"Happiness is 70-80% genetic"

 

Elegance is much more genetic: David Gower

K C Vijaykumar in The Hindu

The Hindu ArchivesDavid Gower, who was elegance personified during his playing days, has retained the same charm and articulation in his present stint as a commentator.

In a free-wheeling chat, Gower, now an acclaimed anchor and commentator for Sky Sports spoke primarily about blending aesthetics with effectiveness.

Remembering David Gower from his playing days is like thinking about first love. There was beauty, joy, a surreal air and in the end, poignancy too as one of the most elegant southpaws retired in 1993.

Yes, there is Brian Lara, but for a generation of fans, who owe allegiance to the 1980s, if there was an equivalent of a thing of beauty being a joy forever among left-handed batsmen, it had to be Gower.

In a free-wheeling chat, Gower, now an acclaimed anchor and commentator for Sky Sports spoke primarily about blending aesthetics with effectiveness.

Excerpts:

The perception-burden of left-handers being intrinsically elegant:

There are ugly left-handers and one I can think of with the greatest of respect was Allan Border, who made thousands of Test runs and proved to be a very good player. You wouldn’t call him elegant and he wouldn’t mind because he would much rather take 11000 Test runs.

Yes in terms of left-handers, for me it was always pleasant when people said that there was elegance and style but then none of that works unless you get runs and spend 10 to 15 years playing Test cricket. For me to walk out to bat at the Lord’s, the Oval, the Eden Gardens, the SCG, wherever it might be, I am not thinking hope this looks good, I am thinking hope I get some runs.

The thin line that splits style from being branded lazy:

The natural flow of emotion if you get out is a degree of disappointment. It could be the bowler bowling a good ball but whatever it is, you are an unhappy man. If you are then accused of being lazy, you are thinking ‘well not really, I was trying’. When you are accused of being laid-back, it implies that there is a lack of care or desire and all I am prepared to admit is that there were good days and bad days. When people have a perception you have to be strong enough in your own heart. The best way to (counter) all these judgements is to get runs and everything will feel lovely.

Grace, genetics and hard-work:

You work hard to improve your concentration, technique and your ability to make a 50, a 100, may be a 200. The elegance-thing is much more genetic. My father was a very good all-round sportsman but I never really saw him as a cricketer and I couldn’t tell whether he was an elegant batsman or not. But whatever he handed down between him and my mother, he handed down something which meant that when I started to play I had the flair and the easy style. The gift was by doing it that way, the positions and the time I had to play (the shots), it turned out to be productive.

Expectations being the bane of gifted players:

It’s a bugbear that people think that we cannot make mistakes or that a bowler cannot bowl a good ball. I have had people telling me you looked good and that they were upset when I got out and you think so was I. Like here, some twenty years in the commentary box, you are expecting people to play well, but then you have to remember that there is a human element, that they will make mistakes and even we made mistakes.

Is cricket losing its multi-faceted characters?

In my generation, some were immersed in the game while others were rounded like (Ian) Botham, and Bob Willis, who was interested in music. Mark Butcher, from the next generation, is a performer and guitarist. Once I met Tim Bresnan in a hotel and somehow the conversation went into diving and I realised that he was a dive-master. The trick is to quietly find out what they do and build up the story.

Nature trumps nurture in exam success

Richard Garner in The Independent

Genetics has a more powerful influence on pupils' GCSE exam results than teachers, schools or family environment, according to a new study published tonight.

Researchers from King's College London found that genetic differences account for 58 per cent of the differences between pupils' GCSE exam scores - while environment (home or school) only accounted for 29 per cent.  They also found boys' results were more likely to reflect their genes than girls.

The bombshell conclusion is bound to thrust the debate over the role of genetics in education back to centre stage - just two months after Michael Gove's outgoing senior adviser, Dominic Cummings, told his boss he believed genetics outweighed teaching when it came to determining pupil performance.

He also arranged a meeting between the Education Secretary and leading geneticist Professor Robert Plomin, one of the authors of the new research, to discuss the issue.

In a 250-page "private thesis" - which has since been made public, Mr Cummings argued that the link between intelligence and genetics had been overlooked up until now in the education system.

