K M Wei
Biographic Data
| ID | 1725 |
|---|---|
| NAME | K M Wei |
| GIVEN NAMES | K M |
| FAMILY NAME | Wei |
| SIGNATURE | WEI K M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Pennsylvania State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2528-9993 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 156 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1036 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 156 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1972 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
The tales genes tell (or not): A century of exploration
Once, not so long ago, the origin myth of Western civilization was that supernatural events had independently produced the various life forms that have trod upon the Earth. But close inspection of creatures both long dead and still living revealed patterns and relationships that seemed to connect all these diverse forms, notably including humans. Seeing this, Darwin and others realized that what was responsible was a process rather than a series …
Additive genetic variation in the craniofacial skeleton of baboons (genus Papio ) and its relationship to body and cranial size
Objectives Determining the genetic architecture of quantitative traits and genetic correlations among them is important for understanding morphological evolution patterns. We address two questions regarding papionin evolution: (1) what effect do body and cranial size, age, and sex have on phenotypic ( V P ) and additive genetic ( V A ) variation in baboon crania, and (2) how might additive genetic correlations between craniofacial traits and body…
From your seat on the train: Even in science, what you see depends on your point of view
Life is a simulation of life – or is it: What we observe is just one run of a probabilistic process
Why can we ask why: Our adaptability adaptation programs us not to be programmed
Finding a moral compass . . . without a compass: Evolution and ethics
The geodesic paths of space and the “Biodesics” of life: Connecting the dots across space and time isn't so easy
Gang Warfare: What are the criteria for deriving assertions from facts in science
The cat in between: Nature, nurture, . . . neither
Life goes on: Are humans still evolving
Are humans still evolving? We frequently hear this question from students and the general public. Even assuming it's about science rather than religion, the question seems so simple that it should have a simple answer, and it does: yes and no. This may not seem like an entirely adequate answer, but I'll try to show that, because of the elusive nature of evolution, it is. The question can be asked from many different perspectives. Understanding th…
Do we understand the genetic basis of evolution: Most traits look polygenic, but that may not be how they evolve
Catastrophes in evolution: Is Cuvier's world extinct or extant
What works works. But what works: Genomes As Works in Progress
Plus Ça Ne change Pas: Evolution May Be a Race, But to Where
Little orphan's nanny: Where Do Genes Come From and Who Takes Care of Them
After the dawn beckons: A soft awakening to an awful day
Will you stop bugging me: Malaria and the evolutionary challenge that won't go away
Dracula! A paradigm shift in evolutionary genetics: Death of a theory at the hands of the undead
Just as evolution had its doubters before Darwin and Wallace put diverse existing ideas together in a definitive way,1 scientists today are dismissive of the repeated references to vampires that regularly appear even in the major media. Readers of Evolutionary Anthropology probably share that view. However, could we be disregarding important facts that have long been at hand but that challenge accepted evolutionary theory? I was led to this surpr…
To understand the baboon: The Triumph of Evolutionary Methods
There was recently a great stir over whether a giant experiment in Europe showed that a tiny subatomic particle, the neutrino, can travel faster than light does (Fig. 1). If early news releases were true, it would be a major finding, because for over 100 years it has been assumed that nothing can travel faster than light, which moves at 299,792,458 m/second. It is an assumption of deep import that every photon everywhere in the cosmos always trav…
Agnotology: How can we handle what we don't know in a knowing way
Thanks to Plato, we have a record of what Socrates (Fig. 1), one of the most influential thinkers in human history, thought and said. In his peripatetic instruction, this professor-without-walls made two proclamations that are particularly worth considering. He said "the unexamined life is not worth living." That's music to the ears of any scientist, because examining the nature of life is what we do every day. We try to be as systematic as we ca…
The Fleagle Factor: In Life and Publishing Alike, the Editor Has the Final Say
You've written your paper, presenting your work as best you can and believing that it's not only important but clear. Then you're sent the reviewers' comments. Thinking arrogantly that they know more about your work than you do, and speaking from behind the cloak of anonymity, they tell you how to write your paper in order for it to be "acceptable" for the journal and to achieve the influence it deserves. If they disagree with you, or have had ot…
