Archive by Author | Kitty

Fresh lemonade with blue agave syrup

May28

Lemon TreeSo we have way too many lemons and when life deals you lemons … time to make lemonade. In the photo on the left I circled where many lemons have fallen off the tree due to our hot weather spell. I have given away 3 bags of lemons in the last week and still have too many.

So I googled recipes for making lemonade and I was appalled by the fact that they all called for as much sugar as lemon juice. The basic recipe is 1 cup lemon juice (from 4-6 lemons), 1 cup sugar (best to make into syrup via hot water), and 4-6 cups cold water (depending how watered down you like it).

So I decided to try using that blue agave syrup that has been sitting in the cabinet. It was in packets and it took 14 little packets to get enough sweetness! And of course the flavor is a touch different than sugar but I think I like it.

After making the lemonade, you put it in the fridge for 30 minutes. Let’s see if I still like it later!

More on Norwegian naming practices and how to list them in your GEDCOM

May19

On GENI.com and wikitree.com they allow birth surnames for men and women which makes life easier for those of us with Norwegian ancestry since the farm name of birth can go into the “maiden” name slot for both sexes and the farm where they lived most of their life into the surname slot. It is important to use the farm name as a surname and put the patronymic in as a middle name, since it makes it much easier to find and identify an ancestor. There are so many Ole Olesons and Lars Larsons otherwise.

ArvegodsThis wonderful blog post explains Norwegian naming in great detail.

http://arvegods.blogspot.com/2012/02/norwegian-names.html

Sadly she has not written very many blog posts.

[UPDATE 9-AUG-2017] That author, Anne Berge, told me to send people to this page instead for her Norwegian DNA project at Family Tree DNA:
http://www.norwaydna.no/gedcoms-and-genealogy/norwegian-names-en/norwegian-names-in-genealogy-software-en/
[END UPDATE]

I found the original on this page at GENI which discusses Norwegian ancestry in detail.

http://www.geni.com/projects/Norwegian-Ancestry-information/11383

 

Learning about Genetic Genealogy: Conferences, Courses, and more

May16


Cece MooreIf I were just starting to learn about genetic genealogy now, I think I would sign up for the Institute of Genetic Genealogy’s conference in Washington this August organized by two of the leaders in this new field: Cece Moore (pictured to the left) and Tim Janzen. Immersion always works best for me.

If I could not make that, then I would try DNA day at the Southern California Genealogical Society Jamboree in June.

In the meantime I might attend the Google+ hangout from 23andme Genetic Genealogy Basics, on May 22 at 12PM PST (3PM EST) (details at http://throughthetreesblog.tumblr.com/post/85927430757/hangout-with-23andme-genetic-genealogy-basics )

Then there are also a number of online courses to take:

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Klotho – a gene for longevity and better brain function as you age

May11

A recent discovery in the news is the Klotho gene which seems boost brain function and adds to longevity. About one in five people have the good variant.

KLsnpIf you tested at 23andme, you can find out if you have it by checking the SNP at rs9536314, the protective variant is the heterozygous one, GT, while the normal variant is TT. The homozygous version, GG, appears to be deleterious.

So log into your 23andme account and then click this URL to see if you have the GT  version is
https://you.23andme.com/tools/data/?query=rs9536314&filter_by_platforms=true

Here are a few informative news articles explaining this discovery:
http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2014/05/114196/better-cognition-seen-gene-variant
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/276665.php

Now to get more technical.

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How many ancestors did I have 1000 years ago?

May8

Powers2Someone recently posed the question “How many ancestors did I have 1000 years ago?” in conjunction with the assumption that the various genetic origins programs include about 1000 years worth of ancestry … my answer, of the billion possible maybe a million, maybe far fewer …

Very simply, if you postulate that 1000 years was 30 generations ago then your theoretical number of ancestors is two to the 30th, or just over a billion: 1,073,741,824. This is impossible as nowhere near that many people were alive back then. Plus not everyone who lived a thousand years ago has descendants today. So your ancestors must be duplicated numerous times on your family tree; this is known as pedigree collapse. Brian Pears points out in his article The Ancestor Paradox, that “even if every marriage in every generation was between second cousins, a quite unbelievable situation, we would still run out of people to be our ancestors within 29 generations.”

Kenneth W. Wachter came up with an interesting mathematical model for this, described in Stephen Lewis’ blog post How many ancestors do I have. To somewhat paraphrase, “Going back 30 generations… Wachter’s model calculates that [an Englishman] would have 952,279 distinct ancestors in 1077 – only around 0.09% of the maximum but representing fully 86% of the total estimated English population [at that time] of 1.1 million.”

More recently (1999), Yale statistician Joseph Chang wrote a paper analyzing pedigree collapse that postulated that we Europeans all have a common ancestor who lived in about 1400 AD. Warning, that paper has lots of math in it.

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