CharonY

Considering that you claim not to have been in a relationship you are awfully certain about how women think and behave.

* incl. bonus typos.

Yeah. Consdering that there has been a push to run academia like a business that would have quite an impact on scientific integrity.

You can't see them with your eyes, obviously. But there are many instruments which allow you to measure it. What iNow mentions is that we are able to see the macrostructures containing the elements.

But it should be, hence moved.

There are many aspects that determine how likely/effective the spread of bacterial infections are. These include whether they can replicate outside the host (Leptospira) can't. How effective they are at establishing infections, the infectious dose, and modes of host to host transfer. Since it is mostly zoonotic transfer is rarer and regular hygiene is often sufficient to avoid infection. Norovirus can be transmitted by being close to a human and can lead to rapid spread (and detection). Likewise leptospirosis can also be underreported as the non-severe cases may be confused with other infections.

From a biological viewpoint the definition would be far too broad to be useful as it would encompass virtually every single measurable behaviour if we dig deep enough into the mechanism. I guess in that case it is a matter of common usage vs precise definitions. To be precise, in behavioural sciences it is usually less about experience (after all, if you use non-human models you really do not know what they experience) but about the expressed behaviour. I.e. in biological lit hard-wired is generally used to describe behaviours that are distinctly fixed in some ways. To be fair, it is not very commonly used, either and often in the context of physiological circuits. It should be noted that e.g. hard-wired neuronal circuits can also exhibit plasticity in dependence on their input. Though the idea is that given a specific input a predictable behaviour would occur. But again, outside of biology and especially when applied to humans I assume that the common usage can be much fuzzier (and as a consequence, less useful for categorization).

Infant death is also disproportionately higher for black children(~13 vs 5.6 for non-hispanic white per 100k). While the overall increase in maternal deaths may be due to changes in record-keeping, the disparity between different groups cannot be explained by that. A number of groups have started to look into this issue, and so far it seems that those at higher risk were generally less educated, often single, started pre-natal care later or had not care at all.

In that case why would one characterize it as hard-wired if the response can be variable? Also, it is not unique to humans either.

Regardless of animal, there are a wide range of behaviours that are not entirely hard-wired. The latter often (unless the science has moved on) refers to fixed action patterns, i.e. a set of innate behaviour that are at best minimally modulated once a trigger stimulus is applied. However, many animals are also able to perform much more nuanced behaviours which generally are the result of some level of learning. They may happen early in life and sometimes be hard to distinguish from innate behaviour but are characterized by the need of the interaction before a particular behaviour is expressed in a certain way. Which is a bit convoluted way to say what John said.

I am not sure whether there was a lot of competition in the early stages. It really depends what is more limiting, i.e. how many theoretical vial options there were to begin with. Obviously, the study can only address precisely one form.

The problem is that nature does not operate in convenient binary categories such as healthy vs sick. Genetic factors that can be detrimental in certain combinations under certain conditions can be beneficial in others or in different composition. We are so far off from understanding the nuances that even thinking about implementing such policies is highly problematic at best.

Geez, and most of my or mine colleague's fees are typically half of that (for external commercial consulting).

Actually I only brought up the Bantu expansion to elaborate on your haplogroup thesis. Specifically to elaborate that haplogroup L3e carriers are not necessarily as fair skinned (and also because we have a bit of an idea about their expansion). In contrast, the evidence suggest that populations that have stayed or originated recently near central Africa do have darker skin, which coincides with the UV/folate hypothesis. I.e. so far even in the confines of this thread we have evidence that pointing to darker skin color. Under these assumptions the hue of the skin will be primarily driven between the needs of folate conservation and vitamin D3 synthesis. Considering the latter not to be limiting (and we find also evidence for this in lit) being darker would be a selective advantage (which follows the argument of Joplin's research).

Looking at UV maps in Algeria the UV radiation ranges from high to moderate whereas countries closer to the equator seem to exceed it on most days in the respective summer months (though a full data set would be helpful to properly asses this). Specifically regarding the haplogroups: off the top of my head L3 E is present throughout Africa, and includes populations with much darker skin than the one you pictured (or to put it differently L3E is not associated with the that particular skin hue), It is most closely associated with Bantu migrations, which as you may know, are often having darker skin. I believe l3b is a much more recent variant, but I may be way off without looking it up. However, neither approach alone would be a good indication of how the skin color used to be in our ancestor. Or specifically how dark it was, as all evidence points toward dark complexion. I am sure that there is actually lit about that somewhere, but I have not bothered digging them up yet. And frankly, my knowledge is too limited to be certain how accurate the estimates could be. The only things I can think of are studies that show a strong selection for sun-resistant MC1R alleles around the time of hair loss. However, if we really want to use current populations as a kind of proxy how skin color may have appeared as a function of UV radiation, I refer you to Jablonski and Chaplin (2000, J human evolution) where they have gathered UV data and compared it with skin reflectance (as a measure of skin color) and clearly found darker complexions in higher radiation areas. Of course, the values won't fit perfectly as access to folates, clothing etc. will have modulated the selective pressures somewhat from what they used to be. But looking specifically at near-equator populations I think it is safe to say that our ancestors would have been rather on the darker rather than the lighter side.

