North Pole Weather 11/19/12

The sun won’t rise until 9:42 this morning, and after a mere 5 hours 47 minutes will set at 3:30 this afternoon. It now gets only about 5 ½° above the horizon at its highest, which makes driving a real problem, especially driving south. The trees casting their shadows on the roof of my favorite restaurant at noon are a considerable distance to the south.

We’ve had a few flakes of snow this past week, but no measurable accumulation. It’s getting pretty cold, though, with daily highs often below 0°F at the Fairbanks airport, and colder where I am. With clear skies, the nights are fairly consistently below -20°F—a little cold for aurora watching. Wind, which is unusual up here when it’s cold. is making it feel even colder. At least the forecast doesn’t look like 40 below for Thanksgiving, which has happened in the past.

Afternoon update: it’s crystal clear, temperature around zero, and a brisk wind blowing. I just heard on the radio that it could reach 40 below tonight in low-lying areas, and since I live in a frost hollow, that could mean here, especially if the wind drops. Thank goodness my house is well insulated!

#Writemotivation: I’ve done most of the first-round edits on Rescue Operation. I might do a couple more bits from Zhaim’s POV, but I think I’ll have it ready for the serious edits by the middle of the week.

Six Sentence Sunday

Welcome back to War’s End. Ginger is trying to free Kelty, Madame Irela is sitting on a log, Bounce is off hunting for Audi, and Coralie’s survival training is kicking in. If you want more details, click “Index” above, and then “Six Sentence Sunday.”

Survival training? What we get in the segments on the weather report is seven steps: Recognition that you’re in a survival situation, inventory of what you have with you, shelter (including clothing), water, food, signals, and play. Inventory has to wait until they’re all together and Ginger has time to get the medical kit open. The signals don’t apply: Coralie has just urged them to move out of the clearing, asking if they want to be visible to satellites.

“We don’t,” Kelty agreed as he managed to pull a hand free.  “Thanks, Ginger.  Mostly it’s my clothes that are stuck, not me.  Maybe if I can wiggle out of them ….”

“Let me cut your hair loose, first.  You’ll have to wear it short for a while.”

Want more snippets? You’re in luck! This is Six Sentence Sunday, and well over a hundred authors have posted six sentence bits from their work, from rough draft to published. Just click on the logo below to find them and find how to join. (And we all love comments.)

Silver Dapple—Another Dilution Gene in Horses

Silver on brown. Without silver, this horse would be mostly black, with black mane and tail.

Silver is another dilution gene in horses, quite distinct from cream/pearl, dun, or champagne. The silver dapple color is quite common in ponies, especially Shetlands. Body color on these ponies ranges from chocolate to blue, often with quite pronounced dappling and light mane and tail. But the gene occurs as well in many other types of horses, especially the gaited breeds in America and a number of breeds in Europe.

Different breeds and areas have different nomenclatures for horses with the silver gene. In Australia, silver is called taffy. In the Rocky Mountain Horse, it is referred to as chocolate.

Typical color for silver on black. Note the light eyelashes.

In all cases the gene occurs at the silver (Z) locus, and the alleles are silver (Z^Z) which is dominant, and wild-type (Z⁺) which is recessive. It is possible to test for the presence of the silver allele, which is at the PMEL17 locus.

The dilution genes we have discussed so far all have the same effect on black and red pigment, or somewhat more effect on red. Silver appears to have no effect on red pigment, and a highly variable effect on black. Interestingly, the coarsest hairs, whiskers and eyelashes, are most affected, often appearing nearly white. Manes and tails, also coarse, are generally affected more than the body coat.

Silver Dapple; Rocky Mountain Horse.

A genetically black horse may have the body color lightened so little it still looks black. On the other hand, the body may appear blue, chocolate or dead-grass color, but without the reddish cast typical of a chestnut. The mane and tail are generally lighter than the body, and the lower legs may be a little paler near the hoof. The contrast between mane and body color may vary—at one extreme the horse may have a mane only a little lighter than the body; at the other a black horse with a white mane and tail is quite possible. A chocolate silver with light mane and tail may be mistaken for a flaxen-maned liver chestnut.

