Another Reason Why You are Not a Chimp

U. Toronto

Humans and chimpanzees share remarkably similar sets of genes.  When measured conventionally, the genes of humans and the genes of chimps are 99% alike.   And yet, chimps do not build cities, do not publish encyclopedias, and do not launch spaceships to Mars and beyond.


Two recent studies:

N. L. Barbosa-Morais et al., “The Evolutionary Landscape of alternative splicing in vertebrate species,” Science, 388, 1587-93, 2012.

J. Merkin et al., “Evolutionary dynamics of gene and isoform regulation in mammalian tissues,”Science, 388, 1593-99, 2012.

provide new information on how two species with very similar DNA patterns can develop so differently in the real world.

The studies from MIT and the University of Toronto, reveal the remarkable degree of difference alternative gene splicing between species -- resulting in distinctly different proteins from the same gene.

“It was somewhat generally assumed that splicing differences that you see between brain and muscle in the mouse would be similar between brain and muscle in the human,” said Donny Licatalosi, professor of RNA molecular biology at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, who did not participate in the studies, “but what both of these studies are showing is that is not the case. There is a large amount of species-specific alternative splicing.”

...“how do physical and behavioral differences arise if we have a very similar set of genes to that of the mouse, chicken, or frog?” said Ben Blencowe, a cell and molecular biology professor at the University of Toronto, who led one of the studies. A commonly discussed mechanism was variable levels of gene expression, but both Blencowe and Chris Burge, biology and biological engineering professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and lead author of the second paper, found that gene expression is relatively conserved among species.

...To assess alternative splicing patterns as well as transcription levels, both groups performed high-throughput sequencing of messenger RNA. They extracted RNA from a large array of organs of different vertebrate species, including frogs, chickens, primates, and humans. “It’s a massive amount of data,” said Cooper.

Blencowe’s team showed that the species-specific alternative splicing changes tended to be driven by differences in the transcripts themselves, which carry a splicing code that guides the splicing machinery—rather than differences in the splicing machinery. For example, human transcripts expressed in mouse cells exhibited human, not mouse, splicing patterns, despite being spliced by mouse machinery.

“These are very important papers that provide for the first time a large-scale view of the evolution of alternative splicing in vertebrates,” said Brent Graveley, professor of genetics and developmental biology at the University of Connecticut, who was not involved in the research. “They demonstrate how dramatically rapidly alternative splicing evolves, and suggest that it might play a role in speciation.”

The incredible capacity for alternative splicing could enable cells to try-out new versions of proteins without risking the complete loss of the originals, said Burge. Of course, if a new version then offers an advantage, the associated sequence changes to the splicing code will be selected for. “It is certainly an attractive model, and we think it is what’s going on,” said Burge. _TheScientist

This remarkably rapid and competitive evolutionary activity is taking place within each cell of almost every tissue inside your body.

Not only does this epigenetic process provide more reasons for differences between species, but it also likely provides more reasons for differences between sub-species. It will probably also eventually reveal significant differences in gene expression between identical twins.

A number of other genetic and epigenetic processes such as copy number variants, transposable elements, non-coding RNAs, non-coding DNAs, unique mutations (each person has about 100 unique mutations in his genome), etc. -- and more to be discovered -- have already provided us with reasons why two individuals with very similar DNA can easily develop significant differences in gene expression.

The alternative splicing mechanisms being elaborated in the two studies above, provide another very powerful source of difference in gene expression -- not only between individuals, but also between body tissues within the same individual. This evolutionary mechanism even introduces differences in gene expression between different cells of the same tissue type.

Biology just keeps getting more and more interesting all the time.

Humans and Apes: What a Difference a Gene Makes

It seems like miR-941 came around after humans evolved from apes and at just the right moment to give humans a real edge over other mammals, some time between six and one million years ago. This was when we as a species were really out there making strides like the genetic champions we are. _geekosystem

University of Edinburgh researchers have identified a gene that is carried only by humans, and may have assisted humanity's ascent into the realm of language, global civilisation, and terminal angst. Their findings were published in Nature Communications.

Genius Chimp or Dunder Man?

The gene, called miR-941, is carried only by humans and it appeared after humans evolved from apes and played a crucial role in human brain development and could shed light on how we learned to use tools and language...

...Scientists led by Dr Martin Taylor at the Institute of Genetics and Molecular Medicine showed that miR-941 had an important part in the development of the human brain and can even help explain how we acquire language and learn to use tools.

This new gene is the first known gene to be found in humans and not in apes. According to the team, it appears to have a certain purpose in the human body.

The researchers analysed 11 different species of mammals, such as gorillas, chimpanzees, rats and mice, and then compared them to the human genome in order to look for variations. _From Apes to Men

Interestingly, miR-941 is thought to have arisen out of non-coding DNA -- or "junk DNA." If so, a lot of proud people will need to downgrade their family lineages in the light of these findings.

It is known that most differences between species occur as a result of changes to existing genes, or the duplication and deletion of genes. But scientists say this gene emerged fully functional out of non-coding genetic material, previously termed "junk DNA", in a startlingly brief interval of evolutionary time. Until now, it has been remarkably difficult to see this process in action. _MXP

The flood of new information in genetics is overwhelming the old theories. Smarter humans are desperately needed. Perhaps another new gene may emerge "fully functional" out of the junk DNA, to give us a boost?

From Monkeys to Muslims: Excitable Primates

The differences between the minds of monkeys and the minds of men are differences of a graded evolutionary nature. Natural selection follows a forked and winding pathway, diverging and converging unpredictably. The range of primate emotions is remarkably similar from monkeys to humans. All primates -- from monkeys to higher species -- are excitable to a greater or lesser degree.

Monkeys Attacking Automobile

Monkeys are excitable, like all primates. Monkeys experience rage reactions -- like apes and humans -- but they do not typically organise in up close and personal group attacks like common chimps and people are wont to do. When they flock together, it is more likely in search of food or out of curiosity.

Evolving Apes on Rampage

In an evolutionary sense, apes are much closer to humans, and ape behaviour has many more parallels with human behaviour. Apes have been known to carry out sustained genocidal wars against competing groups of apes. The superior size and organisation of the ape brain makes it capable of organising and sustaining rage for longer periods of time on a larger scale.

Excitable Muslims

The human brain is larger yet, and formed in such a way to allow for even more complex levels of societal organisation than is found in ape societies. Human groups have been aroused to violence and warfare for as long as there is recorded history.

Human excitability -- particularly in groups -- can be a serious problem for human societies, and for the ability of humans to get along in non-violent ways. Religious excitability and violence has been a problem ever since disparate human tribes began to assert the superiority and dominance of their particular tribal gods over the gods of rival tribes.

Some forms of relgion - instigated rage appear indistinguishable from caricatures of rage as portrayed in feature films such as "28 Days Later." In that film, a "rage virus" escaped from the lab to infest human populations, leading to cataclysmic violence.

Human rage will often build in normal circumstances -- as in "road rage," "computer rage," and other common situations where other humans may act to frustrate or oppose the wishes of a protagonist (that would be you).

Opinions vary widely, as to what should be done to manage human excitability and rage, to prevent out-of-control violence. Would it be better -- for example -- to release one's anger in a real life "fight club?" Or is it better to salve one's anger in meditation, yoga, or even a "laughter club?"

One interesting suggestion is the creation of "rage clubs," as a means to purge the inevitable anger and rage that tend to build over time.

