The genetic architecture of the human cerebral cortex

The cerebral cortex underlies our complex cognitive capabilities, yet little is known about the specific genetic loci that influence human cortical structure. To identify genetic variants that affect cortical structure, we conducted a genome-wide association meta-analysis of brain magnetic resonance imaging data from 51,665 individuals. We analyzed the surface area and average thickness of the whole cortex and 34 regions with known functional specializations. We identified 199 significant loci and found significant enrichment for loci influencing total surface area within regulatory elements that are active during prenatal cortical development, supporting the radial unit hypothesis. Loci that affect regional surface area cluster near genes in Wnt signaling pathways, which influence progenitor expansion and areal identity. Variation in cortical structure is genetically correlated with cognitive function, Parkinson's disease, insomnia, depression, neuroticism, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Who is Right to Fish? Evolving a Social Contract for Ethical Fisheries

Most debates on government fisheries management, focusing on dramatic fishery collapses, have skirted the ethical dimension implicit in the exploitation, for private gain, of fishery resources that are publicly owned. The privilege to fish, a conditional right often nefariously perceived as a legislated "right," implies ethical responsibilities linked to marine stewardship. To date, however, granting this privilege to fish has not been legally tethered to the fiduciary responsibilities of businesses to their clients or governments to their citizens: sustainable management of fisheries and conservation of living marine resources. Legal rights must be coupled with moral responsibilities if governments, private fishing enterprises, and civil society are to conserve marine resources for present and future generations. Evolving a social contract for ethical fisheries that explicitly mandates collaborative governance and corporate responsibility can protect public goods and society's right to fish, both to eat and to exist in the sea

Evolutionary Universal Aesthetics in Ecological Rationality

We contend that individual reactions to universal aesthetics were critical in adapting human brain structure and evolutionary cognition. Emotional responses to aesthetics and reflexive judgments by prehistoric people may have evolved an ecological rationality with intimate pragmatics of survival. In North American Pacific Northwest ecosystems, complex indigenous societies flourished for millennia, developing strategies that allowed them to co-adapt with locally varying, productive landscapes. They evolved ‘societal phenotypes’ based on cultural belief systems fostering ecosystem balance. Their detailed contemplation and experience of natural phenomena, including other organisms’ behaviors, were formalized as traditional ecological knowledge. For example, pre-contact Pacific Northwest societies co-evolved with periodic salmon migrations and blooming gardens of camas lilies, aesthetic events that we suggest inspired awe, captured attention, and motivated memory in individuals. Sharing and collectively storing this ecological information as traditional knowledge enhanced the group’s survival. The natural endowment of judging the sublime and the beautiful through an aesthetic or spiritual connection with the place likely contributed to the success of these indigenous societies, before reservations disrupted their local environmental relationships and cultural transmission of millennial place-based knowledge. Today, the subjective experience of evolutionary universal aesthetics may drive human affinities for natural phenomena and scientists’ preferences in ecological research. We motivate an argument for such unique adaptations by proposing an evolutionary relationship between the biophysical environment, aesthetic responses, and cultural belief systems

Fishful Thinking: Rhetoric, Reality, and the Sea Before Us

Fisheries science and management have been shrouded in controversy and rhetoric for over 125 yrs. Human reliance on fish through history (and even prehistory) has impacted the sea and its resources. Global impacts are manifest today in threatened food security and vulnerable marine ecosystems. Growing consumer demand and subsidized industrial fisheries exacerbate ecosystem degradation, climate change, global inequities, and local poverty. Ten commonly advocated fisheries management solutions, if implemented alone, cannot remedy a history of intense fishing and serial stock depletions. Fisheries policy strategies evaluated along five performance modalities (ecological, economic, social, ethical, and institutional) suggest that composite management strategies, such as ecosystem-based management and historically based restoration, can do better. A scientifically motivated solution to the fisheries problem can be found in the restorable elements of past ecosystems, if some of our present ideology, practices, and tastes can be relinquished for this historical imperative. Food and social security can be enhanced using a composite strategy that targets traditional food sources and implements customary management practices. Without binding laws, however, instituting such an ethically motivated goal for fisheries policy can easily be compromised by global market pressures. In a restored and productive ecosystem, fishing is clearly the privilege of a few. The realities of imminent global food insecurity, however, may dictate a strategy to deliberately fish down the food web, if the basic human right to food is to be preserved for all

Fisheries Centre Research Reports, Vol. 24, No. 1

Zoning of marine space is increasingly used to reconcile conflicting socio-economic and conservation goals for marine resources: marine spatial planning entails appraisal of the outcomes of ecosystem-based trade-offs by stakeholders. This report gives the results of a pilot study using state-of-the-art, spatial ecosystem modelling of potential marine protected areas in the Haida Gwaii marine ecosystem. It aims to inform any marine spatial planning process of the likely ecological consequences of alternative spatial management scenarios. A published ecosystem model of northern BC has been adapted to Haida Gwaii, augmented and spatialized. Novel habitat capacity maps and fishery zones have been employed in the modelling framework for the first time.Science, Faculty ofOceans and Fisheries, Institute for theUnreviewedFacultyPostdoctoralGraduat