Bottom, Crowned with an Ass's Head: Does an inversion in thinking portend the end of Enlightenment science
A recurring theme among writers during the classical period of Greece and Rome was metamorphosis. Many enjoyable, fanciful stories were told in which various people or gods were transformed into other creatures or objects. These changes were disguises, rewards, punishments, and trials. Among famous examples are Apuleius' second-century AD novel Metamorphoses, more popularly known as Lucius and the Golden Ass, the adventures of a nobleman who, tin…
Marry a quean and be merry: How objective are our notions of causation
A now little-known Oxford don, Robert Burton (1577–1640) (Fig. 1A) wrote what may be the longest, and now also little-known, medical treatise in history (Fig, 1B). The Anatomy of Melancholy,1 first published in 1621 was more than 1,400 pages long. It is a rambling, chaotic, sometimes riotous concatenation of quotes, often in Latin, from the most diverse set of sources any one person may ever have cited. Burton scavenged the Bodleian library at Ox…
The 5% Solution: How do we make decisions in science
In the 1920s in Cambridge, England, Muriel Bristol, a biologist at the new Rothamsted Experimental Station, claimed that she could tell by the taste of a cup of tea whether the milk or the tea had been poured into the cup first (Fig. 1). Pompous dons scorned the idea: “It just can't be done, don't y'know!” But why not? Could it be true? And if so, how could we tell? Dr. Bristol's future husband, William Roach, suggested that she be given a chance…
The weald of Kent: Darwin hesitated to Ussher in a better date
How old is old? This may seem like a superficial question but, when it comes to evolution, what you think you see may rest heavily on what you can't really see. Evolution is so slow that it has obviously taken a lot of time getting to where it is now. But how much time, and how can we know? If Darwin was right, or even if the Bible was right, then living species had to have arisen at some time or other. That was either when something first wiggle…
The Osteological Paradox: Problems of Inferring Prehistoric Health from Skeletal Samples [and Comments and Reply]
The Settlement of the Americas: A Comparison of the Linguistic, Dental, and Genetic Evidence [and Comments and Reply]
The classification of the indigenous languages of the Americas by Greenberg distinguishes three stocks, Amerind, Na-Dene, and Aleut-Eskimo. The first of these covers almost all of the New World. The second consists of Na-Dene as defined by Sapir and, outside of recent. Athapaskan extensions in California and the American Southwest, is found in southern Alaska and northwestern Canada. The third, Aleut-Eskimo, is the easternmost branch of the Euras…
A new world syndrome of metabolic diseases with a genetic and evolutionary basis
Currently, many Amerindian peoples, including European- Amerindian admixed groups such as Mexicans, are experiencing a major epidemic of a series of diseases which includes a tendency to become obese at an early adult age, adult onset diabetes mellitus, the formation of cholesterol gallstones, and gallbladder cancer, especially in females. Other cancer sites, and morbid consequences of these primary disorders, also occur at elevated rates. This e…
On the systematic bias in skeletal sexing
Comparison of a large series of sexed adult skeletal populations and a similar series of adult pre‐industrial peoples shows that there is a regular and systematic bias in the sexing of adult skeletons. This bias, which is about 12% in favor of males, is due to the nature of secondary sex characteristics in bone. It should be corrected in skeletal series before demographic analysis is made of them. Application of this knowledge and the same data t…
A Demographer's View of Prehistoric Demography [and Comments and Replies]
The direct data on the population of prehistoric man are typically too sparse to be used alone. However, such supports as the population-resources model can easily become distortive prisons rather than aids to analysis, and the most important general point from ethnographic analogy-that contemporary primitives differ widely in their demographic characteristics but in all cases these are affected by a belief in the supernatural-is seldom reflected…
Statistical genetic comparison of two techniques for assessing molar crown size in pedigreed baboons
Dental anthropologists and paleoanthropologists commonly use an estimated molar crown area (mesiodistal length multiplied by buccolingual width) to describe and compare individuals, populations, and species. Advances in digital imaging now allow researchers to measure the actual crown area of a molar in an occlusal two‐dimensional plane. Because error is reduced by this more accurate measurement, actual crown area is thought to be a better repres…
Archeology, population genetics and studies of human racial ancestry
Using traditional classification, many people have tried to determine the place and time of origin of the major human races. Two basically conflicting views have prevailed, one asserting that races developed as local variations in a species evolving phyletically over much of the Old World for up to one million years, and the other view holding that present races are local variations on populations recently expanding into most areas and replacing …
