Barack Obama's job approval rating in 2014 among white 18- to 29-year-olds is 34%, only three points higher than among whites aged 30 and older

This is the narrowest approval gap between Obama's previously strong support base of white millennials and older white Americans since Obama took office. By contrast, Obama's approval rating was nine percentage points higher among younger whites in 2009, and 10 points higher in 2010. Additionally, while Obama's approval among younger whites matched his overall national rating in his first two years in office, it is now eight points below the national average. These data underscore the gradual erosion of the disproportionately strong support Obama received from young white voters as he took office in 2009 and ran for re-election in 2012. Obama's support among white millennials has factored into his two presidential election successes. Exit polls conducted after the 2012 election, for example, showed that Obama received 44% of the vote of white 18- to 29-year-olds, about six points higher than he received among whites aged 30 and older. Obama's 45% job approval rating among 18- to 29-year-old whites in 2012 mirrored these voting results closely. But Obama's 11-point drop among white 18- to 29-year-olds since 2012 is almost double the six-point drop among the national population and among older whites. From a broader perspective, there is relatively little difference today in Obama's job approval ratings among whites in any of the four major age groups. Whites aged 30 to 49, as well as those 65 and older, have given Obama a 31% approval rating so far in 2014, with 50- to 64-year-olds coming in at 32% and 18- to 29-year-olds at 34%. The spread among age categories was slightly larger in the earliest years of the Obama administration. Although Obama's approval rating has dropped among black, Hispanic and Asian 18- to 29-year-olds from 2009 to 2014, just as it has among white millennials, Obama maintains a much higher level of support among these groups than among whites. Specifically, Obama's approval is 80% among young blacks, 68% among young Asians, and 55% among Hispanic 18- to 29-year-olds - contrasted with his 34% approval among white young adults. Age affects Obama's approval ratings differently among each of these racial and ethnic groups. Obama does slightly less well among black young people than among older blacks, and significantly better among Asians younger than 50 than among those who are older. There is little significant difference in his approval rating by age within the Hispanic population. While Obama is significantly more popular among nonwhites than among whites, he was able to count on proportionately stronger support from young whites than older whites in his 2008 and 2012 presidential election campaigns. Now, his support among white millennials appears to be waning, and these young Americans give Obama an approval rating that is only marginally higher than that among older whites. These findings demonstrate the general importance of race and ethnicity when one talks about Obama's job approval ratings by age. Obama continues to enjoy higher approval ratings among all 18- to 29-year-olds - regardless of race or ethnicity - than he does among the general population, but this is largely attributable to younger age groups in the United States being disproportionately composed of nonwhites. In other words, a big part of the age gap in Obama's approval ratings today is attributable not so much to differences in approval within racial or ethnic groups, but to the fact that the white population in the United States skews older, while the nonwhite population skews younger. The white vote has become an increasing challenge for Democratic presidential candidates in recent years, as well as Senate candidates in many Southern and swing states. A lack of strong support among white voters was instrumental in incumbent Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu's loss in Louisiana's senatorial runoff election. That loss gives the Republicans control of every southern Senate seat from Texas to the Carolinas. While Democrats are likely to be helped in coming years by a growing Hispanic population, Democratic presidential candidates - and senatorial candidates in many states - will continue to need the votes of a substantial minority of white voters in order to put together a winning coalition. Thus, Obama's continuing loss of support among younger white voters highlights one of the potential challenges ahead for Democratic candidates in 2016.

Months after 43 student protesters disappeared in Mexico, a bone fragment found in a dump has provided what authorities say is the first solid evidence of their fate

Mexico's attorney general says forensic experts have determined that the charred piece of eye socket belongs to missing student Alexander Mora Venancio. The attorney general says that the students were arrested by local police in the city of Iguala and turned over to a gang, which massacred them, burned the bodies in a dump, and threw the remains in a river. Another 16 bone fragments found in the dump are still being tested by Austrian experts. Around 80 people — including Iguala's mayor and his wife — have been arrested in connection with the case. Parents of the student teachers spoke at a demonstration in Mexico City after Venancio's relatives announced the identification. If the government "thinks that, because one of our boys' DNA was identified, we will sit and cry, we want to tell them that they're wrong," the father of another missing student said. "We will keep fighting until we find the other 42." Amid nationwide anger at the atrocity, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto has promised sweeping reforms, including the disbanding of local police forces.

