Sounds like things are going pretty well with Ally.
Rene--The newspaper article WAS well-done; not a breath of sensationalism. Maybe it's about time for this particular further extension of civil liberties; Perry vs. Schwarzenegger could do it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_v._Schwarzenegger
Cat--re skin tones: folks got lighter-skinned at higher latitudes because the solar flux is less, and we need UV light to penetrate our skins so the form of vitamin D we absorb from our food can be transformed into the form we need for healthy bones. There have been instances of folks of subsaharan inheritance moving to northern climes who suffer from vitamin D deficiency. Of course the folks with pale skins are more susceptible to radiation damage at low latitudes. Many people of East Asian inheritance (and the same would, I believe, be true of Amerinds) have very light skins when protected from the sun, but can turn quite dark when chronically exposed to the sun. Surely there are other mammals that get all the active vitamin D they need without pale, furless skins. Probably we lack some enzyme or other. Ditto some other critters can synthesize vitamin C, but we must have a dietary source. So skin color could be incidental for creatures with the right enzyme complement. Think of all the things that affect coloration of other creatures--they could apply to hominoids as well. As for other morphological adaptations, something that happened to both Neandethals and Homo sapiens was that although they were gracile (thin and long-limbed) to start with (that works well in Africa, being hot and all), when exposed to very cold climes they became shorter and more compact, which decreases heat loss. Among H. sapiens this is most obvious in the Eskimaux (Gad, how often do I get to use that plural?), who also have adaptations in their noses and eyelids.
listener--you have much more colorful bumblebees than we do hereabouts!
I am jealous of Daughter*in*Art*School's new iMac--but I will wait (I think) until they have the same CPU in one with a smaller screen.
The $$ from my Alaska job came in yesterday--sure makes things easier, even some to spare. No word yet on whether I will be needed up there again for rebuttal. (I wouldn't mind.)
Got tax returns finished and into the mail--had set more than enough aside from my consulting business this time, which again makes things a good bit easier.
Discovered just the other day that absinthe has been fully legal in the United States since 2007 (it was banned in 1912). The good stuff is expensive, but interestingly the ersatz stuff is about the same price. (They evidently exploit consumers' ignorance.) I am playing with the idea of buying a bottle, probably the only one I ever will. Some of the best seems to come from a distillery in Washington. Well, we'll see. And now to bed.
Eternally Thankful to listener for planting those in his honor.
kid2 is closing on his house next month and we'll be planting some there, too. In the fall, we're planning to put in tulip bulbe in honor of my gpa ~ the folks neighbor's did so on their cul-de-sac in '95 and they're still coming up every year! This is the gpa that lived w/ us when kid2 was born :-)
Cat, meant to say ~~ Having known gazillions of Chinese and Japanese, and hundreds of Native Americans, differentiating skin color between the two groups is not even possible, lol! Nor have I ever seen either a yellow person nor a red person in either group. I guess old tags die hard? My hubby and I agreed that he was kind of peach colored. . . . My Ontario Native friend said he's seen 19th C photos of tribes, and while color wasn't part of that package, within single tribes darkness/paleness varied tremendously. The same was true in China.
As for other colors, I'd guess that variations are available via mutation, endlessly. All it would take would be the original mutation, and for the local cohort to decide that it was attractive and valuable for some reason -- over and against the human instinct to kill what's different from us. That could, it seems, be a marker for how far a race has evolved. . . .
As we age, we lose the capacity to activate vitamin D in the skin.
Studies suggest that, between ages 20 and 70, there is a 75% reduction in the ability to activate vitamin D. The capacity of conversion from 25 (OH) vitamin D to 1,25 di(OH) vitamin D also diminishes.
Holick M. Sunlight and vitamin D for bone health and prevention of autoimmune diseases, cancers, and cardiovascular disease.
From Holick, M. 2006
This would explain why 70-year olds come to the office, just back from the Caribbean sporting dark brown tans, are still deficient, often severely, in blood levels of vitamin D (25(OH) vitamin D). A tan does not equal vitamin D.
Courtesy Ipanemic
A practical way of looking at it is that anyone 40 years old or older has lost the majority of ability for vitamin D activation.