The Biodemography of Variation in Human Frailty
A population is composed of individuals who are heterogeneous in their susceptibility to death and disease. This heterogeneity is reflected in the age-specific incidence or mortality (hazard) function. This variation has typically been hidden—that is, not measured directly—and has generally been modeled in a purely empirical statistical way, because there is no theory in demography for the distribution of frailty. A substantial fraction of variat…
Demographic Theory and Anthropological Inference
Infrastructures are material forms that allow for the possibility of exchange over space. They are the physical networks through which goods, ideas, waste, power, people, and finance are trafficked. In this article I trace the range of anthropological ...Read More
Human genome diversity project
Duplication with variation: Metameric logic in evolution from genes to morphology
This paper discusses the use of duplicated structures in evolution. Duplication, followed by variation and modification of function, has been a major strategy from the time of the early biological molecules to the evolution of advanced morphological complexity. Evolution by duplication with variation produces a hierarchically structured organizational logic based on nested segments, or metameres. The genome is itself largely structured in this wa…
Hazards models for human population biology
Population biologists are often interested in examining the effects of continuous biological variables such as measures of growth, body size, nutritional status, and exposure to environmental risk factors, on discerte vital events such as brith, onset of disease, and death. Traditional statistical analyses are unable to cope with several complexities that arise in the study of such effects, including censoring of observations and explanatory vari…
Genetic variation of the mitochondrial DNA genome in American Indians is at mutation‐drift equilibrium
Several surveys have found evidence for founder effects in Amerindian mitochondrial DNA because of the existence of rare Asian morphs in high frequencies in some Amerindian populations and the occurrence of several new morphs not seen elsewhere in the world. These reports, however, do not address whether or not the present genetic variation in the mtDNA genome in Amerindians has reached the steady‐state distribution predicted by the mutation‐drif…
Coming to Terms With Human Variation
Genetics has become the major tool of the life sciences. This is driven partly by technology, and partly by the belief that genes are the ultimate units of biomedical or evolutionary information. The search for variation associated with disease has motivated the Human Genome Project to construct a detailed road map of the entire set of human genetic material, and some additional form of globally representative human genome diversity resource has …
The demographic stability of small human populations
A general measure of human population growth regulation
A general measure relating the relative effects of mortality and fertility in damping population growth has been derived from stable population theory. This measure, called the Index of Growth Regulation, can be calculated from a life table and a fertility schedule. It is a single number which integrates the fertility and mortality aspects of a population. It has intuitive meaning, and can be related to social aspects of the population. It can be…
Additive genetic variation in the craniofacial skeleton of baboons (genus Papio ) and its relationship to body and cranial size
Objectives Determining the genetic architecture of quantitative traits and genetic correlations among them is important for understanding morphological evolution patterns. We address two questions regarding papionin evolution: (1) what effect do body and cranial size, age, and sex have on phenotypic ( V P ) and additive genetic ( V A ) variation in baboon crania, and (2) how might additive genetic correlations between craniofacial traits and body…
"So mortal and so strange a pang": A tribute to Paul T. Baker
Frequencies of complex diseases in hybrid populations
Diseases of complex etiology demonstrate considerable variation in their frequencies in different ethnic populations. Noninsulin‐dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM), rheumatoid arthritis, and several cardiovascular diseases constitute examples of such disorders. In genetic studies involving hybrid populations of known ancestry, it is of interest to compare and correlate disease prevalence with the admixture proportion, the latter estimated from a…
Bioassay of Kinship in Populations of Middle Eastern Origin and Controls [and Comments and Replies]
Gene frequencies for 32 populations show 3 Jewish and 4 gentile clusters. From phenotype frequencies the estimate of inbreeding F is .0110 for populations in the Middle East and .0002 for other populations. Differentiation of populations in the region is small (F =.026) compared with that of the species as a whole (F =.146). Kinship between populations is appreciable within clusters but much less within the total Jewish and gentile groups (.004 a…
Diabetes mellitus in American Indians: Characteristics, origins and preventive health care implications