This is how they would work. People first gather together in a large open space (a barn or warehouse type area – incidentally, no alcohol would be allowed), then several passionate speakers incite the crowd with stories of injustice and exploitation inter-cut with biased news reports (there could even be a standard canon of examples; Bhopal, Gaza, The Crusades, Big tobacco. For ‘light hearted rage’ the subjects could be narrowed down to, poor user interface or badly designed electronic equipment or non existent customer service). The speakers would then lead the crowd into demonstrating their wrath and frustration with screams, tears and rending of shirts (bought specifically for the event from charity shops). A percussion ensemble or rock band will create a throbbing soundtrack of primitive trance like rhythms building in volume. The crowd will simultaneously produce various implements of noise making capability and commence to create a cacophony of sound so powerful it would even make Lemmy from Motorhead stop his ears.

Areas will be set aside where crockery seconds can be hurled furiously at a brick wall. Effigies of slippery political criminals will be stuck on poles and aggrieved victims given fifteen minutes with a baseball bat to put their point across to them (this is contentious I know, but it is meant to be purely symbolic. The signal sent out will be that such behaviour will only be tolerated at the Rage Club but at the same time it will also be a reminder to the authorities and multinationals: “we people know of our power, so don’t screw with us and ignore us at your peril.”)

Ultimately, an energy of pure rage will be created and each individual will experience a catharsis which will lead to exhaustion, reflection and a reasoned course of action to methodically change those things which enrage them. _Rage Club

Would this work? Consider that some of the most spectacular rage displays put on by groups of Muslims often occur immediately after Friday noon prayer at the mosque. Religious clerics often learn to work a crowd into a righteous frenzy. If the group is then released directly onto the streets in the form of a mob, the results can sometimes be quite photogenic.

But what if these excitable primates were steered into a rage club instead? Allowed to vent their rage in a controlled and relatively private manner, such frenzied zealots might gradually ease into a more controlled mental state. Their internal rages may even be satisfied -- at least until next week's Friday noon prayer at the mosque.

It is something to think about.

Bigger and Smarter Brains: What Makes the Difference?

If you look at brain size across the evolutionary tree, it seems clear that larger brained creatures demonstrate greater intelligence, for the most part, when corrected for body size. What is the evolutionary driving force behind increasing brain size?

Researchers found that protein domain called DUF1220 may explain why humans have bigger brains. Humans have more than 270 copies of DUF1220 in their genome whereas chimpanzees have 125, gorillas have 99 and mice have just one. The number of copies of DUF1220 shows how close an animal may be to humans.

"This research indicates that what drove the evolutionary expansion of the human brain may well be a specific unit within a protein – called a protein domain -- that is far more numerous in humans than other species," said Sikela. _Medical Daily

Article abstract
Wikipedia article on "Protein Domain"

Jnl of Cosmology

Something has been driving the evolutionary increase in the size and sophistication of the brain. DUF1220 repeats may well be a part of the story, but are not likely to be the entire explanation.

Besides an increase in overall brain size, the relative size of particular brain components have changed. The frontal lobe size in homo sapiens, for example, is thought to be significantly larger than the frontal lobes in homo neanderthals, while the temporal and occipital lobes were larger in the Neanderthal. So although overall brain size was comparable between the two species of homo, actual brain function would likely have been quite different.

Data from Beals, et al, Oregon State University

Even in the modern extended breeding families (races) of homo sapiens sapiens, we find statistical differences in group brain sizes.

The definitive study of race differences in brain size was carried out on approximately 20,000 crania by Professor Kenneth Beals and his colleagues at Oregon State University. Their results for endocranial volume, measured in cubic centimeters for the major races were as follows: North East Asians (Chinese, Japanese and Koreans): 1,416 cm; Europeans: 1,369cm; Native American Indians: 1,366cm; Southeast Asians: 1,332cm; Pacific Islanders: 1,317cm; South Asians: 1,293cm; Sub-Saharan Africans: 1,282cm; Bushmen: 1,270cm; Australian Aborigines: 1,225cm. These brain size differences correspond with intelligence differences derived from IQ tests given by Prof. Richard Lynn, who finds IQs of 105 for North East Asians,100 for Europeans, and so on downwards to 62 for Australian Aborigines and 54 for the Bushmen of the Kalahari desert. _China Daily Forum

Kenneth Beals PDF Download paper

We find that the gross statistical differences in average brain size appear to correlate with the statistical differences in average IQ.

This would not necessarily be the case, given that changes in the organisation of the brain structures and connections themselves could lead to more efficient brain function. The same is true for changes in molecular and genetic efficiency within brain cells -- a smaller brain does not necessarily mean a less functional brain.

At this time it is best to consider these correlations to be curiosities, rather than reflecting any deeper meaning.

But at least we are slowly stumbling upon some of the answers to our questions. As long as we do not allow our science to be perverted by a misplaced sense of political correctness, we should eventually obtain a fairly clear picture of how larger and more intelligent brains evolved.

Genes Coming out of Nowhwere? Our Changing Brains

A few years ago scientists found that....once in awhile in the cells of all living things bits of once-quiet stretches of DNA sometimes spontaneously assemble themselves into genes. Such "de novo" genes may go on to play significant roles in the evolution of individual organisms—even humans.

...When an international team of researchers scanned the human genome for de novo genes, however, they putatively uncovered 60, three times more than once estimated. More surprising, many of these genes are active in the cerebral cortex, suggesting that de novo genes might have played a key role in the evolution of the human mind. _SciAm

We are learning more and more ways that our genes can change and vary -- changing who we are, and making us different from our ancestors and our fellow travelers. Evolution did not stop with the coming of civilisation -- it may have just gotten started.

Neurological variants such as autism and synaesthesia may be tentative "attempts" by evolution to create new species of human.

"If you think of ideas as being enshrined in neural populations in the brain, if you get greater cross-connectivity [in synaesthesia] you're going to create a propensity towards metaphorical thinking," he [Vilayanur Ramachandran] said. He suggested that this ability to link dissimilar concepts is what created a "huge explosion of abilities that characterise the human brain". _NewScientist

All it might take would be a basic change in the way the brain prunes its neurons in early development and in adolescence, to create a breed of human that thinks in significantly different ways. These changes might come about from the emergence of de novo genes, or via the modification or silencing of older, more ancient genes. But the end result might well be something quite remarkable.

Scientists are learning how to look at a genetic sequence and predict what the individual will be like, based upon those genes. Yes, we know that such a thing is actually far beyond the state of modern genetics and epigenetics, but suppose they can partially succeed at that goal. That would mean that an embryo's genes could be sampled in utero, and we would know if the coming child is likely to diverge from the "standard human genome." What would you do?

Imagine a new species of humans growing up at our feet -- all with at least the genius of a Mozart or an Einstein -- with the potential to revolutionise our world. For a short time they would be vulnerable to our wishes. But soon, they would be well beyond our reach.

It sounds like science fiction, but in many ways it is a far more likely scenario than the ideas of a superhuman machine intelligence that spawns "the singularity."

If modern humans were more homogeneous than they are, the possiblity of such an emerging, advanced, new human species would be low. But given the rather large differences that exist between different populations of modern humans already, it is almost easy to accept the idea of evolutionary divergence of human populations.

As humans gain a firmer grasp of the tools of genetics and epigenetics -- as well as environmental manipulations -- the possibility of an emerging altered subspecies of humans with particular niche advantages, grows stronger.