Silver dapple on a bay background.

A genetically bay horse may show little effect of the silver gene aside from the light eyelashes and whiskers, or may have a variable amount of white hair in the mane and tail and a lightening of the black lower legs toward the hoof. The body color stays red, being unaffected by the silver gene. At the light extreme, a silver bay (called a red silver) may be very difficult to distinguish from a flaxen-maned chestnut. Usually the lower legs darken to near-black before lightening again near the hoof, but it may take a gene test to be sure.

Although I have not seen a red silver in person, I have seen what I suspect to be a buckskin silver. Such a horse could easily be the result of at least two types of breeding expected to produce palomino: a red silver misidentified as a chestnut to a palomino, or a chestnut carrying silver invisibly to a buckskin.

The owner identified this horse as a palomino, but I strongly suspect it is buckskin (cream on bay) with the silver dapple gene. Palominos not uncommonly have black hair in the mane and tail, but very rarely on the lower legs. This illustrates the difficulty of identifying horses with multiple dilution genes.

Clear chestnut completely hides the presence of the silver gene, though in theory a chestnut with a large amount of interspersed black hair or black eyelashes or whiskers would have that black replaced by interspersed blue or chocolate an the body and white eyelashes and whiskers. Without a magnifying glass and a very careful, hair-by-hair examination, however, this would likely go undetected. Since skin color is mostly due to black pigment, that also could be affected, though the silver dapples I have seen have normal skin color.

Silver dapple has been a rare color in North American horses other than ponies, but this is changing as breeders select for rare and unusual colors.

Some silver dapples, especially those with two copies of the silver allele, do have an ocular abnormality, though it is rare that vision is actually affected. This may be due to a linked gene, rather than the silver allele itself, but it is probably safest to have the eyes of silver animals intended for breeding checked.

Upper photos courtesy of Safyre Sporthorses.

Jarn’s Journal Year 4 Day 265

Year 4 Day 265

The river flows into the tideless sea, all right, though it isn’t as tideless as I first thought. When I checked the water level with the position of the moon over several fivedays, it became obvious that there is a very slight rise and fall, so this salt water body must connect somewhere with the tidal sea I found far to the west. Storms and offshore and onshore winds, however, have much more effect on the water level. It is not as salty as the seaway I followed earlier, though still saltier than the open sea once I get well away from the river delta.

I have cut back a little on my exploration, studying the delta in the morning, teleporting back to my home base to check on Songbird at noon, and following the coast westward in the afternoon. So far the coast westward is primarily desert, though there is greenery now and then where there are springs. There must be mountain regions where the water table is recharged, but I have not found them yet.

The delta is fascinating since I figured out how to set the warnoffs to repel the hordes of biting insects — not to mention the water snakes, the hippos and the crocodiles. I don’t think the People would be very happy here. Their advantage of height, of being able to see over the vegetation, would be totally lost in these reed beds.

I wish Songbird would hurry up and have her baby. Meerkat thinks it could be any day now.

Jarn’s Journal is the fictional journal of a fictional human-like alien stranded on Earth roughly 125,000 years ago. He has been befriended by early humans who insist on treating him as a god, much to his annoyance. Right now he is trying to map the coast of Africa while worrying about the child he rescued earlier, who is about to have a child herself. The whole Journal to date is on my author site.

This is a Test

This is, quite frankly, a test–I’ve never tried posting an audio file before, and this one was recorded on my iPhone and e-mailed to myself to get it on the computer. I’m reading a short excerpt from my first book, Homecoming, where Marna is faced with the decision of whether or not to leave Riya, the planet where she was born and where she has been the only survivor of a plague for more than two hundred years. Those of you who use audio files on your blogs, I would more than welcome any help on how to do this.

Let me know if this works!

Yes, the trees are wrong for Riya!

Quotes from Anne McCaffrey

The first six quotes tweeted from @sueannbowling between November 8 and 14 were all from The White Dragon, by Anne McCaffrey.

“You have to be a lot of people. That is hard.” Ruth’s comment to Jaxsom, after listing the multiple roles Jaxsom has to fill.

“There’s a difference between communication and gossip.” Jaxsom, reprimanding F’lessan for talking about Weyr business in a public meeting.

