Victorian rule of thumb beats genetic prediction

A rule of thumb from the 1800s to predict the height of children based on their parents stature is still far more accurate than the best genomic predictions. In 1886 Sir Francis Galton a Victorian scientist who also pioneered the field of eugenics published a technique to predict the height of children. It averages the height of both parents and makes adjustments for age and sex.

“It s really not rocket science ” says Yurii Aulchenko a geneticist at Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Aulchenko s team compared this approach to a more complicated calculation based on gene variations linked to height. Researchers previously identified these mutations by scanning the genomes of tens of thousands of people and then hunting for single letter changes shared by people of similar stature. Minor correlation Aulchenko s team analysed 54 of these genetic variants across 5748 Dutch people and calculated a simple score for each person. The higher a person s score the more gene variants linked to tall stature he or she possessed. But when these numbers were plotted against each person s height and adjusted for age and sex Aulchenko s team found only a minor correlation between a person s genetic score and their actual height. Galton s method on the other hand proved about 10 times better at guessing the height of another 550 people.

Joel Hirschhorn a geneticist at the Broad Institute of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University in Cambridge Massachusetts isn t surprised by the poor prognostic ability of genes linked to height – including a handful identified by his lab. The team noted just as much when it published its findings in 2008. This is because most genetic variations have a miniscule affect on height and many more have yet to be identified Aulchenko says. A few traits such as eye colour are easier to predict with genes and new research will certainly improve genetic prognostication. But for now most of our features remain a genetic black box.

via Victorian rule of thumb beats genetic prediction – science-in-society – 03 March 2009 – New Scientist.

Try these sites if you want to predict your child’s height:

While there is no magic way to look into the future to see how tall your children will be when they grow up, these height predictors can give you a pretty good idea of what your child’s future height will be:

• Kid’s Height Predictor – predict your children’s future height based on their genetic potential (which is based on their parents’ midparental height)
• Kid’s Height Calculator – Two Years Times Two Method, which uses simple linear regressions and doubles a child’s height at age two years
• Yet Another Height Calculator – use your child’s current height and where they are on the growth curve right now to predict their future height

The “True” Story Behind Push

First of all, can you explain a little bit about, well, just what the hell you were involved with on behalf of the Army?

We were watching what the Soviets were doing—we’re talking late-’70s, early-’80s—and had reason to believe they were taking the whole “Psi” area very seriously. We had what was then a classified program going. Part of it was an R&D program in “remote viewing” that became actually operational, meaning that it was being used to target a wide range of things—initially Soviet, later on drug smugglers and things of that nature. Psychokinesis, mind over matter kinds of things. I was conducting… well, beyond “experiments” because the colloquial press likes to make light of that. But the metal-bending effect was absolutely real.

You mean like Uri Geller or the kid in The Matrix who could bend spoons with their minds?

Uri Gellar happens to be a personal friend, but it’s not folks like Uri. It was average, everyday kinds of, in our case, senior officers. So we were concerned because of the implications of what you could do. People would say, “What are you going to do? Bend tank barrels?” And you say, “No. We’re just going to move electrons. Make computers either not work, or render them unreliable.” This was right at the beginning of the Information Age, of course. That this worked is 100 percent real.

Were you a believer from the start, or were you skeptical at first?
Well, I considered myself the quintessential skeptic, as opposed to a debunker. Now, when you deal with Psy-cops and those kinds of organizations, they’re not skeptical—they’re debunkers. Meaning “it can’t be, therefore it isn’t.” As opposed to us, because we’ve had enough incidents happen with folks right in front of us. The problem was, they didn’t happen 100 percent of the time. And control was a significant issue, as were the theoretical models. Are you familiar with the “white crow” saying?

No…
The saying goes that it takes only one white crow to prove all crows aren’t black. We saw absolutely certain kinds of things occur under pretty good observational conditions. We weren’t being faked. These were, as I say, everyday people. In fact, there was something called the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory (PEARL) at Princeton. It was run by Bob Jahn, a supreme astrophysicist and dean of engineering at Princeton, and because of the things that they saw, they set up their laboratory. But if you came in and said, “I’m a psychic, I’d like to be tested,” they’d say, “Thank you very much. We won’t do that.” The only people they would test were normal people. What they didn’t want was somebody to come in and run some tests and put on their business card, “As tested by Princeton.”

Do you remember the first thing you saw that made you a believer?
I had what we call a PK (psychokinesis) party at my house.  We had a guy by the name of Jack Houck, who had invented a process whereby we could teach these techniques to large numbers of people. My boss, who was a three-star general, and a bunch of others were there. But we had a woman hold a folk by the bottom and this thing just dropped a full 90 degrees with no physical contact.

Wow.
That’s what we said, “Wow.” It was like, “somebody needs to look at this.” And then I learned the process and was able to do it again, teaching hundreds to thousands of people over time, many of them pretty senior officials. And we protected who they were because this is not career-enhancing stuff in most cases. The final codename for the operation was Stargate. But it lasted over 20 years and had a number of different names: Grillflame, Centerlane, Sunstreak. Over time we changed the names just to protect the program. But the results are pretty spectacular. The ability to gain information at a distance? Absolutely undeniable. …

via The True Story Behind Push on Maxim.com : Hot Girls, Photos, Hot Videos, Sports, Movies and Music.

There are several different ways magicians seem to bend spoons with their minds. All are tricks.

Uri gives away one of his spoon bending tricks if you listen closely. He states that the spoons he uses are ordinary steel and that they are cold after he rubs them and breaks them. The answer is that they are not ordinary steel, or more likely, that they have been prepared through repeated bending to respond to even the slight warming caused by the rubbing he does with his fingers.

Does Arsonist Have It In For Green Ford Escorts?

