Luke Glowacki
@lukeglowacki.bsky.social
790 followers 800 following 69 posts
Anthropologist at Boston University. PI Human Systems and Behavior Lab. Co-Director of the Omo Valley Research Project.
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Reposted by Luke Glowacki
sheinalew.bsky.social
@durhampsych.bsky.social current has 5 (FIVE!!) PhD studentships being advertised!

3 to work with me on children as agents of cultural evolution

2 to work with @drboothroyd.bsky.social on examining school-based body image interventions.

Please share and apply!

www.durham.ac.uk/departments/...
Fees and Funding - Durham University
www.durham.ac.uk
Reposted by Luke Glowacki
eselster.bsky.social
Graduate school is hard, because sometimes it requires you to explain the word “boofing” to your grandparents. Context below!

open.substack.com/pub/unpublis...
I Do Not Recommend Boofing Plants
Notes from the Field #1
open.substack.com
lukeglowacki.bsky.social
"Unquestionably step forward"? How about instead thinking about how we got to this point and then trying learn from it to design policies that promote diversity, advance science, and improve the credibility of our institutions? Not more of the same: bigotry, group think, and censoriousness.
lukeglowacki.bsky.social
Now might be the time to rethink how the policies of the past ten years have been disastrous for eroding the credibility of science. Diversity makes science better, but DEI has alienated a huge percentage of the public and led to an anti-scientific backlash.
lukeglowacki.bsky.social
Whatever your position about sex as binary or not, this is a fantastically stimulating discussion, enough so it inspired me to buy the book.
ilarimakela.bsky.social
Sex cells are binary. But humans are not sex cells. To understand humans we must move beyond a male-female binary.

Or so argues Augustin Fuentes, author of the new book, Sex is a Spectrum.

Is he right?

Tune in to our chat! 🎧 onhumans.substack.com/p/an-essenti...

@anthrofuentes.bsky.social
An Essential Difference? Males, Females, and the Spaces In Between
A new podcast episode with Agustín Fuentes explores the meaning of biological sex.
onhumans.substack.com
lukeglowacki.bsky.social
I'm excited to share that my wife's book, The Mind Electric, is out! She's a brilliant neurologist and weaves together patient stories exploring the human mind. I read it and it's fantastic. If you r interested in the mind, culture, & how we make meaning, check it out! www.amazon.com/Mind-Electri...
lukeglowacki.bsky.social
Good point, i didn't think about this interpretation.
Reposted by Luke Glowacki
nachristakis.bsky.social
Halting NIH foreign awards means that “more children and adults in low-income countries will now lose their lives because of research that didn’t get done about diseases like malaria and TB.”

Plus: sometimes we collect data abroad about a scientific concern that affects all humans, including us!
Exclusive: NIH to suspend funds for research abroad as it overhauls policy
Move by US biomedical agency threatens thousands of projects on infectious diseases, cancer and more.
www.nature.com
Reposted by Luke Glowacki
nachristakis.bsky.social
Is there really no correlation between cancer prevalence and lifespan and body size across species, as there should be? The apparent lack of an effect of body mass and lifespan on cancer became known as Peto’s paradox. But it turns out there is indeed a correlation.
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
PNAS
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...
www.pnas.org
lukeglowacki.bsky.social
Human and chimpanzee foot. We really are born to run (or walk).
lukeglowacki.bsky.social
Interesting post on philosophy over at Marginal Revolution. Philosophers, I'd love to hear your thoughts. marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevo...
lukeglowacki.bsky.social
This is a fantastic interview with @chrisbstringer.bsky.social. Wide ranging, interesting, and I learned some stuff. Imagine if the LCA of humans and Neanderthals dated to a million years ago! That may just be the case.
Reposted by Luke Glowacki
edhagen.net
TIL that measles can infect and persist in the brain, and then (rarely) FIVE TO TEN YEARS LATER, kills you. There are no effective treatments.

Vaccination against measles obviously prevents this 🧪 journals.plos.org/plospathogen...
Acute viral infections are typically cleared by the host’s innate and adaptive immune responses, but even non-integrating RNA viruses can persist [1,2]. Neurons of the central nervous system are a privileged location for persistence because the host cannot deploy the cytolytic and inflammatory defense mechanisms that control infections in renewable cell types [3,4]. Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE) provides the prime example of a persistent brain infection caused by a human RNA virus. SSPE, which occurs in about 1 in 10,000 individuals typically 5–10 years after they experience an acute infection as a child [5–7], starts with subtle signs of intellectual and psychological dysfunction and progresses to sensory and motor function deterioration that ultimately leads to death [8,9]. There are no effective treatments for SSPE, however nonspecific antivirals (interferons, ribavirin, and inosine pranobex) have been used [10]. Although vaccination against measles prevents SSPE, this lethal disease is resurging due to vaccine hesitancy and missed immunizations due to COVID-19 related disruptions [11,12].
Reposted by Luke Glowacki
robsica.bsky.social
"Cordelia has offered no strong hypothesis that explains the fact that, across time and place, men are more likely than women to decide to throw that punch... Killing off T-Rex entirely serves only to shoot ourselves in the foot"
A psychologist and biologist debate the significance of testosterone | Aeon Essays
In probing whether there are basic sex differences in humans, a psychologist and a biologist agree to seriously disagree
aeon.co
lukeglowacki.bsky.social
@aeon.co how about doing something similar on the origins of war? How deep is it and was it important in human evolution? I'd be happy to argue for the deep roots perspective.
lukeglowacki.bsky.social
This is a great exchange in a format we need more of--longform written debate.
aeon.co
Does biology determine destiny, or is society the dominant cause of masculine and feminine traits? In this spirited exchange, the psychologist Cordelia Fine and the evolutionary biologist Carole Hooven unpack the complex relationship between testosterone and human behaviour
A psychologist and biologist debate the significance of testosterone | Aeon Essays
In probing whether there are basic sex differences in humans, a psychologist and a biologist agree to seriously disagree
buff.ly
Reposted by Luke Glowacki
eselster.bsky.social
Hello, Bluesky! Pleased to share that my first public-press article, on the shifting debate over what makes human culture unique, was published today in @us.theconversation.com. I review recent literature suggesting that cultural open-endedness, not cumulative culture, is our true defining trait.
Humans aren’t the only animals with complex culture − but researchers point to one feature that makes ours unique
Animals can learn from each other, maintaining their cultures for long periods of time. What sets people apart may be the uniquely open-ended ways we invent new ideas and share and build on them.
theconversation.com
lukeglowacki.bsky.social
I have many of your books and can't wait till my kids are old enough to share your books with them.
Reposted by Luke Glowacki
charlescmann.bsky.social
Incredibly, we are cutting back on ag research and services as the US--with more good farmland and quality ag infrastructure per person than any other nation--is on its way, incredibly, to becoming a net importer of food (something pointed out by a disbelieving @sarahtaber.bsky.social ).
Chart from USDA Economic Research Service shows that since 2021 agricultural exports have declined and imports have risen, so that we have, incredibly, a ~$20 billion negative trade balance in agriculture.