“There’s such a thing as being too popular.” Jaxsom is trying to teach Ruth to chew firestone in secret. But the white dragon attracts a swarm of fire-lizards wherever he goes, and some of them undoubtedly look to people who should not know what Jaxsom is doing.

“Looking ahead is far more constructive than looking behind.” Robinton, in a discussion of the Southern continent. What is to be done about it?

“It’s never easy to be patient, but patience can be rewarding.” F’lar, talking to Jaxsom about Jaxsom’s ambiguous position—but his mind is more than half on his relationship with Lessa.

“Things were not as they seemed.” Jaxsom is growing up.

“A plague isn’t going to spread through vacuum!” Bowling, Homecoming. Lai is arguing to the crew of the Bounceabout that finding or even orbiting a plague planet is not a risk.

North Pole Weather 11/12/12

The sun will rise at 9:18 this morning, and set at 3:54 this afternoon, for 6 hours 39 minutes of alleged daylight. Today will be 6 minutes and 35 seconds less than yesterday, but the rate of reduction is slowing. By the end of the month, we’ll be losing only a little more than 5 minutes a day.

Last week started cold, then abruptly warmed to 20 above on Friday. Result? Frost formation on the cold-soaked roads, and marks in the roadside snow all over the place where vehicles had gone into the ditch. The warmth was short-lived, though—we’re back to highs near zero. We did get a little more snow—the depth was up to 6” when it got too dark to see yesterday.

One of the reasons I don’t like driving on white ice. Where are the roads?

On #writemotivation I’ve written two more of Zhaim’s scenes, along with Jacyn’s, and I’ve reworked Tod’s story to give more show and less tell. Still a lot more to do, but I think I’m good up through Chapter 24. (Update Monday 8 pm: I’m now on Chapter 30, almost halfway through. Have to write another bit from my villain’s POV to finish this chapter.)

Finally, I’m going to do some griping for Captcha Craptcha day. Good timing, as yesterday was Six Sentence Sunday and Saturday was Science Fiction and Fantasy Saturday. Most of the blogs I visited were (thank goodness) captcha free, but I’ve finally reached the point where if one try

No, it’s not salt. This sidewalk is actually heated.

at a captcha doesn’t work, that blog simply does not get my comments. I’m tired of being unable to figure out photographed numbers that are unreadable even with the aid of a magnifying glass, trying to guess whether (and where) I am supposed to put spaces between separated characters, and trying to figure out whether that’s a w or two scrunched-together v’s. I don’t use a captcha on my wordpress blog because I don’t need one: the spam filter has yet to let anything through that I have a problem with. (If anything, it sometimes catches legitimate comments, so I do have to check the spam filter regularly.)

Six Sentence Sunday

Welcome back to War’s End. Ginger is trying to free Kelty, Madame Irela is sitting on a log, Bounce is off hunting for Audi, and Coralie’s survival training is kicking in. If you want more details, click “Index” above, and then “Six Sentence Sunday.”

Survival training? What we get in the segments on the weather report is seven steps: Recognition that you’re in a survival situation, inventory of what you have with you, shelter (including clothing), water, food, signals, and play. The signals don’t apply: they’re in enemy territory. This last is not new to Coralie; she’s spent the last 8 years in a war. But she’s reached shelter, water, and food–and she’s realizing that the methods she knows for determining what’s safe to eat won’t work here.

But how could she trust what the local animals ate when the local animals–if there were any larger than the insects–were totally unfamiliar?  Even binding things against her skin as a preliminary test seemed dubious, given Kelty’s plight.

“The survival kit should have a few emergency bars,” Ginger replied as she soaked Kelty’s hand with alcohol.  “Catching rainwater’s a good idea, and so’s shelter–but I don’t know quite how.”

“We should get out of this clearing, as soon as we’re all together and Kelty’s free,” Coralie said.  “We don’t want to be visible from satellites, do we?”

Want more snippets? You’re in luck! This is Six Sentence Sunday, and well over a hundred authors have posted six sentence bits from their work, from rough draft to published. Just click on the logo below to find them. (And we all love comments.)

