‘black racism’ to be the common denominator in most prison sexual assaults and rapes of predominantly white inmates.

>We consider the conditions of peace and violence among ethnic groups, testing a theory designed to predict the locations of violence and interventions that can promote peace. Characterizing the model's success in predicting peace requires examples where peace prevails despite diversity. Switzerland is recognized as a country of peace, stability and prosperity. This is surprising because of its linguistic and religious diversity that in other parts of the world lead to conflict and violence. Here we analyze how peaceful stability is maintained. Our analysis shows that peace does not depend on integrated coexistence, but rather on well defined topographical and political boundaries separating groups, allowing for partial autonomy within a single country. In Switzerland, mountains and lakes are an important part of the boundaries between sharply defined linguistic areas. Political canton and circle (sub-canton) boundaries often separate religious groups. Where such boundaries do not appear to be sufficient, we find that specific aspects of the population distribution guarantee either sufficient separation or sufficient mixing to inhibit intergroup violence according to the quantitative theory of conflict. In exactly one region, a porous mountain range does not adequately separate linguistic groups and that region has experienced significant violent conflict, leading to the recent creation of the canton of Jura. Our analysis supports the hypothesis that violence between groups can be inhibited by physical and political boundaries. A similar analysis of the area of the former Yugoslavia shows that during widespread ethnic violence existing political boundaries did not coincide with the boundaries of distinct groups, but peace prevailed in specific areas where they did coincide. The success of peace in Switzerland may serve as a model to resolve conflict in other ethnically diverse countries and regions of the world.

>A prominent hypothesis in the study of intelligence is that genetic influences on cognitive abilities are larger for children raised in more advantaged environments. Evidence to date has been mixed, with some indication that the hypothesized pattern may hold in the United States but not elsewhere. We conducted the largest study to date using matched birth and school administrative records from the socioeconomically diverse state of Florida, and we did not find evidence for the hypothesis.

>Accurate understanding of environmental moderation of genetic influences is vital to advancing the science of cognitive development as well as for designing interventions. One widely reported idea is increasing genetic influence on cognition for children raised in higher socioeconomic status (SES) families, including recent proposals that the pattern is a particularly US phenomenon. We used matched birth and school records from Florida siblings and twins born in 1994–2002 to provide the largest, most population-diverse consideration of this hypothesis to date. We found no evidence of SES moderation of genetic influence on test scores, suggesting that articulating gene-environment interactions for cognition is more complex and elusive than previously supposed.

>Do human societies from around the world exhibit similarities in the way that they are structured, and show commonalities in the ways that they have evolved? These are long-standing questions that have proven difficult to answer. To test between competing hypotheses, we constructed a massive repository of historical and archaeological information known as “Seshat: Global History Databank.” We systematically coded data on 414 societies from 30 regions around the world spanning the last 10,000 years. We were able to capture information on 51 variables reflecting nine characteristics of human societies, such as social scale, economy, features of governance, and information systems. Our analyses revealed that these different characteristics show strong relationships with each other and that a single principal component captures around three-quarters of the observed variation. Furthermore, we found that different characteristics of social complexity are highly predictable across different world regions. These results suggest that key aspects of social organization are functionally related and do indeed coevolve in predictable ways. Our findings highlight the power of the sciences and humanities working together to rigorously test hypotheses about general rules that may have shaped human history.

>For a long time, many social scientists were convinced that Conservatives were more biased and more in need of explaining than Liberals. However, recent scholarship has challenged this assumption, contending that the predominance of Liberals in the social sciences might have caused social science to view Conservatives unfairly as alien and abnormal and Liberals as unbiased and "normal." Here, we build on this work, arguing that one potent source of liberal bias-perceived victims' groups-has remained largely unstudied. We argue that most Liberals are cosmic egalitarians, that is, they believe that (especially ethnic) demographic groups do not differ biologically on socially valued traits (e.g., math ability, IQ, self-control). This, when coupled with a sacred narrative about protecting perceived victims' groups (e.g., Blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, Women), leads to bias against any challenge to cosmic egalitarianism that appears to cast a perceived privileged group (e.g., men) in a more favorable light than a perceived victims' group (e.g., women). We support our theory with X studies, which show that Liberals, but not Conservatives, evaluate information in a biased manner when that information portrays perceived victims' groups or perceived privileged groups as superior on a socially valued trait. We argue that this bias is due to a liberal trait we call Equalitarianism.

