The solar system’s weirdest moon | Bad Astronomy

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Our solar system is a fantastically bizarre place. There are worlds as varied as our imagination can grasp — in fact, they exhibit features we never imagined before we saw them up close. Storms larger than planets, moons with undersurface oceans, lakes of methane, worldlets that occasionally swap places…

… and that’s just at Saturn. But of all these, if I had to pick, I’d say the strangest place in the entire solar system would be the ringed planet’s distant moon Hyperion. Why? Well, maybe this will help: in September, when the Cassini spacecraft was within just 88,000 km (54,000 miles) of the weird little moon, it snapped this picture:

[Click to entitanate.]

Just looking at it, you get a sense of strangeness, don’t you? It’s little, only about 270 km (170 miles), but packed into that tiny moon is a Universe of weird. It looks like a sponge! Or more like a piece of packing foam that’s been pinged by a BB gun. It has a very low density — about half that of liquid water, even less dense than water ice, indicating it must not be entirely solid. It’s porous, like a sponge, or a pile of rubble.

And those craters… they just look funny. They have sharp rims, shallow slopes, and flat bottoms, and it’s thought that this is because of how crunchy Hyperion is. Instead of blasting out material like on rocky moons, impacts compress the surface, like punching a block of Styrofoam. The bottoms of many of the craters are dark, filled with hydrocarbons that form when sunlight changes the structure of simpler molecules.

That giant flat region on the right is actually a huge impact crater — you can see the central peak in the middle, typical for big impacts — and it reminds me strongly of the huge south polar impact basin on the asteroid Vesta, which itself is a weird place. But it can’t hold a candle to Hyperion.

I’ve talked about Hyperion before (see the Related Posts links below) but I can’t get enough of just how freaky this moon is. While it bears some resemblance to other objects in the solar system, it has a bizarre nature all its own. Perhaps I’m showing my American fondness for underdogs, but Hyperion really is one my favorite worlds in all the solar system. We may never understand everything about it, but with every pass by Cassini, we learn a little bit more, and that’s cool enough for me.

Related posts:

- Cassini visits a foamy moon
- Video of Cassini’s Hyperion flyby
- Raw hypermoon
- You’re as cold as ice… but less dense
- Hyperion!


Extending healthy life by getting rid of retired cells | Not Exactly Rocket Science

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As we get older, many of the cells in our bodies go into retirement. Throughout our lives, they divided time and again, all in the face of radiation bombardments and chemical attacks. Slowly but surely, their DNA builds up damage to that threatens to turn them into tumours. Some repair the damage; others give up the ghost. But some cells opt for a third strategy – they shut down. No longer growing or dividing, they enter a state called senescence.

But they aren’t idle. Senescent cells still secrete chemicals into the body, and some scientists have suggested that they’re responsible for many of the health problems that accompany old age. And the strongest evidence for this claim comes from a new study by Darren Baker from the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine.

Baker has developed a way of killing all of a mouse’s senescent cells by feeding them with a specific drug. When he did that in middle age, he gave the mice many more healthy years. He delayed the arrival of cataracts in their eyes, put off the weakening of their muscles, and held back the loss of their body fat. He even managed to reverse some of these problems by removing senescent cells from mice that had already grown old. There is a lot of work to do before these results could be applied to humans, but for now, Baker has shown that senescent cells are important players in the ageing process.

Note that the mice in this study didn’t live any longer; they just spent more of their life being healthy. That is an incredibly important distinction and one that scientists who work on ageing are starting to bear in mind. James Kirkland, one of the study’s leaders, says, “Until two or three years ago, the basic biology was focused on lifespan. Increasingly, it’s become more focused on increasing healthspan too. People may want to live longer but they don’t want to live longer at all costs. They want to live more healthily. Older people value independence and the ability to carry out the activities of daily life.”