Rape and technology in India: A woman in India says that she was raped by a taxi driver after booking the cab using the popular Uber smartphone app

The 26-year-old from Delhi told police that she dozed off in the taxi and when she woke up the vehicle was parked in a secluded part of the capital. Police said that a medical examination had backed up her allegation. The driver of the taxi has been arrested. The latest incident comes amid increasing concern at sexual violence against women in India. The woman said that after raping her, the driver warned her that she would be hurt if she raised the alarm. He then dropped her off near her home. The driver later abandoned the taxi and returned to his home in neighboring Uttar Pradesh state where he was arrested, police said. Uber, which is growing in India, has been accused of failing to conduct adequate checks on its drivers. "Our initial investigations have revealed shortcomings of the private cab company which didn't have GPS installed in its cabs and the staff wasn't verified," Delhi Special Commissioner Deepak Mishra said. The latest allegation of rape has again put the spotlight on the issue of sexual violence against Indian women, following a series of recent incidents. It comes days before the second anniversary of the gang rape and murder of a student on a bus in Delhi, which prompted outrage and a tightening of the laws on sexual violence.

Diversity in Britain: A Sikh principal, too English for a largely Muslim school

As a Sikh and second-generation British-born running a public school made up mostly of Muslim students, Balwant Bains was at the center of the issues facing multicultural Britain, including the perennial question of balancing religious precepts and cultural identity against assimilation. But in January 2014, Bains stepped down as the principal of the Saltley School and Specialist Science College, saying that he could no longer do the job in the face of relentless criticism from the Muslim-dominated school board. It had pressed him, unsuccessfully, to replace some courses with Islamic and Arabic studies, segregate girls and boys and drop a citizenship class on tolerance and democracy in Britain. “I suppose I was a threat, giving these children more British values, for them to be integrated into society,” Bains said. His experience has helped bring to life the often deeply emotional and highly contentious conflicts unearthed by a British government investigation in 2014 into whether organized groups of Muslims were having undue influence on public schools. The topic has become especially sensitive at a time when Britain is concerned about the radicalization of young Muslims in the country and their involvement with jihadis in Syria and Iraq. The investigation was prompted by an anonymous letter, sent in 2013 to local officials in Birmingham, alleging an organized Islamic takeover of British schools in Muslim neighborhoods. Conducted by the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills, or Ofsted, the agency found much that was troubling about Muslim efforts to promote changes in secular public schools, and it has recently widened its investigation to 46 schools across the country. The investigation found that five schools in Birmingham, including Bains’, shared a pattern of behavior similar to what was described in the anonymous letter. The letter also cited Bains’s impending resignation, a month before it was made official and which only a few knew about, suggesting that the author was someone with detailed knowledge of the schools. “The Sikh head running a Muslim school,” the letter said, “will soon be sacked and we will move in.” The investigation found that some teachers and school board governors at the other schools were encouraging homophobia, anti-Semitism and support for Al Qaeda, sometimes inviting speakers who endorsed the establishment of a state run under Sharia law. One school stopped music and drama lessons as well as Christmas and Diwali celebrations, and subsidized trips to Saudi Arabia for Muslim students. In another school, the report found, girls and female teachers were discriminated against, and compulsory sex education, including discussions about forced marriage, was banned. Girls and boys seen talking for too long or considered flirtatious were reprimanded, while boys were given worksheets that said a wife had to obey her husband. The report, released in July 2014, highlighted Bains’s case and concluded that there had been a “coordinated, deliberate and sustained action, carried out by a number of associated individuals, to introduce an intolerant and aggressive Islamic ethos into a few schools in Birmingham.”

