Ghazal my dear,

What is age, and what is aging, if everyone uses a different measure for this. This came to my mind when I did another picture of the moon tonight. Tonight it was once again the night of the Persides meteor shower. But since nothing could top the spectacular meteor that we saw together with you at the same night in 2010, I put more attention to the moon again (1). A year ago at the same night, we have been at the Bulgarian blacksea coast, and then the Persides night fell together with the full moon. This year, however, the same day in the year (11th to 12th of August), the moon looked completely different.

Is there a final take-home message from this post for you, Ghazal ? Maybe you will find one.

Take Care my Dear

Michael

Footnotes:

(1) Surely you know that the Moon symbolizes the pure, innocent beauty in Persian classicla poetry. This is independent of the exclusive role of the Sun in ancient, pre-islamic Persian culture, philosophy and science. But because poetry is very much influenced by arabic traditions, their spiritual preference for the moon as symbol in religion and arts got access into the poetry of Hafez, Rumi, Atta and Omar Khayyun.

(2) The Persides Meteor shower lives up to its name: same as the Persian people do, it follows precisely the sun’s calender. I guess that it follows in a precise and constant time after Persian Nouruz.

(3) Initially I could not figure out, if the name of the company GLOBAL-SHINING was referring to the moon or the sun. But now that I know that it is a Hongkong based company, I guess they even mean the Shining Stars.

(4) I guess Mr. Ho wont mind having his business address published here on my blog. But it might further promoted his excellent business. Just that Tsuen Wan does not have a postcode might discourage Hongkong tourists to drop into his store and buy camera displays.

Do you remember that we once talked about UV-exposure and skin pigmentation ? You send in November some papers about it, and how this is regulated.
There is an other aspect, and this relates to inherited genetic differences (i.e. a problem that is similar to your MSc project and the search for germline variations). Recently I found an interesting article that came up with a nice explanation for the reduction of the skin pigmentation during the migration of humankind to the northern hemisphere (from their origin in Africa about 100 000 years ago).

The reason is that UV-radiation has not only a detrimental effect (by damaging the DNA and potentially causing skin cancer, as you perhaps know better than anybody else), but it is also essential for the production of vitamin D in our body (important for skelettal development and other biological processes).
If humans during their migration from africa to the north would have kept their dark skin, the lower UVB level in europe would have caused a severe vitamine D deficiency. Therefore, reducing skin pigmentation genetically gained a survival benefit (since with less dark skin, more UVB reaches the dermis and more vitamine D can be produced).
Therefore, if dark coloured people move to the northern hemisphere for longer time, they might start to suffer from vitamine D deficiency. There is only one exception, and these are the inuit living in northern Canada and Greenland. They have relatively dark skin, but live with low UVB level. Their only way to get sufficient vitamine D is by eating raw meat from seals (in particular their liver is full of vitamine D).

The full paper about this is here:

I hope, Ghazal, you will have a sunny weekend, so you get enough UV to produce vitamine D.
You are lucky anyhow, since your light skin is the best condition to live in the north and stay healthy.

Take Care, Enjoy everything

Michael

PS: Have I already wrote you “Thanks” for the Nowruz power-point presentation that you send ? I think I forgot, sorry for this.

PPS: There is an iranian movie in the cinema here, called “Darbareye Ely“. I will probably go and watch. Have you seen it or heard about ?

I interprete the missing answer to my last e-mail as a sign, that you got cought so much by Lee Silvers book on “Mouse Genetics”. I hope that you find it not just scientifically interesting, but also entertaining.
To be honest, I always have problems seeing a lot of heroic activity in observations on how cells after irradiation battle to repair their DNA or commit suicide for the sake of the entire organism. It is either just a matter of adaptation, or opportunism as we would call in humans, or a battle between two armies fighting with unequal weapons (physical radiation and biological enzymes). Both, opportunism as well as stupid heroism in a war was definitely not what contributed a lot to progress during human evolution.
In case of the mouse genetics and antropology, however, the question which physiological and behavioural properties drive the development is realy fascinating. Did you red about the two dominant mouse sub-species (M.m.domesticus, or the west-european house-mouse and M.m.musculus or the eastern field-mouse). Most of the mice strains we keep in the laboratory world-wide are genetic recombinats between these two.

Now comes the exciting interrelation of the two sub-species: domesticus established its dominant area in south-western europe, from the mediterranean countries up to Germany. M.m.musculus, in contrast populated the old-world from central Germany further east (Poland, Czech, Russia, China to the Pacific ocean). Believe it or not, the boundary between the eastern and the western Mouse Hemisphere went from northern Germany down to the south at the Alp mountains, first along the river Elbe and then along the river Isar. Some even believe, that Neuherberg is located right on this very tiny zone where occasionally the eastern M.m.muscullus and the western M.m.domsticus encounter (B.t.w., if the whole mapping is 100% precise with the Isar-river representing the border-line, we here in Daglfing would belong to the M.m.musculus world, whereas you in Unterschleissheim would already live in M.m.domesticus hemisphere).
The small border stripe where animals of the both sub-species occupy a common area, occasionally see genetic mixing of the two. They can form hybrids, and in the laboratory it was shown that the hybridn offspring between musculus and domesticus are also fertile, i.e. in theory they could give rise to next generations and a whole new sub-specie. In nature, however, the occasional happening of matings between the two give rise to hybrid offspring, that seem to have a selective disadvantage. They are less fit and never increased in population size. So the mixing area remained restricted to this small stripe in central germany (good for science, of course, since therefor we got the relatively homogenous animals for laboratory strains).

What also gave me a shiver when I red this is the funny co-incidence of the above mentioned “demarcation line” between eastern M.m.musculus and western M.m.domesticus with the former iron curtain that devided the eastern, socialist part of Europe from the western, capitalist world. This iron curtain also run north to south along the river Elbe.
Could it be that this artifical devision into an eastern and an western world during the second half of the 20th century was already planned early in evolution. Strange idea, I must admit, but sometime we are much less self-determined as we always like to show, in particular if it is in politics and military activities, in which people sometimes follow instincts like an animal.

The connection between the geographic distribution of M.m.domesticus and M.m.musculus with human history has another, more peaceful aspect. The new world, i.e. North and South America, did not had mouse at all before the european occupation in the 15th century began. Mice were brought over to the new continent on board the ships of the conquerers. Since most of these ships came from western europe (Spain, Portugal, France, England), they importet M.m.domsticus in Amerika, where still today it is the dominant mouse. Only a very tine stripe along the pacific coast (California) was first occupied by settlers from asia (Russia, later Chinese and Japanese), which brought there M.m.musculus. Again, like in Europe, the geographic distribution of the two sub-species remains there very separated.

I hope you are well, and I hope you don”t mind getting e-mails from me.
(sorry, I don”t have a mailing list on which your address is just one among another million, and from which I could easily remove yours. The e-mails are always personally just for you. So if you find them boring or otherways annoying, you have to delete them right away. I will keep them anyhow in my outbox, they are like a diary).

Have a nice and sunny day

Michael

PS: You have not suggested a time to visit the castle Oberschleissheim today or tomorrow. In case I don”t hear from you I”ll come tomorrow afternoon.