Articles to 2019-08-29

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First the link to this week's complete list as HTML and as PDF.

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I’ve noticed a rising number of articles stating not only who actually wrote an article but also something like “All authors read and approved the final manuscript”. It can't be my unread blog that wrought the change, so I'm not the only one continually pointing out the deficiency. Some things do change for the better, something pessimists like me are rarely prepared to acknowledge.

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I don't see the point of Tian et al. From figure 6 the modification does not raise yield, or only to a negligible amount – it only stops the falloff at excessively dense planting. So why plant so densely in the first place? There might be a reason. From what I half remember, maize fields are especially prone to runoff of valuable topsoil due to the bare patches between plants. Higher density might be a good idea for that reason. The authors don't tell us. In fact we're told nothing about the advantages and drawbacks of dense planting. Judging from figure 6 the yield can't reasonably be the main incentive.

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Will consumers with high moral standards striving for purity be forced to eat eggs with genes in them, Vogel asks.

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There is an ongoing controversy whether the distinction between Anatomically Modern Humans (AMH) and Fully (or Behaviourally) Modern Humans is valid or not. Recently it seemed to become settled as a slow, uninterrupted continuum but now Klein comes back with good arguments for a distinct developmental step at around 50 ka BP. I remain unconvinced either way. And then there's Finlayson's contention that all Homo from erectus onward are just one species. That one, I believe, has been disproved through demonstrated interbreeding incompatibilities.

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Ossendorf et al.'s study is rightly lauded by Aldenderfer. But again I find two silly mistakes: figure 4a is colour inverted except for item 6 and the reference 33 – by one of the main authors no less – is wrong. “Journal of Archaeological Science” and “Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports” are two different journals. The error is easy to correct for one who knows both journals well and has a feeling for what volume numbers to expect, but what about everybody else? This article has four authors and eighteen co-authors who are explicitly claimed to have read the manuscript. So how come not one of them caught the errors?

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On the one hand I'm glad that, as in the studies by Huang et al. and Xu et al., lean combustion is having a comeback after having been suppressed by the total reliance on stoichiometric combustion and three-way catalytic conversion. But I see with dismay that current results fall far behind what was already done in Aachen three decades ago, and even then the theoretical foundation was far from new.

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When I followed the recommendation in Science and read Sellier et al., well outside my normal area of interest and expertise, it was with the expectation that, like so many others, I would be going to trash it. Not so. It's a solid, well designed study with a clear result. Looking around me, nothing like they recommend is taught in any curricula I'm aware of. Evaluating data and testing hypotheses is all our bread and butter and I can consider myself well trained in the subject. How many archaeologists, after all, have completed the equivalent of a BSc in physics? And still I'm all too aware of my own shortcomings and my tendency to follow the confirmation bias. I could do with a training like that and I'm convinced so could many others. Why isn't anything like that being taught in introductory classes yet?

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Frantz et al.'s finding isn't new – they themselves quote all the older literature – but using the full nuclear genome instead of just mitochondria, they have now put it onto a much firmer footing and elucidated the process.

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In the Hebrew courses I attended we were taught always to use the most comprehensive dictionaries. A typical entry would run along the line “X means a, or the related meaning b, or perhaps the somewhat similar c. Sometimes it can also mean something entirely different, namely d.” Often the reference given for d is the very sentence I'm just struggling with and I was taught that was the meaning to choose. In these cases I always asked myself “How does the author know that and why should I trust him here?” and tried to give the sentence meaning using the main semantic field of the word in question. I'm glad to see the new approach taken by the school of David Clines in Sheffield (deprecated here in Cologne) and the new KTBH project as in Gray of this week.

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