You Are But Zombie Monkeys to the Coming Breed of Man

...one of [Enriquez'] most revolutionary ideas, which he discuses in the book New Human Species, is the expected evolution of a new hominid species in near future. The homo evolutis, which he said he speculates will be the most adapted hominid, endowed with tremendous mental capabilities, he said, “Twenty thousand species have gone around and become extinct,” Enriquez said. “I believe that we’re going to move into a homo evolutis, and our grandchildren will begin to live it.”

What will set apart this hominid from us, he said, is what he labeled “the ultimate reboot.”

“This hominid could take direct control of his species, this species and other species, and that of course, would be the ultimate reboot,” he said. _globalist

Evolution of Man
Juan Enriquez is an author visionary of life technologies, and a venture capitalist. He founded Harvard Business School's Life Sciences Project, and has worked with Craig Venter on a number of projects. So when Juan Enriquez says that humans are evolving a new species, he is likely to have good reason for saying so.

What does it take to make a new species?

We're beginning to see that it's an accumulation of small changes. Scientists have recently been able to compare the genomes of Neandertals and modern humans, which reveals just a .004 percent difference. Most of those changes lie in genes involved in sperm, testes, smell, and skin.

Engineering microbes alone might speciate us. When you apply sequencing technology to the microbes inhabiting the human body, it turns out to be fascinating. All of us are symbionts; we have 1,000 times more microbial cells in our bodies than human cells. You couldn't possible digest or live without the microbial cells inside your stomach. Some people have microbes that are better at absorbing calories. Diabetics have a slightly sweeter skin, which changes the microbial fauna and makes it harder for them to cauterize wounds.

One concern about human enhancement is that only some people will have access, creating an even greater economic divide. Do you think this will be the case?

In the industrial revolution, it took a lifetime to build enough industry to double the wealth of a country. In the knowledge revolution, you can build billion-dollar companies with 20 people very quickly. The implication is that you can double the wealth of a country very quickly. In Korea in 1975, people had one-fifth of the income of Mexicans, and today they have five times more. Even the poorest places can generate wealth quickly. You see this in Bangalore, China. On the flip side, you can also become irrelevant very quickly.

Scientists are on the verge of sequencing 10,000 human genomes. You point out this might highlight significant variation among our species, and that this requires some ethical consideration. Why?

The issue of [genetic variation] is a really uncomfortable question, one that for good reason, we have been avoiding since the 1930s and '40s. A lot of the research behind the eugenics movement came out of elite universities in the U.S. It was disastrously misapplied. But you do have to ask, if there are fundamental differences in species like dogs and horses and birds, is it true that there are no significant differences between humans? We are going to have an answer to that question very quickly. If we do, we need to think through an ethical, moral framework to think about questions that go way beyond science. _TechnologyReview_Juan Enriquez

The video above gives you an idea of how Enriquez expresses his ideas to the public, and reveals some of the things that he thinks about.

His ideas about the evolution of a new human species -- and the great need for humans to face the important genetic differences between different populations of humans -- sets him apart from ivory tower academics, politicians, and media skanks. In his day job, he has to think clearly and make good decisions -- unlike academics, politicians, and journalists, who rarely have to pay for their own mistaken thought processes.

When a venture capitalist makes decisions involving large sums of money, he cannot afford to wallow in political correctness, affirmative action, groupthink, or other modern dysfunctional aberrations of thought. He must be honest with himself and with his backers. In this case, it is likely that Enriquez is being honest with the public, based upon his intimate association with advanced biotechnological projects.

But something that not even Enriquez may be willing to say publicly, is that not all humans population groups will evolve in what is seen as a favourable direction. New genes are evolving and affecting the human brain, but not all population groups are sharing equally in the benefits of these changes.

The evolutionary history of Ashkenazi Jews is a useful, small-scale illustration of what is happening. These Jews of European descent possess the highest average IQ of any distinct population group known. This difference can be seen in terms of accomplishment at the highest levels of science, math, and other areas of scholarship and life achievement. This group has paid a price for this advantage, in terms of inherited disease. But for the group as a whole, the tradeoff appears to have been worth it.

As humans get better at tweaking the genome and epigenome, they should learn better how to acquire more of the advantages of superior adaptation without too many of the disadvantages. Then slowly, but surely, perhaps over dozens, or even hundreds of years, new human species will diverge from older human species.

To many people, this idea of diverging coexisting human species is a new one. To others, not so much. Anyone who has deliberated over the difference between the accomplishments of Australian aboriginals and the descendants of the English transportees to Australia, must have considered the possibility of divergent evolution.

As Enriquez points out, it is critical for humans at this juncture in time to be honest about our broad genetic heritage -- and what this breadth means in terms of aptitudes and behaviours. And what it means for our future selves.

How Faith in Neo-Darwinism May Be Holding Us Back

Do you believe in Neo-Darwinist evolution? New-Darwinism is often used as something of a shibboleth to separate the scientific cognoscenti from the flat-earthers and creationists. But is such a "test of scientific rationality" justified? Only if there are no alternatives to Neo-Darwinism which better fit the observed facts. But what if there were better alternatives? Who would be the flat-earthers then?

Lynn Margulis is a prominent thorn in the side of institutional neo-darwinism, and one of the foremost promoters of the theory of Symbiogenesis. On occasion, Margulis can seem like something of a flake, but it is just that quality which allows her to stand up to the pressures of conventional thinking and make her own way against the crowd and its political consensus.

Faith in any conventional form or ideology will hold humans back from discoveries that may seem to contradict those forms and ideologies. We live in an unfortunate age when academic and intellectual thought has been largely taken over by one general ideology -- which actively suppresses debate and open epistemological inquiry into topics which may be too near and dear to the hearts of the thought leaders within the uber-dominant ideology.

Even the so-called "skeptics" today are often nothing better than papered-over consensualists. "Skeptic" Michael Shermer has written a book called The Believing Brain, in which he attempts to explain human belief using game theory, neuroscience, and evolutionary psychology. But as skeptics go, Shermer tends to be something of a credulous skeptic, as he tends to accede to "consensus" a bit too easily. Like many writers and historians of science who are not actually scientists, Shermer relies on second- and third-hand anecdotes and clever phrasing a bit more than he perhaps should. One can learn nothing about the next level from "skeptics" like Shermer, who is a fashionable and consensual kind of skeptic, always safe and well far behind the cannon fodder.

Fortunately, Neo-Darwinism is only peripheral to the central political issues that drive the dictators, critics, and pseudo-skeptics of modern academia, media, and politics, so it is still permissible to question some aspects of neo-darwinian theory as long as one is not too threatening to the status quo. For example, scientists are learning that some "acquired characteristics" of parents and grand-parents can be inherited by children and grandchildren, via epigenetic means. We are likely to discover many more contradictions to conventional genetic and evolutionary theory as we go along.

But none of these piecemeal discoveries are likely to be as liberating as the potential explosion of knowledge which might arise from a real-world demonstration of controlled symbiogenesis in action.

Neo-Darwinian evolution may be the best theory we've got to explain evolution -- or there may be something better. There are still many profound discoveries waiting to be made, using the mental framework of neo-darwinian theory. It will always be useful in the sense that Newtonian physics will always be useful -- within specific limited domains.

Who is going to come closer to the global optimum, the path to rapid expansion of knowledge in evolution and biology? The rational gadfly who is unafraid to question popular convention, or the uber-conventionalist who hides behind a faith in crowd consensus?