Baker exploited the fact that many senescent cells rely on a protein called p16-Ink4a. He created a genetic circuit that reacts to the presence of p16-Ink4a by manufacturing an executioner: a protein called caspase-8 that kills its host cell. Caspase-8 is like a pair of scissors – it comes in two halves that only work when they unite. Baker could link the two halves together using a specific drug. By sneaking the drug into a mouse’s food, he activated the executioners, which only killed off the cells that have lots of p16-Ink4a. Only the senescent ones get the chop.

Baker tested out this system in a special strain of genetically engineered mice that age very quickly. It worked. The senescent cells disappeared, and that substantially delayed the onset of muscle loss, cataracts, and fat loss.  Typically, around half of these mice show signs of muscle loss by five months of age. Without their senescent cells, only a quarter of them showed the same signs at ten months. Their muscle fibres were larger, and they ran further on treadmills. Even old mice, whose bodies had started to decline, showed improvements.

“There’s been a question of whether senescent cells are important, since they’re only a small proportion of cells,” says Kirkland. “Our work indicates that a small number of these cells can have a big impact.”

While several scientists agree that senescent cells are somehow harmful, they’ve disagreed as to how. Some say that they’ve lost important functions, while others think that they gain harmful ones. Baker’s study supports the latter camp. “The reason why that model is very attractive is that it’s a lot easier to drug,” says Norman Sharpless, who also works on senescence and ageing. “It’s good news if you want to treat or reverse ageing.”

To get to that point, the team has many challenges in store. Now that they’ve shown that senescent cells are important in a strain of mice that age quickly, they need to show that the same applies to rodents that age normally. Those studies are underway, but they will take years. Even then, there’s no guarantee that the results will apply to humans, since there are important differences in the ways the two species age.

After that, the team will have to work out a practical way of destroy senescent cells. Baker’s approach didn’t work in the heart or liver, where senescent cells don’t rely on the p16-Ink4a protein. As such, his mice suffered from the usual slew of heart problems and thickened arteries.

Alternatively, the team could interfere with the chemicals that senescent cells produce, but there are hundreds of these and finding the right target is another challenge. Then, there are many tangential questions. “Are there drawbacks to removing senescent cells?” asks Kirkland. “Do you want to use continuous approaches of intermittent ones? Can this approach improve function in models of arteriosclerosis or diabetes or Alzheimer’s? Our study raises more questions than answers. There’s a long way to go.”

It might seem that there’s an obvious drawback to Baker’s approach. Senescence keeps cancer at bay, by cordoning off the most damaged cells from the growing population. If you get rid of these cells, will animals develop raging tumours?

Kirkland thinks not. He points out that senescent cells also produce inflammatory chemicals that might enhance the spread of some cancers. And many cancers develop from senescent cells, by shaking off their restraints and growing out of control. Get rid of these cells, and you could potentially nip cancers in the bud before they even form. “We anticipate that removing senescent cells may actually decrease the risk of cancer,” says Kirkland. Other scientists, like Judith Campisi, have suggested something similar.

There may be other unwanted side effects. “There are so many trade-offs with ageing. You make cancer less common but you might worsen things in other ways,” says Sharpless. Senescent cells may be involved in repairing skin wounds, and the inflammatory chemicals they secrete can help to keep infections under control.

So far, there are no signs of these potential problems. Baker saw no side effects after treating his mice once every three days, for 15 months – in human terms, that’s equivalent to the period between weaning and the end of middle age. But Kirkland says, “We don’t know if there would be problems if we stressed the animals, say with chemotherapy or putting them out in the wild.” The team still needs to see if the loss of senescent cells leads to problems under more realistic conditions.

Reference: Baker, Wijshake, Tchkonia, LeBrasseur, Childs, van de Sluis, Kirkland & van Deursen. 2011.  Clearance of p16-Ink4a-positive senescent cells delays ageing-associated disorders. Nature http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature10600

More on ageing:

From the Tau to Dark Energy: Martin Perl’s Blog | Cosmic Variance

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Physicists have certainly been ahead of the information-technological curve at times. The web was invented at CERN, and of course we mastered open publishing simply by doing it, while other disciplines have struggled to come up with workable models. But senior physicists — not youngsters, who are always eager to try new things, but more established types — have generally looked askance at blogging, for hard-to-discern reasons. In math we have Fields Medalists blogging up a storm, in economics there are multiple blogs by Nobel Laureates, but physicists on the far side of the “young and striving”/”senior and respected” divide have largely stayed away. (My colleagues here at CV are enormously respected, but in my mind they will always be youthful.)

