Heath nuts tend to be keen on antioxidants, and there are plenty of products out there that mention the benefits in their advertisements. They now seem to be of potential value to survivalists – taking a combination of antioxidants prior to having an CT scan reduced DNA damage by 50%:

In our initial small study, we found that pre-administering to patients a proprietary antioxidant formulation resulted in a notable dose-dependent reduction in DNA injury…

According to New Scientist (April 2, 2011) the formula included vitamin C, glutathione and uric acid. I can see this research leading the way towards experiments on mice to show which antioxidants can protect us in the event of a nuclear disaster.

Antioxidants Protect from Radiation is a post from: 2012 Blog

©2012 2012 Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Image via Wikipedia

If you look at the DNA of the natives of Easter Island, and exclude whose ancestors interbred with Europeans (who arrived in 1722), then you’ll find most of the genes point to a colonization from Asia. But some have the HLA genes found only in Native Americans. See New Scientist, June 2011.

Island legends describe an invasion from the West by a red-haired, long-eared race. The “short-ears” became the slaves of the “long-ears”, and the statues are of the long-ears. It has been speculated that the long-ears were European (due the the red hair), and they may be, but these mysterious elders seem to have arrived via South America. The DNA news presents two possibilities – is it from the long-ears, or is from slaves they brought over from the Americas? I figure it was the latter.

A third possibility is the ancient Americans walked there, although the timeline doesn’t really fit.

Easter Island DNA Shows Interesting Mix is a post from: 2012 Blog

©2012 2012 Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Image via Wikipedia

I’m a fan of panspermia, particularly the idea the mushroom spores traveled to Earth and gave humans a little extra something. The concept was given a real boost this week with news that components of DNA, nucleobases, have been found in meteorites:

In laboratory experiments, Callahan and colleagues showed how the nucleobases could have formed inside meteorites. Simple chemical reactions involving ammonia, water and hydrogen cyanide — all ingredients found in meteorites — produced the wide range of nucleobases the scientists found in the space rocks.

…Scientists have also found other building blocks of life — most notably amino acids, the links that form proteins — inside meteorites.

While Bernstein said that it’s impossible to discern whether the first life on Earth was built on chemicals that fell from the sky, that possibility is now stronger. “These molecules are at the core of [life’s] blueprints,” Bernstein said of the nucleobases. “It’s possible that the presence of these molecules in meteorites made us what we are today.” [Source: Washington Post]

The other possibility is that those ingredients helped life form elsewhere in the universe, and that life itself arrived on Earth, rather than forming in the primordial soup. As time goes on,  evidence (and theories from the likes of Mike Baillee)  is growing, and it seems certain that past humans have been affected by bombardments from space. Which means comets, meteorites, dust, red rain, or even mushrooms from space will return one day…

DNA Comes From Outer Space is a post from: 2012 Blog

©2012 2012 Blog. All Rights Reserved.

By using nine different genes, and real genetic data (instead of estimates) new research suggests that just 70 people crossed the Bering Strait 12-14K years ago. This means that the wiping out of megafauna in North America, especially the mammoths, is now less likely to have been by human hands. Therefore the odds of a cataclysm being responsible have now increased. More at the Daily Mail.

In the USA there appears to have been a dramatic increase in the number of electrical transformers exploding. These news items could become this year’s sinkholes – weird everyday events getting highlighted a lot in blogs and forums. My take on it is that the increase in the Sun’s activity combined with the extra strain on the US power grid since the last solar peak is the culprit. This would mean that any major solar storms in the next few years are still a major risk – the US grid could be down for months, and that would be massive tragedy. More at SOTT.

70 American Ancestors / Exploding Transformers is a post from: 2012 Blog

©2012 2012 Blog. All Rights Reserved.

First of all, I severely doubt HRH Prince Charles is a 2012er, and although I respect his principles, I never thought I would write a blog post about him. But today it crossed my mind that perhaps he has a role to play in the peripheral topics of 2012. He has written a book called Harmony: A New Way of Looking at Our World, and it covers the general idea of how modern society is no longer in tune with nature. In itself, that is not especially interesting – many people have written similar books. But as the Huffington Post reports, the book also covers sacred geometry!

They made a building that offers us the direct experience of what the ancients held to be our true relationship with the world. To walk around within its soaring pillars and to bask in the gentle light that pours through its exquisite windows is to experience a sense of participation in the very ‘patterning’ of the soul. No sense here of being a disconnected observer in a dead and mechanical universe.