Things can change very rapidly when radical theories and tools are discovered. Modern hierarchies of ideas and power can be overturned almost instantly in the face of the type of discoveries which are possible. Which societies are capable of withstanding radical change, which is bound to occur sooner or later? A society whose women are increasingly choosing not to have children because children cramp their style? Or a society of people who welcome change, even as they continue the eternal cycles of love, family, child-raising, birth, death, and continuation in the face of all odds and challenges?

It can be frightening to step outside the mainstream -- particularly if you do so by yourself without the support of a group. But if you take a look at the state of the modern world, it should not take you long to see that the mainstream has very little to offer a conscientious seeker or a driven pathfinder. In fact, the mainstream appears to be taking an express train to the Idiocracy.

In basic rescue and resuscitation, we first look at the ABC: airway, breathing, and circulation. Then we proceed to the finer points of diagnosis and intervention. In your lives, you need to take a similar prioritised approach. But try not to get so caught up in basic survival issues that you do not keep one eye on the sky, for falling sacred cows and orthodoxies.

Just one, small and seemingly insignificant scientific or technological discovery could overturn almost all the conventional wisdom and hierarchical power structure of your society. And there are a lot of discoveries in the pipeline at this time. Not all of them will be developed to their potential -- particularly in our modern age of faux environmentalist energy starvation and a general aversion to disruptive technologies by the ruling classes and thought leaders.

But in reality, it is not up to them any longer. They just do not realise it yet.

A 60,000 Year Explosion of Invention?

IQ Map of World
Most readers of this blog have heard of the "10,000 Year Explosion" by Harpending and Cochrane, which convincingly describes how evolution can quickly work to change an insular breeding population of humans. Something similar -- the evolution of invention -- may have taken place on a global scale, after early humans moved out of Africa sometime over 60,000 years ago.

Before relatively recent contact with outside cultures, Subsaharan Africans did not invent the wheel, did not invent writing, developed minimal art, or agriculture, lacked musical instruments beyond simple percussion, and came up virtually empty in terms of math, science, and technology. Why the almost complete absence of invention and development?

The map of world IQ at top provides a tentative answer to the question, but the map raises a more central question: Why do SubSaharan African populations test so low, on average, on tests of IQ, executive function, and impulse control? Is it possible that a significant part of the development of the human "superbrain" -- which makes invention and modern advanced civilisation possible -- developed only after humans left the African birthplace?

The dispersal of modern humans from Africa to Europe [60,000 some] years ago provides a “minimum date” for the development of language, Hoffecker speculated. “Since all languages have basically the same structure, it is inconceivable to me that they could have evolved independently at different times and places.”

A 2007 study led by Hoffecker and colleagues at the Russian Academy of Sciences pinpointed the earliest evidence of modern humans in Europe dating back 45,000 years ago. Located on the Don River 250 miles south of Moscow, the multiple sites, collectively known as Kostenki, also yielded ancient bone and ivory needles complete with eyelets, showing the inhabitants tailored furs to survive the harsh winters.

The team also discovered a carved piece of mammoth ivory that appears to be the head of a small figurine dating to more than 40,000 years ago. “If that turns out to be the case, it would be the oldest piece of figurative art ever discovered,” said Hoffecker, whose research at Kostenki is funded in part by the National Science Foundation.

The finds from Kostenki illustrate the impact of the creative mind of modern humans as they spread out of Africa into places that were sometimes cold and lean in resources, Hoffecker said. “Fresh from the tropics, they adapted to ice age environments in the central plain of Russia through creative innovations in technology.”

Ancient musical instruments and figurative art discovered in caves in France and Germany date to before 30,000 years ago, he said. “Humans have the ability to imagine something in the brain that doesn’t exist and then create it,” he said. “Whether it’s a hand axe, a flute or a Chevrolet, humans are continually recombining bits of information into novel forms, and the variations are potentially infinite.” _SB

The absence of sophisticated invention or innovation prior to the human diaspora out of Africa, or in SubSaharan Africa since that diaspora, suggests a potentially deep distinction in the way that humans inside SS Africa think in comparison to how Eurasian humans learned to think.

It would be good to be able to research this puzzle, but unfortunately, the straitjacket of Political Correctness prevents the raising of such questions -- even for purposes of objective scientific research. Which means that those of us who are curious will have to conduct our investigations under the table, so to speak.

Is that not always how it is, when intelligent and curious humans are faced with oppressive and authoritarian culture-reichs, such as the modern quasi-left postmodern PC culture?

More: Some links to websites listing some ancient inventions:

Ancient Inventions

Inventions of Ancient China

Top 10 Ancient Inventions

Adapted from an earlier article at abu al-fin

Science Unshackled: Putting Knowledge in Real People's Hands

Modern humans have become slaves to the "hyperspecialist," the so-called experts who tell us what to think and how we should act. But the hyperspecialisation of modern society is a huge step backward to an authoritarian society, ruled from the top down. Much better for as many people as possible -- credentialed or not -- to acquire the specialised knowledge and tools which will reveal the path to a higher level of knowing and being.

One of the pivotal areas of knowledge and research which should be propagated widely, is the new biology and genetics. Bio-hobbyists and bio-hackers are pushing against legal and institutional constrictions and biases, asserting the rights of individuals to master these important tools. Journalist Marcus Wohlsen recently published the book "Biopunk," which looks more closely at the phenomenon of bio-hacking.

In Biopunk, journalist Marcus Wohlsen surveys the rising tide of the biohacker movement, which has been made possible by a convergence of better and cheaper technologies. For a few hundred dollars, anyone can send some spit to a sequencing company and receive a complete DNA scan, and then use free software to analyze the results. Custom-made DNA can be mail-ordered off websites, and affordable biotech gear is available on Craigslist and eBay.

Wohlson discovers that biohackers, like the open-source programmers and software hackers who came before, are united by a profound idealism. They believe in the power of individuals as opposed to corporate interests, in the wisdom of crowds as opposed to the single-mindedness of experts, and in the incentive to do good for the world as opposed to the need to turn a profit. Suspicious of scientific elitism and inspired by the success of open-source computing, the bio DIYers believe that individuals have a fundamental right to biological information, that spreading the tools of biotech to the masses will accelerate the pace of progress, and that the fruits of the biosciences should be delivered into the hands of the people who need them the most.

With all their ingenuity and idealism, it's difficult not to root for the biohackers Wohlsen meets. Take MIT grad student Kay Aull, who built her own genetic testing kit in her closet after her father was diagnosed with the hereditary disease hemochromatosis. "Aull's test does not represent new science but a new way of doing science," Wohlsen writes. Aull's self-test for the disease-causing mutation came back positive.

Or take Meredith Patterson, who is trying to create a cheap, decentralized way to test milk for melamine poisoning without relying on government regulators. Patterson has written a "Biopunk Manifesto" that reads in part, "Scientific literacy empowers everyone who possesses it to be active contributors to their own health care, the quality of their food, water and air, their very interactions with their own bodies and the complex world around them."

Biohackers Josh Perfetto and Tito Jankowski created OpenPCR, a cheap, hackable DNA Xerox machine (PCR stands for "polymerase chain reaction," the name for a method of replicating DNA). Interested biohackers can pre-order one for just over $500 or, once it's ready, download the blueprint free and make their own. According to the website, its apps include DNA sequencing and a test to "check that sushi is legit." Jankowski "hopes to introduce young people to the tools and techniques of biotech in a way that makes gene tweaking as much a part of everyday technology as texting," Wohlsen writes. Jankowski, together with Joseph Jackson and Eri Gentry, also founded BioCurious, a collaborative lab space for biohackers in the Bay area. "Got an idea for a startup? Join the DIY, 'garage biology' movement and found a new breed of biotech," their website exhorts.

