Your Genetic Constitution, My Genetic Constitution: Friends Sharing DNA

     

     The company you keep may include similar genetic material--up to 1 percent shared DNA amongst your friends--according to a new study from scientists at the University of California--San Diego and Yale University published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

     "Looking across the whole genome," co-author James Fowler said, "we find that, on average, we are genetically similar to our friends. We have more DNA in common with the people we pick as friends than we do with strangers in the same population."

     The researchers focused on 1,932 subjects from the Framingham Heart study; they compared pairs of unrelated friends against pairs of unrelated strangers. The same people, who were neither biologically related nor spouses, were used in both types of samples. The only thing that differed between them was their social relationship.
 
   The study controlled for ancestry (see study link below) and is a genome-wide analysis of nearly 1.5 million markers of gene variation. The researchers concluded that friends have similar genetic material to 4th cousins and that the shared genetic material is statistically significant.

    The strongest correlation between friends was sense of smell and the least correlated was resistance to diseases.

     The study is described in the 7-14-14 edition of Science Daily:

GENOME ANALYSIS AMONG FRIENDS

     So, mes amis, what are your favorite smells?! Least favorite smells? Do you suppose the study would be valid for on-line friends?

      My favorites smells are petriclor, lilacs, lemon, coffee, newly mown grass, pine trees, cinnamon, and baby-head smell. Least favorites? Mold, old sour milk, and ammonia.


      

      The paper also lends support to the view of human beings as 'metagenomic,'" co-author Nicholas Christakis said, "not only with respect to the microbes within us but also to the people who surround us. It seems that our fitness depends not only on our own genetic constitutions, but also on the genetic constitutions of our friends."
 
      So how's your genome profile? We all depend on each other, after all. . .

     And lastly, this misspelling of Quatorze de Juillet was too good to pass up. Happy Bastille Day, Julliet, Juliette, Julius, et al! 

Vive mes amis,
Steph
(Femme des Mots)

Any guesses as to what these are?

Take a good look at Kyanite, Andalusite, and Sillimanite: Aluminosilicate Polymorphs!

Take a good look at these three minerals:

Kyanite
Al2SiO5

 

Andalusite
Al2SiO5

Sillimanite Al2SiO5 (in                                                 schist)


    Would you have guessed that these three disparate minerals all have the same chemical formula? The three minerals are all polymorphs of Al2SiO5. They exhibit the widely varied forms, dependent on the temperature (x axis) and pressure (y axis) at formation.

       The crystal systems of the minerals vary from kyanite's triclinic to andalusite and sillimanite's orthorhombic crystals. In particular a variety of andalusite called chiastolite shows these marked crosses:

    The distinctive blue of kyanite, from the Greek meaning "deep blue" shows different hardnesses in different directions. 

     And sillimanite occurs in metamorphic schists formed at relatively high temperatures and pressures.

      A Plume friend was wearing a "kyanite" necklace which brought back my final mineralogy project on the KAS polymorphs...and reminded me of our final exam. We were all given different pieces of wallpaper and were to describe the symmetry of the design. It was quite a surprise and one of the exams from which I learned the most!

     Your swatches of wallpaper (not the computer kind) will be winging their way to you soon:

And for extra credit, 2 advanced wallpapers 

1

2

Looking forward to mineralogy, petrology, and symmetry discussions with you,

Steph
(Word Woman)
  
Whoa--check out this visual representation of the first 1000 digits of pi after the decimal point. That's YOUR WALLPAPER to analyze ;-

Gotta love Wyoming, where the signs point out geologic formations and their ages:

Does your state do this?!

