Daily Data Dump - Wednesday

A Widespread Chromosomal Inversion Polymorphism Contributes to a Major Life-History Transition, Local Adaptation, and Reproductive Isolation. Edmund Yong has already written this paper up. Sheril Kirshenbaum offers up her thoughts, stimulated by personal communication with the first author. Inferring the Dynamics of Diversification: A Coalescent Approach. The title is more forbidding than the topic: "Applying our approach to a diverse set of empirical phylogenies, we demonstrate that speciation rates have decayed over time, suggesting ecological constraints to diversification. Nonetheless, we find that diversity is still expanding at present, suggesting either that these ecological constraints do not impose an upper limit to diversity or that this upper limit has not yet been reached." Bangladesh, 'Basket Case' No More. The headline is hyperbolic. But this is key: "As a percentage of gross domestic product, Islamabad spends more on its soldiers than on its school teachers; Dhaka does the opposite. In foreign policy, Pakistan seeks to subdue Afghanistan and wrest control of Indian Kashmir. Bangladesh, especially under the current dispensation, prefers cooperation to confrontation with its neighbors." By any measure Bangladesh is one of the poorest and most corrupt nations in the world. Because of widespread malnutrition and low literacy it has major human capital deficits. But, it has managed to avoid excessive wasteful military adventures (though the military is still too big and serves the same role as a cushy bureaucratic job; I know, I have relatives who are officers in the Bangladesh army). Another School Says Christine O'Donnell Did Not Attend. Resume padding is as American as apple pie...but this is a problem for Christine because it feeds into the narrative that she's a dull ditz. OK, depending on your perspective, perhaps not really a problem.... Some ADMIXTURE estimates in Eurasia. Dienekes is doing some interesting things with the ADMIXTURE program.