(1989). Diabetes mellitus in American Indians: Characteristics, origins and preventive health care implications. Medical Anthropology: Vol. 11, Anthropological Approaches to Diabetes, pp. 283-304
Anthropology in the Arctic: A Critique of Racial Typology and Normative Theory [and Comments and Reply]
The study of prehistory in the North American Arctic suffers from epistemological problems that have been resolved by scholars in other areas. The predominance of normative theory and racial typology as the foundations of Arctic anthropology has confined research in large part to the pursuit of racial and cultural histories and seriously inhibited the generation of hypotheses that address questions of process in either cultural or biological adap…
Agnotology: How can we handle what we don't know in a knowing way
Thanks to Plato, we have a record of what Socrates (Fig. 1), one of the most influential thinkers in human history, thought and said. In his peripatetic instruction, this professor-without-walls made two proclamations that are particularly worth considering. He said "the unexamined life is not worth living." That's music to the ears of any scientist, because examining the nature of life is what we do every day. We try to be as systematic as we ca…
What It Means to Be 98% Chimpanzee: Apes, People, and Their Genes
What It Means to Be 98% Chimpanzee: Apes, People, and Their Genes. Jonathan Marks. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. 325 pp
A generalized model for competition between hominid populations
A general measure of human population growth regulation
A general measure relating the relative effects of mortality and fertility in damping population growth has been derived from stable population theory. This measure, called the Index of Growth Regulation, can be calculated from a life table and a fertility schedule. It is a single number which integrates the fertility and mortality aspects of a population. It has intuitive meaning, and can be related to social aspects of the population. It can be…
On the systematic bias in skeletal sexing
Comparison of a large series of sexed adult skeletal populations and a similar series of adult pre‐industrial peoples shows that there is a regular and systematic bias in the sexing of adult skeletons. This bias, which is about 12% in favor of males, is due to the nature of secondary sex characteristics in bone. It should be corrected in skeletal series before demographic analysis is made of them. Application of this knowledge and the same data t…
A generalized model for competition between hominid populations
Chapter 7: Description of the Model Life Tables
The model life tables for stationary populations, together with the mortality and fertility schedules, are presented in Appendix C. This chapter annotates all of the elements in the tables: the names are given as they appear in our tables together with their standard denotation in the demographic literature, all elements are defined, and the formulas or algorithms for their derivation are presented. Since the tables apply only to stationary popul…
Chapter 2: Source Data
Our model life tables are based on data from censused primitive populations and from aged skeletal populations ranging from early lithic to medieval European cultures. Censuses among relatively unacculturated primitive populations are rare. Most of the censused groups have long been contacted and affected by Europeans. They have been exposed to European diseases and medicine, affected by trade and technology, or influenced by missions and schooli…
Chapter 8: Examination of the Model Life Table Series
The model life tables should be compared to various data to illustrate their applicability. The comparative data should be independent of the populations used in the construction of the tables so that they can serve as controls for the models. Russell (1958) carried out a comprehensive study of human mortality in late ancient and medieval times. The life table material in his work derives from ungraduated and unsmoothed raw data in the Corpus Ins…
Explanation of Symbols and Notation
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Chapter 9: The History of Human Life Expectancy
Many authors have written comparative articles on the history of human mortality and life expectancy; for example, see Acsádi and Nemeskéri (1970), Angel (1969), Brothwell (1971), Gejvall (1960), Genovés (1969), Goldstein (1953), Howells (1960), Kobayashi (1967), Russell (1958), Şenyürek (1951), Todd (1927), Vallois (1937, 1960). These studies are based on skeletal or historical material. Many of these studies have been used as data sources earli…
Chapter 5: Model Mortality Schedules
Chapter 4, and particularly Table 4, indicate a relatively narrow range of values for E (15), the life expectancy at age 15. This range, 12.3 to 34.6, just overlaps the lowest life expectancies in national censuses of the past 2 centuries (Arriaga 1968; Keyfitz and Flieger 1968). Even in the model life tables of Coale and Demeny (1966), “West” series, which are most applicable to pre-industrial populations, the lowest E (15) is 31.16. This partic…
Chapter 11: Confronting Field Data: Aging and Sexing Problems