>Although past research suggests authoritarianism may be a uniquely right-wing phenomenon, the present two studies tested the hypothesis that authoritarianism exists in both right-wing and left-wing contexts in essentially equal degrees. Across two studies, university (n 5 475) and Mechanical Turk (n 5 298) participants completed either the RWA (right-wing authoritarianism) scale or a newly developed (and parallel) LWA (left-wing authoritarianism) scale. Participants further completed measurements of ideology and three domain-specific scales: prejudice, dogmatism, and attitude strength. Findings from both studies lend support to an authoritarianism symmetry hypothesis: Significant positive correlations emerged between LWA and measurements of liberalism, prejudice, dogmatism, and attitude strength. These results largely paralleled those correlating RWA with identical conservative-focused measurements, and an overall effect-size measurement showed LWA was similarly related to those constructs (compared to RWA) in both Study 1 and Study 2. Taken together, these studies provide evidence that LWA may be a viable construct in ordinary U.S. samples.

>>8379

>emil kirkegaard who has 0 credibility, he might as well be sargon of akkad

>Culture–gene coevolutionary theory posits that cultural values have evolved, are adaptive and influence the social and physical environments under which genetic selection operates. Here, we examined the association between cultural values of individualism–collectivism and allelic frequency of the serotonin transporter functional polymorphism (5-HTTLPR) as well as the role this culture–gene association may play in explaining global variability in prevalence of pathogens and affective disorders. We found evidence that collectivistic cultures were significantly more likely to comprise individuals carrying the short (S) allele of the 5-HTTLPR across 29 nations. Results further show that historical pathogen prevalence predicts cultural variability in individualism–collectivism owing to genetic selection of the S allele. Additionally, cultural values and frequency of S allele carriers negatively predict global prevalence of anxiety and mood disorder. Finally, mediation analyses further indicate that increased frequency of S allele carriers predicted decreased anxiety and mood disorder prevalence owing to increased collectivistic cultural values. Taken together, our findings suggest culture–gene coevolution between allelic frequency of 5-HTTLPR and cultural values of individualism–collectivism and support the notion that cultural values buffer genetically susceptible populations from increased prevalence of affective disorders. Implications of the current findings for understanding culture–gene coevolution of human brain and behaviour as well as how this coevolutionary process may contribute to global variation in pathogen prevalence and epidemiology of affective disorders, such as anxiety and depression, are discussed.

>Most decisions about policy adoption require preference aggregation, which makes it difficult to determine how and when an individual can influence policy change. Examining how frequently a judge is cited offers insight into this question. Drawing upon the psychological concept of social identity, we suggest that shared group memberships can account for differences in policy influence. We investigate this possibility using the demographic and professional group memberships of federal circuit court judges and an original dataset of citations among all published search and seizure cases from federal circuit courts from 1990 to 2010. The results indicate that shared professional characteristics do tend to lead to ingroup favoritism in citation decisions while only partial evidence of such a pattern emerges for demographic group memberships. There is evidence of ingroup favoritism among female and minority judges but none for male or white judges. Overall, judges appear to generally have greater influence on judges with shared characteristics. The findings have vital implications for our understanding of the diversification of policy-making institutions.

> Many modern human genomes retain DNA inherited from interbreeding with archaic hominins, such as Neandertals, yet the influence of this admixture on human traits is largely unknown. We analyzed the contribution of common Neandertal variants to over 1000 electronic health record (EHR)–derived phenotypes in ~28,000 adults of European ancestry. We discovered and replicated associations of Neandertal alleles with neurological, psychiatric, immunological, and dermatological phenotypes. Neandertal alleles together explained a significant fraction of the variation in risk for depression and skin lesions resulting from sun exposure (actinic keratosis), and individual Neandertal alleles were significantly associated with specific human phenotypes, including hypercoagulation and tobacco use. Our results establish that archaic admixture influences disease risk in modern humans, provide hypotheses about the effects of hundreds of Neandertal haplotypes, and demonstrate the utility of EHR data in evolutionary analyses.

>Assessing the genetic contribution of Neanderthals to non-disease phenotypes in modern humans has been difficult because of the absence of large cohorts for which common phenotype information is available. Using baseline phenotypes collected for 112,000 individuals by the UK Biobank, we can now elaborate on previous findings that identified associations between signatures of positive selection on Neanderthal DNA and various modern human traits but not any specific phenotypic consequences. Here, we show that Neanderthal DNA affects skin tone and hair color, height, sleeping patterns, mood, and smoking status in present-day Europeans. Interestingly, multiple Neanderthal alleles at different loci contribute to skin and hair color in present-day Europeans, and these Neanderthal alleles contribute to both lighter and darker skin tones and hair color, suggesting that Neanderthals themselves were most likely variable in these traits.