The Chinese economy has overtaken the United States economy to become the largest in the world

For the first time since Ulysses S. Grant was president, the United States is not the leading economic power on the planet. The International Monetary Fund recently released the latest numbers for the world economy. And when you measure national economic output in “real” terms of goods and services, China will in 2014 produce $17.6 trillion — compared with $17.4 trillion for the USA. As recently as 2000, the United States produced nearly three times as much as the Chinese. This latest economic earthquake follows the development in 2013 when China surpassed the United States for the first time in terms of global trade. Throughout history, political and military power have always depended on economic power. Britain was the workshop of the world before she ruled the waves. And it was Britain’s relative economic decline that preceded the collapse of her power. And it was a similar story with previous hegemonic powers such as France and Spain. Amazingly, the Chinese were able to surpass the USA with virtually no Hispanic immigrants!

Blacks turned violent in northern California when demonstrators smashed windows while others pelted officers with rocks and bottles, authorities said

About 200 blacks were on Berkeley streets for another day of protests over a grand jury decision not to indict New York City Officer Daniel Pantaleo for Eric Garner's death on July 17, 2014. I think that the grand jury might have been more sympathetic to Garner if it weren't for blacks' long history of urban violence. Unfortunately, most blacks are too dumb to realize this and so continue to engage in the type of destructive behavior that alienates the police and everyone else in non-black America.

Black sex crime: Four black William Paterson University students have been charged with kidnapping as well as sexual assault charges after they were arrested in an attack on a female student in a dormitory room

The charges are first-degree aggravated sexual assault and first-degree kidnapping. The kidnapping charge carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison, and aggravated sexual assault has a maximum of 20 years. Noah Williams, Garrett Collick, Termaine Scott and Darius Singleton have been charged with first-degree aggravated sexual assault and first-degree kidnapping. Jahmel Latimer has been charged with first-degree aggravated sexual assault. Collick and Singleton have also been charged with aggravated criminal sexual contact.

What are the genetic causes of the differences in behavior between European and Asian infants?

One cause may be the 7R allele of the D4 dopamine receptor gene, which is associated with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and is very rare in East Asians. Nonetheless, as with differences in intellectual capacity, we're probably looking at an accumulation of small effects at many different genes. Natural selection acts on what genes produce, and not directly on genes, so there is no reason to believe that a single behavioral outcome has a single genetic cause.

Dopamine and difficult cognitive tasks

The chemical messenger dopamine – otherwise known as the happiness hormone – is important not only for motivation and motor skills. It seems that it can also help neurons with difficult cognitive tasks. Torben Ott, Simon Jacob and Professor Andreas Nieder of Tübingen’s Institute for Neurobiology have demonstrated for the first time how dopamine influences brain cells while processing rules. The effects of dopamine become very clear when the brain gets too little of it, as is the case with Parkinson’s disease. A dopamine imbalance leads to varied neurological disruptions – particularly movement – but also mental abilities. Our key cognitive center, the prefrontal cortex, which we use for abstract thought, rule-based decisions and logical conclusions, is intensively supplied with dopamine. Despite its major medical significance, we know little about dopamine’s effects on information processing by neurons in the healthy brain. To test this, the researchers trained rhesus monkeys to solve “greater than” and “less than” math problems. From other recent studies, the researchers knew that certain neurons in the prefrontal cortex answer such questions – one half of these “rule cells” was only activated when the “greater than” rule applied, and the other half was only activated when the “less than” rule applied. Meanwhile, physiologically small amounts of various substances were being discharged near the relevant cells. These substances can have the same effect as dopamine – or the opposite effect – and could be adsorbed by dopamine-sensitive neurons. The surprising result was that stimulation of the dopamine system allowed the “rule cells” to perform better and to more clearly distinguish between the “greater than” and “less than” rules. Dopamine had a positive effect on the “rule cells’” quality of work. The study provides new insight into how dopamine influences abstract thought processes needed, for instance, to apply simple mathematical rules. “With these findings, we are just starting to understand how nerve cells in the prefrontal cortex produce complex, goal-directed behavior,” says Ott. Along with a better understanding of the foundations of information processing in this important part of the brain, the results could have medical significance. “These new insights help us to better interpret the effects of certain medicines which may be used for instance in cases of severe psychological disturbance,” says Professor Nieder, “because such medications influence the dopamine balance in the prefrontal cortex in ways we do not understand well to date.”