Rudist Colonies: Fun, Wild Index Fossils

     Rudists are some of my favorite fossils, not just because it's a fun word to say, but because they are quite useful index fossils from the Jurassic and Cretaceous:

    Index fossils are the forms of life which existed during limited periods of geologic time and thus are used as guides to the age of the rocks in which they are preserved. John McPhee's analogy from Basin and Range  (1981) describes the concept well:

     "Imagine an E.L. Doctorow novel in which Alfred Tennyson, William Tweed, Abner Doubleday, Jim Bridger, and Martha Jane Canary sit down to a dinner prepared by Rutherford B. Hayes. ... a geologist could quickly decide -- as could anyone else -- that the dinner must have occurred in the middle 1870s, because Canary was 18 when the decade began, Tweed became extinct in 1878, and the biographies of the others do not argue with these limits."

    These marine bivalves were one of the main components of the widespread Tethys Sea between Laurasia and Gondwana about 200 million years ago as Pangaea was breaking up:

     Rudists were one of the main components  of the reefs that formed then:

      Rudists were widespread and had very different shapes making them excellent index fossils for fairly narrow time periods:

     The earlier forms were elongate, with both valves being similarly shaped, often pipe-shaped, while the later, reef-building Cretaceous forms had one valve that become a flat lid, with the other valve becoming an inverted spike-like cone. The size of these conical forms ranged widely from just a few centimeters to over a meter in length.

     Rudists' morphology consisted of a lower, roughly conical valve that was attached to the seafloor or to neighboring rudists, and a smaller upper valve that served as a kind of lid for the animal. The small upper valve could take a variety of different forms, including: a simple flat lid, a low cone, a spiral, and a star-shape.

     The earlier forms tended to be more solitary but the Cretaceous forms were generally more colonial. Rudist colony: they started it millions of years ago. The first naturists died off at the major Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction about 65 million years ago.

     Looking forward to your tales of nudist, er, rudist colonies. ;-)

Indexedly,

Steph

(Word Woman)

Holiday Hummer in the Colorado Mountains 7/3/14 (photo by C. Fiss)

     First clue (these are my photos) to location in the CO mts. See if you can win the geography quiz, at least a bit of a challenge this Sunday morning ;-):

Second clue:

More to come (if needed). Clue number three. Hint: It's very, very clear.

Cool Antipodes Tool and Earthquakes in Alaska and New Zealand

     Today two high Moment Magnitude Scale* earthquakes in Alaska (8.0)

              and New Zealand (7.0)

sent me looking for a tool to see if the two quakes were antipodal (on the other side of the earth) to/from each other. This site is quite fun and useful:

                ANTIPODAL TOOL

     What would you guess is antipodal to each location? Have a look. I was a bit surprised.

       The New Zealand quake is described in this USGS link :

 6/23/14 NEW ZEALAND QUAKE

         And the Alaskan earthquake here:

 6/23/14 ALASKAN ALEUTIAN ISLANDS QUAKE

        Both areas are tectonically quite active. I currently have a friend in both locations so have been paying particular attention to the tsunami warnings in the Aleutian Islands.

         Discussion of antipodal earthquakes is mostly anecdotal but this scientific paper looks at antipodal earthquakes as a way of determining that the earth's core is anisotropic:

         ANISOTROPIC EARTH CORE AND EARTHQUAKES

          *Here's a link to our earlier Richter Scale vs Moment Magnitude Scale discussion (if you need a review):

            Moment Magnitude Scale vs. Richter Scale


           And a bonus photograph of spectacular orthorhombic cornetite crystals: (take a close look at the color and crystal shape of this secondary copper mineral):

            Any thoughts on Antipodal Earthquakes? Cornetite? 

Whole lotta quaking' going on,

Steph
(Word Woman)

Antipodal Map (in case the tool isn't working):

Beach time at Medano Creek in The Great Sand Dunes, CO. And reading is fundamental...