Then there's Andrew Hessel, a biohacker fed up with the biotech business model, which he believes is built on the hoarding of intellectual property and leads companies to prioritize one-size-fits-all blockbuster drugs. "During the sixty years or so that computers went from a roomful of vacuum tubes to iPhones, the pace of drug development has never quickened," Hessel tells Wohlsen. Hoping to change that, Hessel is developing the first DIY drug development company, the Pink Army Cooperative, whose goal is to bioengineer custom-made viruses that will battle breast cancer. "Personalized therapies made just for you. In weeks or days, not years. Believe it. It's time for a revolution," the company's website proclaims. "We are trying to be the Linux of cancer," Hessel explains. _TechnologyReview

Bio-hackers tend to be as intelligent as mainstream researchers, but a bit more unorthodox, and sometimes skeptical of mainstream approaches. In science, skepticism and lack of orthodoxy can be very good things, leading to new approaches to problem-solving. Conventional scientists and other academics and institutional workers too often get caught up in "groupthink," where they fear the risks of moving too far away from the herd.

A good example of this "herd thinking" is the reaction of many scientists to 81 year old celebrated biologist Edward O. Wilson's new ideas on group selection in evolution. Wilson has moved away from the popular concept of "kin selection" to a broader concept of evolutionary selection that applies to groups, rather than only to individuals and their close kin. The blowback from "the group" has been furious.

His position is provoking ferocious criticism from other scientists. Last month, the leading scientific journal Nature published five strongly worded letters saying, more or less, that Wilson has misunderstood the theory of evolution and generally doesn’t know what he’s talking about. One of these carried the signatures of an eye-popping 137 scientists, including two of Wilson’s colleagues at Harvard.

The last time Wilson found himself embroiled in controversy as scalding as the current one was after the publication of his book “Sociobiology: The New Synthesis” in 1975. In that landmark book, he made an argument about the power of genetics, demonstrating how all manner of social behaviors observed in insects and animals could be seen as the result of natural selection. What landed Wilson in trouble was the last chapter, in which he extended his argument to humans. That chapter thrust Wilson into a long and loaded debate over how much our genetic heritage — as opposed to, say, culture — has shaped our behavior. Amid the outcry over “Sociobiology,” Wilson was pilloried by critics on the left as an agent of biological determinism and racist science. Protestors once interrupted Wilson while he was speaking at a science conference and poured a glass of water on his head.

....What Wilson is trying to do, late in his influential career, is nothing less than overturn a central plank of established evolutionary theory: the origins of altruism. _boston

Notice that the focus of the controversy circles around the concept of the origin of "altruism" and "self-sacrifice." But such concepts have almost nothing to do with the main thrust of evolution, or the most important questions which evolutionary theorists must answer. Far more important to evolutionary progress than altruism, is "cooperation." Politically correct scientists and science journalists are attempting to construct PC moralistic edifices upon tangential scientific and pseudo-scientific foundations. And they get away with it because knowledge is "supposed to" come from the top down.

It is this "beside the pointness" of much of scientific argument -- and most of the journalistic inspired arguments about science -- which reflect and reveal the destructiveness of hyperspecialisation and "top-down science" and scholarship. The need for citizen science, and citizen scholarship in general, has never been clearer than in modern times, when the "experts" have been so widely coopted by political interests and political correctness.

Bio-hacking should be one useful restorative to the balance of knowledge tools -- and the balance of knowledge power. But much more is needed. We are on the fast road to Idiocratic authoritarianism, aided by the dual crises of skyrocketing debt and demographic decline.

Give it some thought. You may come up with some solutions on your own, which is what all of this is about.

Human Beings Evolving at Unprecedented Rate

A team led by University of Wisconsin-Madison anthropologist John Hawks estimated that positive selection just in the past 5,000 years alone -dating back to the Stone Age - has occurred at a rate roughly 100 times higher than any other period of human evolution.

...The human population has grown from a few million people 10,000 years ago to about 200 million people at A.D. 0, to 600 million people in the year 1700, to more than 6.5 billion today. Prior to these times, the population was so small for so long that positive selection occurred at a glacial pace, Hawks says...

The Wisconsin study is published in the Dec. 10 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences __DailyGalaxy

Many of the recent adaptations relate to disease resistance, such as resistance to malaria, smallpox, and other plagues. Other adaptations no doubt relate to resistance to heat or cold, ability to digest particular foods, body size and shape, muscle mass and speed, and other relatively uncontroversial adaptations.

More controversial would be adaptations that influence brain size, complexity, plasticity, and reaction times. Anything that gives genetic advantage in terms of problem solving and / or goal orientation, would give significant advantage to populations possessing those positive 2nd order adapatations.

The study of Ashkenazi Jews by Harpending and Cochran ATTN: PDF provides a view focused upon a single population of loosely related individuals who underwent rapid evolutionary changes over the past few thousand years.

One of the greatest intellectual curses of modern day humans is "groupthink", which includes "political correctness" and excessive deference to authority. Mass incompetence provides groupthink with its power over populations. Mass incompetence is fed by poor childraising, perverse educational practises, a self-destructive popular culture, and the mass indoctrination into the groupthink cult by media and higher academia.

As scientists learn more about evolutionary adaptation to human culture, it will be fascinating to locate genes that provide resistance to groupthink.

Out of Africa? Out of Europe? Whence Came Homo?

Conventional theory of human origins shows homo sapiens evolving in Africa, and emerging to populate all other large landmasses except Antarctica. But evidence has been accumulating  that suggests that homo erectus evolved outside of Africa -- in the Eurasian landmass. From there, homo sapiens may have evolved from homo erectus either outside Africa, or back in Africa following an erectus migration south.

Received wisdom that modern humans emerged in Africa then dispersed across the rest of the globe is being challenged by skulls found in Dmanisi, a site in Georgia to the south of Russia.

Analysis of the skulls suggests that instead, small numbers of very early ancestors of modern-day humans may have migrated to Europe, where they evolved into Homo erectus, the immediate predecessor of modern Homo sapiens. _NewScientist

An even more extreme counter-point theory to "Out of Africa", is the theory laid out in the free online e-book Erectus Walks Among Us. According to Erectus Walks Among Us, not only did homo erectus evolve in Eurasia, homo sapiens and homo neanderthalis also evolved in Eurasia. Be aware that most anthropologists accept the conventional view of early human migrations, and consider most alternative theories to  be not only unfounded, but also racist.A word of caution: It is impossible to avoid charges of racism whenever one wanders onto this territory. If you are of a squeamish and fastidious sort when it comes to being accused of racism, you had best avoid this topic altogether. But do not bother to complain to the blog proprietors about your own hyper-sensitivity. They will not be moved.

But if you care more about understanding origins and how things became the way they are, than about the screeching censors of the PC Idiocracy, you may find some of the ideas at least marginally interesting. Perhaps even stimulating.  And probably wrong, for the most part.

Still, humans have an inbuilt compulsion to hold strong opinions -- even when they can not possibly know enough about the topic to know the facts, one way or the other. This is true about human origins and migrations, just as it is true about catastrophic climate religion, catastrophic peak oil religion, or any other fanatical belief whose foundations are more imagined than real.