>Almost a decade ago, the sequencing of ancient DNA from archaic humans - Neanderthals and Denisovans - revealed that modern and archaic humans interbred at least twice during the Pleistocene. The field of human paleogenomics has now turned its attention towards understanding the nature of this genetic legacy in the gene pool of present-day humans. What exactly did modern humans obtain from interbreeding with Neanderthals and Denisovans? Were introgressed genetic material beneficial, neutral or maladaptive? Can differences in phenotypes among present-day human populations be explained by archaic human introgression? These questions are of prime importance for our understanding of recent human evolution, but will require careful computational modeling and extensive functional assays before they can be answered in full. Here, we review the recent literature characterizing introgressed DNA and the likely biological consequences for their modern human carriers. We focus particularly on archaic human haplotypes that were beneficial to modern humans as they expanded across the globe, and on ways to understand how populations harboring these haplotypes evolved over time.

>(((David Reich))) - Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past (2018)

http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=9615AAE062FCFED3678A29216AFD1E1F

>Here is a groundbreaking book about how the extraction of ancient DNA from ancient bones has profoundly changed our understanding of human prehistory while resolving many long-standing controversies.

>Massive technological innovations now allow scientists to extract and analyze ancient DNA as never before, and it has become clear—in part from David Reich's own contributions to the field—that genomics is as important a means of understanding the human past as archeology, linguistics, and the written word. In Who We Are and How We Got Here, Reich describes with unprecedented clarity just how the human genome provides not only all the information that a fertilized human egg needs to develop but also contains within it the history of our species. He explains how the genomic revolution and ancient DNA are transforming our understanding of the lineage of modern humans and how DNA studies reveal the deep history of inequality—among different populations, between the sexes, and among individuals within a population. His book gives the lie to the orthodoxy that there are no meaningful biological differenced among human populations, and at the same time uses the definitive evidence provided by genomics to show that the differences that do exist are unlikely to conform to familiar stereotypes.

>Here we report the Simons Genome Diversity Project data set: high quality genomes from 300 individuals from 142 diverse populations. These genomes include at least 5.8 million base pairs that are not present in the human reference genome. Our analysis reveals key features of the landscape of human genome variation, including that the rate of accumulation of mutations has accelerated by about 5% in non-Africans compared to Africans since divergence. We show that the ancestors of some pairs of present-day human populations were substantially separated by 100,000 years ago, well before the archaeologically attested onset of behavioural modernity. We also demonstrate that indigenous Australians, New Guineans and Andamanese do not derive substantial ancestry from an early dispersal of modern humans; instead, their modern human ancestry is consistent with coming from the same source as that of other non-Africans.

>This paper investigates the claim that colonial history has left an enduring imprint on Africa's institutional and economic development. The literature following Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson (2001) and Sokoloff and Engerman (2000) maintains that different types of colonialism affected the institutional environment differently, and that path-dependence subsequently ensures that these institutional differences and their impact on economic performance are persistent over time. By tracing the impact of colonial institutions on contemporary institutions over time, I show that – in contrast to claims in this literature – the relevance of colonial legacies to institutional quality and to per capita income is rapidly disappearing in Africa. Differences in institutional quality or income are explained less and less by colonial legacy, while there is some evidence that precolonial social and geographical circumstances are becoming more important. I conclude that while colonialism has affected African institutional and economic development significantly, this impact is not persistent. Rather, the evidence suggests that colonialism has created a large but very temporary institutional shock, after which a long-run equilibrium is being restored.

