A sleep deficit – even just a week’s worth – can have damaging effects on our genes, researchers said in a new study. Lack of adequate shut-eye had already been linked to conditions from heart disease and cognitive impairment to obesity. But sleep researcher Derk-Jan Dijk and his fellow researchers have delved into the molecular mechanisms behind the phenomenon, looking…
A 20-year-old Chinese geneticist who has been dubbed the nation’s “Bill Gates” is three months away from releasing the results of a groundbreaking but controversial study to identify the genetics behind high IQ in humans. The Wall Street Journal reports on the fascinating career of Zhao Bowen, a child prodigy in charge of the cognitive genetics lab at BGI, a private company…
Margaret Hawkins Abbott, a retired Johns Hopkins Medical School genetics researcher who investigated families with inherited conditions for nearly five decades, died of dementia complications Feb. 1 at Keswick Multi-Care Center. She was 89 and lived in Ruxton. “She was a Johns Hopkins institution,” said Dr. Jason Brandt, Johns Hopkins Medical School director of medical psychology and professor of psychiatry.…
Dr. Saguy, a sociologist at U.C.L.A., methodically teases out all the overtones of the loaded words we use to describe big bodies in her book, “What’s Wrong with Fat”. These bodies are, after all, neither good nor bad, just big. But “fat” often implies the coexistence of sloth, gluttony and self-indulgence. “Obesity” equals disease to medical professionals, while in the…
Discover magazine responds to a paper co-authored by ISG faculty Jessica Lynch Alfaro, Michael Alfaro and former ISG postdoctoral fellow, Sharlene Santana, in its most recent article on human evolution. The research describes the link between the complexity of a monkey species’ facial color pattern and certain social systems. Species that live in larger groups tend to have plainer faces…
In a recent paper in the journal Current Anthropology former ISG postdoctoral fellow, Jennifer E. Smith, along with Eli M. Swanson, Daphna Reed and Kay E. Holekamp suggest that the spotted hyena is an under-appreciated source of information about human evolution. NPR has the full story here Evolution of Cooperation among Mammalian Carnivores and Its Relevance to Hominin Evolution. Jennifer E. Smith, Eli…