In November 2014, U.S.-born employment fell by 166,000 while foreign-born employment rose by 170,000

From January 2009 to November 2014, foreign-born employment rose by 3.397 million while U.S.-born employment rose by only 1.669 million. Over the past 12 months, the labor force participation rate (LPR) — a sign of worker confidence — rose 0.3 points for foreign-born workers and declined 0.2 points for Americans. At 66.3%, the immigrant LPR is significantly above the American LPR (62.1%). At 5.4%, the immigrant unemployment rate remains slightly below that of U.S.-born workers (5.6%). Since November 2013, the foreign-born population of working age grew by 1.29 million while the comparable U.S.-born population rose by only 987,000. If these growth rates persist, the foreign-born population of working-age will double in about 22 years. The increase in the foreign-born working-age population over the past year (1.29 million) exceeds the number of legal immigrants admitted annually, which has been running at about 1 million. Obvious implication: A strong U.S. job market is drawing illegals into country. Contra Obama, the news is not a “very welcome sign for millions of Americans”, but a “very welcome sign” for millions of immigrant workers, many of them illegal. If history is any guide, Obama’s administrative order of amnesty will widen the gap between foreign-born and American-born population growth.

Black male porn stars and sexually transmitted diseases

A judge awarded nearly $130,000 to an adult-film actress who alleged that a black actor exposed her to syphilis. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David Minning heard testimony from Heather DeAngelo, known in the industry as Lylith Lavey, before ordering Jesse Spencer, aka Mr. Marcus, to pay her $129,360. Spencer did not participate in the court proceedings and was found to be in default. DeAngelo sued Spencer in September 2012 after finding out that he had the communicable disease, according to her complaint, which alleges fraud, negligence, battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The scenes involving DeAngelo and Spencer were filmed in July 2012 in Encino, according to court records. DeAngelo did not allege that she contracted the disease. A previous judge handling the case had written in an earlier ruling about Spencer’s disregard of the lawsuit. “It appears (Spencer) has abandoned his defense of this case,” Judge Amy Hogue wrote, adding that DeAngelo believed her career had been hurt by her exposure to syphilis. “She feels that her reputation in the adult-film world has been diminished as a result of filming with (Spencer),” Hogue said. In February 2014, DeAngelo sued Bangbros, the production company behind the filming, alleging that the firm should have known Spencer had the communicable disease. Bangbros has filed a motion to dismiss her case. The county issued a temporary moratorium on pornographic filming after the DeAngelo-Spencer incident and, according to the complaint, implemented stricter requirements to ensure pornographic producers move to protect the safety of the actors.

Authorities have ordered an investigation after at least 24 poor and elderly people went blind following cataract surgeries performed at a free medical camp run by a charity in northern India

The operations were performed in early November 2014 on 130 patients who were all older than 50 and living in either Amritsar or nearby Gurdaspur, in Punjab state, an official says. Some of the patients reported that they'd lost their eyesight or were suffering infections. Doctors in Amritsar are treating some of the patients, but they say that it's unlikely any will regain their sight. Police have launched an investigation and detained at least one doctor in Gurdaspur. Every year, thousands of people, especially in rural areas without proper health facilities, undergo cataract operations in medical camps held by health authorities and welfare groups. The case once again highlights the perilous state of health care in India, where hundreds of millions of poor people without access to doctors or health insurance are forced to seek treatment at medical camps because of poor services and corruption at government hospitals. Recently, 13 women died after taking tainted drugs after undergoing simple sterilization surgeries. One of the women who died in the botched India sterilization drive was told that she'd receive the equivalent of 10 days' wages and be ready to return to work in the fields in 48 hours. A man received $3,250 from the government after his wife died; most in the area earn less than $5 a day. He brands the money as "useless," saying, "Who is going to take care of my children?" Families say that the women were pressured to take the money and get the surgery — the main method of birth control in the country — but cash incentives drove more than just the victims: Village "motivators" usually get about $2.44 for each patient that they recruit; government nurse-midwives can see their salaries docked if they don't meet "sterilization targets"; and the surgeon involved received about $1.22 per patient. That surgeon, Dr. RK Gupta, has been arrested on culpable homicide charges; at least 13 women who attended the "sterilization camp" have died, and there have been more victims from a second camp. "The surgeries went well but the problem was with the medicines given to the women," Gupta said. Indeed, owners of the factories that produce the drugs used have been called in for questioning, but the exact cause is still not clear. Witnesses tell stories of a dust- and cobweb-strewn clinic and little concern for hygiene. Though Gupta says that he performed 83 surgeries in six hours in one day, one nurse who assisted said that it was more like two hours. Government rules cap a surgeon's daily maximum at 35 operations.

