I started this book in March, the second selection for the 2010 Freethinker’s Science Book Club.  It was just before the semester became a long series of deadlines and the book was recalled by another patron of my local library.  Once the semester ended, I checked it out again and finished it in a little over a week.

Remarkable Creatures is a collection of short biographies of “adventurers,” starting with Alexander von Humbolt, the Dutch naturalist whose Personal Narrative describing his explorations of South America inspired Charles Darwin.  Darwin’s chapter was mostly a rehash of material I’ve read elsewhere, which I would expect given my field. But the remainder of the book, even the chapters on Eugène Dubois (who discovered Homo erectus) and the Leakey family (who combined discovered the majority of hominin fossils in Africa) – whose discoveries I teach in my intro physical anthropology classes – presented richly detailed portraits of some of the pivotal figures in the field of evolutionary biology.

One of the more interesting chapters for me was “The Day the Mesozoic Died,” the story of the discovery of the K-T boundary in the fossil record. Disclaimer: I am an anthropological geneticist, but one of my undergrad degrees is in zoology. I was one of those kids who went through the dinosaur fascination phase, and later considered being an astronaut. So this chapter, with the mystery of the “end of the dinosaurs,” and the radical notion that it had come from outer space, was right up my alley. The formidable accumulation of evidence of an extraterrestrial source of the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous, and rejection of other hypotheses (volcanic eruption), is an elegant account of both the transdisciplinary and skeptical nature of science.

The final two chapters discuss the tension between paleoanthropologists and molecular anthropologists in the quest to understand human origins, and are now dated, due the recent work on the Neandertal genome.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Despite that, the book is a great introduction to breadth of research subsumed in evolutionary biology. The life stories of these remarkable scientists will hopefully inspire a new generation of researchers.

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There are also children’s biographies of some of these explorers (and others), for those who might want to encourage their little scientists.

• Life on Earth: The Story of Evolution
• Dragon Bones and Dinosaur Eggs: A Photobiography of Explorer Roy Chapman Andrews
• Dinosaurs Of Waterhouse Hawkins
• Mary Leakey: Archaeologist Who Really Dug Her Work (Getting to Know the World’s Greatest Inventors and Scientists) (Their series on artists and musicians is fantastic, I can’t wait to get these for my younger kids.)

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July’s picks for the 2010 Freethinker’s Book Club are

Happy reading!

Last week, I attended the Midwest Consortium’s annual conference.  The goal was to network with other scholars in the region to facilitate collaboration and development of potential grant proposals.  I got to meet Dr. Joyce Hunter, Deputy Director of the NIH National Center (soon to be Institute) on Minority Health and Health Disparities.  She gave a presentation on different funding mechanisms available at NIH, and described a timeline for applying for those mechanisms depending on where you are in your career.  Dr. Hunter emphasized that NIH is moving away from the path of R03 > R15/R21 > R01, and more toward career development awards (F32, K30, K99/R00) as a means of becoming an independent researcher.  She noted that her center now has a few R01 funding opportunities available, and that NIH has adopted a streamlining process for new investigators, so that they form a separate pool of applications.  Of the 20 R01 grants funded by NCMHD last cycle, 10 were from new investigators. Of those, 8 had had previous NIH funding (many through the Loan Repayment Program).

For those still trying to familiarize themselves with the seemingly Byzantine workings of the nation’s top funding agency, here are two videos from the NIH Center for Scientific Review on what happens at a review panel and advice for new applicants.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Click here to view the embedded video.

Also, check the NIH Office of Extramural Research for current funding opportunities, grant application basics, and information on forms and deadlines.

My physical anthropology buddies will recognize the name.  Kanzi is a bonobo who learned to communicate with researchers using lexical symbols while growing up at the Yerkes Primate Center.

News today from the Great Ape Trust is that Kanzi is now the father of an infant male named Teco. After many years of showing my students the episode of Nova, Can Chimps Talk? I feel like a proud aunt.  Felicitations!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Several of the items I’ve run across while surfing this week involve genomics (not surprising, given my job).