This often makes me wonder if the loss of vitamin D activating potential is nature's way to get rid of us. After all, after 40, we've pretty much had our opportunity to recreate and make our contribution to the species (at least in a primitive world in which humans evolved): we've exhausted our reproductive usefulness to the species.
Is the programmed decline of vitamin D skin activation a way to ensure that we develop diseases of senescence (aging)? The list of potential consequences of vitamin D deficiency includes: osteoporosis, poor balance and coordination, falls and fractures; cancer of the breast, bladder, colon, prostate, and blood; reductions in HDL, increases in triglycerides; increased inflammation (C-reactive protein, CRP); declining memory and mentation; coronary heart disease.
Isn't that also pretty much a list that describes aging?
A fascinating argument in support of this idea came from study from St Thomas’ Hospital and the London School of Medicine:
Higher serum vitamin D concentrations are associated with longer leukocyte telomere length in women
Telomeres are the "tails" of DNA that were formerly thought to be mistakes, just coding for nonsense. But more recent thinking has proposed that telomeres may provide a counting mechanism that shortens with aging and accelerates with stress and illness. This study suggests that both vitamin D and inflammation (CRP) impact telomere length: the lower the vitamin D, the shorter the telomere length, particularly when inflammation is greater.
Data supporting vitamin D's effects on preventing or treating cancer, osteoporosis, lipid abnormalities, inflammation, cardiovascular disease, etc., is developing rapidly.
Now the big question: If declining vitamin D is nature's way of ensuring our decline and death, does maintaining higher vitamin D also maintain youthfulness?
I don't have an answer, but it's a really intriguing idea.
I guess it depends how you look at it. Jung maintained that back into the mists of humanity the aged have always been valued for their practical knowledge, of hunting and gathering territories, for instance, and child rearing among other things.He thinks that age, or perhaps societal value of and care for the aged, has evolutionary value.
As to skin color: sorry to sound so ignorant. Still, I have seen Chinese and Indians who had a definite yellowish cast to the skin. But that's neither here nor there, I suppose. I really would love for the natives to have blue skin. As Alan pointed out, they would have different metabolism and chemistry than humans from Earth. But, can you just imagine the reaction when Earthmen caught the first sight of a blue humanoid? Talk about shoot first, investigate later. *sigh* And it would be the Earthmen doing the shooting. I don't think Natives had fire arms, not because they are stupid, but because they are peaceable. They don't hunt to excess and they don't hunt creatures they can't eat and/or otherwise use.
Oh, I donno. I don't want to produce a six hundred and fifty page saga, and yet Juliette is right that I need to know as much as humanly possible about the planet in order for the characters to grow naturally out of their milieu. Only that requires creating an entire world... Every time I think I've got a handle on one detail, several more points requiring research pop into my mind. I had hoped to have the book finished by the end of this year. But, I'm back in the depressive phase and doubt it will ever be finished.
Still making progress on the computer. Got a new USB hub today that gives me enough ports to plug everything in properly. And it works off an external power supply, rather than drawing all power from the computer. I suspect some of the problems with USB ports I've been having were from the computer's USB power not being enough to support everything I was trying to plug into it.
Also got Office 2007 installed and my old e-mail imported. The irony, for those who haven't noticed, is that Office 2010 will be out in September.
But still have work that's supposed to get done tonight. Looking at the time, I suspect I'm not going to make it.
Glad to hear that Ally is doing well and that no one else appears to have serious problems.
Evidently, the Eskimaux (lol!) get their vitamin D from fish oils, never get vitamin D deficiency, and often lived to a 100, without degenerative diseases of aging. Life span could be shorter due to accidents and polar bears and the like, but not like our illnesses of aging. . . .
Howard's first, and so are Rene's Bluebells.
ReplyDeleteI have been absent--no problems, just busy as the dickens. But things appear to have calmed down now.
ReplyDeleteGetting caught up...
ReplyDeleteSounds like things are going pretty well with Ally.
Rene--The newspaper article WAS well-done; not a breath of sensationalism.
