Links for 2023-01-25
Similarities in Human and Chimpanzee Behavior Support Evolutionary Basis for Risk Taking https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/news-release/2023-january-chimpanzee-risk.html
Directed Energy Futures for 2060: 100 MW lasers shooting down missiles or jets in milliseconds, microwave jammers powerful enough to melt radars, particle beams scrambling electronics from kilometers away, and a huge range of non-lethal effects. https://www.afrl.af.mil/Portals/90/Documents/RD/Directed_Energy_Futures_2060_Final29June21_with_clearance_number.pdf
"300-kilowatt laser to the U.S. Army. … electric bill itself would range 'from US $5 to $10,' for a pulse lasting a few seconds" https://spectrum.ieee.org/ray-gun
“Monetary policy and institutions are far from exempt from political influences. In this paper, we analyze monetary institutions not as being run by either benevolent technocrats or a wealth-maximizing Leviathan, but as the outcome of competition between interest groups trying to capture wealth transfers.” https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11127-022-01009-w
"Researchers found evidence of a peak in lead pollution around 6,000 years ago during the Archaic period. This suggested a simultaneous peak in large-scale copper mining—and matched archaeological evidence from the same period." https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/native-americans-conducted-large-scale-copper-mining-6-000-years-ago/
“Marian Adam Rejewski was a Polish mathematician and cryptologist who in late 1932 reconstructed the sight-unseen German military Enigma cipher machine, aided by limited documents obtained by French military intelligence.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_Rejewski
No privacy in the 4th dimension https://www.youtube.com/shorts/VwofJ3wkzn8
CRISPR technology: A decade of genome editing is only the beginning https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add8643
Eight in 10 people in China caught Covid since early December, say officials https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/23/80-of-people-in-china-caught-covid-since-early-december-say-officials
Japan PM says country on the brink over falling birth rate https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-64373950
Pentagon Will Increase Artillery Production Sixfold for Ukraine https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/24/us/politics/pentagon-ukraine-ammunition.html
Most people have no idea how extensive human biodiversity is and only tend to notice obvious features such as those shown in the photos:
1. The East Asian epicanthic fold.
2. The prevalence of the Neanderthals' occipital bun in some modern populations.
3. Blonde hair among Melanesians who share 4%–7% of their genome with the Denisovans.
4. The peppercorn hair in Khoisan, who are so distinct that by most estimates other Africans like Nigerian Yoruba are actually genetically closer to Eurasians (and Australians and Amerindians) than they are to the Khoisan.
But the differences are more than skin-deep. For example, did you know that East Asians are genetically predisposed to the allele associated with dry-type earwax and a reduction in body odor? Did you know that Tibetans are genetically adapted to high altitudes? Or did you know that the people of the Atacama, whose drinking water contains 20x the safe limit of arsenic, evolved an adaptation to metabolize arsenic?
There are A LOT of other examples. Some obvious, like the evolution of lactose tolerance in certain populations, and others not so obvious, like the Neanderthal progesterone receptor that provides a favorable effect on fertility. Whether your ancestors interbred with archaic humans can influence your immune system and much more.
Indeed, human diversity is so large that blood can be racially specific. In Germany, there is a project specifically looking for blood and stem cell donors among and for people with certain migration backgrounds because of genetically determined incompatibilities with European populations. If you know where your ancestors lived 500 years ago, then you know who your potential stem cell or bone marrow donors are.
The southern African indigenous Khoe-San populations harbor the most divergent lineages of all living peoples. Several gene regions with extreme values include immunity-, sperm-, brain-, diet-, and muscle-related genes.