Curt Doolittle

Theme: Science

  • RT @SteveStuWill: The laws of physics underlying everyday human life are fully u

    RT @SteveStuWill: The laws of physics underlying everyday human life are fully understood and captured in the equation below. This one equa…

    Source date (UTC): 2018-10-02 16:06:29 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1047155869115437056

  • Oct 1, 2018, 2:12 PM

    https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0046774Updated Oct 1, 2018, 2:12 PM

    Source date (UTC): 2018-10-01 14:12:00 UTC

  • “The overall outcome of psychotherapy has not improved in more than 40 years”—

    —“The overall outcome of psychotherapy has not improved in more than 40 years”—

    Yep. Pseudoscience. https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1045246477306597376

  • Functional Responses and the Formulation of Predator-Prey Models When There Is a

    https://www.jstor.org/stable/20143265?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contentsIntuition, Functional Responses and the Formulation of Predator-Prey Models When There Is a Large Disparity in the Spatial Domains of the Interacting Species

    P. Inchausti and S. Ballesteros

    Journal of Animal Ecology

    Vol. 77, No. 5 (Sep., 2008), pp. 891-897

    —“Abstract

    1. The disparity of the spatial domains used by predators and prey is a common feature of many terrestrial avian and mammalian predatory interactions, as predators are typically more mobile and have larger home ranges than their prey.

    2. Incorporating these realistic behavioural features requires formulating spatial predator-prey models having local prey mortality due to predation and its spatial aggregation, in order to generate a numerical response at timescales longer than the local prey consumption. Coupling the population dynamics occurring at different spatial scales is far from intuitive, and involves making important behavioural and demographic assumptions. Previous spatial predator-prey models resorted to intuition to derive local functional responses from non-spatial equivalents, and often involve unrealistic biological assumptions that restrict their validity.

    3. We propose a hierarchical framework for deriving generic models of spatial predator-prey interactions that explicitly considers the behavioural and demographic processes occurring at different spatial and temporal scales.

    4. The proposed framework highlights the circumstances wherein static spatial patterns emerge and can be a stabilizing mechanism of consumer-resource interactions.”—

    https://www.jstor.org/stable/20143265?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

    Source date (UTC): 2018-09-25 09:57:00 UTC

  • September 25th, 2018 9:57 AM Intuition, Functional Responses and the Formulation

    September 25th, 2018 9:57 AM Intuition, Functional Responses and the Formulation of Predator-Prey Models When There Is a Large Disparity in the Spatial Domains of the Interacting Species
    P. Inchausti and S. Ballesteros
    Journal of Animal Ecology
    Vol. 77, No. 5 (Sep., 2008), pp. 891-897 —“Abstract
    1. The disparity of the spatial domains used by predators and prey is a common feature of many terrestrial avian and mammalian predatory interactions, as predators are typically more mobile and have larger home ranges than their prey.

    1. Incorporating these realistic behavioural features requires formulating spatial predator-prey models having local prey mortality due to predation and its spatial aggregation, in order to generate a numerical response at timescales longer than the local prey consumption. Coupling the population dynamics occurring at different spatial scales is far from intuitive, and involves making important behavioural and demographic assumptions. Previous spatial predator-prey models resorted to intuition to derive local functional responses from non-spatial equivalents, and often involve unrealistic biological assumptions that restrict their validity.


    2. We propose a hierarchical framework for deriving generic models of spatial predator-prey interactions that explicitly considers the behavioural and demographic processes occurring at different spatial and temporal scales.

    3. The proposed framework highlights the circumstances wherein static spatial patterns emerge and can be a stabilizing mechanism of consumer-resource interactions.”—
    https://www.jstor.org/stable/20143265?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

  • September 25th, 2018 9:57 AM Intuition, Functional Responses and the Formulation

    September 25th, 2018 9:57 AM Intuition, Functional Responses and the Formulation of Predator-Prey Models When There Is a Large Disparity in the Spatial Domains of the Interacting Species
    P. Inchausti and S. Ballesteros
    Journal of Animal Ecology
    Vol. 77, No. 5 (Sep., 2008), pp. 891-897 —“Abstract
    1. The disparity of the spatial domains used by predators and prey is a common feature of many terrestrial avian and mammalian predatory interactions, as predators are typically more mobile and have larger home ranges than their prey.

    1. Incorporating these realistic behavioural features requires formulating spatial predator-prey models having local prey mortality due to predation and its spatial aggregation, in order to generate a numerical response at timescales longer than the local prey consumption. Coupling the population dynamics occurring at different spatial scales is far from intuitive, and involves making important behavioural and demographic assumptions. Previous spatial predator-prey models resorted to intuition to derive local functional responses from non-spatial equivalents, and often involve unrealistic biological assumptions that restrict their validity.


    2. We propose a hierarchical framework for deriving generic models of spatial predator-prey interactions that explicitly considers the behavioural and demographic processes occurring at different spatial and temporal scales.