• First, from the National Human Genome Research Institute GenomicsCareers: Find Your Future, a website detailing the myriad career choices in the emerging field of genomics. With interactive videos and career profiles, a nice resource for the budding scientist. This one is on my list to share with my oldest, who has expressed an interest in forensics and neuroscience.
• Next, HuGE Navigator, “An integrated, searchable knowledge base of genetic associations and human genome epidemiology.”  BiteSizeBio has a nice review of the high points here and here. I realize these posts are from over a year ago, but I was trapped in dissertation purgatory at the time.
• Finally, Genomicus, a genome browser that lets users compare genomes across species.

Here’s the Genomicus output from the FOXP2 gene,with the human gene at the bottom of the figure, and a handy demo video.

[T]wo subjects which moved my Father perhaps more deeply than any others were cruelty to animals & slavery – his detestation of both was intense, and his indignation was overwhelming in case of any levity or want of feeling on these matters.  – William Darwin

The trick to finishing books this year is getting up early, apparently.  I managed to get through the last four chapters of Darwin’s Sacred Cause this weekend while the baby slept. In the process, I’ve had to come to terms with  the disquieting beginnings of my own discipline and the bloody and violent antecedents of the town I’ve called home for the past dozen years.

Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln share a birthday, but they also share a tumultuous period in history. I’ve always been struck by the realization that Origin of Species was published just a few short years before the Civil War. After reading Darwin’s Sacred Cause, I get the idea that it was not coincidental.  Yes, Darwin sat on his big idea for 20 years, publishing travel journals, works on geology, and a four-volume monograph on barnacles. Why barnacles?  First, to document the amount of variation present in species, which natural selection requires to operate; and second, to establish himself as a knowledgeable naturalist in the eyes of the Royal Society, and provide the credentials needed to discuss his theory. In addition, describing the complete lineage of these marine arthropods provided an example of common descent. Barnacles were a proxy for a much more controversial topic – human variation.

Not science

Human variation is what I study as a biological (or physical) anthropologist. Physical anthropology has its roots, at least in part according to the authors, in phrenology. That’s the pseudo-science of determining temperament from the shape of the skull.  Not surprisingly, given that phrenology developed in Europe, Europeans were said to have the most refined skulls, and phrenological findings were used to justify slavery, something Darwin’s entire family was against.  Darwin would not have been impressed with the physical anthropologists of his day, especially in America, where differences in skull morphology were seen as “proof” of a polygenic origin of humans. According to the polygenists, each human “race” had its own pair of progenitors and were separately created, an idea used to justify all sorts of atrocities, since non-Europeans were seen as less than human. Darwin held the monogenist view, and saw all peoples as descended from a common ancestor, meaning they were all worthy of being treated with dignity and respect, and slavery was unjustified.  Actually, he took it farther than that, and saw a common ancestor for all living things.

It is absurd to talk of one animal being higher than another.–We consider those, where the cerebral structure/intellectual faculties most developed, as highest.–A bee doubtless would when the instincts were. – Charles Darwin

He spent a number of years studying pigeons, just to demonstrate that all the fancy breeds (“races”) descended from a common ancestor. Another proxy for human variation.

Darwin’s Pigeons – from Variation in Animals and Plants under Domestication (1868), with the common ancestor, the rock dove, in the center.

The tension between these two worldviews played out in my hometown, before the Civil War even started. In 1856, Sheriff Samuel Jones led a pro-slavery posse into Lawrence, Kansas, which had been established by abolitionist settlers two years before, sacked the town, burned the Free State Hotel, smashed the presses, and killed an antislavery supporter.

The ruins of the Free State Hotel

Darwin’s mentor and friend, geologist Charles Lyell, who encouraged him to publish his ideas on natural selection, was a Southern sympathizer. The Anthropological Society of London was founded in 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, with three Confederate agents on the council, whose sole purpose was to push a pro-slavery agenda.

