Posted 07 Jan 2016 / 0
The Scientist “The Evolution of Cooperation” Starting with the title, this short article is not bringing anything all that new to the existing literature on how cooperation evolves. But once I realized that this piece was really about the direction of Denison’s research on rhizobia, the rest of the basic background made a lot more Read More
A Minor Post, Coevolution, Competition, Cooperation, Host-Pathogen Evolution, Mutualism, Parasitism, Punishment, Reciprocity, Web
Posted 07 Jan 2016 / 0
“exercise is good in principle, but it’s almost never the case that it’s the best thing you could do right now.” -Dan Ariely There’s a really interesting experiment being conducted by behavioral economist Dan Ariely and the new WNYC program Only Human. Called “Stick to It!“, the experiment allows listeners to the show to volunteer to download Read More
A Minor Post, Behavior, Behavioral Ecology, Cultural Evolution, Evolutionary Psychology, Human Nature, Mismatch theory, Psychology, Public Policy, Radio & Podcasts, Sustainable Transportation, Sustainable Urban Design
Posted 06 Jan 2016 / 0
Great NPR piece here on how new technologies in personalized DNA testing have the potential to broadly expand our understanding of human relatedness. I am particularly interested in the idea that these tests further reinforce previous research showing just how much of our gene pool is shared globally rather than locally. While these tests are Read More
A Minor Post, Breeders, Propagators, & Creators, Cultural Anthropology, Genetics, Human Evolution, MSCI-362, The Evolution of Sex, Radio & Podcasts, Sex and Reproduction, Sexual Competition
Posted 22 Dec 2015 / 0
Last month, I published a rather long review of William Provine’s last book, The “Random Genetic Drift” Fallacy. The book is pretty obscure and I knew that a lot of other evolutionary biologists had dismissed the book as being a bit on the crazy side, so in the back of my mind I was wondering whether Read More
A Major Post, Belief, Creationism, Data Limitation, Evolution, Fluidity of Knowledge, Hypothesis Testing, Natural Selection, Population Genetics, Web, WordPress
Posted 17 Dec 2015 / 0
“Lev Ginzburg has retired”. For anyone who knows Lev, this combination of words does not make a whole lot of sense. Is it possible that such a lively and active scientist would hang up his yellow pad and pencil in order to put his feet up in some retirement community far away from the world Read More
A Major Post, Allometries, Biography, Carrying Capacity, Conferences, Conservation Biology, Ecological Modeling, Ecology, Evolutionary Modeling, Population Genetics, Population Growth, Science as a career, System Stability, Talks & Seminars
Posted 03 Dec 2015 / 0
Only Human “Your Brain on Sound” This is a great feature that uses the experience of a particular person (“Rose”) to explain how important the brain’s filtering of sound stimuli is to our perception of sound. Rose suffers from auditory neuropathy, which prevents her brain from responding to sound with neural synchrony. This makes it really Read More
A Minor Post, Minor in Sound & Music Studies, MSCI-363, Biological Origins of Sound & Music, Radio & Podcasts, Sound Perception
Posted 03 Dec 2015 / 0
National Public Radio “In Worst Attacks, Terrorists Often Have Fraternal Bonds” This is an interesting — albeit brief — piece on a recent “pattern” that has emerged in terror attacks: teams of attackers are often composed of blood relatives. As a good scientist I have to point out that there’s a danger here of over-generalizing Read More
A Major Post, Activism, Behavior, Behavioral Ecology, Belief, Breeders, Propagators, & Creators, Cultural Anthropology, Cultural Evolution, Data Limitation, Gene by Environment Interactions, Gene-Culture Coevolution, Genetics, Host-Pathogen Evolution, Human Evolution, Memetic Fitness, Mismatch theory, Phenotypic Plasticity, Public Policy, Radio & Podcasts, Resistance Evolution in Parasites, Social Diversity
Posted 23 Nov 2015 / 0
The Chronicle of Higher Education “An Unevolved View of Gender Evolution” Although I am sympathetic to a number of the critiques of traditional sexual selection theory, I have to agree with the overall thrust of this book review: if you are going to shine a critical light on scientific understandings of sex differences in humans, Read More
A Minor Post, Articles, Ethics, MSCI-362, The Evolution of Sex, Sex and Reproduction, Sexual Conflict, Sexual Selection
Posted 23 Nov 2015 / 0
Image courtesy of Pacific Southwest Region of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service via Wikimedia Commons The Chronicle of Higher Education “Ecomodernists Spark Rhetorical Heat” In my Ecology for Architects course I have students work on an activity that asks them to advocate one of four “extreme” environmental positions: Population bombers; Neo-luddites; Deep ecologists; or Read More
A Minor Post, Activism, Anthropogenic Change, Articles, Environmental Justice, MSCI-271, Ecology for Architects, Public Policy, Resource Consumption, Risk & Uncertainty, Sustainability, Sustainable Agriculture, Sustainable Energy, Sustainable Transportation, Sustainable Urban Design
Posted 23 Nov 2015 / 0
Image courtesy of Frans de Waal via Wikimedia Commons Journal of Comparative Psychology “Inference in a social context: A comparative study of capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella), tree shrews (Tupaia belangeri), hamsters (Mesocricetus auratus), and rats (Rattus norvegicus)” This is not a surprising finding, but it reinforces the fact that the ability to understand the effects Read More
A Minor Post, Articles, Behavior, Empathy, Primates