As humans, we cannot help wondering and discussing our speculations.

Update:  Here is another look at the fossil findings from HBDBooks

More here
Here is an interesting look at the pre-historical peopling of Europe via Race / History / Evolution Notes blog

Fast Human Evolution Tweaked by Migrations

Image Source Impact LabWhen groups of humans migrate into different environments, their extended genome begins to adapt to the new environment almost immediately. How does this happen? Geneticists do not know, precisely, but they are betting that this fast-adaptation occurs by other means than traditional natural selection.

In recent years, geneticists have identified a handful of genes that have helped human populations adapt to new environments within just a few thousand years—a strikingly short timescale in evolutionary terms. However, the team found that for most genes, it can take at least 50,000-100,000 years for natural selection to spread favorable traits through a human population. According to their analysis, gene variants tend to be distributed throughout the world in patterns that reflect ancient population movements and other aspects of population history.

“We don’t think that selection has been strong enough to completely fine-tune the adaptation of individual human populations to their local environments,” says co-author Jonathan Pritchard. “In addition to selection, demographic history — how populations have moved around — has exerted a strong effect on the distribution of variants.”

To determine whether the frequency of a particular variant resulted from natural selection, Pritchard and his colleagues compared the distribution of variants in parts of the genome that affect the structure and regulation of proteins to the distribution of variants in parts of the genome that do not affect proteins. Since these neutral parts of the genome are less likely to be affected by natural selection, they reasoned that studying variants in these regions should reflect the demographic history of populations.

The researchers found that many previously identified genetic signals of selection may have been created by historical and demographic factors rather than by selection. When the team compared closely related populations they found few large genetic differences. If the individual populations’ environments were exerting strong selective pressure, such differences should have been apparent.

Selection may still be occurring in many regions of the genome, says Pritchard. But if so, it is exerting a moderate effect on many genes that together influence a biological characteristic. “We don’t know enough yet about the genetics of most human traits to be able to pick out all of the relevant variation,” says Pritchard. _ImpactLab_(from sciencenews)

Scientists are just beginning to understand the significance of the small differences in genotype between extended breeding populations of humans. Because phenotypic differences are significant -- not just morphologically and in terms of physical performance, but in behavioural and cognitive characteristics such as intelligence, executive function, etc. -- between human populations, it is obvious that the slight genotypic differences that exist are meaningful. Scientists need to learn more about how human populations diverged, and what it means for the future.

Clearly the evolutionary stresses presented to isolated villagers living at 10,000 feet in the Andes are much different than evolutionary stresses to coastal city-dwellers in a modern society. Even inside that coastal city, if distinct breeding populations exist within quasi-isolated communities, evolutionary stresses will be somewhat distinct -- and lead to further divergence.

Given the "neo-tribalist" emphasis of the modern political, academic, and popular societal lebensreich, the equalising forces of assimilation have been obstructed by forces of post-modern political correctness and identity dogma. Electing pro-affirmative action presidents and selecting pro-affirmative action Supreme Court justices only hastens the trend toward neo-divergence of core breeding populations.

The level of inter-breeding between populations may seem to contradict this idea, but in reality inter-breeding often has the opposite effect -- enhancing a sense of "separateness" and neo-segregation. A good look at Obama's first auto-biography should illustrate the point well. ("Am I black enough ...?") In the black community of the US, one often finds an elite strata that is composed largely of mixed-race persons who are often more stridently opposed to physical and social assimilation (Reverend Wright) than a typical American black chosen at random.

It is an interesting dynamic, and one that does not lend itself to a closing of gaps of intelligence or executive function. To accomplish that, we will need to understand a lot more about the subtle genetics of differences, and how the (chosen and unchosen) environment plays into that subtlety.

Science Evolves and Changes Naturally w/ Time

Every science should be viewed as temporary. The sciences are constantly accumulating new information and new data which must be reconciled with "established" science, and incorporated where possible. Sometimes established science must be discarded like a soiled diaper in the light of new information. Science is not about "facts", after all, but rather a way of reasoning.

Science is an evolving discipline. Various fields are constantly being born while others are dying away. For example, 20 years ago, quantum computing was a mere twinkle in its founders' eyes as was proteomics a mere ten years ago. And in the same time scale, a large part of chemistry has morphed in nanotechnology.

...Communities regularly merge and create new groups of ideas. That's to be expected if the anecdotal evidence is anything to go by but they find some more interesting phenomena too.

For example, communities that are more willing to reinvent themselves tend to be the ones that have most impact per paper. But it also shows that communities with higher impact per paper tend be shorter-lived. _TechnologyReview

When political and financial interests exert excessive influence on science, it loses its natural evolutionary vitality and becomes set in bureaucratic concrete. This is clearly happening in the field of climate modeling and the carbon hysteria establishment. Sadly, the Obama administration is injecting politics into the scientific process at unprecedented levels since the days of Stalin. It is unclear whether the already weakened US economy can withstand this level of top-down interference -- particularly when the end result is energy starvation and a strong artificial upward pressure on energy prices. (political peak oil)

Sciences are born, sciences merge, split, and sciences die. That is the nature of healthy evolution in the world of contested ideas. Greedy and corrupt politicians and financiers cannot help interfering with the process. We must save what can be saved from the mash and do what we can. It should be enough.

Fast Forward Evolution: Advanced Microbe Fab

LS9 biofuels company aims to create "magic microbes" to solve the world's energy problems, and other problems besides. To that end, they have developed a machine to create rapid multiple changes in a bacterial genome. They have put evolution on "fast forward" in the hope of riding the magic microbes into the future.

"What once took months now takes days," says Stephen del Cardayré, vice president of research and development at LS9, a biofuels company based in South San Francisco of which Church is a founder. LS9 soon plans to use the technology--called multiplex-automated genomic engineering, or MAGE--to accelerate development of bacterial cells that can produce low-cost renewable fuels and chemicals.

...Church and his collaborators attack the genome on a broad scale. They design numerous genetic changes targeting genes throughout the genome, and then implement them all at once, looking for the resulting bacterial strain that can best produce the desired product. "It allows you to make modifications to the genome much more rapidly than the traditional one-step processes we have," says Kristala Jones-Prather, a metabolic engineer at MIT who was not directly involved in the research.

...As a test run of the device, Church and his team created bacteria that could more efficiently produce lycopene, an antioxidant abundant in tomatoes. They designed DNA strands targeting genes known to be involved in lycopene production, and then monitored multiple tubes of engineered bacteria for production of the bright-red compound. In just three days, they had generated a strain that could produce five times more lycopene, according to findings presented at a conference at Harvard this month. The best lycopene producer had 24 genetic changes--four that completed blocked production of the gene's protein, and 20 that resulted in small or large changes in the expression of that gene.

Church and his collaborators, who ultimately plan on making a commercial version of the device, are now working on creating different types of chemicals, including biofuels and drug precursors. _TechnologyReview

Biofuels from microbes will not take up croplands, will not destroy rainforests, will not produce pollutants -- but count on faux environmentalists to dream up some reason that abundant microbial biofuels will destroy the planet. In the meantime--before they dash our childish hopes-- let us cultivate our simple-minded optimistic belief that humans can somehow find a way to live in the world without destroying it.

How Did Humans Come to Be Smarter than Apes?

Humans display significant differences in behaviour and mental aptitude from their closest relatives -- the great apes. How did those differences come about? Could a similar branching off take place in the near future, with the arrival of a new species that can make monkeys out of men?

