jeskill

sounds interesting .... The link isn't working though.

Hey, so was ScienceForum scheduled for some down time, or was that an accident? I'm very glad it's up again.

I've just read this whole thread and I want to make a few general comments. First, I'm completely against eugenics -- I think it would be a waste of our resources and money to constantly screen unborn children for genetic diseases. This is why: It seems as though there are two main types of genetic diseases: those that are heritable and those that aren't. You'll never be able to get rid of the unheritable ones (e.g. those that are caused by unequal separation in meiosis) because they're not controlled by one gene and they tend to increase as the parents age. For example, Turner's Syndrome and Down's Syndrome. As for the heritable ones, most of those are caused by recessive genes and those genes are practically impossible to get rid of in a population, as someone else already tried to explain. Just a reminder: a recessive gene needs two copies to be functional. Anyways, he gave a good explanation, I just want to add that recessive genes generally aren't under selection because they are "hidden" in healthy heterozygotes. (This is one of the reasons why we are so anti-incest: an incestuous mating has a high chance of producing a child with a recessive genetic disorder.) Also, the lower the frequency of a gene, the longer it tends to persist in a large population. I mean, if only 10 people in North America have a particular recessive genetic disorder, the chances of them mating are few and far between. If you truly want to rid humanity of genetic diseases, the best way would be to eliminate all the heterozygotes -- the people who are carrying the disease but don't actually have the disease. However, given mutation rates of genes, it's probably a safe bet to say that most, if not all humans are heterozygotes of some form of recessive genetic disorder. And, I don't really see how getting rid of genetic disorders will help humanity. There are many different diseases that are potentially far scarier that we could get that aren't caused by genes -- e.g Avian Flu, Cancer caused by environmental toxins, Lyme disease. You'd have a helluva time trying to convince me that genetic diseases are going to be the death of humans. In fact, I would rather we had those genes in our gene pool, because the greater diversity, the more chance humans as a species will have to survive what will be thrown at us.

what about using primers for ribosomal DNA?

castle --> sand Next word: crab

sharp next word: pea

So, what do you think of Joan Roughgarden's approach to the evolution of sex? She's "thrown down the gauntlet" as Seed magazine's Maggie Whittlin writes, challenging that the neo-Darwinist view of sexual selection as being largely competitive is wrong. Has anyone read her book, Evolution's Rainbow? I read the first chapter while wasting time in Chapters but I don't feel I have a good grasp of that book. Is it worth reading in entirety? I feel that she makes some really good points -- a lot of sexual behaviours are not well explained by Sexual Selection theory. Role-reversals or organisms that do not have differentially sized gametes are two examples that she used. But part of me is resistant because she has such a "the world is beautiful because it's diverse" mentality -- I feel like she's almost brought morality into this. http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/03/overthrowing_darwins_number_tw.php?page=1 http://www.calacademy.org/calwild/2005summer/stories/sexual.html

The last paragraph is particularly interesting. 35 million DNA base pairs is a lot of leeway. Especially when you consider that sometimes a protein's function can change from just one amino acid difference (which is coded by 3 nucleotides) or even one nucleotide difference. For example, remember when I was talking about "opsins" in the fossil thread? Those are proteins that sense light in the eye. Well, one amino acid change can cause an opsin to change from sensing ultraviolet light to violet light (we don't have these opsins but birds do). As birds use UV or violet light to choose mates or find food, these small changes can have huge implications. I don't really understand your second paragraph. Could you find the article and post a link to it? Also, what is C and E?

So, what about the people who use contraceptives and still get pregnant because the contraceptives fail? Do they qualify as well? What about people who were never taught anything about contraceptives? Do you have any statistics to show that most abortions occur because of an "irresponsible juvenile mindset", and I'm going to guess that, by that, you mean people who aren't using contraceptives? There are so many variables -- so many reasons why people have abortions. I don't think you can really generalize about them and paint them as irresponsible, immature or stupid.

lol. I wonder what would happen if musicians got their Grammys taken away from them for creating music "under the influence".

My mom wanted to name me Jane, My dad wanted Jessica. They settled for Jes, which are the initials of my proper name, Jane E. Skillman So jeskill is an abbreviation of my full name. The avatar is a picture of a tiny jumping bug that I took last year in the north-east corner of Turkey. If you touch the fuzzy tail, it jumps. I have no idea what the proper name is.