The controversy was fuelled when London Mayor Boris Johnson appeared to suggest more resources should be devoted to the education of those with high IQs, arguing: "Whatever you may think of the value of IQ tests, it is surely relevant to a conversation about equality that as many as 16 per cent of our species has an IQ below 85 while about two per cent have an IQ above 130."

The influence of genetics on intelligence has been almost a taboo subject in education policy circles for years following the publication of a book nearly two decades ago in the United States, The Bell Curve by Robert J.Hermstein and Charles Murray, suggesting there was a link between race and intelligence.

As Dr John Jerrim, from London University's Institute of Education who has conducted research into the impact of genes on children's reading ability, put it genetic research has often in the past "been linked with right-wing political views".

Today's research acknowledges  the danger of "a deep-seated fear  ... that accepting the importance of genetics justifies inequities - educating the best and forgetting the rest".

However, it adds: "Depending on one's values, the opposite position could also be taken, such as putting more educational resources into the lower end of the distribution to guarantee that all children reach minimal standards of literacy and numeracy."

The study, based on  11,117 identical and non-identical twins, shows that a child's genes are a more important indicator of educational performance across all the core subjects - accounting for 52 per cent of the difference in scores in English, 55 per cent in maths and 58 per cent in science.

"The significance of these findings is that individual differences in educational achievement at the end of compulsory  education are not primarily an index of the quality of teachers or schools," the report says.  "Much more of the variance  of GCSE scores can be attributed to genetics than to school or family environment."

The researchers compared the exam performance of identical twins who share 100 per cent of their genes with non-identical twins who share on average 50 per cent of their genes.  They argued that - if identical twins' exam scores were more alike than those of non-identical twins -the difference was due to genetics rather than environment.

They added:  "A remarkable finding is that the estimates of heritability and shared environmental influence do not differ substantially across diverse subjects.  The humanities subjects have the lowest estimate (40 per cent) and science subjects the highest."

The researchers said that a previous study which showed strong genetic influence on performance in the early years had been "surprising" but it was even more so to find such a strong link at GCSE level. "The surprise stems from thinking that, as these subjects are taught at school, differences in educational achievement are primarily due to differences in teaching," they added.

Nicholas Shakeshaft, lead author of the paper and a PhD student at the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London, said: "Children differ in how easily they learn at school.  Our research shows that differences in students' educational achievement owe more to nature than nurture."

The researchers argue that it could be expected that countries with a "one-size-fits all" national curriculum - as the UK has - might yield higher heritability estimates than countries with a more flexible system.

However, they add that "one major misconception" of their findings would be to conclude genetic influences "diminish the importance of schools".  "The differential impact between good and bad schools is not great," the report adds, "but the difference between schools and no schools is likely to be enormous".

Instead, the findings argue an individually tailored approach to a child's education is more likely to combat any lack in performance due to genes rather a universal, one-size-fits-all approach to the curriculum.

Earlier, Dr Claire Haworth, from Warwick University and deputy director of the twins programme, argued genetics should be covered in teacher training - especially if it helped trainees to explain variations in the way different children learn.

Improving the understanding of genetics in schools was key to dispelling some of the myths around the science.

The red badge of courage

There are several reasons for sporting success but it's possible that bravery exerts the foremost influence

Rob Steen in Cricinfo

September 11, 2013

 

	Kevin Pietersen: an inventor who outwits and confounds © Getty Images  Enlarge

Half a century ago, Willie Mays was baseball's Garry Sobers. He ran like the wind, possessed a bone-chilling throw, maintained a sturdy batting average, and biffed home runs by the truckload. A superb centre-fielder, he also claimed the game's most celebrated catch, an over-the-shoulder number in the 1954 World Series that still inspires awe for its athleticism, spatial awareness and geometric precision.

Almost without exception, white New York sportswriters said he was gifted: the inference many drew was that this man, this black man, had succeeded not through hard work but because he had been granted a God-given head start. Even if you somehow manage not to classify this as racism, it remains deeply insulting.

"Gifted" is still shorthand for unfeasibly and unreasonably talented. We use it all the time in all sorts of contexts, mostly enviously. Wittingly or not, the implication is that the giftee has no right to fail. Hence the ludicrous situation wherein David Gower aroused far more scorn than Graham Gooch yet wound up with more Ashes centuries and a higher Test average.