Champagne: Another Dilution Gene in Horses

Champagne Tennessee Walking Horse

The champagne allele, at the champagne locus, (Ch) was for many years ignored or confused with palomino, buckskin or dun. In fact the first edition of Sponenberg, published in 1983, has some of the same photographs of hoses, identified as “pink-skinned palomino,” or “lilac dun.” used in the second edition (1996) to illustrate the champagne group of colors. It was a relatively rare allele until recently, but is now known to occur in a number of breeds of horses, and is becoming more common due to selection for the champagne colors.

The champagne locus has two alleles, champagne (Ch^C) and wild-type (Ch⁺). Champagne is dominant to wild-type, though a horse with two champagne alleles may be slightly lighter than a horse with one champagne and one wild-type. In general, however, one cannot look at a horse in the champagne color group and say whether one or two copies of champagne allele are present. Certainly the difference is not nearly as marked as between buckskin and perlino.

Another champagne, I think a classic champagne, with lighter points.

The diluting effect on red is similar to a single cream allele, but champagne has far more effect on black pigment than does cream. Since the pigment in the skin and eyes of all horses is black (eumelanin,) eyes and skin color are affected by the champagne gene. Skin color is paler than normal, often with some mottling. Most champagne foals are born with blue eyes which darken to amber, and the foal coat is often darker than the adult coat.

Champagne also tends to produce a very shiny look to the body coat, as well as reverse dappling. In the case of champagne imposed on clear chestnut, the result is an almost metallic gold color. These gold champagnes are easily confused with palominos, and in fact may be closer to the “new-minted gold coin” body color than the commoner dark-skinned palominos. Genetically, however, they are quite different, though both are dilutions of chestnut base color.

If the base color is black, the result is what is called a classic champagne. The color is not uniform. The body is diluted to a sort of pinkish beige, but the mane, tail and to some extent the lower legs are a darker shade of brown.  Why this contrast occurs when the base color is uniform black is not clear—microscopic examination of the pigment granules is needed in champagnes, as in another color group, the silvers.

Champagne imposed on bay gives amber champagne. Horses of this color have a shiny yellow to tan body color with chocolate points. Actually looking at a horse, it is surprisingly hard to distinguish between classic champagne and amber champagne. I think both photos are of amber champagnes, but I am not absolutely certain.

Both bay and chestnut vary a great deal in the depth of red color and the amount of interspersed black hair in the body coat, and the addition of the champagne gene does not change this. Thus there is a wide variation in the exact shade of color in the various types of champagne, and I suspect that many champagnes are still not correctly identified. The champagne gene has now been identified with a mutation in the gene SLC36A1, and a commercial test for the mutant allele is now available. Champagne is not known to be associated with any health problems.

(First published 12/5/2010 at which time I had neither photographs nor the DNA information.)

Jarn’s Journal Year 4 Day 240

Jarn’s Journal is the fictional journal of a fictional alien stranded on Earth, in Africa, 125,000 years ago, He has found and been accepted as a god (much to his annoyance) by a group of primitive humans. He is trying to map the coastline of Africa while worrying about the child he rescued being about to have her own first child. The full journal (as far as it has been written) is on my author website.

Year 4 Day 240

Meerkat says another moon cycle, and laughs behind our backs at both Giraffe and me. At least we can keep busy, Giraffe with supplying food and hides while I get on with my mapping and contribute an occasional exotic edible.

I decided to investigate both the salty sea and the north-flowing river, spending half of each day on one and then teleporting to the farthest point I have explored on the other. Today I reached the northern end of the salty sea, and found I could levitate high enough to see another ocean to the north, and far to my left a green, swampy-looking area that must be the delta of the river. Tomorrow I will follow the river, which seems the water route to the tideless sea.

The salty ocean does not actually connect with the tideless one, though even a slight rise in sea level would cause a breakthrough. The northward-flowing river, however, evidently does. It’s a good thing I can levitate, as the quick look I got did not suggest that walking the bank of this river would be either easy or comfortable. If nothing else, it looks like an ideal habitat for blood-sucking insects!

I hope Songbird has her child soon, as I don’t think she’ll be able to walk if she gets much larger.