Plaque marking the site of the Free State Hotel, downtown Lawrence.

That’s what Darwin was up against.  Not just other naturalists, but Victorian society. No wonder he waited two decades to publish.

My discipline has come a long way since Darwin’s day.  The American Anthropological Association’s “Statement on Race and Intelligence” states in part:

WHEREAS all human beings are members of one species, Homo sapiens, and

WHEREAS, differentiating species into biologically defined “races” has proven meaningless and unscientific as a way of explaining variation (whether in intelligence or other traits),

THEREFORE, the American Anthropological Association urges the academy, our political leaders and our communities to affirm, without distraction by mistaken claims of racially determined intelligence, the common stake in assuring equal opportunity, in respecting diversity and in securing a harmonious quality of life for all people.

And the American Association of Physical Anthropologists has their own “Statement on Biological Aspects of Race,” which says:

Physical, cultural and social environments influence the behavioral differences among individuals in society. Although heredity influences the behavioral variability of individuals within a given population, it does not affect the ability of any such population to function in a given social setting. The genetic capacity for intellectual development is one of the biological traits of our species essential for its survival. This genetic capacity is known to differ among individuals. The peoples of the world today appear to possess equal biological potential for assimilating any human culture. Racist political doctrines find no foundation in scientific knowledge concerning modern or past human populations.

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Image Credits:

Ryan Somma’s flickr stream

Wikimedia Commons

Dr. Steven M. Carr’s website

As reported in the New York Times, the cover article of Nature this week describes the sequencing of a Paleo-Eskimo genome from Greenland.  This is the first ancient sequence from the New World, and is important for a number of reasons:

• The sequence analysis was conducted from a sample of human hair that was recovered from permafrost, and the DNA was recovered from the hair shaft, not the root. This opens a whole new avenue of paleogenomic research.
• SNP analysis shows that the hair belonged to an individual who carried a number of traits frequently found in modern Asian populations, including shovel-shaped incisors and dry ear wax.
• 85-87% of the genome was sequenced – phenomenal coverage given the age of the sample.

Chukchi women (seated front right), circa 1906

• Population genetic analysis (principle component analysis of genetic distances) revealed the closest relationship between the Greenland genome and the Chukchi, a population in northern Siberia, suggesting a recent migration (in the last ~5,000 years) from Siberia across the Arctic to Greenland. This would be in addition to the three migrations (Amerind, Na-Dene, and Eskimo-Aleut) traditionally hypothesized for the peopling of the New World.

Rasmussen et al. (2010) Figure 3b. PCA of populations - Saqqaq genome indicated by star.

I was disappointed that more North American samples weren’t included in the analysis.  With the exception of populations from West and East Greenland, Na-Dene in western Canada, and Aleuts, the only other Native American groups are from Central and South America. But overall, this study demonstrates how ancient DNA analysis can help answer historical questions.

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Disclaimer: One of the co-authors (Michael Crawford) was my graduate mentor. Which, for me, makes this study even more awesome.

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

Rasmussen, M., Li, Y., Lindgreen, S., Pedersen, J., Albrechtsen, A., Moltke, I., Metspalu, M., Metspalu, E., Kivisild, T., Gupta, R., Bertalan, M., Nielsen, K., Gilbert, M., Wang, Y., Raghavan, M., Campos, P., Kamp, H., Wilson, A., Gledhill, A., Tridico, S., Bunce, M., Lorenzen, E., Binladen, J., Guo, X., Zhao, J., Zhang, X., Zhang, H., Li, Z., Chen, M., Orlando, L., Kristiansen, K., Bak, M., Tommerup, N., Bendixen, C., Pierre, T., Grønnow, B., Meldgaard, M., Andreasen, C., Fedorova, S., Osipova, L., Higham, T., Ramsey, C., Hansen, T., Nielsen, F., Crawford, M., Brunak, S., Sicheritz-Pontén, T., Villems, R., Nielsen, R., Krogh, A., Wang, J., & Willerslev, E. (2010). Ancient human genome sequence of an extinct Palaeo-Eskimo Nature, 463 (7282), 757-762 DOI: 10.1038/nature08835

A subject that’s been on my mind quite a bit this week, and coincidentally, several related things have popped up on my radar. First, a video from SciVee, intended for high school girls who might be considering a career in science.