>Marriage practices in Northwest Europe are unique among societies with intensive agriculture. Critically, married couples were freely chosen non-relatives who set up their households independently of their parents and their extended families; households typically including nonrelatives and were established only afer achieving economic viability. This in turn required greater planning and self-control prior to marriage, and resulted in greater husband-wife partnership than is typical when marriage is embedded within extended kinship networks (i.e., joint family structure—a form of collectivism paradigmatically occurring in the Middle East). A standard view among historians is that this marriage regime was a response to the unique context afer the fall of the Roman Empire in which lords were forced to give incentives to laborers. This hypothesis is rejected for several reasons: 1. there are strong currents of individualism in Indo-European culture long predating the post-Roman period; 2. the manorial system of the post-Roman world was remarkably similar to the prevailing practices of Germanic tribes during the Roman period; 3. individualist families have several disadvantages compared to collectivist families, including later generation time, uncertain inheritance, greater likelihood of sexual assault prior to marriage in households composed of non-relatives—thus making it unlikely to be freely chosen because of incentives provided by lords. This is compatible with a theory that European individualism results from genetically based tendencies resulting in a misft with medieval environments compared to collectivist family structure. Data are reviewed indicating that the most extreme forms of individualism occur in Scandinavian societies, implying a cline in individualism from southeast to northwest. In conclusion, an ethnically based northwest-southeast gradient is proposed as the main variable in explaining variation in family structure within Western Europe. However, viewed in broader terms—in comparison, say, to the Middle East—all of Europe, including Eastern Europe, is relatively individualistic.

>Ambient temperature is a critical environmental factor for all living organisms. It was likely an important selective force as modern humans recently colonized temperate and cold Eurasian environments. Nevertheless, as of yet we have limited evidence of local adaptation to ambient temperature in populations from those environments. To shed light on this question, we exploit the fact that humans are a cosmopolitan species that inhabit territories under a wide range of temperatures. Focusing on cold perception–which is central to thermoregulation and survival in cold environments–we show evidence of recent local adaptation on TRPM8. This gene encodes for a cation channel that is, to date, the only temperature receptor known to mediate an endogenous response to moderate cold. The upstream variant rs10166942 shows extreme population differentiation, with frequencies that range from 5% in Nigeria to 88% in Finland (placing this SNP in the 0.02% tail of the FST empirical distribution). When all populations are jointly analyzed, allele frequencies correlate with latitude and temperature beyond what can be explained by shared ancestry and population substructure. Using a Bayesian approach, we infer that the allele originated and evolved neutrally in Africa, while positive selection raised its frequency to different degrees in Eurasian populations, resulting in allele frequencies that follow a latitudinal cline. We infer strong positive selection, in agreement with ancient DNA showing high frequency of the allele in Europe 3,000 to 8,000 years ago. rs10166942 is important phenotypically because its ancestral allele is protective of migraine. This debilitating disorder varies in prevalence across human populations, with highest prevalence in individuals of European descent–precisely the population with the highest frequency of rs10166942 derived allele. We thus hypothesize that local adaptation on previously neutral standing variation may have contributed to the genetic differences that exist in the prevalence of migraine among human populations today.

>The human pelvis is often described as an evolutionary compromise (obstetrical dilemma) between the requirements of efficient bipedal locomotion and safe parturition of a highly encephalized neonate, that has led to a tight fit between the birth canal and the head and body of the foetus. Strong evolutionary constraints on the shape of the pelvis can be expected under this scenario. On the other hand, several studies have found a significant level of pelvic variation within and between human populations, a fact that seems to contradict such expectations. The advantages of a narrow pelvis for locomotion have recently been challenged, suggesting that the tight cephalo‐pelvic fit might not stem from the hypothesized obstetrical dilemma. Moreover, the human pelvis appears to be under lower constraints and to have relatively higher evolvability than other closely related primates. These recent findings substantially change the way in which we interpret variation in the human pelvis, and help make sense of the high diversity in pelvic shape observed within and among modern populations. A lower magnitude of covariance between functionally important regions ensured that a wide range of morphological variation was available within populations, enabling natural selection to generate pelvic variation between populations living in different environments. Neutral processes such as genetic drift and differential migration also contributed to shaping modern pelvic diversity during and after the expansion of humans into and across the various continents.

>There are mean differences in complex traits among global human populations. We hypothesize that part of the phenotypic differentiation is due to natural selection. To address this hypothesis, we assess the differentiation in allele frequencies of trait-associated SNPs among African, Eastern Asian, and European populations for ten complex traits using data of large sample size (up to ~405,000). We show that SNPs associated with height (P=2.46×10−5), waist-to-hip ratio (P=2.77×10−4), and schizophrenia (P=3.96×10−5) are significantly more differentiated among populations than matched “control” SNPs, suggesting that these trait-associated SNPs have undergone natural selection. We further find that SNPs associated with height (P=2.01×10−6) and schizophrenia (P=5.16×10−18) show significantly higher variance in linkage disequilibrium (LD) scores across populations than control SNPs. Our results support the hypothesis that natural selection has shaped the genetic differentiation of complex traits, such as height and schizophrenia, among worldwide populations.

