North Pole Weather 6/10/13

The sun rose at 3:09 this morning and will set 21 hours and 21 minutes later, at 12:32 tomorrow morning. The gain in daylight has slowed down a little; we’re now gaining about 5 minutes a day. The sun at noon is fairly high in the sky, over 48°. The weather is cloudy but generally pleasant – the spirea was photographed in natural light with cloud-covered sky at 10 pm.

Normally, I would have my garden planted by now. Between my east coast trip and a sprained wrist I finally got the zucchini in yesterday, and am going to try to get the herb plants in the ground today. No beans or peas this year, though I may try a late planting of lettuce. That, however, will depend very much on how I feel after the surgery scheduled for next Friday.

It’s starting to look like summer. The wild roses are budding, the spirea is in full bloom, and the dwarf columbine is showing color. Indoors, I have three orchids in bloom, all reblooming from last fall. Unfortunately the summer mosquitoes, the small ones that come in clouds, are as numerous as ever. I was wearing shorts when I went out to take the pictures, and the mosquitoes drove me in almost at once.

Weekend Writing Warriors

Sunday’s the day for snippets from the work of several writers. You can go to Weekend Writing Warriors (click the logo above) or the Snippet Sunday facebook page (click the logo below) for a list of participating authors and links to their snippets. (My apologies for leaving out the links. It’s fixed now.)

I’ll probably be reading only today–just found out I have to go to Anchorage for surgery, and I’m frantically trying to get everything squared away here, so I’m pretty busy..

I’m nearing the end of the chapter I planned to post from War’s End. The castaways have finally understood why they found themselves tumbling though the jungle instead of on a spaceship, but they still need to figure out exactly where they are and how they can contact help. Kelty has just said that if there’s a hidden Confederation base on planet he doesn’t know how to find it, and is still speaking.

“Or where we are, for that matter. We could probably work out latitude, but there’s no way of getting longitude without information we don’t have. And if Colo’s working with the Maung-possessed any base here has very likely been betrayed and taken out. Or maybe not—that in itself would direct the Council’s attention to Rakal, and Colo won’t want that right now. Though Council attention would be our best hope.”

Audi checked something on the reader before she spoke. “If we have a working timepiece on Central time, we can get the longitude by observing local noon. If the skies clear up.”

Longitude and clocks—that was a historical problem, too. But between the darkness and the rain, all they can do now is plan for the next day. I’m going to leave them there next week, and break with another excerpt from Horse Power, which I plan to make free next weekend. I’d love reviews.

My Maternal DNA

A schematic of a DNA molecule. (Public Domain image from Wikimedia commons.)

Every human being alive today has a maternal line, daughter from mother, that traces back to the same woman, who lived in Africa some 180,000 years ago. This comes from analyzing the mitochondrial DNA of people all over the world. There were small changes, mutations, of this mDNA over time, and these can be used to trace the branches of this woman’s descendants.

The first important mutation I carry is called L3. Although L3 is found today in Africa, it is thought to be the branch of the first woman’s descendants that first moved out of Africa, and is found today all over the world. This mutation is thought to have originated somewhere in East Africa some 70,000 years ago.

The next important mutation is called N, and it probably occurred in East Africa or western Asia about 60,000 years ago. This woman’s descendants probably traveled down the Nile and crossed into the modern Levant. They are very widespread today, but most important in the Near East and Europe. Chances are they were still very darkly pigmented, as they lived in a very sunny area. (Light coloration is thought to be an adaptation to a need to let sunlight through the skin to produce vitamin D.)

A mutation in a woman of the N group, probably about 55,000 years ago in West Asia, is called R. Apparently the descendants with the R mutation stayed with the parent N group, and both groups moved together through Turkey, the Middle East, and southern Russia.

A subgroup of R, called RO, occurred about 41,000 years ago somewhere in West Asia. This group produced the Cro-Magnons in Europe, but is most frequent today in Arabia and also moved into the Indus Valley.

The next important mutation in my female line was called HV. Like the M and RO groups, it arose in Western Asia. The Palestinian area is not only a political hotbed today, it is the origin of a large part of the “white” race. This mutation occurred relatively recently, around 22,000 years ago.

The next mutation is a little confusing, as the mutation to H is assumed to have occurred about 28,000 years ago, also in West Asia. It should be pointed out that the age estimates can be significantly skewed by such events as population bottlenecks. H is in any event the dominant maternal genotype in Western Europe.

