Oh What a Beautiful Morning

Weekly Photo Challenge – Horizon

And on a clear day you can see forever

So you are…?

Which Grandparent Are You Most Related to?

 

Your family tree says you inherited 25 percent of your ancestry from each. Genetics says you didn’t.

 

What makes you who you are genetically? The easy answer is your family. The longer answer begins with the fact that all humans have two parents (at least for now), and usually four distinct grandparents (there are unfortunate exceptions). Genetically you are a recombination of four separate individuals. But that does not mean you have an equal contribution from four separate individuals.

But that does not mean you have an equal contribution from four separate individuals. Humans normally carry 23 pairs of chromosomes: 22 autosomal pairs and one pair of sex chromosomes, either two copies of the X for a female or an X and a Y in the case of males. By Mendel’s law of segregation you receive one copy of each pair from your mother (via the egg), and one copy from your father (via the sperm). This means exactly half of your genome derives from each parent.

Things begin to get more complicated going back two generations. One might think that of the 44 autosomal chromosomes you would receive 11 from each of the four grandparents. (For simplicity we’ll leave the sex chromosomes out for now. If you are a female, you receive one X from each parent, while if you are a male you receive an X from your mother and a Y from your father, who got it from his father.) But while the proportion of one’s inheritance from parents is fixed by exact necessity, the fraction from grandparents is governed by chance. For each of the chromosomes you inherit from a given parent, you have a 50 percent chance of gaining a copy from your grandfather and a 50 percent chance of gaining a copy from your grandmother. The laws of independent probability imply that there is a 1 in 4 million chance that all of your maternal or paternal chromosomes could come from just one grandparent!* What’s more, genetic recombination means that chromosomes aren’t purely from one grandparent or the other; during the cell divisions that produce sperm and eggs, chromosomes exchange segments and become hybrids. You almost certainly have different genetic contributions from your four grandparents.

But this is not just abstract theorizing. Imagine that you could know that 22 percent of the genome of your child derives from your mother, and 28 percent from your father. Also imagine that you know that 23 percent of the genome of your child derives from your partner’s mother, and 27 percent derives from your partner’s father. And you could know exactly how closely your child is related to each of its uncles and aunts. This isn’t imaginary science fiction, it is science fact.

read the article

What would be yours?

Old Cemeteries
A truly Happy Person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour. And, one who can enjoy browsing old cemeteries…
Some fascinating things on old tombstones!

Harry Edsel Smith of Albany , New York :
Born 1903–Died 1942.
Looked up the elevator shaft to see if the
car was on the way down. It was.
=============================
In a Thurmont, Maryland , cemetery:

Here lies an Atheist, all dressed up
and no place to go.
=============================
On the grave of Ezekial Aikle in
East Dalhousie Cemetery, Nova Scotia:

Here lies Ezekial Aikle, Age 102.
Only the good die young.
=============================
In a London, England cemetery:

Here lies Ann Mann, who lived an old maid
but died an old Mann. Dec. 8, 1767
=============================
In a Ribbesford, England, cemetery:

Anna Wallace
The children of Israel wanted bread,
And the Lord sent them manna.
Clark Wallace wanted a wife,
And the Devil sent him Anna.
===============================
In a Ruidoso, New Mexico , cemetery:

Here lies Johnny Yeast.
Pardon him for not rising.
===============================
In a Uniontown, Pennsylvania , cemetery:

Here lies the body of Jonathan Blake,
Stepped on the gas instead of the brake.
==============================
In a Silver City , Nevada , cemetery:

Here lays The Kid,
We planted him raw.
He was quick on the trigger,
But slow on the draw.
================================
A lawyer’s epitaph in England :

Sir John Strange.
Here lies an honest lawyer,
and that is Strange.
=================================
John Penny’s epitaph in the Wimborne,
England , cemetery:

Reader, if cash thou art in want of any,
Dig 6 feet deep and thou wilt find a Penny.
==================================
In a cemetery in Hartscombe , England :

On the 22nd of June, Jonathan Fiddle went out of tune.
==================================
Anna Hopewell’s grave in Enosburg Falls ,
Vermont :

Here lies the body of our Anna,
Done to death by a banana.
It wasn’t the fruit that laid her low,
But the skin of the thing that made her go.
==================================
On a grave from the 1880s in Nantucket ,
Massachusetts :

Under the sod and under the trees,
Lies the body of Jonathan Pease.
He is not here, there’s only the pod,
Pease shelled out and went to God.
==================================
In a cemetery in England :

Remember man, as you walk by,
As you are now, so once was I.
As I am now, so shall you be,
Remember this and follow me.