My prof gave us this definition for life-history traits: "a set of rules used to allocate energy and time between reproduction and growth." I think this is a bad definition. I didn't like the Wikipedia one either, although it's better: "key maturational and reproductive characteristics that define the life course." What do you think? Is there a better definition or am I just being picky?

Google is a wonderful tool. http://staff.jccc.net/pdecell/cells/centrioles.html

I'm so upset! For a minute I thought it would be another Giant Beaver story. I love giant beavers.

Your data suggest a strong automatic preference for Tall People compared to Short People. Sorry short people.

Something your advisor or professor would never say: In order to increase efficiency in the lab, I've decided to buy all of you iPods. They are, after all, valuable storage devices.

I believe he got most of his stats from appendices III to VIII of this publication: ftp://ftp.cordis.lu/pub/improving/docs/g_wo_etan_en_200101.pdf The book by Baron-Cohen that is cited is not online. I haven't had a chance to check it out at the library. I don't know if this'll help , but here are some other articles by this researcher: Both articles below discuss how he categorizes male and female brains. Basically, he says there are three main types of brains: empathetic, systematic and mixed. Baron-Cohen argues that on average, females have empathetic brains and males have systematic brains, although there are always exceptions. Baron-Cohen specializes in autism, and also argues that autism is an "extreme form of maleness". This is a clip of a review of the aforementioned book: McClure, I. 2003. Reviews: The Essential Difference: Men, Women and the Extreme Male Brain British Medical Journal. 327:57 (5 July) http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/extract/327/7405/57 Here is a scientific article: Baron-Cohen, S., R.C. Knickmeyer, M.K. Belmonte. 2005. Sex differences in the brain: Implications for explaining autism. Science. 310(5749): 819-823

I completely agree with you. (It's 9:20pm and I still at the frickin lab.) I look at the female profs who have had very good careers. It seems like most of them have not had children. It's kind of scary if you think about it. I think some advisors are more understanding than they were in the past, but I know of some women who's PhD went down the tube after having a baby and finding their partner wasn't as supportive as they'd originally thought they'd be. Of course, others seem to handle it just fine. Is there any woman here who has kids and is doing OK in their PhD?

I was wondering why so many people had read the post but not replied. Just editing to add: I do think it's possible to discuss this rationally. Although I understand your concerns, I'm not interested in labelling anyone a "sexist pig". I guess I'm also fishing for women to come forth and give their opinion as well, although I am interested in the male opinion too.

I didn't mean to imply that there is a purpose or goal. I could restate it to say, "evolution can occur when genotypes that have higher fitness reproduce more" but that's kind of redundant.

Just to play devil's advocate, why do we have stereotypes? Are the stereotypes "on average", true? If so, is this because females and males are hardwired differently or is it because we're brought up differently? Or, is it a mix? If it's a mix, then how much of genetics actually plays a part in the discrimination? I know this is a touchy subject. I'm a female hoping to do a PhD myself. I was brought up by a single mom who's a doctor and a feminist and taught me that I could do anything I wanted to. I call myself a feminist, which I believe means that women should have equal opportunity. At the same time, I do wonder sometimes if women and men think differently -- if the reason why the workforce is disportionate is because of this. I think that Lawrence may be taking it too far with the whole nurturing vs. ruthlessnes bit. I think it's much more complicated then that. But I also think that "typical female" qualities (for lack of a better word) tend to be looked down upon in the workplace. I don't think that's a good thing. I also think, as I stated above, that by fixating on the putative genetic differences, he shoves the whole family vs. work problem under the rug.

I wasn't sure if this should go under general biology or politics. There was a story in the telegraph (the link and story are below) about a paper by Peter A. Lawrence that Science was going to publish but retracted right before the publishing date. The actual paper can be found at PLOS, and the link is at the bottom. I think this is a very interesting paper, but it doesn't convince me that the overlying reason why women don't become PhDs is because they are less aggressive. I think that he's way underestimating the problems that come with being a woman and trying to have a family and do a PhD. Men just aren't expected to do as much work as women. While there are men who will be stay-at-home dads, they are still few and far between. I think this issue is more cultural than the author wants to believe. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml;jsessionid=R2SCQNKZZJTYJQFIQMFCFGGAVCBQYIV0?xml=/connected/2006/02/07/ecnthink07.xml&%5C1sSheet=/connected/2006/02/07/ixconn.html Here is the paper: http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0040019

Seed Magazine ROCKS. But I don't know if it would give good rebuttals on evolution. It's like a "hip" science magazine, if there ever were such a thing