>There are national differences in scientific activity that are not well accounted for by economic and intellectual factors alone. We examine the novel hypothesis that androgen levels may also play a role. Androgens are often referred to as male hormones, but are present in both men and women, and have been linked to performance in other domains, such as sports and entrepreneurship. National-level empirical data on scientific productivity, in terms of numbers of publications, and science Nobel laureates were compared to seven national-level androgen indicators; namely androgenic body hair, the length of the CAG repeat on the androgen receptor gene, prostate cancer incidence, male and female 2D:4D finger ratio, and sex frequency and number of partners. The majority of these indicators were associated in the expected direction with per capita number of scientific publications and Nobel prizes. Moreover, several indicators significantly interacted with national-level estimates of intelligence, such that androgen levels are related to measures of the scientific achievement only when the level of intelligence is relatively high. These findings may partly explain the global distribution of scientific productivity, achievements, and Nobel prizes.

>Why should mitochondria define species?

>More than a decade of DNA barcoding encompassing about five million specimens covering 100,000 animal species supports the generalization that mitochondrial DNA clusters largely overlap with species as defined by domain experts. Most barcode clustering reflects synonymous substitutions. What evolutionary mechanisms account for synonymous clusters being largely coincident with species? The answer depends on whether variants are phenotypically neutral. To the degree that variants are selectable, purifying selection limits variation within species and neighboring species have distinct adaptive peaks. Phenotypically neutral variants are only subject to demographic processes: drift, lineage sorting, genetic hitchhiking, and bottlenecks. The evolution of modern humans has been studied from several disciplines with detail unique among animal species. Mitochondrial barcodes provide a commensurable way to compare modern humans to other animal species. Barcode variation in the modern human population is quantitatively similar to that within other animal species. Several convergent lines of evidence show that mitochondrial diversity in modern humans follows from sequence uniformity followed by the accumulation of largely neutral diversity during a population expansion that began approximately 100,000 years ago. A straightforward hypothesis is that the extant populations of almost all animal species have arrived at a similar result consequent to a similar process of expansion from mitochondrial uniformity within the last one to several hundred thousand years.

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/228798/20180530/massive-genetic-study-reveals-90-percent-of-earth-s-animals-appeared-at-the-same-time.htm

>>8580

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5430617/

>A recent study conducted the first genome-wide scan for selection in Inuit from Greenland using single nucleotide polymorphism chip data. Here, we report that selection in the region with the second most extreme signal of positive selection in Greenlandic Inuit favored a deeply divergent haplotype that is closely related to the sequence in the Denisovan genome, and was likely introgressed from an archaic population. The region contains two genes, WARS2 and TBX15, and has previously been associated with adipose tissue differentiation and body-fat distribution in humans. We show that the adaptively introgressed allele has been under selection in a much larger geographic region than just Greenland. Furthermore, it is associated with changes in expression of WARS2 and TBX15 in multiple tissues including the adrenal gland and subcutaneous adipose tissue, and with regional DNA methylation changes in TBX15

>The other region contains WARS2 and TBX15, located on chromosome 1. WARS2 encodes the mitochondrial tryptophanyl-tRNA synthetase. TBX15 is a transcription factor from the T-box family and is a highly pleotropic gene expressed in multiple tissues at different stages of development. It is required for skeletal development and deletions in this gene cause Cousin syndrome, whose symptoms include craniofacial dysmorphism and short stature. TBX15 also plays a role in the differentiation of brown and brite adipocytes. Brown and brite adipocytes produce heat via lipid oxidation when stimulated by cold temperatures, making TBX15 a strong candidate gene for adaptation to life in the Arctic. SNPs in or near both of these genes have also been associated with numerous phenotypes in GWAS studies – in particular waist-hip ratio and fat distribution in Europeans and ear morphology in Latin Americans.