So we’re extremely happy to note that Martin Perl (at an enthusiastic 84 years young!) has jumped into the blogosphere, with Reflections on Physics: From the Tau to Dark Energy. Perl shared the Nobel Prize in 1995 for the kind of result that every physicist dreams of achieving, but few actually do: the discovery of a new elementary particle. In particular, the tau lepton, the heaviest of the three charged leptons (along with the electron and muon). Not too shabby.

Martin’s first post is on Faster-Than-Light Neutrinos and the Dynamics of the Internet. He finds the OPERA results intriguing, but thinks that figuring them out is going to require new experiments, not clever outsiders trying to figure out where they went wrong. I would tend to trust his judgment here.

It’s fantastic to have another great physicist taking the time to reach out to a broader audience. Note that Martin is at SLAC, along with our own JoAnne and Risa. Something about the Palo Alto coffee that nudges one toward blogging?


Crepuscular rays are parallel! | Bad Astronomy

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When you go outside at sunset, many times you’ll be greeted with spectacular rays of light and shadow stretching across the sky. These are called crepuscular rays, and are caused by clouds blocking the sunlight, their long shadows cast on haze and other particulates floating in our air.

Those rays fan out, spreading away at different angles… but that’s an illusion! The rays are parallel, and I offer this photograph as proof:

[Click to penumbrenate.]

That shot was taken on October 18, 2011, by an astronaut on board the International Space Station as it passed over India. Towering cumulonimbus clouds threw their long shadows back, away from the Sun. Note that the shadows from different clouds are parallel to each other! That’s because the Sun is very far away compared to the distance between the clouds.

Here’s a picture I found on Flickr showing what we see from the ground, though (it’s not of the same clouds, but just a typical display of crepuscular rays). The fanning out of the rays is actually an illusion, caused by perspective! It’s precisely the same thing that makes railroad tracks or long roads appear to converge in the distance. Things farther away look smaller, so the parallel rails of a railroad track appear to get closer together as you look farther away. For railroad tracks you look down to see this; for cloud shadows you look up! Other than that, they’re the same.

So why do the shadows in the first picture look parallel? It’s because the astronaut was looking straight down on the clouds and shadows, so his distance to any part of the shadow was roughly the same; the shadow near the cloud and way downstream (so to speak) were both about the same distance away from him. That negates the perspective effect, and the shadows are revealed for what they truly are: parallel.

Astronauts have said it for years, but it bears repeating: exploring space gives you perspective. And in this case, it’s literally true.

Image credit: NASA; Elsie, Esq.’s Flickr Stream

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- Crepuscular rays
- My comic book premier
- A sun pillar gooses the sky
- Thus spoked the Dumbbell


In the Constitution We Trust | Bad Astronomy

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[UPDATE (20:00 Eastern time): Sigh. The bill passed.]

[UPDATE 2 (23:00 Eastern time): I have been told that this bill, even when passed, does not have the force of law. It's what's called a House Concurrent Resolution, and basically is used to express a sentiment of the legislature. I might then argue it's not unconstitutional, but then why did several House members say it would be (see the link provided in the post below)? Making law really is like making sausages. Anyway, even if the argument about it being unconstitutional is not a good one, this bill was still a colossal waste of time, and meaningless. There is simply no good, real reason to have done this, and the fact that so many thought it was a good expenditure of time, and that so many signed it, makes me sad.]

I found out about this too late to do much about it, but just in case you hadn’t heard, The US House of Representatives is voting tonight on a bill to make reaffirm "In God We Trust" the official motto of the US.