Nature v nurture: has there ever been a more contentious or damaging sociological debate? Its eternal capacity to polarise was borne out last week when the Times devoted a hefty chunk of space to the views of two sporting achievers turned searching sportswriters, Matthew Syed and Ed Smith. Here was a fascinating clash of perspectives, not least since both have recently written books whose titles attest to the not inconsiderable role played by chance: Syed's Bounce and Smith's Luck.

In the red corner sits Syed, a two-time Olympian at table tennis. Referencing the original findings of the cognitive scientist Herbert Simon, winner of the 1978 Nobel Prize, he supported the theory espoused by Malcolm Gladwell, who argued in his recent book Outliers that success in any field only comes about through expertise, which means being willing to put in a minimum of 10,000 hours' practice.

Smith, the former England batsman and Middlesex captain who writes so thoughtfully and eloquently for this site, takes his cue from The Sports Gene: What Makes the Perfect Athlete, a new book by the American journalist and former athlete David Epstein, who takes issue with Gladwell.

Genetic make-up, Epstein concludes, is crucial. Usain Bolt, as he stresses, is freakishly tall for a sprinter. He also cites the example of Donald Thomas, who won the high jump title at the 2007 World Athletics Championships just eight months after taking his first serious leap. The key was an uncommonly long Achilles tendon, which doubled as a giant springboard. Subsequent practice, however, failed to generate any improvement. But if we insist, simplistically, that athletic talent is a gift of nature, counters Syed, echoing academic research, this can wreck resilience. "After all, if you are struggling with an activity, doesn't that mean you lack talent? Shouldn't you give up and try something else?"

The debate is rendered all the more complex, of course, by its prickliest subtext. Having conducted a globetrotting survey of attitudes, one "eye-opener" for Epstein was the reluctance of scientists to publish research on racial differences. Fear of the backlash continues to trump the need for understanding.

	Sport is uniquely taxing because it asks young bodies to do the work of seasoned minds

These delicate issues and stark divergences of opinion, though, mask a deeper, more pertinent and resonant truth. To give nature all the credit is to deny the capacity for change; to plump for nurture is to ignore the inherent unfairness of genetics. Isn't it a matter of nurturing nature? Besides, surely success is more about application. Possessing gallons of ability is no guarantee if, like Chris Lewis, who promised so much for England in the 1990s and delivered conspicuously less, you lack the wherewithal to take full advantage. And if skill was the sole prerequisite, how did Steve Waugh become the game's most indomitable force?

Where would Waugh have been without determination? The same could be asked of the game's two most powerful current captains, MS Dhoni and Michael Clarke. Without that inner drive, would Dhoni have emerged from his Ranchi backwater? Would Clarke have risen from working-class boy to metrosexual man? Ah, but is determination innate or learnt? Cue a cascade of further questions. How telling is environment - social, economic and geographic? Does it have more impact during childhood or adulthood? Is temperament natural or nurtured? Can will be developed? Is confidence instinctive or acquired? I haven't the foggiest. All I can say with any vestige of certainty is that, when preparing a recipe for success, limiting ourselves to a single ingredient seems extraordinarily daft and utterly self-defeating.

So here's another thought. Given that, for the vast majority, achieving sporting success invariably involves battling against at least a couple of odds, surely courage has something to do with it: the courage to overcome prejudice, disadvantage or fear of failure. The courage to perform when thousands are urging you to fail - or, worse, succeed. The courage to take on the bigger man, the better-trained man, to stand your ground, put bones at risk, resist defeatism. The courage not just to be different but act different. The courage not to play the percentages. The courage not to be cautious. The courage to try the unorthodox, the outrageous. The courage to risk humiliation. And the courage, after suffering it, to risk it again.

	Shane Warne: one of those rare cricketers who aspired to something loftier than mere excellence © Getty Images  Enlarge

The older we get, theoretically at least, the safer we feel and the less courage we need. The less courage I need, the more I admire it in others, hence the growing conviction that bravery exerts the foremost influence on a sportsman's fate, as critical on the field as in the ring or on chicane. In team sports, it is even more imperative: sure, the load can be shared, but it still takes a special type of courage, of nerve, to satisfy the selfish gene - i.e. express yourself - while serving the collective good.