This and the following chapters will deal with the practical application of our life tables to anthropological data. In order to fit field data to a model, one must be confident that the data are as accurate and reliable as possible. This is difficult with anthropological data, especially if one is working from the literature. In this chapter the methods and common problems associated with the aging and sexing of anthropological populations are d…
Chapter 13: Confronting Field Data: Adapting the Models to Other Fertility or Growth Patterns
This work deals almost exclusively with stationary populations whose fertility function is assumed to be approximated by the K ( X ) values developed in Chapter 6. It is appropriate to consider how the shape of the fertility function may be adjusted to fit unusual field situations. Then we can show how the models can be adapted for populations with nonzero growth rates
Chapter 10: The Index of Growth Regulation and Its Application
Biologists have long been concerned with the processes by which animal populations regulate their growth. The biological factors ultimately responsible for this regulation are fertility and mortality; their relative effectiveness in keeping growth within tolerable limits, and generally at, or cyclically around, zero, has been examined in several ways
I. Introductory Remarks
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Chapter 4: The Graduation of Survivorship Data
The mortality between adjacent age classes can be estimated from the survivorship schedules derived in Chapter 3. The data, however, differ in each case in the number, size, and age limits of the age classes; therefore, it is not possible to derive strictly comparable information from the data sets. Further, it is not yet possible to define the internal mortality structure of each age class which must be known for the computation of many elements…
Chapter 12: Confronting Field Data: Fitting Data to Model
The model life tables are constructed for field data which are fragmentary, incomplete, or lacking in detail. If a few gross measures can be determined which reflect the pooled experience of many elements of the population and hence are freer of stochastic variation, and if the stationary population assumptions are at all justified, a reasonable fit to a model can be expected with a minimum of work
V. Summary
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Chapter 1: Theoretical Foundations
The approach to population structure followed in this work is that of stable population theory as developed by A. J. Lotka and others. An early exposition of this theory is found in Lotka (1956); more recently it has been summarized by Coale (1972), Keyfitz (1968), and Shryock and Siegel(1971). The theory of stable populations requires that a population is infinite in size, has no net immigration or outmigration, and has fixed rates of fertility …
Appendix B: A Short Table of Values of
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Chapter 6: Model Fertility Schedules
Before the stable population can be fully characterized, the age-specific fertility rates needed to satisfy equation (1-4a) must be determined. For most anthropological data (and certainly for archaeological data) this information is not available. A method must be devised to estimate the rates of B ( X ), based on the assumption of a growth rate r and the mortality information. The relative amount of fertility in females at each age during the c…
Chapter 3: The Derivation of Survivorship Schedules
To utilize skeletal populations, one must assume stable population conditions at the time of deposition of the skeletons; one must also assume that the sample is representative of the population, and that it is free from systematic aging error. In this chapter, we assume that the studies used satisfy these conditions. The procedure for calculating mortality rates based on assigned ages of skeletons is simple and straightforward. Table 1 provides …
Appendix C: The Model Life Tables
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Chapter 14: Confronting Field Data: Two-Sex Models
The models discussed so far have been, effectively, asexual.We have considered fertility in terms of females and their daughters, but we have used pooled survivorship data to derive model mortalities. In so doing, we have assumed an equal sex ratio at birth and equal sex-specific mortality rates. This introduces some error, and the direction is probably known: pre-industrial males have generally a higher adult survivorship than females, although …
Appendix A: Source Data for Life Tables
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Dangers of Popularized Science
Demographic Disturbance and the Use of Life Tables in Anthropology
Many studies have recently appeared in which an attempt was made to derive age-specific birth and death rates from anthropological populations. The display of age-specific death rates usually takes the form of an abridged life table; fertility rates are rarer in the literature. One recent compendium has discussed the construction of life tables for skeletal populations (Acsádi and Nemeskéri 1970). In another work, I have argued that the fragmenta…
Sociology (93 works) · Computer Science (82 works) · Biology (63 works) · Library science (50 works) · History (49 works) · Citation (48 works) · Anthropology (46 works) · Demography (44 works) · Evolutionary biology (40 works) · Population (37 works)