[Majorityrights News] Alex Navalny, born 4th June, 1976; died at Yamalo-Nenets penitentiary 16th February, 2024 Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, 16 February 2024 23:43.
[Majorityrights Central] A couple of exchanges on the nature and meaning of Christianity’s origin Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 25 July 2023 22:19.
[Majorityrights News] Is the Ukrainian counter-offensive for Bakhmut the counter-offensive for Ukraine? Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, 18 May 2023 18:55.
This document has been updated! The most recent version of this document (v4) was posted on 2011 August 15. View the most recent version doi:10.1038/npre.2010.5003.3; IPBS, UMR 5089, Toulouse, France, PDF (2.7 MB); Document Type: Manuscript. Date: Received 25 November 2010 14:31 UTC; Posted 29 November 2010
Tags: speciation mechanisms inbreeding group level selection extinction mutation load
Abstract:
Whilst the principle of adaptive evolution is unanimously recognised as being caused by the process of natural selection favouring the survival and/or reproduction of individuals having acquired new advantageous traits, a consensus has proven much harder to find regarding the actual origin of species. Indeed, since speciation corresponds to the establishment of reproductive barriers, it is difficult to see how it could bring a selective advantage because it amounts to a restriction in the opportunities to breed with as many and/or as diverse partners as possible. In this regard, Darwin himself did not believe that reproductive barriers could be selected for, and today most evolutionary biologists still believe that speciation can only occur through a process of separation allowing two populations to diverge sufficiently to become infertile with one another. I do, however, take the view that, if so much speciation has occurred, and still occurs around us, it cannot be a consequence of passive drift but must result from a selection process, whereby it is advantageous for groups of individuals to reproduce preferentially with one another and reduce their breeding with the rest of the population.
In this essay, I propose a model whereby new species arise by “budding” from an ancestral stock, via a process of inbreeding among small numbers of individuals, driven by the occurrence of advantageous recessive mutations. Since the phenotypes associated to such mutations can only be retained in the context of inbreeding, it is the pressure of the ancestral stock which will promote additional reproductive barriers, and ultimately result in complete separation of a new species. I thus contend that the phenomenon of speciation would be driven by mutations resulting in the advantageous loss of certain functions, whilst adaptive evolution would correspond to gains of function that would, most of the time be dominant.
A very important further advantage of inbreeding is that it reduces the accumulation of recessive mutations in genomes. A consequence of the model proposed is that the existence of species would correspond to a metastable equilibrium between inbreeding and outbreeding, with excessive inbreeding promoting speciation, and excessive outbreeding resulting in irreversible accumulation of recessive mutations that could ultimately only lead to the species extinction.
Discussion
Comments:
0 comments
Share:
(Login to share with a colleague)
Additional information
White children and nothing but in a (still) White city, Warsaw, Poland. 3 April 2019.
Father who escaped Sweden with daughters allowed to stay in Poland
A Russian father escaped Sweden and traveled to Poland with his three children after they were given away to a Muslim foster family. A Warsaw court has given the family the right to stay in Poland until they have been granted refugee status.
The drama of 41-year-old Denis Lisov and his three daughters started in Sweden when his wife fell ill and had to be taken into hospital. The Swedish social services took the Russian man’s daughters away and gave them to an Arabic foster family.
Lisov could only visit his daughters once a week and only for a few hours, despite having full parental rights. All three of his children have Russian citizenship.
The Swedish social services took the Russian man’s daughters away and gave them to an Arabic foster family
Swedish authorities refused to give Lisov his children back and he decided to return to Russia with his family despite the ban. The girls were inserted into the Schengen Information System (SIS) as missing persons, which is why the Polish border guard had to detain the family when they arrived at Warsaw Chopin airport.
The Polish Ministry of Justice and the Polish proponent of children’s rights were informed of the issue. The representatives of the Swedish social services, the Arabic foster family and the Russian consul arrived at the airport.
Thanks to the help of the proponent, the Russian father agreed to apply for asylum for himself and his children in Poland. Owing to this decision, the family could not be given back to the Swedes.
“The court cannot send the minors to Sweden which they entered under their father’s care,” decided judge of the regional court in Warsaw on Wednesday afternoon. “Following the father’s hearing and due to the lack of proof confirming restriction of parental rights, as well as having in mind the minor’s well-being, the court has decided that they should remain in their father’s care.”
The notion of rules about foster families not respected
The Ministry of Justice also reminded that due to the efforts of Polish authorities, in December 2018, the Council of the European Union for Justice and Home Affairs passed the notion which foresees a uniform rule of respecting the cultural, religious and lingual identity of a child when it is given to a foster family.
The Ministry informed that so far, the law has not been respected and there have been situations in which children were given away to families of vastly different beliefs or from different cultures, as had happened in the case of Denis Lisov.
“If you invest your tuppence wisely in the bank, safe and sound,
Soon that tuppence safely invested in the bank will compound,
And you’ll achieve that sense of conquest as your affluence expands
In the hands of the directors who invest as propriety demands.”
— “Mary Poppins,” 1964
When “Mary Poppins” was made into a movie in 1964, Mr. Banks’ advice to his son was sound. The banks were then paying more than 5% interest on deposits, enough to double young Michael’s investment every 14 years.
Now, however, the average savings account pays only 0.10% annually—that’s one-tenth of 1%—and many of the country’s biggest banks pay less than that. If you were to put $5,000 in a regular Bank of America savings account (paying 0.01%) today, in a year you would have collected only 50 cents in interest.
That’s true for most of us, but banks themselves are earning 2.4% on their deposits at the Federal Reserve. These deposits, called “excess reserves,” include the reserves the banks got from our deposits, and on which they are paying almost nothing; and unlike with our deposits, there is no $250,000 cap on the sums banks can stash at the Fed amassing interest. A whopping $1.5 trillion in reserves are now sitting in Fed reserve accounts. The Fed rebates its profits to the government after deducting its costs, and interest paid to banks is one of those costs. That means we, the taxpayers, are paying $36 billion annually to private banks for the privilege of parking their excess reserves at one of the most secure banks in the world—parking them, rather than lending them out.
The banks are getting these outsize returns while taking absolutely no risk, because the Fed, as “lender of last resort,” cannot go bankrupt. This is not true for other depositors, including large institutions such as the pension funds that hold our retirement money.
The business world has undergone considerable change in the last two decades.
While some fortunes are always reliably passed on to their respective heirs and heiresses, Visual Capitalist’s Jeff Desjardinsnotes that there are also entirely new industries that rise out of nowhere to shape the landscape of global wealth.
As the wealth landscape shifts, so does its geographical distribution.
We’ll start here by looking at the most recent data from 2019:
The most recent billionaires list features Jeff Bezos at the top with $131 billion, although it’s likely his recent divorce announcement will provide an upcoming shakeup to the Bezos Empire.
Bezos is just one of 21 Americans that find themselves in the top 50 list, which means that 42% of the world’s top billionaires hail from the United States.
Billionaire Geography Over Time
If we compare the top 50 list to that from 1999, it’s interesting to see what has changed over time in terms of geographical distribution. Here’s the distribution of top countries on both lists, compared:
In the last 20 years, Russia and China have stockpiled the most top billionaires, adding five and four to the top 50 list respectively. The United States added three, going from 18 to 21 billionaires over the timeframe. On the other end of the spectrum, Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland have lost the most billionaires from the top 50 ranking.
White children and nothing but in a (still) White city, Warsaw, Poland. 3 April 2019.