>Multiple studies have shown extensive introgression of DNA from Neanderthals and Denisovans into modern humans. Many of the introgressed tracts have been shown to be of functional importance and may possibly be examples of adaptive introgression into humans, including several genes involved in immunity, several genes associated with skin pigmentation, and EPAS1, associated with high-altitude adaptation in Tibetans. Archaic humans have been hypothesized to be adapted to cold temperatures. Therefore, in this paper we examine if any of the selected genes in Inuit1 may have been introduced into the modern human gene pool via admixture from archaic humans, i.e. Neanderthals or Denisovans. We will show that the WARS2/TBX15 haplotype of high frequency in Greenlandic Inuit was likely introgressed from an archaic human population that was closely related to Denisovans. We will also show that the selection affecting this haplotype is relatively old, resulting in a high allele frequency in other New World populations and intermediate allele frequencies in East Asia. Finally, functional genomic analyses suggest that the selected archaic haplotype may affect the regulation of expression of TBX15 and WARS2, and is associated with phenotypes related to body fat distribution.

>>4110

http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=1EA5C0581A1D89EB36F565F2B0CF85AC

>Arthur R. Jensen - The g Factor: The Science of Mental Ability (1998)

>Jensen fully and clearly explains the psychometric, statistical, genetic, and physiological basis of g, as well as the major theoretical challenges to the concept. For decades a key construct in differential psychology, the g factor's significance for scholars and researchers in the brain sciences as well as education, sociology, anthropology, evolutionary psychology, economics, and public policy is clearly evident in this, the most comprehensive treatment of g ever published.

>What makes humans unique as a species and as individuals? Our uniqueness stems from language, tool use, reasoning, and other cognitive abilities that are largely mediated by specialized regions of the cerebral cortex. These regions of higher cognitive function have expanded disproportionately during human evolution (compared with nonhuman primates) and during postnatal maturation, when cortical surface area expands threefold between infancy and adulthood (1). Our uniqueness as individuals reflects countless differences in brain structure, function, and connectivity. One basic anatomical difference between similarly aged individuals is a more than 1.5-fold variation in total brain size (and total cortical volume) (2). On page 1222 of this issue, Reardon et al. (3) bring this aspect of individual variability under the umbrella of “differential scaling” by showing that human brains of different sizes do not scale uniformly across all regions. Rather, larger brains show greater expansion in regions associated with higher cognition and less expansion in regions associated with sensory, motor, and limbic (emotion- and affect-related) functions.

>Data are reported for intelligence of children in China assessed by the Combined Raven's Test in 1988, 1996 and 2006. The IQ of the samples increased by 15.0 IQ points over 18-year period. The British IQ of China in 1988 and 2006 is estimated as 94.8 and 109.8, respectively.

>The purpose of this study is to conduct a systematic review of the literature on the relationship between general cognitive ability and fertility among modern humans. Our goals were to (a) evaluate the state of the extant literature, and (b) provide a quantitative summary of effect sizes to the extent possible (given the limitations of the literature). A thorough search identified 17 unique datasets that passed the inclusion criteria. Using a Random Effects Model to evaluate the data, the overall weighted effect was r = −0.11, although the data also indicated a sex effect (stronger correlations among females than males), and a race effect (stronger correlations among Black and Hispanic populations compared to Whites). Importantly, the data suggest the correlation has been increasing in strength throughout the 20th century (and early 21st). Finally, we discovered several notable limitations of the extant literature; limitations that currently prohibit a psychometric meta-analysis. We discuss these issues with emphasis on improving future primary studies to allow for more effective meta-analytic investigations.

>Animal models of conflict behavior predict that an organism's behavior in a conflict situation is influenced by physical characteristics related to abilities to impose costs on adversaries. Stronger and larger organisms should be more motivated to seek larger shares of resources and higher places in hierarchies. Previous studies of human males have suggested that measures of upper‐body strength are associated with measures of support for inequality including Social Dominance Orientation (SDO), a measure of individual differences in support for group‐based hierarchies. However, other studies have failed to replicate this association. In this article, we reexamine the link between upper‐body strength and support for inequality using 12 different samples from multiple countries in which relevant measures were available. These samples include student and locally representative samples with direct measures of physical strength and nationally representative samples with self‐reported measures related to muscularity. While the predicted correlation does not replicate for every single available measure of support for inequality, the overall data pattern strongly suggests that for males, but not females, upper‐body strength correlates positively with support for inequality.

https://press.cern/press-releases/2018/09/statement-cern-stands-diversity

>CERN considers the presentation delivered by an invited scientist during a workshop on High Energy Theory and Gender as highly offensive. It has therefore decided to remove the slides from the online repository, in line with a Code of Conduct that does not tolerate personal attacks and insults.

judge for yourself

http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=77FB9ACB7CD6A107ADF0B308F52FA754

