Tuesday, May 28, 2019
Monday, May 27, 2019
Sunday, May 26, 2019
Weekly Commentary August 10, 2018
The west and China need Africa for food and water! Without African resources they will fall! Climate change taking its toll!
Saturday, May 25, 2019
Tuesday, May 21, 2019
Monday, May 20, 2019
Saturday, May 18, 2019
Friday, May 17, 2019
Thursday, May 16, 2019
Wednesday, May 15, 2019
Tuesday, May 14, 2019
Sunday, May 12, 2019
Friday, May 10, 2019
Thursday, May 9, 2019
Wednesday, May 8, 2019
Tuesday, May 7, 2019
Climate Change To Blame For Lower Birth Rate In US And EUROPE
Arctic methane release is the release of methane from seas and soils in permafrost regions of the Arctic. While a long-term natural process, it is exacerbated by global warming. This results in a positive feedback effect, as methane is itself a powerful greenhouse gas.current warming (just one degree Celisus) has already left a discernible mark on 77 of 94 different ecological processes, including species’ genetics, seasonal responses, overall distribution, and even morphology – i.e. physical traits including body size and shape. About 47 percent of land mammals and 23 percent of birds have already suffered negative impacts form climate change. In all, nearly 700 species in just these two groups are flagging under climate change, according to this research.If global society doesn’t kick its fossil fuel addiction – and quick – scientists estimate that temperatures could rise 4-5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. Such a rise would be not so much catastrophic, but apocalyptic.Scientists are working frantically to give melanin to white and non-melanated Asian populations or else they will cease to exist by 2100.The master enzyme in all this is tyrosinase. If the gene for this enzyme is defective, the result is a person with albinism, someone who makes no melanin at all. But the most remarkable discovery made by molecular biologists has been that most of us, regardless of skin color, have quite enough tyrosinase in our melanocytes to make us very black. In those of us without eumelanin (brown/black) who are pheomelanin dominant (white), something is preventing the enzyme from functioning at full capacity--and that seems to be a combination of two genetic mechanisms: a switch that causes the cell to make most of the tyrosinase in an inactive form, and a tendency to make a lot of inhibitors of the enzyme. In the body, the effects of either or both of these mechanisms can be modified by such environmental factors as exposure to ultraviolet light. People with albinism are highly sensitive to ultraviolet, which can easily damage skin and eyes,make one prone to many pre-natal diseases,premature aging,myopia and infertility.In animals, melanin comes and goes at the dictates of evolutionary pressures. It is reasonable to assume, then, that we humans have this molecule not because it makes us smarter but primarily because it helps us survive a variety of environmental conditions. Clearly melanin protects us from the ravages of ultraviolet light. Some of the most darkly pigmented people in the world, natives of the North Solomon Islands, almost never get basal cell carcinoma or melanoma, and if they do have melanomas, these tumors arise on the light-skinned soles of their feet. Caucasians in South Africa,Australia,The middle East,India, and South America have high rates of skin cancer which are doubling every year caucasians living in Hawaii, have the highest documented skin cancer rate in the United States. ALL European nations are below replacement levels for indigenous populations yet the word remains silent about this citing economies as the culprit while African nations with worse economies are seeing the highest number of births in decades!Many believe this is the underlying cause for the rise in white supremacist rhetoric and fascism globally.Climate adaptation is surprisingly rarely reported as a cause for the build‐up of reproductive isolation between diverging populations. Fast temperature‐dependent co‐evolution between mitochondrial and nuclear genomes may be particularly likely to lead to hybrid sterility...This may already be apparent as studies show that men from European populations globally have lost 60 percent of their ability to bear children since 1973!Data from nearly 43000 men around the world found that sperm counts dropped by more than half in Western countries.Men even have their own version of a biological clock. Beginning around their mid-30's, male fertility gradually degrades, and while most men produce sperm to their dying day, those past 40 who help conceive have a greater risk of passing on genetic abnormalities to their children, including autism. Globally the oldest male populations are white and Asian adding a double whammy to the situation four decades ago, the average "Western" (European) man had a sperm concentration of 99 million per milliliter. By 2011, that had fallen to 47.1 million and continues to drop by 1.5 percent each year!The researchers found no significant declines for non-Western men, though other studies have found major drops in countries like China and Japan(non-eumelanated Asian populations).Women need to average roughly 2.1 children—enough to replace themselves and their partner, with a spare bit to offset kids who don’t survive to reproductive age—to keep a country’s population stable through birth alone. The U.S. is at 1.8 and dependent on continued immigration to keep the white population growing ironically the anti immigration sentiments currently in the US are speeding up demographic decline and destabilizing the economy. Low sperm counts may also presage a premature death, even among men in the prime of their lives who might seem otherwise healthy.
