Haunted places and ghosts... Mystery of infrasound:
http://www.prosoundweb.com/article/print/a_ghost_story_low_frequency_illusions_created_by_standing_waves
Chladni Patterns -- http://thelig.ht/chladni/
Asia to Europe migration of humans earlier than thought:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/12/141223084139.htm
Leafy remedy for BedBugs:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/10/science/earth/how-a-leafy-folk-remedy-stopped-bedbugs-in-their-tracks.html
On Meritocracy and Pumpkin growing:
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2014/12/the-meritocracy-trap.html
e-Books and Tablets disturb sleep--
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-30574260
Ruby on Rails - fast start.
https://medium.com/@mackenziechild/how-i-finally-learned-rails-95e9b832675b/
**C++ reading**
https://isocpp.org/blog/2014/12/myths-1
http://en.cppreference.com/w/
"Watch the videos from GoingNative and CppCon. Andrei's talk recommended"
http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/GoingNative/GoingNative-2012
http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/GoingNative/2013
https://www.youtube.com/user/CppCon
** Git related. Many tips and tricks etc **
http://thelinell.com/2014/12/23/curated-git-links-of-2014/
To learn git the easy start way:
http://thelinell.com/2014/03/19/git/
Using git crypt to secure data in git repo
http://www.twinbit.it/en/blog/storing-sensitive-data-git-repository-using-git-crypt#
Facebook Graph API
FaceBook Graph API - http://facebookgraphapi.blogspot.com/2011/01/facebook-graph-api.html
--
/A
Thursday, December 25, 2014
Which hard disk is most reliable?
*Which hard disk is most reliable?*
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/175089-who-makes-the-most-reliable-hard-drives
/A
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/175089-who-makes-the-most-reliable-hard-drives
/A
Wednesday, December 3, 2014
Music in the genes
Anu Acharya
Either you have it in you, or you don't. And, the kind of music that you
take to is genetically determined as well
Several years ago, I watched a documentary musical, Latcho Drom , about
the migration of the Romany people from India to Egypt, Turkey, Romania
Hungary, Slovakia, France and Spain. The beautiful transition of music
as the central theme of their cultural migration is sketched in my mind.
Recent studies in genetics also point to genetic similarity that shows
the same migration pattern.
The other interesting correlation is between musical ability and
genetics. There are some people who seem to have an inbuilt musical
ability. Like wealth, music has been carefully preserved and
proliferates in certain families; in the gharanas of the Hindustani
music tradition, such as Patiala, Agra, Gwalior and Jaipur, for
instance. Interestingly, in the Carnatic tradition, many of the
musicians are brahmins. This shows that genes have a possible impact at
two levels: on musical ability and the kind of music that one takes to.
Your kind of music
In the 1970s, Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, a geneticist at Stanford
University in California, argued that combining genetics with fields
such as linguistics and demography could help trace human ancestry.
Floyd Reed, a population geneticist at the University of Maryland in
College Park, worked on this further. He first crunched the existing
catalogues to convert the cantometric database into a two-dimensional
scatter plot, with each dot representing a culture. The closeness of the
dots showed their similarity in music. He found that the music of
African bushmen cultures, such as the Juhoansi, fell close to that of
pygmy tribes such as the Aka. And in this plot he found that groups such
as the Hutu were farther away and they sing in unison.
When Floyd compared the graph with a database of genotypes from more
than 3,000 people in Africa, he found a correlation between genes and
songs. In other words, cultures that had grouped together musically
tended to share genetic markers.
Making links
The link was stronger than the correlation between songs and geography:
cultures next door to each other weren't as likely to sing the same
tunes as were cultures with similar genotypes. Music reveals deeper
biological connections between people than characteristics such as
language, that change when one culture meets another.
Moving to inherent musical abilities, Miriam Mosing of the Karolinska
Institute, Sweden, suggests that practising music without the right
genes to back up that practice is indeed useless. To prove this she took
a fairly large sample size of 1,211 pairs of identical twins (who share
all their genes) and 1,358 pairs of fraternal twins (who share half)
born between 1959 and 1985 and concluded that genes have a profound
effect on their musical ability.