This is pretty shocking. Well, it’s not shocking in that everything the Republican-majority House has done in the past few months has been pretty antireality, but this is such a clear violation of the First Amendment that it’s, well, shocking. That Amemndent to the US Constitution says:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…

There are many cases where the interpretation of this simple statement is not terribly clear, but this ain’t one of them. Passing a bill saying the official motto of this country is a religious one is clearly making a law about the establishing of religion. It is putting a religious belief above non-religion, for one. It is also putting a monotheistic belief above pantheism, for another. While some people might think pantheism is silly, that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that this bill violates the Establishment Clause.

And it’s not just me saying that; several dissenters in the House feel that way as well.

This country, you may have noticed, is a mess. A lot of this is due to the government itself, but we’re at the point that we need the government to fix it. There are ways they could help: jobs bills, increasing science funding, and so on. Instead, they’re wasting time and making us look foolish by violating the very principles upon which this country was founded.

We are not a Christian nation. The majority of this country may be religious, but that is all the more reason to make very, very sure our laws are free from religion. The immediate reason is that we want everyone to be free to practice religion or not according to their own beliefs or lack thereof. But also, remember, just because one religion has the majority now doesn’t mean it always will. There could come a time when some other religion, or some other version of it, has control. Making laws based on religion now will make it easier to make laws based on some other religion then.

It’s a bad, bad idea.

I know that the current House has no clue about this sort of thinking, but we the voters do. Any Congressperson who is inclined to vote YES on this bill should first remember the very first thing they did when sworn in as a Representative of the American people: uphold and defend the Constitution. This bill is the antithesis of that oath, in spirit if not in letter.

[UPDATE: Note that I originally said this bill would make this the official motto; it is actually to "reaffirm" it. Either way, it's a waste of time and still a violation of the Establishment Clause, as the dissenters pointed out.]

Tip o’ the quill to Tim Lloyd on Google+.

Related posts:

- Are the Ten Commandments really the basis for our laws?
- We are not a Christian nation
- Evolution is the coin of the realm
- Texas State Board of Education confirms irony is dead
- Pray for the First Amendment


The Arab world’s demographic transition | Gene Expression

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In the post below I stumbled upon a weird datum. Kuwait’s total fertility is now below 3. The average estimates seem to be ~2.5 or so. This surprised me, as my impression was that Gulf Arab petroleum based states tended to encourage pro-natalism. This was both a matter of ideology, and also because the small and wealthy native populations lived off rents, and had not had to modify their neo-medieval ideologies to foster productivity driven economic growth. But perhaps Kuwait is an anomaly? Well, it turns out that the Saudi fertility rate is now below 3 as well. Again, depending on which numbers you trust a value of ~2.5 seems plausible. In 1980, at the peak of OPEC’s power and a period when Saudi Arabia was flush with incredible per capita wealth the fertility rate was north of 7.0. But even in the mid-1990s Saudi Arabia’s fertility remained a robust 5.0. Obviously one has to account for the fact that some of the “Arab” nations are not very Arab. The UAE has huge South Asian and Persian populations, not to mention all other sorts. So its fertility of 1.80 can be chalked up to its unique demographics. But would you have guessed that Lebanon’s fertility rate is now the same as Finland’s?

Below the fold is a chart which shows the trends among Arab nations and Finland over the past 40 years. The shading of the bars is proportional to life expectancy.

Image Credit: Denise Chan

NCBI ROFL: Was Mona Lisa’s smile caused by Bell’s palsy or a punch in the face? | Discoblog

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Mona Lisa syndrome: solving the enigma of the Gioconda smile.

“The Mona Lisa smile is presented as a possible example of facial muscle contracture that develops after Bell’s palsy when the facial nerve has undergone partial wallerian degeneration and has regenerated. The accompanying synkinesis would explain many of the known facts surrounding the painting and is a classic example of Leonardo da Vinci as the compulsive anatomist who combined art and science.”

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Mona Lisa: the enigma of the smile.

