“A mind trying to defeat a stereotype leaves little mental capacity free for anything else we’re doing.” – Claude Steele. David Sobel, MD, MPH, and Sally MallamContributing Writers In his autobiography “Parallel Time,” Brent Staples, an African-American writer, describes being a graduate student at the University of Chicago. While walking down the street dressed as a …
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By the second half of the fifth century Athens and Sparta emerged as the two most powerful states in Greece. But now without a common enemy, tensions grew between them, and in 431 BCE they confronted one another, with most of the Greek states joining in support of either state. By Sally MallamContributing Writer This …
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Ancient DNA has enabled scientists to understand how complex biological traits evolve over time. They can follow the complex evolution of skin pigmentation and traits such as blue eyes and height. Skin color is extremely variable, even on the African continent, and is still evolving. A study of diverse African groups led by University of …
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Recent technological breakthroughs in genomic analysis, combined with archeological, paleoanthropological, linguistic and other information, now give us an unparalleled opportunity to trace humanity’s evolution and movement in time – how we developed, differentiated and interbred many times, and arrived at our present planet-wide population. Until recently, the leading theory of human population descent, known as …
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Featured Book The Future Six Drivers of Global Change Al GorePaperback edition 2013 The global economy, a global “mind” powered by the internet, a shifting global power structure, unsustainable growth, breakthroughs in life sciences and the threats to our ecological foundations are converging to present an unprecedented challenge and opportunity. Can we muster the collective …
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Featured Book Neanderthal Man In Search of Lost Genomes by Svante PääboReviewed by George Kasabov Neanderthals, our nearest cousin species, finally died out soon after 40,000 years ago. How are we related to them? When did we first branch off from them? Did we interbreed with them? How big is the genetic gap between our …
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RECOMMENDED
by Charles C. Mann
In this groundbreaking work of science, history, and archaeology, Charles C. Mann radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus in 1492.
Contrary to what so many Americans learn in school, the pre-Columbian Indians were not sparsely settled in a pristine wilderness; rather, there were huge numbers of Indians who actively molded and influenced the land around them. The astonishing Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan had running water and immaculately clean streets, and was larger than any contemporary European city. Mexican cultures created corn in a specialized breeding process that it has been called man’s first feat of genetic engineering. Indeed, Indians were not living lightly on the land but were landscaping and manipulating their world in ways that we are only now beginning to understand. Challenging and surprising, this a transformative new look at a rich and fascinating world we only thought we knew.
Featured Book Summary of Kahneman’s “Thinking, Fast and Slow” Daniel Kahneman is a Nobel Laureate in Economics who is a psychologist by training. He won the prize mostly for his work in decision making, specifically Prospect Theory. This book distills a lifetime of work on the engine of human thinking, highlighting our cognitive biases and …
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Reproduced from the PATH website at www.path.org 7-15-19. About 830 women die from pregnancy or childbirth related complications around the world every day. By Margaret A. Caudill-Slosberg, MD, PhD, MPHContributing Writer About 830 women die from pregnancy or childbirth related complications around the world every day. Of the 130 million babies born worldwide each year, about 2.7 …
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Featured Books A Contemporary Look at the Nature of Religious Experience By George Kasabov An exploration of two recent books on the subject: How Religion Evolved: And Why It Endures, by Robin Dunbar, and GOD 4.0: On the Nature of Higher Consciousness and the Experience Called “God, by Robert Ornstein with Sally M. Ornstein. …
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A colonial inspector checks the latex collected by native laborers in 1941 in Cameroon. Growing global income inequality and the absence of the rule of law underlie most of the social and economic problems in developing countries, including the roadblocks to effective foreign aid. Growing global income inequality and the absence of the rule of …
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Modern humans, Homo sapiens, have existed for perhaps 300,000 years, and maybe longer. But agriculture and civilization only started about 10,000 years ago. What took so long? During most of humanity’s existence, Earth’s climate has been harsh and hostile. In the few million years since the first of our genus appeared, lands in the north …
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