Changing a single base, or DNA letter, is likely to have a limited effect because such mutations alter only a single gene. But large duplications containing 20,000 bases or more, such as the ones mapped in the new study, may contain more than one gene or parts of genes and regulatory regions.

Doubling, tripling or quadrupling the number of copies of a piece of DNA in the genome can potentially increase activity of genes contained in the chunks by a corresponding amount. A duplication might contain some parts of a gene, but not all of it, which could change the gene’s function. And duplications might contain control panels for genes, Gerstein says. Copying those control panels, in full or in part, and inserting them somewhere else in the genome could change the activity of genes adjacent to the insertion point.

Duplications don’t appear to happen randomly, the researchers found. Most duplications occurred next to more ancient duplications, creating hot spots in the genome susceptible to copying and rearranging....

About 20 percent of the duplications identified in the study are found only in humans. Most of the replicated chunks contain genes with unknown function, so the next step of the project is to figure out how the duplications happen and how the genes inside them contribute to making humans human. _ScienceNews

Genomic "hotspots" are analogous to the volcanic "hotspots" responsible for creating the Hawaiian Islands, and other island chains. The question is whether these genomic hotspots are still active, percolating the foundations for an even newer species that is to man as men are to apes? In any event, understanding the power of gene duplications will help to understand more of the powerful forces underlying evolution.

Such speculation is highly politically incorrect, since if the mind is not careful it may stray to the heretical topics of IQ and EF differences between population groups, and differences in measured IQ on different continents and parts of continents of the world. Such differences may suggest nascent speciation attempts that were ongoing thousands of years in the past.

Unfortunately, such self-censorship of the sciences in the western world is leading to the acceptance of the most absurd theories (imminent anthropogenic climate catastrophe) and an out of hand rejection of the study of promising avenues of research (reasons for differences in group intelligence and aptitudes). Refusing to study these things only assures that we will remain stuck in the present rut of ignorance.

Impact 10,900 BCE? A Possible Solution to Several Coincidental Mysteries of Pre - Historia

Several pre-historic mysteries have been waiting for a solution.

1. What caused the Lesser Dryas abrupt global cooling 12,900 years ago?
2. Why did the Clovis culture of SW North America disappear?
3. Why did technology migrate from South and Central America northward, when human migration from Asia went the opposite direction?
4. What caused the extinction of large mammals such as mammoths?
   

Those and other mysteries may have a common solution: a devastating asteroid impact into mile-thick ice covering southern Canada 12,900 years ago.

Now researchers are reporting that the abrupt cooling — which took place about 12,900 years ago, just as the planet was emerging from an ice age — may have been caused by one or more meteors that slammed into North America.

That could explain the extinction of mammoths, saber-tooth tigers and maybe even the first human inhabitants of the Americas, the scientists report in Friday’s issue of the journal Science.

...But if true, the hypothesis could explain the disappearance of ice age mammals like mammoths and argue against the alternative idea that the animals were hunted to extinction by humans.

It might also help explain the disappearance of the Clovis people, a culture named after a distinctive arrow point discovered in a mammoth skeleton in Clovis, N.M., who are believed to have arrived in the Americas more than 13,000 years ago.

Douglas J. Kennett, a University of Oregon archaeologist who is the lead author of the Science paper, said no Clovis points or bones of the extinct animals had been found above the diamond layer. “It seems those two things synchronously end,” he said.

Dr. Kennett said there also appeared to be a gap of several centuries between the disappearance of the Clovis and the resettlement by other people. _NYT_via_Instapundit

Even more mysterious to me than the disappearance of the Clovis culture, is the fact that more advanced technology appears to have been discovered and heavily utilised first in South and Central America, then migrated northward to tribes of southern and eastern North America. A destruction of northern cultures and a disruption of southward migration paths would have isolated the early migrations south of the devastation zone, where their cultures would have evolved separately from source cultures.

The return to glaciation represented by the Lesser Dryas no doubt destroyed or disrupted earlier human attempts at civilisation in both the old and new worlds. Old legends of "Atlantis" and other mythical lost civilisations might have their origins in pre-impact times between the emergence from the last glaciation and the Lesser Dryas. Much has been lost to human history, and much that human history partially captured is ignored.

It is likely that a catastrophic cutting off of partially civilised cultures has occurred multiple times to human and primate cultures. These groups would have had to "start over" in building a civilisation, revert to barbarity, or die off (with a few other possibilities perhaps best suited for fiction writers).

Future humans may soon face the same challenge of starting over.

Male Superiority In Spatial Ability Comes Early

As early as a few months of age, male babies begin showing superior spatial abilities to female babies. Angry feminists such as Nancy Hopkins are apt to faint with rage at these findings, but nevertheless, science must have its say.

Males typically outperform females on spatial-ability tests by age 4, especially on tasks that require mental rotation of objects perceived as three-dimensional. Yet, two studies of 3- to 5-month-olds, both published in the November Psychological Science, conclude that a substantially greater proportion of boys than girls distinguish a block arrangement from its mirror image, after having first seen the block arrangement rotated.

...Moore and Johnson showed 20 boys and 20 girls, all 5 months old, videos of a block arrangement rotating back and forth through a 240° angle. Each child sat in his or her mother’s lap as the mother kept her eyes closed. After tiring of looking at this image, infants saw alternating videos of the original block arrangement or its mirror image rotating through a 120° angle.

Video records of infants’ gaze and head movements revealed that 14 boys, or 70 percent of them, preferred looking at mirror images, compared with 9 girls, or 45 percent of them.

Quinn and Liben showed 12 boys and 12 girls, all 3 to 4 months old, a series of images of either a black number 1 or its mirror image, each drawn to appear three-dimensional and situated at a different degree of rotation. Each baby then saw presentations of both the number 1 and its mirror image in a new degree of rotation.

In the latter trials, 11 boys preferred looking at the image that they hadn’t seen before, compared with 5 girls.

It may be possible to study mental rotation in babies within the first few days after birth, Quinn says. _ScienceNews

These are fascinating findings, needing further elaboration and explication. But these two studies certainly confirm each other, and add more bricks to the cohesive structure of male superiority in spatial abilities over the life span.

Feminists all too often deny evolutionary differences--apparently out of ideological and political stances that prevent them from acknowledging even painfully apparent gender differences that may favour males. Now, under Obamanation, expect a significant increase in science/evolution-denial by well placed academics of a certain political slant (neo-leftist).

As with the carbon hysterics involved with the global warming orthodoxy, gender and race hucksters involved in human biodiversity denial cannot afford to let science have its say unhindered by their own biased political viewpoints. Obama is likely to be sympathetic to the science deniers, unfortunately.

Humans Slide, Genes Abide

Humans are sliding along the arrow of time, borne atop a genetic flow unbroken since the origin of DNA life. The more we learn about DNA and genetics, the more powerful the genetic flow is seen to be. Even "junk DNA" is more powerful than we ever imagined.

This research also shows that these repeats are anything but "junk DNA," since they provide a great source of evolutionary variability and might hold the key to some of the important physical differences that distinguish humans from all other species. _SD

Yes, junk DNA may be largely responsible for the origin of new species--and the reason why humans are different from close relatives such as the chimp. Another important and often overlooked reason for significant differences between related species is "CNVs," copy number variants. The number of copies of a gene in a genome can determine its influence in the organisms development and function.