But here is the thing, as humans have always been humans, how would you know what the baseline promiscuity is? You seem to think that the development has suppressed tendencies, but isn't it equally or even more likely that it may be increasing? What we seem to be in agreement with is that environmental factors (resources, society etc.) may modulate mating behaviour. However, the difference appears to be that you seem to assume that there is a natural threshold that is abnormally influenced by civilization, whereas I maintain that the flexibility in itself is biological and modulated by circumstances, be it civilization, resources or other reasons.

I am not sure how you came to that conclusion? Obviously humans are much more likely to engage in monogamy than our closest relatives. Yet the sexual behaviour is still markedly different between different apes. Yet if the evolutionary history is sufficent to explain prefernces, it would not explain the wide-spread monogamy in humans. There are various models in which different levels of promiscuity can be stable strategies. This have been is mostly tested in nesting birds, though often the benefit of polyandry is still unclear (yet it clearly happens). Considering that birds can have different mating strategies, which we would consider "normal" (which shifting frequencies which may reflect environmental change) it should be somewhat obvious that for humans a similar leeway is likely? And if so it would make the specific phrasing of OP rather unsuited.

I think in that case it would be beneficial to start using a scale of human complexion and discuss what you mean with moderate darkness. In my case I used it to differentiate it from lighter complexions the further we move away from the equator.

Well, and there are quite a few examples of polyandry in a range of animals (especially birds) so high-level evolutionary explanations won't suffice as explanation, either. Edit: Most people (as in this thread) use hard-wired as a stringent ,unalterable biological response, independent of individual experience (i.e. often in a kind of evolutionary sense). Something like a reflex. However, imprinting for example, is part of the developmental learning process. You learn certain and subsequently affirm sexual preferences, for example. A different exposure would likely lead to a different outcome. Here, you seem to be using like a reflex that can be suppressed. E.g. women are naturally polygamous/monogamous but can use willpower (or equivalent) to suppress it. What I propose, especially in the context of OP (i.e. mate selection and polyandry) is that the decision for or against monogamy is based only on a mix of biology (on a very low level) and a lot personal development (which, as all human actions, including e.g. "awareness" or "learning", is based on biological processes) . But because of that drawing conclusions of individual actions based on rough "just so" evolutionary stories just does not make a lot of sense.

With regard to OP, it is assumed that darker pigmentation accompanied fur loss during human evolution in equatorial Africa. However skin damage/cancer is, for a number of reasons not very likely. A compelling hypothesis put forward by Jablonski and Chaplin is that instead cost in terms of folate, (high breakdown and is also required to address UV-damages such as forDNA repair) has been the driving factor. Dispersal out of Africa then created a different situation with the need of increased vitamin D photosynthesis. While I am not entirely sure how it addresses OP, skin color range is clearly determined by a moderately large set of genes and not a single gene or allelic variation. SLC24A5 accounts for up to 40% of pigmentation (I think it is either Kivisild's work or he cites someone's on this)differences and is probably a main element of vitamin D adaptation but obviously other alleles contribute to the variations that we find inside and outside of Africa. Regardless, it is almost certain that our ancestors were very dark-skinned.

Not even then. Say you under stress do to some environmental factors, you will quite possibly not notice them. At least not that way. Hormonal status and imprinting also affects mate choice and hence, what you perceive as gorgeous. Same for other animals, btw. There is very little that is hard-wired in the strictest sense.

Regardless of the biological benefits it appears that there is a choice involved, which makes it not hard-wired. It is often a fallacy to assume something is just so by nature since it kind of makes biological sense, especially when dealing with complex organisms. After all, they react to environmental cues (which includes learning) and can have a wide range of responses.

Conference proceedings are usually just short abstracts and not all are peer-reviewed. Typically they accompany a presentation (poster or oral). Regarding references, it is not like a school assignment with page requirements or something. They are used to embed your research in existing knowledge. Giving it a number is meaningless.

There are numerous (though the one you mentioned, I believe is a 2006 study from Miller et al. falls roughly into that area). The issue is often the way the question is framed. E.g. asking whether "humans have evolved over time" or whether "humans existed in present form since beginning" in the US you get 60% agreeing with evolution (Pew 2013). Likewise, you get different responses in e.g. Germany whether you ask "is evolution true or probably true" (65%) or whether you allow a guidance by god. Thus the support for specifically of a non-religious form of evolution is not vastly different. I would say that the biggest difference (which, on hindsight is probably closest to OP's question) whether people believe in some for creationism, which seems to be more of a US thing. Still, in Germany, according to a fowid survey (2005) 12.5% considered themselves creationists, 25.2 % were proponent of some sort of ID and 60.9% considered evolution to be true (with or without a guiding god).

IEEE has a number of journals each with slightly different requirements. It is not a single journal. I have not heard from partial submission, I think you may be confusing it with abstract submission for proceedings for conferences, which are an entirely different beast. The references are always dependent on the paper and what is known to be about a subject. You should know more about the subject to have an inkling of how much you need. Providing a fixed number is rather meaningless. The template you linked to is for something else entirely... You really should team up with someone familiar with scientific publishing to have a realistic shot at it.