>Robert Plomin - Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koxSMz8jVXE

bbc hard talk with the author

>In The Mismeasure of Man, Stephen Jay Gould argued that the preconceived beliefs and biases of scientists influence their methods and conclusions. To show the potential consequences of this, Gould used examples from the early days of psychometrics and allied fields, arguing that inappropriate assumptions and an elitist desire to rank individuals and/or groups produced incorrect results. In this article, we investigate a section of The Mismeasure of Man in which Gould evaluated the Army Beta intelligence test for illiterate American draftees in World War I. We evaluated Gould’s arguments that the Army Beta (a) had inappropriate content, (b) had unsuitable administration conditions, (c) suffered from short time limits, and (d) could not have measured intelligence. By consulting the historical record and conducting a pre-registered replication of Gould’s administration of the test to a sample of college students, we show that Gould mischaracterized the Army Beta in a number of ways. Instead, the Army Beta was a well-designed test by the standards of the time, and all evidence indicates that it measured intelligence a century ago and can, to some extent, do so today.

>The relationship between biracial status, color, and crystallized intelligence was examined in a nationally representative sample of adult Black and White Americans. First, it was found that self-identifying biracial individuals, who were found to be intermediate in color and in self-reported ancestry, had intermediate levels of crystallized intelligence relative to self-identifying White (mostly European ancestry) and Black (mostly sub-Saharan African ancestry) Americans. The results were transformed to an IQ scale: White (M = 100.00, N = 7569), primarily White–biracial (M = 96.07, N = 43, primarily Black–biracial (M = 94.14 N = 50), and Black (M = 89.81, N = 1381). Next, among self-identifying African Americans, a statistically significant negative correlation of r = −0.102 (N = 637) was found between interviewer-rated darker facial color and vocabulary scores. After correction for the reliability of the measures, this correlation increased to r = −0.21. Corrections for the validity of color as an index of African ancestry would raise this correlation to around r = −0.48. This association among self-identifying African Americans was not accounted for by confounding factors, such as region of residence and interviewer race, or by parental socioeconomic status and individual educational attainment. In the multivariate models, the standardized betas for color and crystallized intelligence among African Americans ranged from β = −0.112 to β = −0.142. Based on the coefficients from the multivariate analysis, it was further found that cognitive ability was a significant mediator in the context of color and education, while education was not in the context of color and cognitive ability. It is concluded that these results further substantiate the statistical relation between intelligence and biogeographic ancestry in African and European American populations.

>Little published empirical research has investigated public support for eugenic policies. To add to this literature, a survey on attitudes about eugenic policies was conducted of participants from Amazon Mechanical Turk who indicated residence in the United States (N > 400). Survey items assessed the levels and correlates of support for policies that, among other things, encourage lower levels of reproduction among the poor, the unintelligent, and people who have committed serious crimes and encourage higher levels of reproduction among the wealthy and the intelligent. Analyses of responses indicated nontrivial support for most of the eugenic policies asked about, such as at least 40% support for policies encouraging lower levels of reproduction among poor people, unintelligent people, and people who have committed serious crimes. Support for the eugenic policies often associated with feelings about the target group and with the perceived heritability of the distinguishing trait of the target group. To the extent that this latter association reflects a causal effect of perceived heritability, increased genetic attributions among the public might produce increased public support for eugenic policies and increase the probability that such policies are employed.

>We assembled genome-wide data from 271 ancient Iberians, of whom 176 are from the largely unsampled period after 2000 BCE, thereby providing a high-resolution time transect of the Iberian Peninsula.We document high genetic substructure between northwestern and southeastern hunter-gatherers before the spread of farming.

>We reveal sporadic contacts between Iberia and North Africa by ~2500 BCE and, by ~2000 BCE, the replacement of 40% of Iberia’s ancestry and nearly 100% of its Y-chromosomes by people with Steppe ancestry.

>We show that, in the Iron Age, Steppe ancestry had spread not only into Indo-European–speaking regions but also into non-Indo-European–speaking ones, and we reveal that present-day Basques are best described as a typical Iron Age population without the admixture events that later affected the rest of Iberia. Additionally,we document how, beginning at least in the Roman period, the ancestry of the peninsula was transformed by gene flow from North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean.