The mutation to H1 is assumed to have take place a mere 18,000 years ago, still in West Asia. This line is again most common today in Western Europe. Some of these individuals may have been light skinned, in an evolutionary ploy to avoid rickets. I might point out that it is now recognized that at least two separate mutations to light skin have occurred, one in the West and one in Eastern Asia. Both help with the production of Vitamin D, but only the Western form gives an increased likelihood of skin cancer.

I have one final mutation, of undetermined age, called HB. This one is fairly rare. It may have arisen in Central Asia and runs between 1 and 2 percent of modern Europeans.

Overall, my ancestors in female line seem to have done a lot of traveling!

(The information above was taken from my results at the Genographic Project website. What does your mitochondrial DNA show?)

Jarn’s Journal Year 6 Day 230

 Year 6 Day 230

I am hopeless at flint knapping.

All I managed to do with the obsidian was cut my hands, but Little Gnu said that was a difficult stone to work with and finally showed me a sample of the easiest stone to use for simple tools: a variety of chalcedony. “I’ve seen stuff like that in my mapping,” I said, and brought him a sample. “Yes,” he said excitedly. “Could you bring more? I will show you how we make our tools.”

I brought him an armload of the stone, and he produced a simple butchering tool so fast I could hardly follow what he was doing Then I tried.

It’s a good thing I had brought him plenty, because I spoiled at least half of what I had brought. I wonder if I could shape it with my mind?

Jarn’s Journal is the journal of a fictional human-like alien stranded in Africa roughly 125,000 years ago. He has been adopted as a god (much to his annoyance) by a group of primitive humans, and is using his esper abilities to map the continent. His story to date is on my author site.

Blogathon Blues

I knew when I signed up for the blogathon it would present problems, particularly since I had registered for the Kachemak Bay Writer’s Conference June 14-18 and I was getting a late start on the garden. I was not expecting to:

Cambridge brick sidewalks. These are in better repair than those where I fell. tripping on an asphalt patch that was actually a curb.

(1) sprain my wrist when I tripped and fell on a Cambridge sidewalk a week ago, or

(2) have a Doctor’s appointment made Monday to talk about what I thought was a minor but annoying problem balloon over two days into a projected operation in Anchorage, 350 miles away.

I normally blog four days a week: Monday (Alaska weather), Wednesday (quotation contexts), Friday (Jarn’s Journal ) and Sunday (snippets from my writing.) I thought I’d fill in Saturdays with my genealogy from Genographics, and  Tuesdays and Thursdays with my experiences at the conference and in self publishing. Well, I’ve had to cancel the conference (I’ll be in surgery when it opens, and the surgery has nothing to do with my fall in Cambridge.)

I don’t know yet if I’ll have WiFi in the hospital, but the Wednesday and Sunday posts for June are already scheduled. I hope to get next week’s and Jarn’s Journal through the end of the month written and scheduled before I fly to Anchorage Tuesday. Beyond that? I have just had my collection of old slides digitized and I have lots of other photos from the Corning Glass Museum, so you may be treated to a lot of pictures on Tuesdays and Thursdays. But I’m still going to try for a post a day.

Quotes from Andre Norton

These are the contexts of the quotes tweeted from @sueannbowling between May 30 and June 5, 2013

“Perhaps is sometimes all one can ask for.” Andre Norton, Lore of the Witch World, “Changeling.” Trystan. Even a ghost of hope may sometimes be better than nothing.

“Your ways are not ours, and under our skies remember that.” Andre Norton, The Gate of the Cat. Ethetur to the Witch Wittle when she tried to behave in Escore as she would have in Estcarp

“What she could learn, that she would.” Andre Norton, The Gate of the Cat. Kelsie, trying to come to terms with Escore.

“It would seem that here were balances.” Andre Norton, The Gate of the Cat. Kelsie, finding herself facing something that seems the obverse of the winged being that helped her earlier.

“Had she come to depend too much on that because so far it had not failed her?” Andre Norton, The Gate of the Cat. Kelsie has come to depend on the witch-jewel she does not understand.

“To everything there was a limit.” Andre Norton, The Gate of the Cat. Kelsie wondering if she and Yonan could go any further.

“Injured birds are usually best left to themselves.” Bowling, “Horse Power.” Amber is trying to get her ten- and eleven-year old children to quit bringing injured birds into the house as pets.

The Corning Museum of Glass

One of the places I love to go while visiting my sister in Ithaca, New York is the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York. It’s about an hour’s drive away, and really too large for an oldie like me to cover in a day. But I did get some pictures. Unfortunately I did not get all the details about the artists, but enjoy a few pictures.

