by CKR
The 4 February Science magazine reports on a symposium at the fall American Geophysical Union meeting where scientists compared notes on the seismic activity they can pick up from the oceans’ waves. Long considered a nuisance in seismometers, the low-level seismic activity of waves slapping the shore can now be associated with storms, as well as give information about the temperature of the earth’s crust and El Ninos past. If you want more technical details try Googling ocean waves microseisms at Google Scholar.
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Some varieties of corn have been bred for oil production for more than a century. Now scientists from the University of Illinois and Monsanto have taken a look at what that has done to the genome of those varieties. What they found correlates with studies on body size in poultry and may have broad ramifications. Although a single trait (corn oil production, body weight) was selected for in both cases, several areas of the genome contributed to the result. For corn oil, about fifty locations on ten chromosomes participate, and thirteen locations for poultry body weight.
This says that the findings of a “gay gene” or “God gene” are highly suspect. If many genome locations contribute to a characteristic as simple as corn oil production, then behavior is hardly likely to be a result of a single gene.
Tying this to the surprisingly small number of genes found in the human genome (between 20,000 and 30,000), it also supports the idea that interaction among genes is at least as important as the individual genes.
Sorry, couldn’t find a good link to the overall story. Reported in the 4 February Science, subscription only.
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The skeletons of Neandertals show them to be quite distinct from modern humans (people like you and me), but both types lived in some of the same places, like the Middle East, at the same times. So the first thing many of us have wondered about them is if they had sex. At a meeting on Neandertals in New York in late January, reported in the 11 February Science, paleoanthropologists said the DNA evidence was that the two had probably stayed separate, although there was maybe some sex around the edge that may have transferred, say, genes for pale skin color, since the Neandertals seem to have made it to the north before the others did. Trent Holliday of Tulane University in New Orleans said, “If you’re counting on humans not to mate, you’ll be very disappointed.”
Sorry, no good links again, but here’s a selection from Google Scholar.