Category Archives: Uncategorized

Weekend wag the dog: Taphonomic mystery edition

Posted on October 12, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

Spotted on the forest path I regularly walk the dogs along. I am assuming this poor little fish was dropped by a bird that had fished it out of the nearby Charles River. I did not check for any marks … Continue reading →

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Updating my journal RSS feeds

Posted on October 10, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

As a paleoanthropologist with both teaching and research interests spanning an array of human evolutionary topics, one of my biggest challenges is attempting to keep up with current literature. I used to get e-mail alerts when new issues of journals … Continue reading →

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Weekend wag the dogs: 10/5/2012

Posted on October 5, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

Here comes the Fall…with a photo mockup of Clifford (left) and Gracie (right) looking on:

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The contemporary landscape of prehistoric research

Posted on October 2, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

Following up on my post about the Dmanisi fossil materials from yesterday, I should point out that yesterday was a significant political day for the country of Georgia. Mikheil Sakashvili, the Georgian president since a largely non-violent political protest in … Continue reading →

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Back to school…

Posted on August 27, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

…for me and my kids. Lots of back to school stuff keeping me busy at the moment, but will hopefully have a number of posts-in-progress up later in the week.

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Legitimate science on pregnancy and rape

Posted on August 21, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

Kate Clancy’s post is a must-read response to all the controversy surrounding Todd Akin’s remarks over the weekend: Think of all the illnesses and conditions that make the news regularly. Take gluten intolerance, for example. The incidence for gluten intolerance … Continue reading →

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Australopithecus sediba: still very interesting

Posted on June 27, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

Nature released the latest Australopithecus sediba paper today, this one attempting to reconstruct the diet of sediba based on phytoliths extracted from the dental calculus of two individuals, the carbon isotope composition based on laser ablation isotope ratio mass spectrometry, … Continue reading →

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The neuroscience of race

Posted on June 27, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

Nature Neuroscience has a review article by Jennifer T Kubota, Mahzarin R Banaji and Elizabeth Phelps in the current issue on how the brain functions in the context of racial interactions and decision-making processes. The article is accompanied by an … Continue reading →

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Science: It’s a girl thing

Posted on June 22, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

In response to this terrible European Commission video “promoting” women in science, here are a few shots of what actual female Anthropology students look like doing field work at Dmanisi. By chance, our field school was almost entirely female students … Continue reading →

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Misha Angrist on genomic privacy

Posted on June 18, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

Misha Angrist, Duke University geneticist, speaking at the National Cancer Institute: My position is this: genetic privacy is a red herring. That’s not to say that it’s not important or that it should be abolished, but let’s look at it … Continue reading →

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