   

   

The "Proof" is in the Puddingstone: Theories are Malleable, but not Infinitely So

     This post is dedicated to my Smith geologist friend, Dot, on her birthday. We surely enjoyed many a puddingstone outcrop in New England! Here is a thin section of the Roxbury Conglomerate, informally known as the Roxbury puddingstone: 

Last fall's puddingstone post remains the most popular at PEOTS so a tangential revisit to these conglomerates is in order:

     The article linked below discusses proof (but not necessarily in the puddingstone) and theory as being two of the most misunderstood and misused words regarding science:

MISUSED SCIENTIFIC WORDS: FROM THEORY TO PROOF TO ORGANIC

      It's a good list. Ten items is a reasonable number to absorb--like the 10 items at the fast line at the grocery store or David Letterman's top 10 list. It's a catchy way to get the general public thinking about scientific vocabulary. It's not perfect but it'll do.

      I'd like to focus on the first two words, proof and theory, but the other eight words/phrases are worth a look also.

      The phrase "Theories are malleable, but not infinitely so" resonated with me. We know plate tectonics is essentially the way features on the earth's surface are formed, but it is the constant refining and sculpting with more and more data that makes the theory malleable and testable (since Alfred Wegner proposed it in 1939). The defining characteristic of all scientific knowledge, including theories, is the ability to make falsifiable or testable predictions (as we've discussed earlier).

     

       "The fact that science never really proves anything, but simply creates more and more reliable and comprehensive theories of the world that nevertheless are always subject to update and improvement, is one of the key aspects of why science is so successful." We don't really "prove" things. We refine, bolster, add to a mountain of evidence. . .but scientific proof is different from that "proof is in the pudding(stone)." We can't taste the fruits of our research and get the "proof" as we can in cooking.

     The hot, steamy cooking of the earth like this Fly Geyser in Nevada, remains part of the theory of plate tectonics. We just can't consume it or prove it:

     Do any of the top ten words resonate with you?

Here's to another great trip around the sun,

Steph (Word Woman)

Squaring the Circle: Earth and Moon are 60 million years older than we thought, Dante and Math

     The big buzz (Aldrin) of the day yesterday:

EARTH AND MOON 60 MILLION YEARS OLDER

     Sixty million years, give or take 20 million years is a really big deal. The push to ever older ages for rocks on the earth by these French researchers is quite a statement.

     The discovery of older inclusions of xenon gas in Australian and South African rocks points to a much older earth and moon. 60,000,000 years is a huge deal, even to geologists. Many more years for processes to happen. . .

     And this article about Dante and mathematics is worth a look. The question of "squaring the circle" is at the center of Jones' work:


DANTE'S MATHEMATICS

     The tie in? Besides the great rota of life?

     The look at Dante's poetry from a mathematical perspective points to a time when math/science and poetry/the arts were more intricately linked. My question? How and why did they get so separated? Is it merely the increase of the amount of  information so we "can't" keep both parts intricately linked?

     Looking forward to a Wednesday meeting here.  As always, I appreciate your wisdom and insight...about science, words, squaring the circle, and any and all tie-ins.

Mid-weekly, tri-angling squaring the circle,

Steph
(aka Word Woman)

MAIZIE MAY 

     
     

Leaping Lizards: Saltation vs. Saltation: Jumping Grains vs. "Hopeful Monsters"

     A Smith friend (thanks, Dot!) sent this link to a University of California at Berkeley page which draws a timeline of evolutionary thought in a clear, spatial manner:

     For live links, see the page below:

    TIMELINE OF EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT

     The graphic is particularly intriguing because it includes both biologists and geologists.

     The scientists are essentially grouped as non-Darwinians, Darwinians, and neo-Darwinians. And who doesn't enjoy a good Galapagos tortoise photograph:

      The branch which caught my attention was the "Hopeful Monsters" tied to Richard Goldschmidt. (Of course, this branch is still under construction at the Berkeley site)...But, the connection between "Hopeful Monsters" or saltation in evolutionary biology to saltation in geology was too enticing to pass up. Saltation is the jumping over quickly from one creature a la macromutations (in biology) or one grain (in geology) to another. Fast evolution, fast geologic change vs slow evolution, slow gradual geologic change.