Maybe it's about time for this particular further extension of civil liberties; Perry vs. Schwarzenegger could do it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_v._Schwarzenegger
Cat--re skin tones: folks got lighter-skinned at higher latitudes because the solar flux is less, and we need UV light to penetrate our skins so the form of vitamin D we absorb from our food can be transformed into the form we need for healthy bones. There have been instances of folks of subsaharan inheritance moving to northern climes who suffer from vitamin D deficiency. Of course the folks with pale skins are more susceptible to radiation damage at low latitudes. Many people of East Asian inheritance (and the same would, I believe, be true of Amerinds) have very light skins when protected from the sun, but can turn quite dark when chronically exposed to the sun. Surely there are other mammals that get all the active vitamin D they need without pale, furless skins. Probably we lack some enzyme or other. Ditto some other critters can synthesize vitamin C, but we must have a dietary source. So skin color could be incidental for creatures with the right enzyme complement. Think of all the things that affect coloration of other creatures--they could apply to hominoids as well. As for other morphological adaptations, something that happened to both Neandethals and Homo sapiens was that although they were gracile (thin and long-limbed) to start with (that works well in Africa, being hot and all), when exposed to very cold climes they became shorter and more compact, which decreases heat loss. Among H. sapiens this is most obvious in the Eskimaux (Gad, how often do I get to use that plural?), who also have adaptations in their noses and eyelids.
listener--you have much more colorful bumblebees than we do hereabouts!
I am jealous of Daughter*in*Art*School's new iMac--but I will wait (I think) until they have the same CPU in one with a smaller screen.
The $$ from my Alaska job came in yesterday--sure makes things easier, even some to spare. No word yet on whether I will be needed up there again for rebuttal. (I wouldn't mind.)
Got tax returns finished and into the mail--had set more than enough aside from my consulting business this time, which again makes things a good bit easier.
Discovered just the other day that absinthe has been fully legal in the United States since 2007 (it was banned in 1912). The good stuff is expensive, but interestingly the ersatz stuff is about the same price. (They evidently exploit consumers' ignorance.) I am playing with the idea of buying a bottle, probably the only one I ever will. Some of the best seems to come from a distillery in Washington. Well, we'll see. And now to bed.
kidnapped from the BBB. . . .
ReplyDeleteDean is da first!
By Thankful2Thankful4Dean on Apr 14, 2010 2:51 AM EDT
and so are Rene's bluebells!
http://howardempowered.blogspot.com/2010/04/renes-memorial-bluebells.html
Eternally Thankful to listener for planting those in his honor.
kid2 is closing on his house next month and we'll be planting some there, too. In the fall, we're planning to put in tulip bulbe in honor of my gpa ~ the folks neighbor's did so on their cul-de-sac in '95 and they're still coming up every year! This is the gpa that lived w/ us when kid2 was born :-)
Cat, meant to say ~~ Having known gazillions of Chinese and Japanese, and hundreds of Native Americans, differentiating skin color between the two groups is not even possible, lol! Nor have I ever seen either a yellow person nor a red person in either group. I guess old tags die hard? My hubby and I agreed that he was kind of peach colored. . . . My Ontario Native friend said he's seen 19th C photos of tribes, and while color wasn't part of that package, within single tribes darkness/paleness varied tremendously. The same was true in China.
ReplyDeleteAs for other colors, I'd guess that variations are available via mutation, endlessly. All it would take would be the original mutation, and for the local cohort to decide that it was attractive and valuable for some reason -- over and against the human instinct to kill what's different from us. That could, it seems, be a marker for how far a race has evolved. . . .
Vitamin D and programmed aging?
ReplyDeleteAs we age, we lose the capacity to activate vitamin D in the skin.
Studies suggest that, between ages 20 and 70, there is a 75% reduction in the ability to activate vitamin D. The capacity of conversion from 25 (OH) vitamin D to 1,25 di(OH) vitamin D also diminishes.
Holick M. Sunlight and vitamin D for bone health and prevention of autoimmune diseases, cancers, and cardiovascular disease.
From Holick, M. 2006
This would explain why 70-year olds come to the office, just back from the Caribbean sporting dark brown tans, are still deficient, often severely, in blood levels of vitamin D (25(OH) vitamin D). A tan does not equal vitamin D.
Courtesy Ipanemic
A practical way of looking at it is that anyone 40 years old or older has lost the majority of ability for vitamin D activation.
This often makes me wonder if the loss of vitamin D activating potential is nature's way to get rid of us. After all, after 40, we've pretty much had our opportunity to recreate and make our contribution to the species (at least in a primitive world in which humans evolved): we've exhausted our reproductive usefulness to the species.
