Neurognosis
Science in general will be the majority of my work here but much focus will be on neuroscience, psychology, neurobiology, evolutionary biology, and palaeoanthropology. There will also be ample dose of personal adventures and trials posted.
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Cory Overby
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Crobar - > Neurognosis -> Natural Selection's Fingerprints on the Human Genome
Natural Selection's Fingerprints on the Human Genome
**This is an old post from my MySpace blog I did back in July**:

Some recent research in the open access, peer reviewed online journal PLoS Genetics has provided empirical support to propositions made by scientists previously.  The study done by researchers from Cornell University showed that up to 10% of the human genome has been changed by natural selection in the past 15,000 - 100,000 years.  This has involved things like skin pigmentation due to regional climate variation - you awesome anthropologists were right all along.  Not to mention it provides even more empirical support for natural selection working on our species to put us where we are today despite what many might say to the contrary.

Another interesting study of which the findings were presented in Philadelphia back in March at the meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists shows that human evolution is actually "speeding up".  An interesting trend is that the overall average size of the human braincase has been getting smaller in the last 20,000 - 30,000 years.

These findings also support predictions made by Jeffrey McKee 7 years ago utilizing a computer modeling program.  However, the accelerated evolution being tied to population growth is still being debated and is not resolved completely in this work - it will open avenues for further study later to see if there is, in fact, a link.  This also is more evidence to silence those who claim that human evolution has stopped - which of course is ridiculous as there are certain criteria that must be met to stop evolution from occurring and some are virtually impossible (at least at the current time) such as stopping mutations from happening.  It also flies in the face of a recurring anti-evolutionist argument of "why aren't we still evolving?" - the answer now has substantial empirical backing - "it didn't stop, we are still evolving".
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posted by Crobar on Tuesday, October 16, 2007 at 12:58 PM
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