The United Arab Emirates' interior minister says that police have arrested a female suspect in the stabbing death of an American schoolteacher in the country's capital and reveals that the attacker also planted a bomb outside the home of another American

Interior Minister Saif bin Zayed Al Nahyan said that the makeshift bomb was left at the house of an American doctor and that police dismantled it after it was discovered by one of the physician's sons. Police say that the teacher was stabbed to death in a public restroom at an Abu Dhabi mall by a butcher's knife-wielding attacker wearing the full black veil commonly worn by Muslim women throughout the Gulf Arab region. Footprints Recruiting, a Canada-based teacher recruitment company that found a job for the victim, identified her as Ibolya Ryan.Police said that the victim had 11-year-old twins and that they were being kept in protective custody until their father, who's the victim's ex-husband, arrives in the country.

India sees 800,000 newborns die each year, but 58,000 of those deaths were particularly noteworthy — and alarming — in 2013

Those infants died of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections, according to a recent study. The evidence is mounting that a sizable amount of the bacteria living in everything from India's water to its soil to its sewage can't be defeated with almost any antibiotic. But the wave of newborns being born with these infections may indicate that these bacteria are also living in pregnant women's bodies, neonatologists believe. "Our hypothesis is that resistant infections in newborns may be originating from the maternal genital tract and not just the environment," said one. But the environment is far from a sanitary one: Unicef surveyed 94 hospitals and medical centers in India's largest state, Rajasthan, in 2013, and found that as many as 70% could have contaminated water. Even more had no soap at their sinks. What they did have was antibiotics, which are freely dispensed, so much so that one state has for years dosed babies with antibiotics even if they were seemingly healthy. It creates a vicious cycle, where drug-resistant bacteria exits via hospital sewage, enters rivers and canals, and can infect pregnant women. Dr. Timothy R. Walsh, a professor of microbiology at Cardiff University, says that "India’s dreadful sanitation, uncontrolled use of antibiotics and overcrowding ... has created a tsunami of antibiotic resistance that is reaching just about every country in the world." To wit, bacteria whose genetic code has its origins in India has been found in the United States, among other countries.

Israel is more corrupt than Qatar and the United Arab Emirates

The vast majority of countries ranked as least corrupt are located in northern and western Europe, with seven such countries comprising the top ten.

Irony alert: Blacks murder white man who wrote about the evils of racism for the Southern Poverty Law Center

David Ruenzel was one of those liberals who liked to write about white privilege. I wonder if he felt very privileged when he was being murdered by two black guys?

Researchers from the African Genome Variation Project (AGVP) have published the first attempt to comprehensively characterise genetic diversity across Sub-Saharan Africa