Believe it or not, an arsonist in Medford seems to be targeting early-to-mid 1990′s green Ford Escorts.

There have been three fires set in similar cars in the past month.

The most recent one happened early Sunday morning, when a ’95 green Escort was set on fire at a home on Kings Highway. Someone had broken a window and poured a flamable liquid inside before setting the car ablaze. The car was destroyed.

The same thing happed on Feb. 22 to a green ’93 Escort parked at a home on North Columbus. It too, was destroyed. A possibly related fire had been set in the laundry room at an nearby apartment building on West Main a few days before.

The first green Escort fire reported to police was on Feb. 2. In that case a woman living on Dakota thought her ’92 model had a flat tire, but when she looked closely saw that a plastic container of flamable liquid had been put next to the tire and set on fire.

Police say a man riding a bicycle was seen near the Kings Highway fire Sunday morning, but ran from officers and hid in the nearby neighborhood. Investigators aren’t sure why he ran or or if he had anything to do with the fires. The only description available is a male wearing a dark puffy jacket and riding a mountain bike.

Anyone with information about the fires is asked to call Medford police at 541-774-2230 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-3-DETECT.

via Does Arsonist Have It In For Green Ford Escorts? | green, fire, set – Top Stories -.

A girl I dated briefly drove one of these, but I think it was red or blue. I wonder if she moved to Medford and made someone so totally crazy that he flipped out.

Pink dolphin appears in US lake

You may have never seen one, but I assure you, the pink dolphins are real. – Xenophilius Lovegood.

The world’s only pink Bottlenose dolphin which was discovered in an inland lake in Louisiana, USA, has become such an attraction that conservationists have warned tourists to leave it alone.

Charter boat captain Erik Rue 42 photographed the animal which is actually an albino when he began studying it after the mammal first surfaced in Lake Calcasieu an inland saltwater estuary north of the Gulf of Mexico in southwestern USA. Capt Rue originally saw the dolphin which also has reddish eyes swimming with a pod of four other dolphins with one appearing to be its mother which never left its side. He said “I just happened to see a little pod of dolphins and I noticed one that was a little lighter. “It was absolutely stunningly pink. “I had never seen anything like it. It s the same color throughout the whole body and it looks like it just came out of a paint booth. “The dolphin appears to be healthy and normal other than its coloration which is quite beautiful and stunningly pink. “The mammal is entirely pink from tip to tail and has reddish eyes indicating it s albinism. The skin appears smooth glossy pink and without flaws. “I have personally spotted the pink dolphin 40 to 50 times in the time since the original sighting as it has apparently taken up residence with its family in the Calcasieu ship channel. “As time has passed the young mammal has grown and sometimes ventures away from its mother to feed and play but always remains in the vicinity of the pod. “Surprisingly it does not appear to be drastically affected by the environment or sunlight as might be expected considering its condition although it tends to remain below the surface a little more than the others in the pod.” Regina Asmutis-Silvia senior biologist with the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society said: “I have never seen a dolphin coloured in this way in all my career. “It is a truly beautiful dolphin but people should be careful as with any dolphins to respect it – observe from a distance limit their time watching don t chase or harass it “While this animal looks pink it is an albino which you can notice in the pink eyes. “Albinism is a genetic trait and it unclear as to the type of albinism this animal inherited.” A close relation of dolphins the Amazon River Botos called pink dolphins live in South America in the Amazon.

via Pink dolphin appears in US lake – Telegraph.

These pictures should be enough to convince you. They laughed at the first person who said the duck billed platypus was real too.

Buried Antarctica lake ‘could provide clues to life on Mars’ – Telegraph

Buried nearly two miles beneath Antarctica the unspoilt lake has been “frozen in time” for hundreds of thousands of years sealed off from the outside world. Scientists believe it may contain tiny life forms that never been seen by humans whose existence would throw light on how life could develop in other icy environments including Mars. The team also hopes the exploration of the waters will yield vital clues about climate change and future sea-level rise. The Natural Environment Research Council NERC has awarded £6 million to a consortium of multidisciplinary research centres including the University of Bristol for the work. Over the next five years the researchers will develop the technologies needed for the project. During the 2012-2013 winter season the research team will go “deep field” into West Antarctica to sample water from the lake in the search of “tiny life forms never before seen” and to extract sediment from the lake bed to find clues as to how the climate has changed over many millennia. Professor Martyn Tranter from the University of Bristol will be analysing some of the water from the lake looking for signs of life. He said “We are all very excited at the prospect of seeing what s going on down there. Any microbes feeding on material at the bottom of the lake will be giving off a particular chemical signature that we hope to pick up in the water. “If we find anything living beneath the ice it will not only be very exciting in itself but could have implications for life in similar icy environments such as on other planets.” About the size of Lake Windermere in the Lake District the underground pool has been described as “one of the planet s last great frontiers”.”

via Buried Antarctica lake ‘could provide clues to life on Mars’ – Telegraph.

Vatican hosts Darwin conference

The Vatican is sponsoring a five day conference to mark the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species.

The subject is the compatibility of evolution and creation.

It is one of two separate international academic conferences being sponsored by the Vatican this year.

They aim to re-examine the work of scientific thinkers whose revolutionary ideas challenged religious belief: Galileo and Charles Darwin.

Scientists, philosophers and theologians from around the world are gathering at the prestigious Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome to discuss the compatibility of Darwin’s theory of evolution and Catholic teaching.

Christian churches were long hostile to Darwin because his theory conflicted with the literal biblical account of creation.

But the Catholic Church never condemned Darwin, as it condemned and silenced Galileo.

Pope John Paul II said that evolution was “more than a hypothesis”.

via BBC NEWS | Europe | Vatican hosts Darwin conference.