Complementaries

"Complementaries"

Watercolor on paper, 26 May 2004

  "There are things that only intelligence is able to search, but that, by itself, will never find them; only instinct would find them, but it will never seek them"

                                                                                               Henry Bergson

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Melting pot

"Melting pot"

Watercolor on paper, 26 May 2004

  We tend to think that populations of the world have been, and still are, unique in their genetic origins. Studies show that the whole world (not just certain territories) is actually a huge melting pot where thousands of generations have moved, settled, and again moved looking for new lands to settle. These two charts show how mingled we are, attending to the distribution of the different halogroups in our genes:

  The first map shows the situation about 1500 AC, when the main colonization journeys from Europe had not yet begun. The second map shows how the population is distributed throughout Europe according to their genetic origin by the end of the 20th century.

  It's interesting to see, for instance, that the proportion of people with Celtic-Basque-Frison-Italic- Saxon genes in Spain is very high, being only higher in Wales and Ireland. Austria, Serbia, Turkey and Chezc Republic are probably the countries with the highest gene diversity. Iceland, in the other hand, has the lowest diversity, as you could expect; Nevertheless, still there are three main halogroups quite evenly distributed among the Icelandic population: Celtic, Slavic and Germanic.

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Connections... On Intelligence

"Connections"

Watercolor on paper, 1 March 2007

    Jeff Hawkings is a remarkable researcher and computer designer who invented one of the latest antiquities: the PalmPilot hand-held computer. Only ten years ago everybody had one, although today PalmPilots are well obsolete. 

  However, the technology developed in the Palm devices is still around; Jeff Hawkings investigated how the human brain works to build the hardware and the software necessary to make the Palm devices recognize the hand-written texts and turn them into strings of bits that computers could handle.

 Jeff Hawkings wrote a book (On Intelligence, 2004) explaining how he became to know how human cortex does work. Wanting to develop a software that could read hand written texts, he looked for researchs on how human cortex does really work. For his amazement, he could not find a single work as a reference for what he wanted. Therefore he studied neurophysiology for several years to understand how we think, and then apply his findings to his projects.

  One amazing discovery he made is that cortex works on predictions. The regions connected with sensorial inputs interact with memory cells to create an expectation of what can be found and what actions to take. This basic function is found in the cortex of all mammals, whose brains only vary in size, not on how they work. 

  Jeff Hawkings is the founder and director of Redwood Neuroscience Institute, a center for research of brain theory.

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Crystal fruit

"Crystal fruit"

Ink on paper, 28 April 2004

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Self-awareness

"Self-awareness"

Watercolor on paper, 4 July 2004

  Different medical studies have concluded that absolute life span expectative for man is 120 years. Interesting enough, this bold scientific statement was already found in ancient Hebrew scripts, as we can read in Genesis 6:3. This "coincidence" brought me to think that perhaps there were other paragraphs in ancient Hebrew writings that could contain facts that Science has not yet confirmed.

  Most of the scarce systematic and statistical information found in old Hebraic writings is related with genealogy. Specifically the list of Adam's descendants found in chapter 5 of Genesis is a good example of detailed systematic notes, which transmit a sense of importance rarely found in other verses. 

I decided to chart the figures.

  
  The green sections show the reported lifespan for each individual. Starting with Adam, the series is coherent with an early period described in Genesis as of peaceful progress, followed by a period of constant decline of social and spiritual conditions just before and after the time of the Flood (red line). 

  The figures show something interesting: After the Flood man's life span reduced gradually to become 120 years, while before the Flood the life expectancy seemed to be a quite regular 900-year figure for almost 2,000 years. The age in which they generated their siblings seems also affected.

  Besides other connotations, it seems to be a relationship between the development of cultural societies and the decline of life expectancy, at least in a rare self-aware lineage that realized this connection and left a clear message for future generations: "Beware of your mind".

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Millennial or just centennial?

  

"Mutation" 

Watercolor on paper, 18 Sept. 2005

  More than a decade ago it was discovered that DNA strands have in their ends groups of apparently inactive molecules called telomeres. These telomeres protect the genuine, acting DNA molecules from changes or mutations that could alter the correct duplication of the DNA strands and thus give way to malformations, aging and diseases.

  Every time a cell divides, a portion of the hundreds of telomeres available in each strand are lost, which means that after approx. 50 divisions the DNA strands suffer alterations, the cell cannot divide exactly as it should, deteriorates and finally dies. This is how the aging process begins.

  Now, there is a enzyme that replicates telomeres: Telomerase. While we are young we produce enough of it to keep our telomeres in good shape. However, our body also stops producing telomerase when adulthood is reached.

  Telomerase allows, then, cells to live for a indefinite period of time. An interesting fact is that cancer cells are associated to a high level of telomerase in the blood, which explains why cancer cells are so difficult to fight, they regenerate fast and multiply even faster. A high level of telomerase is a good, high-probability indicator of cancer cells presence, even if these have not been detected yet.

  It has been assessed that telomeres can decay and be destroyed more rapidly on highly stressed people. (See study)

  Can we infer that low levels of stress can help to keep telomeres intact for longer periods of time, and thus extend our life span? Studies confirm this point... Succesful experiments have been conducted with mice, increasing their life span about 30%. 

  It is possible that non-stressed individuals may have existed that could live much longer than us. Did centennial, or even millenial individuals exist? We will look into that in the next blog entries. Keep tuned!

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Synchronicity

"Synchronicity"

Watercolor on paper, 24 Jun. 2004

  We read in Wikipedia:  

     "Synchronicity is the experience of two or more events that are apparently causally unrelated...  yet are experienced as ocurring together in a meaningful manner. The concept of synchronicity was first described by Carl Gustav Jung, a Swiss psychologist, in the 1920s."

     "...The concept does not question, or compete with, the notion of causality. Instead, it maintains that just as events may be grouped by cause, they may be also grouped by meaning. A grouping of events by meaning need not (to) have an explanation in terms of cause and effect..."

    "...Following discussions with both Albert Einstein and Wolfgang Pauli, Jung believed that there were parallels between synchronicity and aspects of the Relativity Theory and Quantum Mechanics. Jung was transfixed by the idea that life was not a series of random events but rather an expression of a deeper order, which he and Pauli referred as 'Unus Mundus'. This deeper order led to the insights that a person was embedded in an orderly framework and that he/she was its focus. The realization of this was more than an intellectual exercise, having also elements of a spiritual awakening." 


    "...From the religious perspective, synchronicity shares similar characteristics of an 'intervention of grace'. Jung also believed that in a person's life, synchronicity served a role similar to that of dreams, with the purpose of shifting a person's egocentric conscious thinking to greater wholeness."

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