The study of the world's most genetically diverse region will provide an invaluable resource for medical researchers and provides insights into population movements over thousands of years of African history. "Although many studies have focused on studying genetic risk factors for disease in European populations, this is an understudied area in Africa," says Dr Deepti Gurdasani, lead author on the study and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. "Infectious and non-infectious diseases are highly prevalent in Africa and the risk factors for these diseases may be very different from those in European populations. Given the evolutionary history of many African populations, we expect them to be genetically more diverse than Europeans and other populations. However we know little about the nature and extent of this diversity and we need to understand this to identify genetic risk factors for disease." Dr Manjinder Sandhu and colleagues collected genetic data from more than 1800 people - including 320 whole genome sequences from seven populations - to create a detailed characterization of 18 ethno-linguistic groups in Sub-Saharan Africa. Genetic samples were collected through partnerships with doctors and researchers in Ethiopia, the Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Uganda. The AGVP investigators, who are funded by the Wellcome Trust, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the UK Medical Research Council, found 30 million genetic variants in the seven sequenced populations, a fourth of which have not previously been identified in any population group. The authors also found evidence of extensive European or Middle Eastern genetic ancestry among several populations across Africa. These date back to 9,000 years ago in West Africa, supporting the hypothesis that Europeans may have migrated back to Africa during this period. Several of the populations studied are descended from the Bantu, a population of agriculturists and pastoralists thought to have expanded across large parts of Africa around 5,000 years ago. The authors found that several hunter-gatherer lines joined the Bantu populations at different points in time in different parts of the continent. This provides important insights into hunter-gatherer populations that may have existed in Africa prior to the Bantu expansion. It also means that future genetic research may require a better understanding of this hunter-gatherer ancestry. "The AGVP has provided interesting clues about ancient populations in Africa that pre-dated the Bantu expansion," says Dr Manjinder Sandhu, lead senior author from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, UK and the Department of Medicine, University of Cambridge. "To better understand the genetic landscape of ancient Africa we will need to study modern genetic sequences from previously under-studied African populations, along with ancient DNA from archaeological sources." The study also provides interesting clues about possible genetic loci associated with increased susceptibility to high blood pressure and various infectious diseases, including malaria, Lassa fever and trypanosomiasis, all highly prevalent in some regions of Africa. These genetic variants seem to occur with different frequencies in disease endemic and non-endemic regions, suggesting that this may have occurred in response to the different environments these populations have been exposed to over time.

Transparency International: How do countries rank on corruption?

More than two-thirds of the 175 countries and territories included in the Corruption Perceptions Index for 2014 scored below 50 on a 100-point scale. Just two, Denmark and New Zealand, ranked in the top 10 percentiles with scores of 92 and 91, respectively. North Korea and Somalia tied for last place with 8. The United States came in 17th place with a score of 74, a slight improvement over last year that put the country on the same level as Ireland, Hong Kong and Barbados. As in 2013, the European Union and Western European states had the best results, with just 16% of countries scoring below 50 points, compared with 95% in Eastern Europe and Central Asia and 92% in sub-Saharan Africa. Turkey recorded the biggest setback, dropping 5 points to score 45 in the wake of a string of sensational corruption allegations, including incriminating tapes in which President Recep Tayyip Erdogan appeared to be ordering his son Bilal to “make vanish” tens of millions of dollars in cash stashed at a family residence. Angola, China, Malawi and Rwanda also saw their scores fall by 4 points apiece. China’s dramatic slide — it fell 20 places from the previous year to 100th place with a score of 36 — came despite a high-profile drive by President Xi Jinping to root out corrupt officials, both high-ranking “tigers” and lowly “flies.” The Asia Pacific region includes some of the world’s fastest-growing economies, but 18 of the 28 countries included in the index scored less than 40 in 2014. India, the Philippines and Thailand all scored 38 and Indonesia came in at 34. Corruption also has been a problem for other emerging markets, including Brazil (with a score of 43), where officials are accused of siphoning billions of dollars from the state-run oil company Petrobras into the coffers of political parties; and Mexico (35), where the disappearance of 43 students called attention to the infiltration of local governments and police forces by organized crime. Of the 31 European nations surveyed, 26 had scores of 50 or greater while only 5 had scores less than 50. The 20 least corrupt countries in the world are Denmark, New Zealand, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Singapore, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Canada, Australia, Germany, Iceland, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Japan, Barbados, Hong Kong, Ireland and the United States.