So which genes have been found to affect musical ability? It seems like
the best association was found at chromosome 3 close to the GATA2 gene
that regulates the development of cochlear hair cells and the inferior
colliculus (IC) in the auditory pathway. The best linkage results were
obtained on chromosome 4 that contains several genes that affect inner
ear development and are expressed in amydala or hippocampus. The highest
probability of linkage was obtained for pitch perception accuracy next
to the protocadherin 7 gene, PCDH7 known to be expressed in cochlear and
amygdaloid complexes.
Music is ingrained and while it may be true that some of us have the
talent, others can enjoy listening to it. Given my love for music, it is
possible that I could have done well had I bothered to practice.
Perhaps, it is not too late.
--
http://www.fastmail.com - Does exactly what it says on the tin
Either you have it in you, or you don't. And, the kind of music that you
take to is genetically determined as well
Several years ago, I watched a documentary musical, Latcho Drom , about
the migration of the Romany people from India to Egypt, Turkey, Romania
Hungary, Slovakia, France and Spain. The beautiful transition of music
as the central theme of their cultural migration is sketched in my mind.
Recent studies in genetics also point to genetic similarity that shows
the same migration pattern.
The other interesting correlation is between musical ability and
genetics. There are some people who seem to have an inbuilt musical
ability. Like wealth, music has been carefully preserved and
proliferates in certain families; in the gharanas of the Hindustani
music tradition, such as Patiala, Agra, Gwalior and Jaipur, for
instance. Interestingly, in the Carnatic tradition, many of the
musicians are brahmins. This shows that genes have a possible impact at
two levels: on musical ability and the kind of music that one takes to.
Your kind of music
In the 1970s, Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, a geneticist at Stanford
University in California, argued that combining genetics with fields
such as linguistics and demography could help trace human ancestry.
Floyd Reed, a population geneticist at the University of Maryland in
College Park, worked on this further. He first crunched the existing
catalogues to convert the cantometric database into a two-dimensional
scatter plot, with each dot representing a culture. The closeness of the
dots showed their similarity in music. He found that the music of
African bushmen cultures, such as the Juhoansi, fell close to that of
pygmy tribes such as the Aka. And in this plot he found that groups such
as the Hutu were farther away and they sing in unison.
When Floyd compared the graph with a database of genotypes from more
than 3,000 people in Africa, he found a correlation between genes and
songs. In other words, cultures that had grouped together musically
tended to share genetic markers.
Making links
The link was stronger than the correlation between songs and geography:
cultures next door to each other weren't as likely to sing the same
tunes as were cultures with similar genotypes. Music reveals deeper
biological connections between people than characteristics such as
language, that change when one culture meets another.
Moving to inherent musical abilities, Miriam Mosing of the Karolinska
Institute, Sweden, suggests that practising music without the right
genes to back up that practice is indeed useless. To prove this she took
a fairly large sample size of 1,211 pairs of identical twins (who share
all their genes) and 1,358 pairs of fraternal twins (who share half)
born between 1959 and 1985 and concluded that genes have a profound
effect on their musical ability.
So which genes have been found to affect musical ability? It seems like
the best association was found at chromosome 3 close to the GATA2 gene
that regulates the development of cochlear hair cells and the inferior
colliculus (IC) in the auditory pathway. The best linkage results were
obtained on chromosome 4 that contains several genes that affect inner
ear development and are expressed in amydala or hippocampus. The highest
probability of linkage was obtained for pitch perception accuracy next
to the protocadherin 7 gene, PCDH7 known to be expressed in cochlear and
amygdaloid complexes.
Music is ingrained and while it may be true that some of us have the
talent, others can enjoy listening to it. Given my love for music, it is
possible that I could have done well had I bothered to practice.
Perhaps, it is not too late.
--
http://www.fastmail.com - Does exactly what it says on the tin
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