‘This article is a list of fictional diseases — nonexistent, named medical conditions which appear in fiction where they have a major plot or thematic importance. They may be fictional psychological disorders, magical, from mythological or fantasy settings, have evolved naturally, been engineered artificially (most often created as biological weapons), or be any illness that came forth from the (ab)use of technology.’ (via boing boing)

‘[Svante] Paabo has changed the way scientists study human evolution. Along with fossils, they can now study genomes that belonged to people who died 40,000 years ago. They can do experiments to see how some of those individual genes helped to make us human. During his talk, Paabo used this new research to sketch out a sweeping vision of how our ancestors evolved uniquely human brains as they swept out across the world.’ (via The Loom | Discover Magazine).

Related:

• Dear Professor, I think my husband may be a Neanderthal (guardian.co.uk)
• Admit it – you totally would have had sex with Neanderthals [Evolution] (io9.com)
• What Happened Between the Neanderthals and Us? : The New Yorker (gcmpacaquaticindustries.wordpress.com)
• Svante Paabo: DNA clues to our inner neanderthal [Greg Laden’s Blog] (scienceblogs.com)

‘Though …academic ethnographers have balked at working with the military — the American Anthropological Association issued a report condemning the Human Terrain program as a violation of professional ethics — they have not ignored the country. Noah Coburn’s “Bazaar Politics” is the first extended study of an Afghan community to appear since the Taliban fell. It follows an ambitious history of Afghanistan by the Boston University anthropologist Thomas Barfield, and an impassioned essay by Rory Stewart, the Conservative M.P., author-adventurer and Kabul preservationist, that faults the international .effort in Afghanistan for its neglect of ethnographic insight. Whatever anthropology has to say about America’s longest war, it’s saying it now.’ (via Book Review – NYTimes.com).

‘People with high IQs are more likely to smoke marijuana and take other illegal drugs, compared with those who score lower on intelligence tests, according to a new study from the U.K.’ (via TIME). This finding is universally referred to as ‘counterintuitive’, but I don’t think so. We are not talking about use of tobacco, and we are probably not talking about heroin addiction, but those with higher IQ are generally more open to novel experience, less credulous about anti-drug propaganda and less rigidly moralistic.

‘When our autobiographical memory lets us down, how do we reconstruct the lost chapters?’ (via BPS Research Digest).

“There’s definitely something to be said for first impressions. New research from the University of California, Berkeley, suggests it can take just 20 seconds to detect whether a stranger is genetically inclined to being trustworthy, kind or compassionate. The findings reinforce that healthy humans are wired to recognize strangers who may help them out in a tough situation. They also pave the way for genetic therapies for people who are not innately sympathetic, researchers said.

…Two dozen couples participated in the UC Berkeley study, and each provided DNA samples. Researchers then documented the couples as they talked about times when they had suffered. Video was recorded only of the partners as they took turns listening. A separate group of observers who did not know the couples were shown 20-second video clips of the listeners and asked to rate which seemed most trustworthy, kind and compassionate, based on their facial expressions and body language.

The listeners who got the highest ratings for empathy, it turned out, possess a particular variation of the oxytocin receptor gene known as the GG genotype.” (via e! Science News).

Ummm, okay, so we can recognize people with a particular oxytocin gene variant. and we think they are more empathic. But is there any evidence that truly correlates with greater empathy? (I know  there is some evidence that, at least in animals, oxytocin has a relationship with strength of social affiliation.)

Related:

• The kindness of strangers: Caring and trust linked to genetic variation (eurekalert.org)
• Oxytocin Revisited (psychologytoday.com)
• A Kindness Gene? Researchers Say Caring, Trustworthiness May Be In Our DNA (huffingtonpost.com)
• Body Language Reveals ‘Empathy Gene’ (webmd.com)
• Is empathy in our genes? – CNN (edition.cnn.com)
• Being a jerk could be in your genes (windsorstar.com)