Reply to comment

I started out writing this post about color and color perception and how the brain interprets color. For although we have set definitions, i.e. no matter what if two people see a banana they will call it yellow (unless it has brown spots), or if two people see grass in a field or on a lawn, they will call it green, or if they see a tomato they will call it red, that there are set standards for what we see, how do we know that exactly what we are interpreting is what the other person is observing regardless of the standard definitions. For example, is the banana the same yellow to one person as it is to the other person even if for both people they call the banana yellow? Is yellow the same to one person as it is to the other? How will we ever know since we only have one set of eyes and only have one brain, we each are our own person and are not able to see exactly what the other person sees, we cannot look through another’s eyes. Maybe the color green known to one person is to another person, what that original person would consider blue in their mind. Maybe colors are switched when the mind interprets them for certain people, or maybe all of this is not true and we in fact see the same exact colors and images.

The other part of the post I wanted to include came from a news aggregator article about genes linked to sizes of dogs. Dogs are the only species to have so many different breeds that the size of the dog can range from 2 pounds to 200 hundred pounds, a very large gap. Interestingly enough, there is a gene which was been discovered to account for this variance among dogs. Apparently, in the small dogs, there is something, some DNA that exists which is not apparent in the DNA of larger dogs, and that DNA suppresses the “insulin-like growth factor 1 gene” in dogs. Moreover, such is applied to dwarfism and mini-mice. Therefore, I wonder if there is any connection between diabetes and this DNA as diabetes is related to issues with insulin. It would be very interesting to do further research in this field. Gene therapy to me is very intriguing, and this research about dogs I found interesting and definitely wanted to read more.

Here is the link if you are interested:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/06/science/06dogs.html?ex=1333512000&en=4989da2886ea6eb4&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss