Has Evolution Stopped, for Homo?

Not at all. If anything, it seems to have accelerated over the course of the past 80.000 Years.

It’s what The Economist reports in this article. The original piece of research can be found in PNAS.

Since I don’t have time to comment today, just go and read it, it’s free.

An interesting personal side-note on the article: it points out how two version of lactose tolerance arose independently in the Indo-European and the African Tutsi populations. So, may be my child(ren) will inherit both versions. I wonder if there are any studies around investigating the effect of the two mutations present at the same time in people’s cells. Will they reinforce each other? Or will they have a completely different effect? I guess it depends on the detailed mechanism of action of the two… I’ll have a look on the world wide wikipedia…

42

I’ve listened to the whole of BBC’s Hitch Hikers’ Guide to the Galaxy, yesterday.

thenm, I went to look for it on the wikipedia. Well, not exactly like this but I ended up on the wikipedia page related to number 42.

quite a lot of unsuspected info, indeed. Makes you think that may be Adams had some insight after all.

t is a composite number; its factorization makes it the second sphenic number and also the second of the form {2.3.r}. As with all sphenic numbers of this form the aliquot sum is abundant by 12. 42 is also the second sphenic number to be bracketed by twin primes; 30 also rests between two primes. 42 has a 14 member aliquot sequence 42, 54, 66, 78, 90, 144, 259, 45, 33, 15, 9, 4, 3, 1, 0 and is itself part of the aliquot sequence commencing with the first sphenic number 30. Further, 42 is the 10th member of the 3-aliquot tree.

42 is the product of the first three terms of Sylvester’s sequence; like the first four such numbers it is also a primary pseudoperfect number.

It is the sum of the totient function for the first eleven integers.

It is the third 15-gonal number.

It is a Catalan number.

It is a pronic number.

It is the twenty-eighth square-free integer.

It is the reciprocal of a Bernoulli number. It is conjectured to be the “third moment of the Riemann zeta function“. That means that when

is expanded as in powers of log(T), the leading coefficient—that of the 9th-degree term—is 42.

It is a meandric number and an open meandric number.

42 is a perfect score on the USA Math Olympiad (USAMO) and International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO).

In base 10, this number is a Harshad number and a self number, while it is a repdigit in base 4 (as 222).

The eight digits of pi beginning from 242,422 places after the decimal point are 42424242.

The first digit (4) taken to the power of the second digit (2) is equal to the second digit (2) taken to the power of the first digit (4): 4² = 2⁴ = 16. It follows clearly that 24 exhibits the same characteristic, and in fact 24 is the only other two-digit non-repdigit number that does. (All two-digit repdigit numbers exhibit this characteristic.)

In Science

• The atomic number of molybdenum. The element following molybdenum with atomic number 43 (technetium) has no stable isotopes.
• The number of teeth wolves and dogs (canines) have.
• 42° is the critical angle of refraction by water – it is the angle between a rainbow and the antisolar point.
• The light leaving a rainbow is spread over a wide angle, with a maximum intensity around 42°
• The number of minutes it would take a theoretical “gravity train” to travel to any point on earth.
• In one Grand Unified Theory, the Georgi-Glashow model, the inverse of the coupling constant is approximately 42.
• 10! (10 factorial) seconds is exactly 42 days.
• On page 7-10 of Volume 1 of “The Feynmann Lectures on Physics” is a marginal figure that illustrates the strength ratio of gravitation attraction and electrical repulsion between two electrons as 1/4.17 x 10^42. The denominator is also written out by hand as a long, snaking 4,170,… followed by 39 more zeros. Feymann mentions the unified field theory, the similarity of the inverse square laws, the disparity of the relative strengths, and asks “Where could such a large number come from? … it involves something deep in nature.”

[edit] Astronomy

• Messier object M42, a magnitude 5.0 diffuse nebula in the constellation Orion, also known as the Orion Nebula
• The New General Catalogue object NGC 42, a spiral galaxy in the constellation Pegasus
• The Saros number of the solar eclipse series which began on 1577 BC April 28 and ended on 297 BC June 5. The duration of Saros series 42 was 1280.1 years, and it contained 72 solar eclipses.
• The Saros number of the lunar eclipse series which began on 1293 BC January 24 and ended on 59 April 15. The duration of Saros series 42 was 1352.2 years, and it contained 76 lunar eclipses.
• Gliese 42 is a magnitude 7.17 K3 V orange dwarf nearby star (14.5 pc) in Sculptor, also known as HD 5133, CD-31°325, G269-049, GCTP 177.00, and LHS 1163.
• Ross 42 is a magnitude 11.52 dM4 e red dwarf nearby star (14.1 pc) in Orion, also known as Gliese 206, G097-047, and GCTP 1259.00.
• The planet Uranus‘ north and south poles face the sun 42 years before switching, (example) the north pole experiences 42 years of summer and 42 years of winter and vice versa.
• The moon Io hurtles around its orbit once every 42 hours at a distance of 420,000 kilometers or so from the center of Jupiter.
• In January 2005, Asteroid 2001 DA42 was given the name Asteroid Douglasadams, named for the author Douglas Adams that popularized the number 42 and died in 2001. With even his initials in the provisional designation, Brian G. Marsden, the director of the Minor Planet Center and the secretary for the naming committee, said, “This was sort of made for him, wasn’t it?”

[edit] In Religion

• The number of generations (names) in the Gospel of Matthew’s version of the Genealogy of Jesus. The forty-two generations divide neatly into three parts.

• The number of months the Beast will hold dominion over the Earth (Revelation 13:5).

• The number (in the Babylonian Talmud, compiled 375 AD to 499 AD) of the “Forty-Two Lettered Name” ascribed to God. Rab (or Rabhs), a 3rd century source in the Talmud stated “The Forty-Two Lettered Name is entrusted only to him who is pious, meek, middle-aged, free from bad temper, sober, and not insistent on his rights”. [Source: Talmud Kidduschin 71a, Translated by Rabbi Dr. I. Epstein]. Maimonides felt that the original Talmudic Forty-Two Lettered Name was perhaps composed of several combined divine names [Maimonides "Moreh"]. The apparently unpronouncable Tetragrammaton provides the backdrop from the Twelve-Lettered Name and the Forty-Two Lettered Name of the Talmud.

• In the ancient Chinese text the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu, chapter 42 is an explanation of the universe.

• The number of men of Beth-azmaveth in the census of men of Israel upon return from exile (Ezra 2:24).

• The number of Jewish captive exiles who returned from Babylon is 42,360. This figure appears in two identical verses: Ezra 2:64 and Nehemiah 7:66. The number 360 is the number of days in the Jewish year, which further isolates the number 42,000. Perhaps the number 42,360 is both literal and symbolic similtaneously.

• God sends bears to maul 42 of the youths who mock Elisha for his baldness (2 Kings 2:23).

• There are 42 principles of Ma’at, the Ancient Egyptian personification of physical and moral law, order, and truth.

• The number of lines on each page of the Gutenberg Bible, the first and oldest surviving book printed with movable type.^{[citation needed]}

• 42 is the number with which God creates the Universe in Kabalistic tradition.

• In the Kabbalah, the system of cosmology explained the significance of the various divine names and added other divine names. The most significant name is that of the En Sof (also known as “Ein Sof“, “Infinite” or “Endless”), who is above the Sefirot (sometimes spelled “Sephirot“). The Forty-Two-Lettered Name contains four combined names which are spelled in Hebrew letters (spelled in letters = 42 letters), which is the name of Azilut (or “Atziluth” “Animation”). While there are obvious links between the Forty-Two Lettered Name of the Babylonian Talmud (see further up this page) and the Kabbalah’s Forty-Two Lettered Name, they are probably not identical due to the Kabbalah’s emphasis on numbers. The Kabbalah also contains a Forty-Five Lettered Name and a Seventy-Two Lettered Name.

Great looking lenticular cloud

Wow, was just browsing Panoramio when I found this. A spectacular lenticular cloud over a volcano (I believe) in Kamchatka.

Photo location (see this area):

Imagery ©2007 NASA – Terms of Use

here’s a smaller one – the pic, not the cloud, which is, if anyting, even more impressing – with some explanations from the wikipedia:

Lenticular clouds, technically known as altocumulus standing lenticularis, are stationary lens-shaped clouds that form at high altitudes, normally aligned at right-angles to the wind direction.

Where stable moist air flows over a mountain or a range of mountains, a series of large-scale standing waves may form on the downwind side. Lenticular clouds sometimes form at the crests of these waves. Under certain conditions, long strings of lenticular clouds can form, creating a formation known as a wave cloud.

Power pilots tend to avoid flying near lenticular clouds because of the turbulence of the rotor systems that accompany them, but sailplane pilots actively seek them out. Although the clouds can produce heavy turbulence they also show a sign of precipitation. This is because the systems of atmospheric standing waves that cause “lennies” (as they are sometimes familiarly called) also involve large vertical air movements, and the precise location of the rising air mass is fairly easy to predict from the orientation of the clouds. “Wave lift” of this kind is often very smooth and strong, and enables gliders to soar to remarkable altitudes and great distances. The current gliding world records for both distance (over 3,000km) and altitude (14,938m) were set using such lift.

They have been mistaken for UFOs (or “visual cover” for UFOs) because these clouds have a characteristic lens appearance and smooth saucer-like shape.

Wikipedia Documentary

Alfa 156 SportWagon

Here’s my car, in all its splendor in its own wikipedia page. It’s the 1.9 Diesel 85 KW (115BHP) 2002 facelift model.

I am tempted to learn it, almost

After a week spent reading Absorption and Drug Development
Solubility, Permeability, and Charge State by pION’s Alex Avdeef, I’m now reading Clinical Pharmacokinetics: Concepts and Applications by Malcolm Rowland and Thomas N. Tozer. Pretty interesting read, but I need a break from time to time.

I’ve found the wikipedia page about sardinian, the language spoken in my birthplace. Well, not exactly in my birthplace since we have a mixed italian/sardinian/corsican dialect up there.

Anyway, it’s quite interesting to read. Have a go! Or, you can read one of the books above – how about that? Now, back to the exercises

And, once again, where are you?

A small partial map of the Internet. Each line is drawn between two nodes, representing two IP addresses. This graph contains over 40,000 nodes, which represents about 2% of the Class C network address space.

from wikipedia.

We were like this, once…

Only, we weren’t ectopic. the picture comes from Wikimedia, the image/audio/movie part of wikipedia. Original page is linked, just click the picture.

the embryo in the image is seven weeks old, 10mm long, and implanted itself in the wrong place, in one of the ovarian tubes connecting the ovaries to the womb. In the upper part, the placenta’s willi are forming, although I guess they would not be able to complete their development as normal, not being in the proper place.

It’s fascinating to think that we were like that, once. You can see the eyes, the limbs and the brain, and all little parts which would grow up to male up one of us. Incredible, isn’t it?

My first Wikibution

that is, my first contribution to Wikipedia. In my city’s entry, I’ve added a tidibit of info regarding one of the main sights. It doesn’t show my name as I didn’t register (yet), but now I have so I’ll start adding my little knowledge to the lot already accumulated there…