>Rushton and Jensen argued that cognitive ability differs between human populations. But why are such differences expectable? Their answer: as modern humans spread out of Africa and into northern Eurasia, they entered colder and more seasonal climates that selected for the ability to plan ahead, in order to store food, make clothes, and build shelters for winter. This cold winter theory is supported by research on Paleolithic humans and recent hunter-gatherers. Tools become more diverse and complex as effective temperature decreases, apparently because food has to be obtained during limited periods and over large areas. There is also more storage of food and fuel and greater use of untended traps and snares. Finally, shelters have to be sturdier, and clothing more cold-resistant. The resulting cognitive demands are met primarily by women because the lack of opportunities for food gathering pushes them into more cognitively demanding tasks, like garment making, needlework, weaving, leatherworking, pottery, and kiln operation. The northern tier of Paleolithic Eurasia thus produced the "Original Industrial Revolution"—an explosion of creativity that preadapted its inhabitants for later developments, i.e., farming, more complex technology and social organization, and an increasingly future-oriented culture. Over time, these humans would spread south, replacing earlier populations that could less easily exploit the possibilities of the new cultural environment. As this environment developed further, it selected for further increases in cognitive ability. Indeed, mean intelligence seems to have risen during recorded history at temperate latitudes in Europe and East Asia. There is thus no unified theory for the evolution of human intelligence. A key stage was adaptation to cold winters during the Paleolithic, but much happened later.

>Education and Intelligence: Pity the Poor Teacher because Student Characteristics are more Significant than Teachers or Schools (2016)

Education has not changed from the beginning of recorded history. The problem is that focus has been on

schools and teachers and not students. Here is a simple thought experiment with two conditions: 1) 50 teachers are

assigned by their teaching quality to randomly composed classes of 20 students, 2) 50 classes of 20 each are composed

by selecting the most able students to fill each class in order and teachers are assigned randomly to classes. In condition

1, teaching ability of each teacher and in condition 2, mean ability level of students in each class is correlated with

average gain over the course of instruction. Educational gain will be best predicted by student abilities (up to r = 0.95)

and much less by teachers’ skill (up to r = 0.32). I argue that seemingly immutable education will not change until we

fully understand students and particularly human intelligence. Over the last 50 years in developed countries, evidence

has accumulated that only about 10% of school achievement can be attributed to schools and teachers while the

remaining 90% is due to characteristics associated with students. Teachers account for from 1% to 7% of total variance

at every level of education. For students, intelligence accounts for much of the 90% of variance associated with

learning gains. This evidence is reviewed.

>There is long-standing tension regarding whether and how to use race or geographic ancestry in biomedical research. We examined multiple self-reported measures of race and ancestry from a cohort of over 100,000 U.S. residents alongside genetic data. We found that these measures are often non-overlapping, and that no single self-reported measure alone provides a better fit to genetic ancestry than a combination including both race and geographic ancestry. We also found that patterns of reporting for race and ancestry appear to be influenced by participation in direct-to-consumer genetic ancestry testing. Our results demonstrate that there is a place for the language of both race and geographic ancestry as we seek to empower individuals to fully describe their family history in research and medicine.

>We show that genetic endowments linked to educational attainment strongly and robustly predict wealth at retirement. The estimated relationship is not fully explained by flexibly controlling for education and labor income. We therefore investigate a host of additional mechanisms that could account for the gene-wealth gradient, including inheritances, mortality, risk preferences, portfolio decisions, beliefs about the probabilities of macroeconomic events, and planning horizons. We provide evidence that genetic endowments related to human capital accumulation are associated with wealth not only through educational attainment and labor income, but also through a facility with complex financial decisionmaking.

>There are growing concerns that social media exacerbates the selective exposure of audience members to content that supports their political views. However, despite the hype, the existing literature does not fully address the extent to which social media users selectively consume like-minded news stories, in part due to different methodologies. In an attempt to move toward a common framework, this study examined the partisan selective exposure of a representative sample of Twitter users by combining survey data with digital trace data. Specifically, the study linked survey responses (n = 558) from Twitter users with their media following and exposure to news via their friends. The study found that selectivity bias was present in all types of data, including self-reported media consumption (survey), media following (Twitter), and indirect exposure to media (Twitter). However, the study found some differences between self-reports and digital measures such that the overlaps in media diets between partisan groups were much larger based on the digital trace data than the self-reported data. In addition, the study observed an asymmetric pattern of selective exposure between conservatives and liberals in the digital trace data, but not in the self-reported data. The implications of these findings are discussed with reference to the contemporary news environment, hostile media effects, and normative assumptions of selective exposure.