To which someone replied by writing on the tombstone:

To follow you I’ll not consent,
Until I know which way you went.

Are you being had?

Herbal Supplements Often Contain Unlisted Ingredients

People who consume herbal products such as supplements may be getting more, or less, than they bargained for. Many of these products contain ingredients not listed on the label, a new study finds.

In the study, nearly 60 percent ofherbal products tested contained plant substances not listed on the label. In nearly a third of products, the main ingredient was substituted with a different product. More than 20 percent of products contained fillers such as rice, wheat and soybeans, in addition to the main ingredient.

 

Overall, out of the 12 companies that produce herbal supplements included in the study, just two had products with no substitutions, fillers or contaminants, the researchers say.

Such unlisted ingredients may pose health hazards for consumers, the researchers said. For example, one produced was labeled as St. John’s wort, but actually contained the laxative plant Senna alexandrina. The laxative is not recommended for long turn use, and can cause serious side effects, such as chronic diarrhea and liver damage.

Other products contaminated with walnut leaves, wheat, soybeans and rice might pose problems for people with allergies or those seeking gluten-free products, said study researcher Steven Newmaster, an integrative biology professor and botanical director of the University of Guelph’s Biodiversity Institute of Ontario.

“A consumer has a right to see all of the plant species used in producing a natural product on the list of ingredients,” Newmaster said.

The researchers analyzed 44 herbal products sold in the United States and Canada, using a gene sequencing technique called DNA barcodingto identify the plant species present in the products. (DNA barcodes are short gene sequences that are indicative of a particular species.)

But read the whole article here.

Weekly Photo Challenge – The Hue of You

Is this my hue? Lilac and green. For gardens yes.

Getting to know you, Getting to know all about you

5 Surprising Facts About Otzi the Iceman

. The Iceman has living relatives. In fact 19 found so far in Austria.

He had several health issues.

He also had anatomical abnormalities.

The Iceman was inked. He had tattoos.

 He consumed pollen and goats.

You can read more here

Is America Burning???

Talking about Nero – Who fiddled while Rome burned? History repeats itself does it not!

 

Gossip is like Poison

A woman was gossiping with a friend about a man she hardly knew— I know none of you have ever done this—that night she had a dream. A great hand appeared over her and pointed down at her. She was immediately seized with an overwhelming sense of guilt. The next day she went to confession. 

She got the old parish priest, Father O’Rourke, and she told him the whole thing. “Is gossiping a sin?” she asked the old man. “Was that the hand of God Almighty pointing a finger at me? Should I be asking your absolution? Father, tell me, have I done something wrong?”

“Yes!” Father O’Rourke answered her. “Yes, you ignorant, badly brought-up female! You have borne false witness against your neighbor, you have played fast and loose with his reputation, and you should be heartily ashamed!”

So the woman said she was sorry and asked for forgiveness. “Not so fast!” says O’Rourke. “I want you to go home, take a pillow up on your roof, cut it open with a knife, and return here to me!”

So the woman went home, took a pillow off her bed, a knife from the drawer, went up the fire escape to the roof, and stabbed the pillow. Then she went back to the old parish priest as instructed. “Did you gut the pillow with the knife?” he says.”Yes, Father.” “And what was the result?” “Feathers,” she said. A world of feathers.

“Feathers?” he repeated. “Feathers everywhere, Father!”

“Now I want you to go back and gather up every last feather that flew out on the wind!”

“Well,” she said, “it can’t be done. I don’t know where they went. The wind took them all over.”

”And that,” said Father O’Rourke,“is gossip!”

Father Brendan Flynn, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman In the movie ‘Doubt’

A Remedy

 

 The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (Official)‘s photo.