This means that three 2012 / ancient mystery angles are present in one book:

1) Earth Changes, where many 2012ers believe our disharmony with nature could cause a catastrophic event in 2012

2) Sacred Geometry, which is linked to the Freemasons and the  Templars, and connects ancient mysteries with modern conspiracy theories

3) Sacred Bloodlines, the idea that perhaps many royals were descended from Jesus, and/or are carriers of ancient secrets and knowledge

I’m not suggesting that Charles is sharing secret/sacred knowledge with us, or that this is anything more that a gentle man with new age interests sharing his thoughts. But it is intriguing that a person who could have access to such secrets is writing a book covering these topics.

Prince Charles and 2012 Topics is a post from: 2012 Blog

©2012 2012 Blog. All Rights Reserved.

This is breaking news, and could be important one day. The “hobbits” were similar, but more of a curiosity. This new fossil, nicknamed “Woman X“, might have lived as recently as 30,000 years ago, making her a contemporary of ourselves and the Neanderthals.

New Hominid = Mysterious Elders is a post from: 2012 Blog

©2012 2012 Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Previously I have mentioned the amazing seed vault in Norway, that seemingly offers plants a better chance of surviving a cataclysm than humans have.

Other places to find species kept safe include:

Native Seeds – 2000 plant varieties in Tucson, USA.

Ambrose Monell Cryo Collection – houses a million frozen tissue samples representing the DNA of a wide range of animal species. Located in New York City.

Millennium Seed Bank Project – large underground frozen vaults in West Sussex, UK, preserving the world’s largest collection of seeds. Now has over 1 billion seeds stored. Aiming to cover 24,000 species of plants, approximately 10% of all existing dry land flora.

Seed Vaults is a post from: 2012 Blog

©2012 2012 Blog. All Rights Reserved.

According to Discover magazine, “blue eyes have their hue because of a single genetic mutation that occurred fewer than 10,000 years ago in one individual and swept rapidly through the European population…”

The most likely cause of the mutation spreading would be that individual having lots of children…

Various theories vaguely related to 2012 include ancient races known by names such as the Watchers, Angels, Annunaki, Atlanteans, Nephilim and so on. They are generally depicted as either being lizard-like, or Elvish (think LOTR).

Could this mutation have come from one of these speculative races? If so, what was their relation with humans? Did this individual just happen to have lots of children with human partners, or were the conceptions forced, or even experimental in nature?

Food for thought.

Blue Eyes only 10,000 Years Old is a post from: 2012 Blog

©2012 2012 Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Can mutation really lead to the evolution of new species?

Yes. Several species of abalone shellfish have evolved due to mutations in the protein “key” on the surface of sperm that binds to a “lock” on the surface of eggs. This might appear impossible, but it turns out that some eggs are prepared to be penetrated by deviant sperm. The same thing can happen in fruit flies, and likely in many other groups too. In yeasts, the mutations that led to some new species forming have not only been identified, they have even been reversed.

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/dn13673-evolution-myths-mutations-can-only-destroy-information.html

Organisms do not always hang about waiting for a helpful mutation to occur. For instance, the parasite that causes sleeping sickness has thousands of spare genes for its coat proteins, which it mixes and matches to generate new coats faster than its host’s immune system can keep up.

More controversially, a few biologists think some microbes may have evolved mechanisms for boosting the mutation rate in specific genes when they are struggling to cope with a changing environment, or for “storing up” variation for when it is needed

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/dn13698-evolution-myths-evolution-is-random.html

It won’t be long (hopefully pre-2012) before a prominent scientist dares to suggest that we evolve the the way our DNA chooses, into new species.

Supporting Evolution Snippets from New Scientist is a post from: 2012 Blog

©2012 2012 Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Found this at The Scientist. Seems even after DNA has been changed, planst can revert back to the DNA of their ancestors:

She had found that a mutant Arabidopsis plant could “fix itself” back to the wild-type and take on the genetics of its grandparents. That seemed to contradict the laws of Mendelian inheritance.

It all sounds very similar to current Windows software that saves a snapshot of your system, and lets you rollback to those settings if something bad happens – like catching a computer virus

According to this theory, somewhere in the plant cells exists an RNA copy of ancestral DNA, sequences of which the plants can tap and randomly substitute into their own DNA, accounting for the reversion. Of course, Gregor Mendel’s law of segregation states that offspring inherit two alleles for one trait, one allele from each parent. That means there’s a linear relationship of inheritance between parent and child, and each offspring’s alleles can only come directly from their parents’ alleles. A non-Mendelian system of inheritance has “enormous implications,” says Lolle, with the potential to unseat nearly two centuries of assumptions in genetic research.

…Researchers speculate this mechanism evolved as a way to evade viruses that often create double-stranded RNA as they spread in the host system.

Rollback your DNA is a post from: 2012 Blog

©2012 2012 Blog. All Rights Reserved.