Haunted Island

Islands can be luxurious, relaxing and even…spooky!!! In a past episode of Destination Truth host Joshua Gates explores Pemba Island off the east coast of Africa. The island is reputed to be so haunted that many local fisherman wont visit the island. Apparently in the past hte island was used as a slave trading post. According to locals the island is haunted by the angry ghosts of deceased slaves. Happy Halloween Everyone!!!

The global human – II | Gene Expression

global2A reader pointed me to a second composite image of a “global human.” It is “a composite itself from four composite of Northwest European, South & West Asian, East Asian and African faces….” I was very taken aback by this face, because it was familiar: staring back at me is younger variant of the faces of my maternal uncles! I asked a friend who has met my family their impression of the photo without a preface, and they immediately wondered if it was a stylized representation of one of my mother’s male relatives.

Koken Barbers Chair

How do I find out what bearing is used on the insdie of a Koken Barbers Chair handle. The bearing came out in pieces so I don't even know what it looks like. Also is there a manual for this type of chair.

The Mileage Theory

Hi All,

In India we have a popular perception with all auto guys, they say a new vehicle for their 1st 1000km/ 1 month the speed should not be more than 40kmph.

Is this because the new engine needs seasoning i.e. when driving at low speeds the new engine material expands to a limit x,

On a Harsh Scottish Isle, Sheep Trade Strong Immunity for Lots of Lambs | 80beats

Soay_eweThe snowy, wind-blown Scottish archipelago of St. Kilda may be inhospitable, but because it is inhospitable, it is an ideal natural laboratory. The last people left this place behind nearly a century ago, but the sheep stayed. And the in absence of human interference in their breeding, the sheep of St. Kilda have shown scientists something peculiar.

It has to do with the relationship between the immune system and reproduction. Andrea Graham and colleagues have studied the islands’ Soay sheep for years and years, and found the average lifespan of the ewes to be about 6 years. However, there’s great variation in there: Some lived just a few years, and some as many as 15.

The short-lived ewes had lower concentrations of antibodies than the longer-lived ones, which suggested why their lives were so short. But why was natural selection not weeding them out? Dr. Graham said the researchers found this to be a puzzle: “What are all these sheep doing with low antibody concentrations?” [The New York Times]

It’s a good question. If you just looked at the conditions on St. Kilda, you’d think that weaker sheep eventually would be wiped out.

The Soay sheep may not have any natural predators, but they do have the elements to contend with: a lack of food, brutal weather that can kill off half the population at a time and parasitic worms that live inside their bodies and suppress their immune systems. [MSNBC]

The answer, they found, was that the sheep with the weakest immune systems were the most fertile, reproducing like crazy during their short lives. Meanwhile, the sheep with strong immunity had less reproductive success, but they also lived a lot longer, so the reproduction stats just about even out. Therefore the archipelago hosts a population where neither the strong immunity/weak fertility sheep nor the weak immunity/strong fertility sheep have died out.

Graham’s study is out in Science.

Related Content:
80beats: Like a Wool Sweater, Scottish Sheep Shrink As Climate Heats Up
80beats: Naturally Produced Hydrogen Peroxide Summons White Blood Cells to Wounds
80beats: How Male Antelopes Lie to Get More Sex: With False Alarm Calls

Image: Wikimedia Commons


Catch Basin Design

Greetings All,

I need to build a catch basin for storm run off in a parking lot, googled several different designs, but what i have in mind is a small debris catch with a clean out, attached to some sewage leach field pipe buried in 3/4 inch gravel. Not counting the size requirements, would

The possible impossibility of truth and the importance of incorrectness | Gene Expression

In the post below on the genetic history of India, or earlier when discussing the revisions of European prehistory, one general trend that is cropping up is that the future seems more complex and muddled than we’d presumed. This introduces the real possibility that in the foreseeable future we won’t be able to opine with any credibility about the nature of the pre-literate past, because our tools are good enough to falsify simple models, but not powerful enough to distinguish between the set of more complex models. In contrast, ten years ago when it came to the expansion of farming in Europe on offer we had simple and clear dichotomies; demic diffusion of Anatolian farmers vs. cultural diffusion of farming techniques along trade routes. Ten years ago when it came to India we are mooting the possibilities between elite transmission of Indo-European language, versus demographically significant migrations into South Asia bringing the Indo-Aryan dialects.


I think that such models are wrong, because there are major parameters left out of the picture. Now in the world we see around us the possibility of really achieving plausible consensus around a positive truth has decreased significantly, because the causal possibilities are proliferating. A model then becomes synonymous with a story. But to admit that it may be that we can’t know is still a greater improvement on the delusion that we did know.

These are general observations. R. A. Fisher’s attempt to transform evolutionary biology into a deterministic set of laws as powerful as those of thermodynamics seems to have failed; at least beyond a trivial level. The importance of history and contingency, of specific detail, muddles the general insight which we can derive in evolutionary processes. But if there is no general insight to derive then we shouldn’t be deriving it, should we? False confidence in knowledge we think we have is a far greater sin than the admission of ignorance.

Libertarian Party of Indiana Condemns Use of Candidates Image’s Without Permission

The Indiana Democratic Party has sunk to new lows in their efforts to win two Congressional seats in Indiana. It was revealed Friday that the Indiana Democratic Party has put out a direct mail piece for Libertarian Greg Knott in Indiana’s ninth Congressional district. Today, Conservative voters in the second Congressional district received a direct [...]