     In general, both evolutionary biology and geology tend to change slowly over many generations or years. But there are times, as in the Scablands of Eastern Washington, where floods have occurred over a short time period (55 years at a time over a total of 2000 years) creating a landscape that changed relatively quickly:

      As to "Hopeful Monsters," relatively rapid changes due to macromutations were proposed by Goldschmidt in 1940. Many neo-Darwinians dismissed his ideas, however.

      

      On the subject of Goldschmidt, Donald Prothero in his book Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters (2007) wrote:

"The past twenty years have vindicated Goldschmidt to some degree. With the discovery of the importance of regulatory genes, we realize that he was ahead of his time in focusing on the importance of a few genes controlling big changes in the organisms, not small-scales changes in the entire genome as neo-Darwinians thought. In addition, the hopeful monster problem is not so insurmountable after all. Embryology has shown that if you affect an entire population of developing embryos with a stress (such as a heat shock) it can cause many embryos to go through the same new pathway of embryonic development, and then they all become hopeful monsters when they reach reproductive age."

       A paper by Page et al in 2010, showed that the Mexican axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum) could be classified as a hopeful monster as it exhibits an adaptive and derived mode of development that has evolved rapidly and independently among tiger salamanders. 

     In both biology and geology, periods of rapid change make sense.

      (It is unfortunate that some creationists have taken the "Hopeful Monsters" theory as meaning there are no transitional fossils and that "punctuated equilibrium" translates to no evolution. Punctuated Equilibrium is not the same thing as "Hopeful Monsters.")

     Leaping lizards! That's a pretty hopeful looking monster.

With all good things saltational and not, I look forward to your thoughts,

Steph

(aka Word Woman)

   

   

Trilobite Eyes, Pixels, Surgery, and your Smart Phone

      Trilobite compound eyes have always intrigued me. The calcium carbonate of the eyes of these Paleozoic-aged marine arthropods (similar to those of horseshoe crabs and insects) are often well-preserved:

     These extinct creatures have a three-lobed body:

     Their eyes contain many individual lenses (akin to each one creating a pixel) 

unlike those of humans, which is a useful adaptation used in laparoscopy and which may be used in Smart Phones, if/when the technology gets small enough:

Surgery, Smart Phones, and Compound Eyes

     Compound eyes are especially useful in low light situations and in order to be able to see 360 ° to be aware of predators:

     Experience seeing like an insect (it's NOT what you think)


      A recent paper describes discovery of the not-usually-fossilized soft parts of the trilobite eyes as flower like:

          Discovery of trilobite eye soft parts

     I think it might make me see a little buggy though.

     To end today: Tri a lo' bite of this quote: 

     "I cannot stress often enough that what science is all about is not proving things to be true but proving them to be false." -Lawrence M. Krauss, theoretical physicist (b. 1954) 

What do you think?

Steph
(aka Word Woman)

E-femur-al Find: Largest Dinosaur Bone Discovered in Argentina

    The discovery of the largest dinosaur bone in Argentina is the source of an e-femur-al delight today. It is nearly 8 feet long! The dinosaur, as yet unnamed, belongs to the class of dinosaurs called titanosaurs, due to their large size:

      The bones were discovered 160 km from Trelew, Patagonia, Argentina:

     Here are a couple of links to the announcement from earlier this week:

Titanosaur Femur Found--7.9 feet long

Patagonian Dinosaur Bones Found


     These vegetarian dinosaurs weighed as much as 14 full grown elephants. That's a lot of plants consumed. They lived during the Cretaceous Period, about 95 m. y. ago, represented below:

     What would you name the new species of dinosaur? Here's a link to the names of other Patagonian dinosaurs for inspiration:

             Patagonian Dinosaurs

Can you top Piatnitzkysaurus Floresi?

E-femur-ally,

Word Woman (Scientific Steph)

Bonus random-dot stereogram or autostereogram: What animal do you see?

Bonus opalized wood:

Bonus Australian Opal

        Hmmmm, maybe a week on opals may be in our future, o pals ;-).