What makes this even more complicated is that when sportsfolk most need courage - between the ages of, say, 14 and 40 - few have fully matured as human beings. How many of the most powerful business leaders or successful lawyers or respected doctors are under 50? How many of the most eminent actors, musicians, authors or chat-show hosts? Sport is uniquely taxing because it asks young bodies to do the work of seasoned minds.

In cricket, the first test of courage comes early. Of all the factors that dissuade wide-eyed schoolboys from pursuing the game professionally, none quite matches the fear of leather and cork. Even for those at the summit, it remains a fear to be acknowledged, tolerated and respected. As Ian Bell recently highlighted when discussing the delights of fielding at short leg, conquest is impossible.

Where the air is rarest and the stakes highest, spiritual courage is even more vital. "I was an outsider. I still am. I didn't do what they wanted." Lou Reed's words they may be, but they could just as easily be the reflections of another couple of performers happy to walk on the wild side, Kevin Pietersen and Shane Warne. That these brothers-in-fitful-charms happen to be 21st-century cricket's foremost salesmen seems far from accidental.

Both are victories for nurture. Both practise(d) with ardour and diligence, mastering their craft, continually honing and refining, then building on it, then honing and refining some more. Both studied opponents assiduously, the better to parry, outwit and confound. Both became inventors, devising daring drives and dastardly deliveries. Yet nature, too, has played a significant role. Both are enthusiasts and positive thinkers. Both radiate self-belief and superiority. Both boast heavenly hand-eye co-ordination. Above all, nonetheless, both aspire(d) to something loftier than mere excellence. Both craved not just to be the best, nor even to dominate, but to astound. To do that takes another very special brand of courage.

For Warne, this meant having the courage to give up one sport and pursue one for which he seemed, physically and temperamentally, far less suited. For Pietersen, it meant having the courage to leave his homeland and to be reviled as both intruder and traitor. Neither, moreover, could completely suppress nature, so they remained true to their gambling instincts and innate showmanship. Without the mental strength to achieve the right balance, such an intricate juggling act would have been beyond them. Perhaps that's what courage really is: the strength to stick to your own path.

Don't take it from me; listen to Bolt: "I'd seen so many people mess up their careers because people had told them what to do and what not to do, almost from the moment their lives had become successful, if not before. The joy had been taken from them. To compensate, they felt the need to take drugs, get drunk every night, or go wild. I realised I had to enjoy myself to stay sane."

Nature versus nurture. Mind versus matter. Means versus ends. Turn those antagonists into protagonists and we might get somewhere. First, though, there must be acceptance: compiling an idiot-proof guide to success is akin to tackling a vat of soup with miniature chopsticks. Besides, if it were easy, there would be more winners than losers. In sport, where success means nothing if nobody fails, that might present a particularly prickly problem.

The best advice? Try Laura Nyro's rallying-cry:
Oh-h, but I'm still mixed up like a teenager
Goin' like the 4th of July
For the sweet sky

European Gypsies have Indian Genes

Gypsies arrived in Europe 1,500 years ago, genetic study says

Migrants from India came to continent much earlier than previously thought, analysis suggests, and arrived in the Balkans

• Giles Tremlett in Madrid
• guardian.co.uk, Friday 7 December 2012 18.09 GMT

Gypsies in a shanty town in Madrid, Spain. Photograph: Navia/Cover/Getty Images

In parts of Europe they are still shunned as disruptive outsiders or patronised as little more than an exotic source of music and dance, but Gypsies have ancient roots that stretch back more than a millennium, scientists have proved.

A genetic analysis of 13 Gypsy groups around Europe, published in Current Biologyjournal, has revealed that the arrival on the continent of their forebears from northern India happened far earlier than was thought, about 1,500 years ago.

The earliest population reached the Balkans, while the spread outwards from there came nine centuries ago, according to researchers at Spain's Institute of Evolutionary Biology and elsewhere.

"There were already some linguistic studies that gave clues pointing to India and genetic studies too, though without being precise about the where or when," said David Comas, who led the research group.

"Now we can see that they arrived in one single wave from the north-west of India around 1,500 years ago."