The reality of climate change | David Puttnam | TEDxDublin
A handful of sexual encounters between Homo Sapien Africans and Neanderthals made most Europeans what they are today, affecting both their appearance and vulnerability to disease. But the genetic legacy left by the Neanderthals also highlights differences beyond phenotypes.
Neanderthals lived in Europe and Asia between about 200,000 and 30,000 years ago. Homo Sapiens ie “modern humans” – came into Eurasia about 65,000 years ago, at the time of the ice age which made traversing large areas quit difficult and so the two species remained in close proximity In 2010, geneticists discovered that they had been very close sexyually as well. They sequenced a Neanderthal genome and discovered it carried genes that also appear in the genomes of people of European and Asian descent proving Modern humans interbred with Neanderthals.
By studying Neanderthal genes in people today, researchers are unraveling how interbreeding influenced the species.
In one new study of 1000 human genomes, Sriram Sankararaman and David Reich of Harvard Medical School and colleagues found that Neanderthal DNA is most common in regions of the genome with the greatest genetic variability, Europe and Asia making them a prime target for natural selection. In populations outside of Europe and Asia Neanderthal DNA may make up only 1.6 to 1.8 per cent of the Eurasian genome in some caucasians it can be as much as 4 to 10 percent, and it punches above its weight in terms of biological impact, says Reich (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature12961).It is suggested that 20 percent of Neanderthal DNA survives in Eurasians, notably expressed in the skin, hair and diseases of these people.
Joshua Akey and Ben Vernot of the University of Washington in Seattle have analysed the Neanderthal DNA in a further 665 humans (Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1245938). Both their study and the Harvard one found a hotspot of Neanderthal ancestry in genes relating to keratin, a fibrous protein found in our hair, skin and nails.One of the genes, BNC2, is involved in skin pigmentation. That implies that Eurasians owe their white skins partly to Neanderthals. The theory was that light skin was an advantage at higher latitudes because it is more efficient at generating vitamin D from sunlight. High prevalence of vitamin D insufficiency is a particularly important public health issue because hypovitaminosis D is an independent risk factor for total mortality in the general population. Current studies suggest that most people need more vitamin D than presently recommended to prevent chronic disease. Black people have Eumelanin which acts as a natural sunscreen they need more sunlight than do caucasians to stay healthy. White and fairer-skinned individuals have much more pheomelanin. However, while pheomelanin produces vitamin D efficiently, its reaction with high levels of UVB also makes dangerous free radicals which can damage skin cells and cause cancer. Thus higher UV radiation is a serious consideration for them.
A third study published this week describes a DNA analysis of one person who lived in Stone Age Europe about 7000 years ago – 40,000 years after any Neanderthal interbreeding. His genes suggest his skin was dark (Nature, doi.org/q74). It may be that the Neanderthal keratin affected early Eurasians’ hair also, perhaps straightening it.
Sankararaman and Reich found that a Neanderthal inheritance includes several genes that make some people susceptible to diseases including type 2 diabetes, lupus and Crohn’s disease.Some of the genes also appear to have led to fertility problems.Sankararaman found that the X chromosome is almost devoid of Neanderthal DNA. This suggests that most Neanderthal DNA that wound up on the X chromosome made the bearer less fertile – a common occurrence when related but distinct species interbreed – and so it quickly disappeared from the human gene pool. “Neanderthal alleles were swept away,” says Sankararaman. Modern men lack Y chromosome genes from Neanderthals meaning at some point the Neanderthal male became infertile.
“This underlines that modern humans and Neanderthals are indeed different species,” says Fred Spoor of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology modern man from Africa and the neanderthal were genetically incompatible with – and male fetuses conceived through sex with Neanderthal males would have miscarried. The genetic evidence further backs this up. Neanderthal DNA is irregularly spaced through the modern human genome rather than being fully mixed. That implies that interbreeding occurred very rarely. Sankararaman estimates it may have happened just four times.“But these relatively few matings obviously were an important event in the history of non-Africans,” says Reich.
This article appeared in print under the headline “Neanderthal sex, the aftermath”
Monday, May 6, 2019
Saturday, May 4, 2019
This is what sea level rise will do to coastal cities
High elevation is why the rush to gentrify Roxbury and Dorchester and eventually Mattapan is a desperation tactic the property is worth millions because Boston has to move and moving North is unaffordable and those are predominantly white communities who won't sell as cheaply as minoritirs ...case in point condos in Peabody square formerly Ashmont Station are going for 1 million and up! Now how much do you think your home will be valued in 10 years!
Friday, May 3, 2019
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