The best advice? Just do it. If that’s what your passion is, go for it.

When I was a very little girl, I remember my father coming to pick me up from daycare one day. I was in tears, and when he asked me what was wrong, I told him that my teacher had asked all of us to tell what we wanted to be when we grew up. When I said that I wanted to be an astronaut, my teacher said I couldn’t because I was a girl (this was pre-Sally Ride). My father confronted the teacher, and informed her that his daughter could be anything she wanted to be. Knowing that a trusted adult believed in me gave me the confidence to pursue my dreams. Just one of the reasons I adore my dad.

Sally Ride - First American Woman in Space

My high school biology class turned my attention from outer space to DNA. After those Punnett squares, I never looked back. But that confidence in my abilities never wavered.

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Also, the National Postdoctoral Association posted their 6 Core Competencies for postdocs:

to offer guidance to individual postdoctoral scholars who must seek out relevant training experiences, in collaboration with mentors, institutions, and other advisors who provide this training…These competencies are meant to serve primarily as: (1) a basis for self-evaluation by postdoctoral scholars and (2) a basis for developing training opportunities that can be evaluated by mentors, institutions, and other advisors.

Postdocs can use the checklist to identify areas for future development, and as a springboard for discussion with their mentors.

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Finally, an article from Science Careers – Reaching gender equity in science: The importance of role models and mentors.

One of the factors that has inspired more women to pursue scientific careers has been having examples of successful women who have done the same.

I feel very fortunate to have a team of mentors, one of whom is a very prolific and successful scientist, woman, and mother.  When I started graduate school, my concern was mostly with the academics. Completing my courses, making sure I had enough time in the lab to get my research done, writing.  I hadn’t really considered the importance of mentoring in establishing my career. I can see now that it is essential, and especially beneficial to have a group of senior researchers interested in your professional development, even if their advice seems sometimes contradictory.  And while this may not be the case for some postdocs, I know that they all genuinely have my best interests in mind.  I’m beginning to see my graduate training, and by extension my postdoc, as an apprenticeship.  A position where I learn how to be a scientist, with all the core competencies that entails.

By Dai Cooper, via my grad student listserv.

Click here to view the embedded video.

We need to do a better job advertising this, because I’m a scientist and this is the first I’ve heard of it. In the spirit of science literacy, here are a few links to explore.

• Scitable – “a free science library and personal learning tool” from Nature. The current focus is genetics (my favorite topic).
• Women in Science – from the Smithsonian Institution Archives, a collection of “images documenting women scientists and engineers from around the world, most of whom were pioneers in their respective fields, or were the first women to receive advanced graduate degrees in their discipline.” The photo below is of Dr. Mary N. Crawford, who discovered the rare Lutheran a-b- blood type.
  

  Mary N. Crawford

  The entire photo collection is an inspiration to women in science.

• Lifeworks E-Mentoring – from the National Institutes of Health Office of Science Education, “a free e-mentoring program that helps high school and college students who are interested in behavioral and social science, biomedical science, dental, and healthcare careers find a mentor.” Sounds like a great place to volunteer if you’re so inclined. What better way to improve science literacy than to help mentor the next generation of scientists?

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Speaking of science literacy: On the book club front, I’m about 2/3 of the way through January’s book.  It’s interesting but dense reading, and I haven’t had as much time to read while nursing as I thought. Baby keeps grabbing the book.  It’s easier to read while pumping, but that gives me roughly 30 minutes a day. I have had a couple of long waits at the car shop over the last week, so I’m making good progress.  Maybe I’ll be finished by this weekend.