“The Mona Lisa, painted by Leonardo Da Vinci, 1503, pictures a smile that has been long the subject of conjecture. It is believed, however, that the Mona Lisa does not smile; she wears an expression common to people who have lost their front teeth. A closeup of the lip area shows a scar that is not unlike that left by the application of blunt force. The changes evident in the perioral area are such that occur when the anterior teeth are lost. The scar under the lower lip of the Mona Lisa is similar to that created, when, as a result of force, the incisal edges of the teeth have pierced the face with a penetrating wound.”

Photo: Flickr/Joaquín Martínez Rosado

Related content:
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Smiling faces rated more feminine than serious faces in Japan.
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: My smile beats your p-p-p-poker face.
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Smile intensity of baseball players in photographs predicts longevity.

WTF is NCBI ROFL? Read our FAQ!


Ancient Roman DNA project | Gene Expression

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Dienekes already mentioned it, but readers might be curious about the Ancient Roman DNA Project. Here are the details:

I’m asking for $6,000 for this project, which will cover the cost of testing DNA from the 20 immigrants to Rome I found in my previous project. Of course, I would love to test additional individuals but recognize that testing the 100+ skeletons I have sampled is out of the realm of possibility. Still, any additional funding over the $6,000 goal will be put to good use: analyzing DNA from more Romans! Be a part of the #SciFund Challenge and help me bring science to ancient Rome!

Scientists Grow Human Blood Protein in Rice | 80beats

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alb
Human serum albumin is used in everything from vaccines to cell culture.

Human blood is in demand these days. Donor blood is required for transfusions, of course, but it also contains human serum albumin, a blood protein used to treat shock, severe burns, and liver injuries that also shows up in vaccines and in cell culture materials. Worldwide, we use about 500 tons of human serum albumin (abbreviated HSA) a year.

Shortages of the protein and the potential for contamination by blood-borne viruses have encouraged scientists to look beyond donor blood for sources. One promising approach, inserting the gene for HSA into plants and then harvesting the resulting protein, has always yielded too little for the method to make sense financially, but a new paper details a way to get around that: get the plant to make HSA in its seeds, which are lean, mean protein-concentrating machines. HSA made up 10% of the soluble protein in the rice seeds produced by the research team, one of the highest yields on record from a transgenic plant. And when the team put it through its chemical paces, it worked exactly like normal, human-grown HSA, indicating that its sojourn in the plant world hadn’t impaired its usefulness. If all goes as planned, the team will be testing rice-grown HSA in people in clinical trials in the next two years, with an eye towards supplanting donor blood as a source.

[via Nature News]

Image courtesy of Borislav Mitel / Wikimedia Commons


Limits to technology | Gene Expression

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A few stray thoughts, which might be worth having a discussion about. Unless one wants to go Soylent Green or Logan’s Run both the proponents of stable/declining world population and continued growth have to look to technology. More people means more economic productivity to keep everyone afloat ahead of the Malthusian trap. But even if the population stabilizes, there is still the major problem of the rising dependency fraction due to aging. The only way that we can keep up is by increasing the productivity of the work force. This is especially going to be an issue in a nation like China because of the one child policy (which practically turned out to be a 1.5 child policy). Either “working age” people have to work more productively, or health care has to reduce late in life morbidity so that people can work longer and get the ratio of retirees to workers reasonable.

Secondarily, I’m kind of getting sick of the fact that everyone’s battery is dying. My battery is dying, your battery is dying. “Hey, can I call you later? My battery is dying.” With the rising penetration of smartphones batteries are dying all over the place. I remember a time, back in 2006, when I must have been charging my phone once a week or something! The days. I know that smartphone technology is a step forward, but it goes to show how difficult it is to make a good battery, insofar as we’ve taken a massive step backward in terms of the battery life that we had come to expect. There’s a creeping element of zero sum in all of this; more features means less juice per feature.

Grow a paireidolia | Bad Astronomy

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I believe without reservation that this may be the greatest instance of pareidolia of all time: an ultrasound of a man experiencing epididymo-orchitis, or pain and swelling of a testicle:

Having suffered through a similar (if less traumatic) version of this, may I add that the expression on the man’s, um, "face" is exquisitely accurate.