CNVs in humans and chimpanzees often occur in equivalent genomic locations: most lie in regions of the genomes, called segmental duplications, that are particularly 'fragile'. However, one in four of the 355 CNDs that the team found do not overlap with CNVs within either species - suggesting that they are variants that are 'fixed' in each species and might mark significant differences between human and chimpanzee genomes. _PO

One of the most important distinctions of humans from other animals, is the sophistication and power of human language, in creating human culture. The propagation of human culture around the globe and across time is dependent upon genetic influences on the human brain, evolved over time. Scientists are beginning to learn more about the genetics of human language.

Molecular techniques then revealed that these changes occurred around 200,000 years ago — at just the point at which modern humans were evolving. This has led to much speculation about whether FOXP2 is a “gene for speech” — particularly given that people with major mutations, like the KE family, have major language defects. _Times

A recent genetic discovery by British scientists helps to unravel the mystery of human language slightly. One more small piece of a very large puzzle.

Variants of the CNTNAP2 gene are associated with the disorder known as specific language impairment (SLI) -- the unexplained difficulty with language that can involve repetition of nonsense words, the researchers said.

The gene has also been implicated in autism and could represent a genetic link between the two disorders, the scientists said. _WP

Genetics research is also proving a powerful tool in the quest to vanquish cancer.

Using cells donated by a woman in her 50s who died of leukemia, the scientists sequenced all the DNA from her cancer cells and compared it to the DNA from her own normal, healthy skin cells. Then they zeroed in on 10 mutations that occurred only in the cancer cells, apparently spurring abnormal growth, preventing the cells from suppressing that growth and enabling them to fight off chemotherapy. _NYT

One more small piece. Most people are unaware that the remarkable amount of scientific and technological research being done in the US is only possible due to excess wealth generated by the US' market economy. As politicians look for new ways to strangle the ability of the US economy to create excess wealth, savvy individuals will take a more jaundiced look at government.

The remarkable advances in recent stem cell research would have not been possible if not for the incredible progress previously made in genetics biotech. Researchers in Japan recently grew human brain tissue in a laboratory, from embryonic stem cells. Prelude to Grobyc?

The tissues self-organised into four distinct zones very similar to the structure seen in human foetuses, and conducted neuro-activity such as transmitting electrical signals, the institute said.

...The team's previous studies showed stem cells differentiated into different cells but until now they had never organised into functioning tissues.

...The tissues could also serve as "a mini organ" for use in studying the cause of the Alzheimer's disease and developing vaccines, it said. _AFP

Whether utilised as regenerative therapy for replacement of damaged brain, as research tools for understanding the organisation of neuronal and brain tissues better, or as Grobyc-style bio-brains for mechanical machines, these results are just the tip of the iceberg.

Research without an underlying "organising principle" is too often wasted, with the data and potential knowledge overlooked for long periods of time. If research findings are folded into ongoing meta-research efforts, nothing will be lost. It may take decades to find the optimal use for any given research findings. But as long as bioinformatics and other advanced computational and information procession tools advance along with applied research, the larger potential of what science is doing now will be examined eventually, although it is presently beyond the comprehension of most policy makers, pundits, and specialised workers and thinkers.

Leftists Arrayed Against Evolution: Shame On You!

You might think that the religious right is the greatest enemy to evolutionary science, but you would be wrong. In reality, the left stands squarely in the path of the widespread dissemination of the startling findings of evolutionary science. And since the left has control and occupation of the University, it is the left's censorship of science that has the greater impact on society.

Consider the most striking case, the question of whether there are differences between men and women with regard to the distribution of intellectual abilities or behavioral patterns. That no such differences exist, or if that if they exist they are insignificant, is a matter of faith for many on the left. The faith is so strongly held that when the president of Harvard, himself a prominent academic, merely raised the possibility that one reason why there were fewer women than men in certain fields might be such differences, he was ferociously attacked and eventually driven to resign....

...Males and females play quite different roles in reproduction. It would be a striking coincidence if the distribution of abilities and behavioral patterns that was optimal for one sex turned out to also be optimal for the other, rather like two entirely different math problems just happening to have the same answer.

The denial of male/female differences is the most striking example of left wing hostility to the implications of Darwinian evolution, but not the only one. The reasons to expect differences among racial groups as conventionally defined are weaker, since males of all races play the same role in reproduction, as do females of all races. But we know that members of such groups differ in the distribution of observable physical characteristics--that, after all, is the main way we recognize them. That is pretty strong evidence that their ancestors adapted to at least somewhat different environments. _DavidFriedman_via_Instapundit

And leftist superstition and censorship spreads out from the university to the media in turn. From there, pseudo-intellectuals lap it up like the dog-level mentals they tend to be, then pass it on.

Religious rightists are wrong about evolution. But to many non-scientists, evolution does indeed take on many aspects of a religion, since non-scientists for the most part do not actually understand what it is they "believe" about evolution. In fact, many people trained in biology do not truly understand the mechanisms behind the origin of species. And certainly, no one on Earth knows where life originated in the first place. So a lot of the "superiority" felt by people who "believe" in evolution--with respect to creationists--is certainly misplaced.

It is the leftists who should be ashamed of their willingness to subvert and pervert science in the name of ideology. They are the ones who are the greater threat by far.

Aschwin de Wolf expands on this issue in the context of transhumanism.

Science Is Evolving, But People: Not So Much

Human nature resists change, despite the best efforts of social engineers and would-be utopians. All the soaring rhetoric in the world will not raise the average IQ or EF of the vast herds of short-lived human grazers. Very few humans are directly involved in magnificent scientific and technological efforts such as this or this. The Earth-shaking consequences of nanotechnology and convergence owe nothing to the 99% of humans whose lives will eventually be transformed by the advances.

Modern education and child-raising creates lazy human minds. This laziness is reflected in politics, the media, popular amusements, and general attitudes. Even within academia, laziness occupies center stage. No other area of academia is lazier than the "social sciences."

One effect of the impressive progress in the physical sciences is that it conferred credibility to the “social sciences” as well. Knowing that a person is a scientist has become meaningless. The first question one needs to ask is what this person studies and how. The philosopher David Hume said it best when he said:

“When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume of divinity or school of metaphysics, for instance, let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.” David Hume ‑ An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding,1748, Section XII, Part I
_DepressedMetabolism

As lazily fraudulent as the social sciences frequently are, you see the same type of laziness creeping into more mainstream sciences via politicisation--particularly in climate science, and in gender-driven "reforms" to science education, hiring, funding, and publication. It is human nature for zealots within an organisation to attempt to strengthen their faction. It is also human nature for non-zealots to eventually become too weary to continually fight them off.

Parasitical politics is ubiquitous in human organisations. It is simply a manifestation of human nature within a particular niche. The masses are lazy. Politically oriented people tend to greediness and power-hunger. They make a perfect match, since laziness and greed/power hunger are basic human traits that are present in the proper ratio for a hungry few to control the complacent many.

And so the liberal experiment tentatively begun in ancient times, smoldering undetected throughout the dark ages, flaming up in the renaissance - reformation - industrial revolution - American Constitution and Experiment, can easily collapse under the weight of the brain dead and top-heavy mass of the political tumour that ultimately starves the body politic to death. It is simple human nature.

Revolutionary science is done by a vanishingly small number of people. In order for the good work being done in labs to provide good results for humans in general, the natural human parasitic politics threatening to smother human transformative initiative must itself be smothered in its feathered bed. But gently, as in a dream.