Cavalcade of Mammals

Recently Gao et. al. published “An Estimate of the Average Number of Recessive Lethal Mutations Carried by Humans”. They studied a Hutterite group in South Dakota, highly inbred (63 founders 13 generations ago). From serious genetic diseases common in this population, they determine the number of deleterious variants present in the founders. They find that 0.29 recessive lethal alleles per haploid genome. Since some lethals manifest before birth, they double the estimate to 0.58.

This gives an expected 1.8% increased chance of a genetic disease from two first cousins.

Gao, Z., Waggoner, D., Stephens, M., Ober, C. & Przeworski, M. Genetics 199, 1243–1254 (2015).

NPR Enables The Anti-Worker Movement
Economics blog: Beat the Press (Dean Baker)
Purple frog
Ultrasound Alzheimer’s treatment fully restores memory function. pub link. Worth following up in a year
Welfare that the well off get
Medzhitov / Galli theory that allergies are a response to toxic chemicals
Family firms
Survey of gun researchers: having a gun increases your risk

Ending the Creditor’s Paradise
First detailed microscopy evidence of bacteria at the lower size limit of life (0.2 um, 1/150th size of an E. coli) (paper)
Best Feminist Books For Younger Readers
Cold-brewed chocolate
A Chladni plate experiment–visualizes complex resonance patterns
Fuse glass in a microwave and metals
Variant annotation: ANNOVAR vs VEP: McCarthy et. al., 2014, pdf, suppl.
Blog post with a comparison: State of Variant Annotation: A Comparison of AnnoVar, snpEff and VEP by Andrew Jesaitis
TIP – Troubles in Paradise (history of creationist argumentation)
The Irrationality of Alcoholics Anonymous–using naltrexone to treat alcoholism
Krugman reports on the Republican budget proposal
A Scientist’s Guide to Citizen Science

Comic: Phoebe and Her Unicorn
Illumina sequencer comparison: XTen, HiSeq 2500, NextSeq 500, MiSeq
NextSeq 500, an odd choice
How fast is your flash? Measuring high-speed flashes
Plans for an air-gap flash
The Infection Schedule versus the Vaccination Schedule by Mark Crislip. Comparing the antigens in a vaccine to the number a person responds to in ordinary life.
Elysium Health (Guarente) has a NAD precursor + sirulin targeting anti-oxidant, $2/day
VAX! A game about epidemic prevention.
Roald Dahl on Olivia, writing in 1988. “MEASLES: A dangerous illness.”
UPC codes for a product, inexpensive from a reseller
USB id for a product, inexpensive from a reseller

2015 Nebula award speculation

Origin of the $ sign

Converting files avi to mp4

I was sent a link to a blog post, “This Mama Isn’t Scared of the Shmeasle Measles” by Megan Heimer.

I’ll run through the post in a minute, it contains a whole lot of nonsense. First, some links to reliable info:
CDC measles info
CDC Manual for Surveillance of VPD: Chapter 7: Measles
Measles week posts by an immunologist

Now, on to the post…

Read the rest of this entry »

Designing The Best Board Game On The Planet: Twilight Struggle by Oliver Roeder
After 10 years, few payoffs from Gates’ ‘Grand Challenges’
the Mincome experiment in Dauphin, Manitoba, 19774-1979
State tax rates 2014
International SAT is Corrupt.
Great Commodore 64 game: The Castles of Dr. Creep (rewrite, description)
Science and the AAAS sell their souls to promote pseudoscience in medicine by Orac, link to Science advert Supplement
Bat hibernation, muted immune response, and aging
More Rotavirus Vaccination Means Less Rotavirus, paywalled article Sahni et al., 2015 in Pediatrics
Cooking charts
Pioneer Girl by Laura Ingalls Wilder review

Travel ideas
30 Years of Conservative Nonsense, An Explainer By Kurt Eichenwald
The $9 Billion Witness: Meet JPMorgan Chase’s Worst Nightmare By Matt Taibbi
Japan, Awash in Chaos by Noah Smith
Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments: All Lab, No Lecture by Robert Bruce Thompson
Why Didn’t Toxic Waste Cause a Cancer Epidemic, Like We Expected in the 1970s?
How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World by Steven Johnson
Alientube, Reddit comments on YouTube
Every time zone tool
Vaccines Work
Nanopore Sequencing overview
“Manipulating the Pain: Chiropractic and Other ‘Alternative’ Treatments for Back Pain,” by
Richard A. Deyo

Shared DNA / relatedness among close relatives
Analysis of the midterm elections
Climate fiction: When literature takes on global warming and devastating droughts
Origins of BLAST
Charlie Brooks’s kriotherapy leaves me cold
Kryotherapy – Freezing the Balls off a Brazen Quack
Cost of new drug development (and patents), Dean Baker
Officer Darren Wilson’s story is unbelievable. Literally. by Ezra Klein

I bought a Sunbeam heating pad. It has low/med/high settings, and turns off after two hours.

The back of the controller says ‘Sunbeam SLA103’.

I wanted to eliminate the shutoff, I’m using it to heat my fermentation bucket.

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What really undid the Berlin Wall, interview with historian Mary Sarotte
Genome-wide Ancestry Patterns in Rapanui Suggest Pre-European Admixture with Native Americans. Moreno-Mayar et. al., 2014, Current Biology
Russian site has birch scroll in Old Novgorod language, 1000-1400
New Deal projects site with a map!
34 states have governor elections only in off years
Theodore Roosevelt 100 Years Ago, “The people of the United States have but one instrument which they can efficiently use against the colossal combinations of business – and that instrument is the government of the United States…”
Lee Sheppard: Taxes Are A Monetary Instrument