Tip o’ the codpiece to my Hive Overmind co-blogger Ed Yong on Google+. Original image: Elsevier, Inc.


Stress Is a Real Killer—for Dragonflies | Discoblog

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Dragonflies can literally be scared to death of fish. Who knew? In a study published in November in the journal Ecology, researchers found that dragonfly larvae reared in the presence of fish were four times more likely to die before reaching adulthood, compared to larvae raised in an environment without predators. Similarly, 2.5 times more dragonflies croaked when raised in the same tank as an invertebrate predator. The larvae were kept in cages in full view of the predators, although the cages kept the predators from entering, and each one contained a small cup where the larvae could hide.

The study also found dragonfly nymphs raised in tanks with a fish were 10 percent more likely to die while metamorphosing into their winged adult form that we know so well. Apparently growing up is not only stressful for humans, and being constantly reminded of one’s mortality doesn’t help. (But of course, I’m anthropomorphizing their metamorphosizing.)

The researchers also measured body size in surviving larvae and adult dragonflies (a species called the dot-tailed whiteface, or Leucorrhinia intacta). They found no difference between the different groups, which came as a bit of a surprise since previous studies on other animals have shown that various types of stress can affect development and growth rate, affecting adult body size.

So why did higher numbers of dragonflies die when raised alongside predators? The researchers don’t know but have several guesses. For one, the stressed-out larvae may have an impaired response to disease or pathogens. It’s well-established that stress can hamper immune response in a wide variety of animals (including humans), and the fact that a small percentage of the predator-free larvae died hints at a low level of disease in the population, gathered from lakes in Michigan. The researchers also suggest stress may lead baby dragonflies to use and store energy less effectively. But their best guess is that stress causes a variety of negative responses that can combine synergistically. This has been shown in other animals; for example, tadpoles exposed to predatory newts are more susceptible to herbicide poisoning.

All this seems somewhat intuitive, but few studies have examined concrete effects of stress in invertebrates. The findings could help pave the way for understanding stress in other animals, including the one that complains about stress the most: us humans.

Reference: Shannon J. McCauley, Locke Rowe, Marie-Josée Fortin. The deadly effects of “nonlethal” predators. Ecology, 2011; 92 (11): 2043 DOI: 10.1890/11-0455.1

Image: Gary Yankech / Flickr


You could use facts to prove anything that’s even remotely true | Bad Astronomy

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Here at BA Central, I have my hands full trying to battle the Forces of Darkness: those who would spin, fold, and mutilate reality for their own gain. They may be motivated by greed, or power, or ignorance, or ideology, but the thing they all have in common is, they’re wrong. They come in many flavors: homeopaths, psychics, creationists, antivaxxers… and yes, sadly, far too many politicians.

And I can rail against them time and again, my arsenal filled with the facts from an entire Universe at my disposal, yet make hardly a dent in their armor.

Sometimes, though, a small dose of satire penetrates right through that shielding and pierces the very heart of antiscience. Thank you, The Daily Show, for fighting this good fight:

The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Weathering Fights – Science: What’s It Up To?
http://www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full EpisodesPolitical Humor & Satire BlogThe Daily Show on Facebook

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- You can’t explain Bill O’Reilly
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Men on the move, part n | Gene Expression

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Ancient DNA suggests the leading role played by men in the Neolithic dissemination:

The impact of the Neolithic dispersal on the western European populations is subject to continuing debate. To trace and date genetic lineages potentially brought during this transition and so understand the origin of the gene pool of current populations, we studied DNA extracted from human remains excavated in a Spanish funeral cave dating from the beginning of the fifth millennium B.C. Thanks to a “multimarkers” approach based on the analysis of mitochondrial and nuclear DNA (autosomes and Y-chromosome), we obtained information on the early Neolithic funeral practices and on the biogeographical origin of the inhumed individuals. No close kinship was detected. Maternal haplogroups found are consistent with pre-Neolithic settlement, whereas the Y-chromosomal analyses permitted confirmation of the existence in Spain approximately 7,000 y ago of two haplogroups previously associated with the Neolithic transition: G2a and E1b1b1a1b. These results are highly consistent with those previously found in Neolithic individuals from French Late Neolithic individuals, indicating a surprising temporal genetic homogeneity in these groups. The high frequency of G2a in Neolithic samples in western Europe could suggest, furthermore, that the role of men during Neolithic dispersal could be greater than currently estimated.