Weather at North Pole, Alaska 6/3/13

Home again! And during the two weeks I was away it’s gone from the end of winter, with snow patches still in the yard, to summer. The trees aren’t fully leafed out and it’s dry – extreme fire danger. But the daytime temperatures are now in the 80’s. I doubt that the few drops of rain we had last night will help much.

The sun rose this morning at 3:26 am and will set at 12:15 tomorrow morning. That’s a total of 3 hours and 8 minutes with the sun below the horizon, and I know from the ride back from the airport near solar midnight Saturday that the sky will remain peach pink all night. Sunrise and sunset blend into each other this far north as midsummer approaches. The day is still increasing in length by about 6 minutes a day, but that will taper off soon.

The delphiniums and columbines are growing like mad, and the white violets are already blooming. The spirea has leafed out and is even showing flower buds, with the roses a little behind. The lilac and the Amur Maple are barely opening their leaf buds. And incredibly, I haven’t seen a mosquito yet. Maybe it’s too dry for them?

(The metal bars in the photo? I haven’t gotten around to removing the cage that keeps the moose out in the winter.)

Weekend Writing Warriors, War’s End

Back to War’s End, and Madame Irela, who’s just volunteered to feed Michelle until Coralie has milk for her, is speaking. I’m entering this in Cambridge, but should be home (if exhausted) by the time it goes live.

“You concentrate on keeping us alive, at least until you have milk for her again.”

Coralie hesitated, but Michelle had no objections, and Madame Irela clearly knew what she was doing. “All right,” Coralie said once she was convinced that Michelle was as satisfied as she was going to be. “We need to know what we have — let’s check the emergency kit first — and discuss whether we’re going to stay here, look for a better place, or try to find help.”

“I’d say here or within a few hours walk, if we can,” Kelty said as he laid out the contents of the emergency kit. “Michelle would have brought us to some place that felt safe to her. Any ‘help’ we could find on Rakal would more likely than not be Maung-possessed. There may be a Confederation base somewhere on Rakal, but if so it’ll be well hidden and I have no idea of where it might be.”

So they have some idea of what to do once it’s light again.

There are lots of us offering snippets from our work today. Click the logo at the top for Weekend Writing Warriors, and the one on the bottom for the facebook page for Snippet Sunday.

DNA: We All Have It

Where did we come from?

A schematic of a DNA molecule. (Public Domain image from Wikimedia commons.)

I just got the results from my Genographic DNA study, and I thought I’d share them. To start with, I thought I’d explain a little about DNA, and how the Genographics study uses it.

DNA is the abbreviation for deoxyribonucleic acid, and thank goodness it has a widely used abbreviation! If you enlarged a molecule of it enormously it would look rather like a twisted ladder with four different kinds of “rungs.” The genetic information is coded by the order of these kinds of rungs. I’m not going to get technical here, but if you want more information have a look at Wikipedia.

DNA is the information-carrying part of chromosomes. Most normal human beings have 46 chromosomes: 23 from the mother and 23 from the father. (The rare exceptions generally have some kind of medical problem, such as Down’s Syndrome which results from having three copies of one particular chromosome.) These chromosomes are in the nucleus of just about every cell in your body. In addition, the cell body has structures called mitochondria which are essential for metabolizing nutrients. These mitochondria have their own DNA, but since the cell body and mitochondria come from the egg cell, the mitochondrial DNA is inherited only from the mother.

There is one pair of the 23 which is special, called the sex chromosomes. These chromosomes come in two forms, X and Y. The Y-chromosome determines maleness, and seems to have little other genetic information. The X chromosome has a normal complement of genes. A normal woman has two X chromosomes. A normal man has one X (from his mother) and one Y (from his father.) Individuals with other combinations such as XXY occur rarely. The important thing for us is that Y chromosomes are passed only from male to male.

Thus there are three types of genetic analysis which can be done: nuclear, mitochondrial and Y-chromosome.

The nuclear DNA is what makes me, me and you, you. It comes from both parents, and is remixed in every generation. Your nuclear DNA can be compared with that of indigenous populations throughout the world, and interpreted as what percent of your ancestry came from what area.

Mitochondrial DNA is passed almost without change from mother to child. Thus my mitochondrial DNA is the same as my mother’s mother’s mother’s mother’s mother, a woman named Ellen Carr. Changes do occur, very slowly, and these can be used to track back how my maternal line traveled out of Africa.

I don’t have a Y-chromosome, so the Genographics results don’t give me any information on my father’s line. A cousin, a son of my father’s brother, has been tested by another company, so I know I am in Bowling Group 6. But I don’t have the pathway my paternal ancestors took out of Africa.

Next week I’ll retell the story Genographics told of my maternal line.