Human ancestors may have begun evolving the ability to consume alcohol about 10 million years ago, long before modern humans began brewing booze, researchers say

The ability to break down alcohol probably helped our pre-human ancestors make the most out of the rotting, fermented fruit that fell onto the forest floor, the researchers said. Therefore, knowing when this ability developed could help researchers figure out when these pre-human ancestors began moving to life on the ground, as opposed to mostly in trees. "A lot of aspects about the modern human condition — everything from back pain to ingesting too much salt, sugar and fat — goes back to our evolutionary history," said lead study author Matthew Carrigan, a paleogeneticist at Santa Fe College in Gainesville, Florida. "We wanted to understand more about the modern human condition with regards to ethanol [alcohol]." To learn more about how human ancestors evolved the ability to break down alcohol, scientists focused on the genes that code for a group of digestive enzymes called the ADH4 family. ADH4 enzymes are found in the stomach, throat and tongue of primates, and are the first alcohol-metabolizing enzymes to encounter ethanol after it is imbibed. The researchers looked at the ADH4 genes from 28 different mammals, to investigate how closely related they were and find out when their ancestors diverged. In total, they explored nearly 70 million years of primate evolution. The scientists then used this knowledge to investigate how the ADH4 genes evolved over time and what the ADH4 genes of their ancestors might have been like. The results suggested that there was a single genetic mutation 10 million years ago that endowed our pre-human ancestors with an enhanced ability to break down ethanol. The scientists noted that the timing of this mutation coincided with a shift to a terrestrial lifestyle. The ability to consume ethanol may have helped human ancestors dine on rotting fruit that fell on the forest floor when other food was scarce. "I suspect ethanol was a second-choice item," Carrigan said.

Sons whose fathers have criminal records tend to have lower cognitive abilities than sons whose fathers have no criminal history, data from over 1 million Swedish men show

The research, conducted by scientists in Sweden and Finland, indicates that the link is not directly caused by fathers' behavior but is instead explained by genetic factors that are shared by father and son. "The findings are important because cognitive ability is among the most important psychological predictors of many important life outcomes, including socioeconomic success and health," says lead researcher Antti Latvala of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and the University of Helsinki in Finland. Research looking across generations in families has shown that children of parents who engage in "antisocial" behaviors - such as rule-breaking, aggressive, or violent behavior - are at greater risk for various negative outcomes, including criminality, psychiatric disorders, substance use, and low academic achievement. And research has also shown that individuals who engage in antisocial behaviors tend to have poorer cognitive abilities than those without antisocial tendencies. Latvala and colleagues wanted to combine these two strands of research to investigate how parents' antisocial behaviors might affect their children's cognitive development. "We wondered whether children of antisocial parents also have lower cognitive ability than children of non-antisocial parents, and if so, whether compromised cognitive functioning might be part of the inherited risk for antisocial behavior," says Latvala. The researchers took advantage of extensive data collected from Swedish residents, including data on cognitive ability acquired as part of compulsory military conscription and data on antisocial behavior (in this case, defined as criminal convictions) obtained from a national crime register. Looking at data from over 1,000,000 men, the researchers found that men whose fathers had any criminal convictions tended to have lower cognitive-ability scores than men whose fathers had no such history. And this association seemed to be influenced by the severity of the fathers' criminal history: "Perhaps most surprising was the clear gradient seen in the magnitude of the association with sons' cognitive ability by severity of fathers' criminality: The more severe crimes the father had committed, the poorer was the sons' cognitive performance," explains Latvala. But did fathers' antisocial behavior have a direct causal effect on sons' cognitive ability, or could the link be explained by shared genetic factors? To find out, the researchers compared the link between fathers' criminal history and sons' cognitive ability across cousins whose fathers had varying relationships to each other. Specifically, they examined the link in cousins whose fathers were half-siblings (sharing about 25% of their genetic makeup), cousins whose fathers were full siblings or fraternal twins (sharing about 50% of their genetic makeup), and cousins whose fathers were identical twins (sharing 100% of their genes). If fathers' antisocial behavior directly caused sons' lower cognitive ability, the link would remain equally strong across the comparisons of varying genetic relationships. The data, however, suggested otherwise. When the researchers took the varying genetic relationships into account, the association between fathers' criminality and sons' cognitive ability gradually diminished. "Our results thus indicate that despite the adversities related to parental criminality, having a father who has been convicted of crime is unlikely to influence cognitive development in the offspring when the effects of other factors associated with parental antisocial behavior, including genetic risks, are taken into account," the researchers conclude.