Some notes:


- Otzi the Iceman is G2a.

- A continuity of local maternal lineages would not be so surprising. Recall that ~50% of Argentine mtDNA seems to be indigenous, even though they’re ~80% European in total ancestry, and ~95% European in the paternal line.

- This is not limited to Latin America. In South Asia the majority of the maternal lineages are non-West Eurasian, while the majority of paternal lineages are West Eurasian. Autosomal ancestry seems to be about half West Eurasian.

- There are now several instances of Neolithic settlements yielding relatively rare paternal lineages, which are almost certainly intrusive, but left little impact. The authors step forward with the most plausible, and frankly suprising, rationale:

The high frequency of G2a haplogroup in Neolithic specimens, whereas this haplogroup is very rare in current populations, also suggests that men could have played a particularly important role in the Neolithic dissemination that is no longer visible today. This would imply that intra-European migrations related to the metal ages may have strongly affected the modern
gene pool.

In other words, the European paternal lineage landscape may not be determined primarily by the hunter-gatherers or first farmers, but subsequent groups. The relative lack of the two dominant European haplogroups, R1a and R1b, is particularly notable. What’s going on? Perhaps male lineages were “winner-take-all,” and have a tendency to rise to near fixation and then shift toward extinction, more than female lineages? The Genghis Khan haplotype story may be less exceptional than we think. If this is right then we need to be very careful about the historical lessons we draw from mtDNA and Y chromosomes, because they may give us a skewed and unrepresentative picture of the demographics of the past.

Science writing I’d pay to read – October 2011 | Not Exactly Rocket Science

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It’s time for October’s Science Writer Tip-Jar picks. For those new to this, here’s the low-down:

Throughout the blogosphere, people produce fantastic writing for free. That’s great, but I believe that good writers should get paid for good work. To set an example, I choose ten pieces every month that were written for free and I donate £3 to the author. There are no formal criteria other than I found them unusually interesting, enjoyable and/or important.

I also encourage readers to support these writers through two buttons on the sidebar. There are two ways to help. Any donations via “Support Science Writers” are evenly distributed to chosen ten at the end of the month. Donations via the “Support NERS” button go to me; I match a third of the total figure and send that to the chosen writers too.

So without further ado, and in no particular order, here are the picks:

A game of numbers, a matter of values | Gene Expression

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The New York Times has a article out about environmentalists who are now looking at population control again, after shying away from it. This is probably prompted by the hullabaloo over “7 billion.” This comes in the wake of a long piece, The Last Taboo, in the Lefty periodical Mother Jones.

The rationale for why environmentalists have moved away from population control is alluded to only elliptically in The New York Times piece. They make a big deal about abortion, but I don’t think this is the most terrifying issue in principle. Environmentalists tend to be on the pro-choice side of the Culture Wars anyway. To cut to the chase it is the fear of being called racist (and to be fair, racial nationalists from Madison Grant to John Tanton have synthesized ethnic concerns with genuine conservationist impulses). Only environmentalists with rock-solid credentials or a lean toward anti-humanistic Deep Ecology philosophies remained vocal about their opposition to mass immigration over the past few decades. David Brower, founder of the Sierra Club, was one such individual. And it’s no surprise that the founder of the radical Earth First movement is also an immigration restrictionist.


The logic behind environmentalist skepticism of immigration is pretty clear. Citizens of the developed world have a huge impact in comparisons to citizens of the developing world. Without immigration since 1965 the population of the United States would have already stabilized a generation ago, while today it will likely approach 400 million in the mid-21st century.