Gypsies were originally thought to have come from Egypt and some of the earliest references to them in English, dating back to the 16th century, call them "Egyptians".

Early European references describe wandering, nomadic communities who were known for their music and skill with horses.

They arrived in Spain in the 15th century or earlier – with records of groups of up to a hundred Gypsies travelling together, often led by someone who termed himself a "count" or "duke" – and held on despite attempts to expel them or imprison those who refused to give up their language and culture.

They were accompanied by a legend that they had been expelled from Egypt for trying to hide Jesus.

The new study now sets their arrival in Europe in the sixth century – a time when Britain was still in its early post-Roman era.

Gypsies, often referred to as Roma, are found across all of Europe and make up the continent's largest ethnic minority. There are about 11 million of Gypsies in Europe.

Centuries of discrimination, including systematic extermination by some 20th-century fascist regimes, have helped keep many of them marginalised.

"There is still widespread discrimination and this is the most marginalised minority in Europe," said Robert Kushen of the European Roma Rights Centre in Hungary.

Both France, during Nicolas Sarkozy's presidency, and Italy, under Silvio Berlusconi, targeted Gypsy communities with populist eviction policies, while long-running discrimination continues in much of eastern Europe.

Sarkozy's Socialist successor, François Hollande, has done little to change policies in France.

"They suffer from forced evictions – and have been targeted recently in both France and Italy," Kushen said. "And it seems that in some places, like Romania and Bulgaria, the laws applying to free movement within the European Union don't quite apply to them in the same way that they apply to other people."

But the stereotypical wandering Gypsy in a mule-drawn caravan belongs to the distant past. The vast majority of Europe's Gypsies have long been settled. "There is still the myth of the nomad, which drives bad policy in places like Italy, where the government maintains they are nomads when in fact they are not," said Kushen.

His group has called on the European Union to bypass national governments, many of whom ignore EU rules on the treatment of Gypsies and Roma, in order to enforce policies.

And Comas's study shows not only that they share common ancestry from north-west India, but also that they have mixed extensively with other Europeans.

"That is more pronounced in northern and western Europe," he said. "They conserve the genetic footprint from India, but their ancestors are both European and Indian."

The sequencing and analysis of the first Malayali personal genome

The new Malayali world of DNA

T. NANDAKUMAR

A Kochi-based laboratory has completed the full sequencing and analysis of the first Malayali personal genome, revealing the genetic diversity of the linguistic group and signalling a revolution in disease diagnosis and treatment.

The study by SciGenom Laboratories established that the Malayali is genetically similar to the Caucasians more than any other race on earth.

A detailed report on the analysis has been published after peer review by BMC Genomics, an international medical journal that identifies and pools research contributions in genomics. Investigators at SciGenom Labs had joined hands with Stephan C. Suschter's laboratory at Pennstate, USA, and others to analyse the genome sequencing data.

The report carries elaborate comparison of Malayali genome against other published genomes from other parts of the world. The study revealed that the gene sequence of the Malayali varies from Chinese and African genomes but stands closer to the Caucasian, a term denoting the white race.

Genetic diversity

According to the report, the availability of this genome and the variants identified is a first step in understanding the genetic diversity in the Indian subcontinent, a crucial factor in identifying clinically relevant changes. These changes, along with further studies on additional genomes from this region, should provide a comprehensive assessment of the disease burden in the Indian population, it concluded.

Dr. George Thomas, Director, SciGenom Labs, said this was the first complete sequencing of a South Asian Indian female (SAIF) genome. “The real challenge with regard to the data obtained from genome sequencing is its analysis for arriving at sound conclusions. The analysis enables listing out those genetic deformities and hidden diseases in an individual which would come out in future,” he said.

“So diseases such as cancer, diabetes, liver diseases, and Alzheimer’s would become predictable and there could be preventive treatment and personalised drugs. This is the field occupied by bioinformatics and India needs to develop a good number of experts in this field,” he said.

The sequencing and genotype data has been deposited at the European Genome-Phenome Archive, hosted by the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI). The SAIF variant information could be viewed at http://gbrowse.scigenom.com. and the full report published by BMC Genomics was available at http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2164/13/440, a press note issued by SciGenom Laboratories said.