Is the programmed decline of vitamin D skin activation a way to ensure that we develop diseases of senescence (aging)? The list of potential consequences of vitamin D deficiency includes: osteoporosis, poor balance and coordination, falls and fractures; cancer of the breast, bladder, colon, prostate, and blood; reductions in HDL, increases in triglycerides; increased inflammation (C-reactive protein, CRP); declining memory and mentation; coronary heart disease.
Isn't that also pretty much a list that describes aging?
A fascinating argument in support of this idea came from study from St Thomas’ Hospital and the London School of Medicine:
Higher serum vitamin D concentrations are associated with longer leukocyte telomere length in women
Telomeres are the "tails" of DNA that were formerly thought to be mistakes, just coding for nonsense. But more recent thinking has proposed that telomeres may provide a counting mechanism that shortens with aging and accelerates with stress and illness. This study suggests that both vitamin D and inflammation (CRP) impact telomere length: the lower the vitamin D, the shorter the telomere length, particularly when inflammation is greater.
Data supporting vitamin D's effects on preventing or treating cancer, osteoporosis, lipid abnormalities, inflammation, cardiovascular disease, etc., is developing rapidly.
Now the big question: If declining vitamin D is nature's way of ensuring our decline and death, does maintaining higher vitamin D also maintain youthfulness?
I don't have an answer, but it's a really intriguing idea.
http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/vitamin-d-and-programmed-aging.html
ReplyDeleteAlly update at baby. . . .
ReplyDeletehttp://eatapyzch.blogspot.com/
http://www.gratefulness.org/candles/candles.cfm?l=eng&gi=ALLYS
Thanks, puddle, for the Ally post at Baby and for reposting Thankful's sweet note!!
ReplyDeleteI'll have to go over and post a note there too. :)
I guess it depends how you look at it. Jung maintained that back into the mists of humanity the aged have always been valued for their practical knowledge, of hunting and gathering territories, for instance, and child rearing among other things.He thinks that age, or perhaps societal value of and care for the aged, has evolutionary value.
ReplyDeleteAs to skin color: sorry to sound so ignorant. Still, I have seen Chinese and Indians who had a definite yellowish cast to the skin. But that's neither here nor there, I suppose. I really would love for the natives to have blue skin. As Alan pointed out, they would have different metabolism and chemistry than humans from Earth. But, can you just imagine the reaction when Earthmen caught the first sight of a blue humanoid? Talk about shoot first, investigate later. *sigh* And it would be the Earthmen doing the shooting. I don't think Natives had fire arms, not because they are stupid, but because they are peaceable. They don't hunt to excess and they don't hunt creatures they can't eat and/or otherwise use.
Oh, I donno. I don't want to produce a six hundred and fifty page saga, and yet Juliette is right that I need to know as much as humanly possible about the planet in order for the characters to grow naturally out of their milieu. Only that requires creating an entire world... Every time I think I've got a handle on one detail, several more points requiring research pop into my mind. I had hoped to have the book finished by the end of this year. But, I'm back in the depressive phase and doubt it will ever be finished.
Still reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It's a fine book, very violent in parts, but an excellent book for all that.
ReplyDeleteBluebells and bumblebees. Spring is really here.
ReplyDeleteStill making progress on the computer. Got a new USB hub today that gives me enough ports to plug everything in properly. And it works off an external power supply, rather than drawing all power from the computer. I suspect some of the problems with USB ports I've been having were from the computer's USB power not being enough to support everything I was trying to plug into it.
ReplyDeleteAlso got Office 2007 installed and my old e-mail imported. The irony, for those who haven't noticed, is that Office 2010 will be out in September.
But still have work that's supposed to get done tonight. Looking at the time, I suspect I'm not going to make it.
Glad to hear that Ally is doing well and that no one else appears to have serious problems.
Evidently, the Eskimaux (lol!) get their vitamin D from fish oils, never get vitamin D deficiency, and often lived to a 100, without degenerative diseases of aging. Life span could be shorter due to accidents and polar bears and the like, but not like our illnesses of aging. . . .
ReplyDeleteGood point, Bill, that Ally is well and mostly the rest of us are too. A red letter sort of day.
ReplyDeleteI'm sending HOPE and LOVE to tc tonight. ♥