    3. The proposed framework highlights the circumstances wherein static spatial patterns emerge and can be a stabilizing mechanism of consumer-resource interactions.”—
    https://www.jstor.org/stable/20143265?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

  • Untitled

    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886915001622https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886915001622

    Source date (UTC): 2018-09-23 22:43:00 UTC

  • THERE ARE NO CAUCASIANS REMAINING IN INDIA? —“India has been underrepresented

    THERE ARE NO CAUCASIANS REMAINING IN INDIA?

    —“India has been underrepresented in genome-wide surveys of human variation. We analyze 25 diverse groups to provide strong evidence for two ancient populations, genetically divergent, that are ancestral to most Indians today. One, the “Ancestral North Indians” (ANI), is genetically close to Middle Easterners, Central Asians, and Europeans, while the other, the “Ancestral South Indians” (ASI), is as distinct from ANI and East Asians as they are from each other. By introducing methods that can estimate ancestry without accurate ancestral populations, we show that ANI ancestry ranges from 39-71% in India, and is higher in traditionally upper caste and Indo-European speakers. Groups with only ASI ancestry may no longer exist in mainland India. However, the Andamanese are an ASI-related group without ANI ancestry, showing that the peopling of the islands must have occurred before ANI-ASI gene flow on the mainland. Allele frequency differences between groups in India are larger than in Europe, reflecting strong founder effects whose signatures have been maintained for thousands of years due to endogamy. We therefore predict that there will be an excess of recessive diseases in India, different in each group, which should be possible to screen and map genetically.”—

    Source date (UTC): 2018-09-22 12:46:00 UTC

  • Another Take on Indian Origins

    September 22nd, 2018 12:53 PM ANOTHER TAKE ON INDIAN ORIGINS
    by Mark Lanzarotta, The ancestors of the Dravidians, the Proto-Elamites, originated from a Zarzian (Nostratic) migration from the Zagros Mountains to Turkmenistan around 13,000 BC. They were driven from there in 8000 BC by Proto-Sumerians from the Altais and fled to Iran, where they gave rise to the Elamites, among others. They began to drift into India around 7000 BC and wrested it from the Nihalis (the new arrivals started the Mehrgarh civilization, a blend of Dravidians and native Nihalis). The Mundas didn’t exist yet, they came from Yunnan later. The Dravidians married the Australoid indigenes and became quite dark, though they imposed their language on the conquered people. In the Indus Valley was invented Dentistry by these people. The Iranian Dravidians (Elamites) drove the Kartvelians from Mazanderan to the Caucasus around 6000 BC. The Indus Valley people had terrible floods and plagues which drove them south. The Aryans, a mixture of Iranians and Hunas, began to filter into India around 1300 BC, absorbing some Dravidians and driving the others south. The Indo-Aryan kingdoms mentioned in the Mahabharata were established by 1100 BC. Bengal remained Dravidian much longer than western India, though they were eventually conquered. Bengal means “God’s Country” in the language of the Mundas, the original inhabitants. The Dravidians were related to but not the same as Elamites, since they arose as a mixture of Elamites and African settlers from the Horn of Africa in the Ormozgan area of southeastern Iran, around 7500 BC. The ancient Adivasis or Australoids originally spoke Australian languages before the Dravidians conquered them. The Dravidians are related to Austro-Asiatics like the Mundas through extensive admixture in India, though not by common origin. Dravidians are Nostratics with an Eritrean admixture, they have a separate origin from the Austric peoples. The Australoid Adivasis are among the oldest Indians of them all, they arrived in India in 60,000 BC. But they were preceded by the Negrito ancestors of the Andamese, who were in Uttar Pradesh as early as 85,000 BC. Before them Denisovan hominin and Homo Erectus lived in India for countless ages, and a few of their most ancient genes are still in the Indian people today.

  • There Are No Caucasians Remaining in India?

    September 22nd, 2018 12:46 PM THERE ARE NO CAUCASIANS REMAINING IN INDIA?

    —“India has been underrepresented in genome-wide surveys of human variation. We analyze 25 diverse groups to provide strong evidence for two ancient populations, genetically divergent, that are ancestral to most Indians today. One, the “Ancestral North Indians” (ANI), is genetically close to Middle Easterners, Central Asians, and Europeans, while the other, the “Ancestral South Indians” (ASI), is as distinct from ANI and East Asians as they are from each other. By introducing methods that can estimate ancestry without accurate ancestral populations, we show that ANI ancestry ranges from 39-71% in India, and is higher in traditionally upper caste and Indo-European speakers. Groups with only ASI ancestry may no longer exist in mainland India. However, the Andamanese are an ASI-related group without ANI ancestry, showing that the peopling of the islands must have occurred before ANI-ASI gene flow on the mainland. Allele frequency differences between groups in India are larger than in Europe, reflecting strong founder effects whose signatures have been maintained for thousands of years due to endogamy. We therefore predict that there will be an excess of recessive diseases in India, different in each group, which should be possible to screen and map genetically.”—