I’m much more optimistic about the medium term future than most environmentalists. Though I’m not a Panglossian, I think that science and technology will probably be able to manage to keep civilization creaking along. And when it comes to population control sometimes I wonder if the ultimate reason why we care about population control isn’t being muddled. Those who espouse a full-throated Deep Ecology ethos which is basically anti-humanistic in orientation are at least honest. People who are militant about not having children, and attempt to convert others to the cause, sometimes strike me as curious. Who exactly are they saving the world for? The people who they claim should not reproduce?

But I’m a biologist enough to understand that Malthusian conditions aren’t made up out of whole cloth. I understand the fixation upon controlling the numbers of middle class Westerners in the medium term, but observe in the plot above that the crappiest countries in the world have the highest fertilities! One thing that seems true is that a demographic transition results in a positive shift in the dependency ratio, so that economic growth and higher quality of life ensues. Nations which aren’t proceeding through the demographic transition don’t benefit from this dividend. To not put a too fine a point on it they remain shitholes for their residents, and require the resources and energy of societies which actually function to prop up. The “carbon footprint” of a Somali really isn’t a big deal. 5 million Somalis vs. 10 million Somalis makes no real difference to the planet. But it makes a huge difference to the probability of a given Somali starving or not! If you want to go Julian Simon on me I have a bet I could make with you about the relationship between Somalia’s population and its stability and per capita prosperity (at least normalized for world levels of prosperity).

The game of understanding, and shaping, human population seems to be forced into two artificial extremes. On the one hand there are absolutists for reproductive freedom who believe that to have children is a right, who also believe that food, healthcare, and housing are rights. What are rights without responsibilities? There is no honor is starving to death because your nation is too dangerous for CNN camera crews to come film large numbers of children and infants with bloated bellies, which might prompt those societies with surplus to divert it so you can live to breathe and breed another day. As for environmentalists who scold others for daring to produce more humans, often in the zeal of their proselytization they can confuse others into wondering if a world extirpated of humanity wouldn’t be their ideal. This is not the truth of the matter, after all ZPG activists aim for stabilization in large part so that the affluence and security which we take for granted might become sustainable, extending human well being and flourishing out indefinitely. Instead of one-size-fits-all maxims, what we need are case-by-case solutions for a complex world.

What Would Wernher Do? What DID He Do?

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Standards, Wayne Hale

"Much of the time NASA appears to be a loose confederation of 10 quasi independent fiefdoms, each pretty much in charge of their own business.  People often ask me what would I do if I were king of NASA for a day.  They expect me to say something like:  build this rocket, launch that satellite.  Rather I think how I would standardize the procurement processes, or the human resources procedures, or the engineering standards used across the agency.  But then I always was a dreamer, tilting at impossible windmills.  Launching rockets is easy; getting engineers to agree on standards is hard."

Obama and NASA This Week

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White House Photo of the Day, 3 Nov 2011

"Janet Kavandi, Director of Flight Crew Operations at Johnson Space Center, presents President Obama with a jacket during a drop by with the crew of the Space Shuttle Atlantis in the Oval Office, Nov. 1, 2011. The jacket features patches from several past space shuttle missions. Pictured in the background, from left, are: Pilot Doug Hurley, Mission Specialist Sandy Magnus, Commander Chris Ferguson and Mission Specialist Rex Walheim. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)"

Pres. Obama talks NASA's future with Dave Ward, KTRK

"What we've said with NASA is that we need to re-tool, to take that next big leap forward in space. The shuttle program had a wonderful run but the truth of the matter is that the next phase, including the Orion project, was way behind schedule and didn't seem to be meeting its budget objectives," President Obama said. "So what we've done is to try to say let's take a step back, let's figure out how do we re-tool."

'We've got to do more', MyFox, Tampa

"We are, for example, working with NASA and the private sector to bring additional jobs to central Florida. Boeing just made an announcement that we're very happy about."