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Newly discovered patterns in evolution may help scientists make accurate short-term predictions.   Full article here ~ http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140717-the-new-science-of-evolutionary-forecasting  Also, go back to a previous related blog post   http://cultureplaces.blogspot.com/2010/09/more-on-near-term-evolution.html Doebeli’s bacteria echoed the evolution of lizards in the Caribbean. Each time the lizards arrived on an island, they diversified into many of the same forms, each with its own set of adaptations. Doebeli’s bacteria diversified as well — and did so in flask after flask.... To get a deeper understanding of this predictable evolution, Doebeli and his postdoctoral researcher, Matthew Herron , sequenced the genomes of some of the bacteria from these experiments. In three separate populations they discovered that the bacteria had evolved in remarkable parallel. In every case, many of the same genes had mutated....

By  Tom Merle  on Thursday, July 10, 2014 at 10:52am Thomas Edsall CONTRIBUTING OP-ED WRITER The New York Times   http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/09/opinion/thomas-edsall-how-much-do-our-genes-influence-our-political-beliefs.html?src=me&module=Ribbon&version=context&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Most%20Emailed&pgtype=Blogs How Much Do Our Genes Influence Our Political Beliefs? It’s been a key question of American politics since at least 1968: Why do so many poor, working-class and lower-middle-class whites — many of them dependent for survival on government programs — vote for Republicans? The debate over the motives of conservative low-income white voters remains unresolved, but two recent research papers suggest that the hurdles facing Democrats in carrying this segment of the electorate may prove difficult to overcome. In “Obedience to Traditional Authority: A heritable factor underlying authoritarianism, conservatism and religi