SoleInvictus
@SoleInvictus@lemmy.blahaj.zone
- Comment on What common American habits do people find quietly annoying? 1 day ago:
I can tell you, I’m a real molecular/microbiologist!
Tl;Dr: It’s mostly bunk.
Most of these services don’t analyze your entire genome*, but instead just regions of genes, looking for something called SNPs: single nucleotide polymorphisms. DNA is composed of four nucleobases, commonly represented by their initials: T and A, C and G. A SNP is a spot on a gene where there’s some variability in these, e.g., a C or A or even a T instead of a common G.
Through whole genome sequencing and statistical analysis, these companies were able to identify frequency trends in SNPs according to where the person lives and their self-reported ancestry. Now they use a cheaper, less comprehensive (but still fairly accurate) process to look for the SNPs that data suggests are most strongly correlated with different regions/ancestries and dole out your supposed ancestry.
There are problems.
Conclusions are only as good as your data, and the data are often based strongly on self-reporting, which is usually pretty inaccurate.
SNPs aren’t static - every child has some, about 20 to 60, that their parents don’t have. Many detrimental SNPs can lead to death, so most that persist have no effect, though some are weakly detrimental or, even more rarely, beneficial. That means there’s a limited pool of viable options, so your kid might have spontaneously developed a few strongly associated with a region they’re not at all connected to. You have a few too, as does your coparent and all of your parents. Through a couple of generations of new SNPs, a person’s ancestry results can shift. Through random chance and no new SNPs, one might inherit a combination of SNPs commonly seen in other regions, simply through the right combination of ancestors not at all from that area.
Some SNPs are better than others. Those on what are called “highly conserved” genes, i.e., fuck this gene up at all and you die, tend to be less common and more stable. If a defined group has an unusual SNP or SNPs on these regions, it’s a far better indicator of relatedness than a SNP on a gene for something like vitamin C synthesis, which we have but the process is broken so it doesn’t matter if we break it more.
In summary, these services are built on data of varying quality (shitty data) and moving targets of variable utility (shitty targets).
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
*If you can swing it, genome sequencing and analysis can be really interesting and useful for healthcare decisions. You can learn a lot about how you, specifically, work, and we’re learning more all the time.
Just be sure to get sufficient sequencing coverage, at least 30x if you want “good enough”, 100x or more if it’s medically vital and/or you’re looking for rare genes. 1x is fairly worthless, paying for it is a waste of money.
- Comment on What common American habits do people find quietly annoying? 1 day ago:
I also find it maddening, not only because it’s silly, but because the analysis is largely crap anyhow.
My mother’s family touted their “Irish heritage for three generations”, then quickly shut up when their genome analysis “proved” they were instead largely English. I’ve had to point out Ireland and England’s relative positions and ask them if they thought anyone in our ancestry might have ever moved from island to island. Maybe consider that they were from somewhere else in Europe even earlier? Now they’re “Irish” again.
Point entirely missed, JFC. They were Irish, their ancestors were maybe English, and way back, their ancestors were definitely African, but I don’t see them getting into African cultural heritage. Thankfully.
You’re United Statesians. I get the draw, they’re looking for genuine but effort-free connection, identity, and belonging in a country whose dominant culture is homogenization, commoditization, and exploitation, but their search for culture through tenuous connections to long-dead ancestors instead of family, friends, and neighbors is just as hollow and unfulfilling.
Don’t obsess about great³-Grandpa Pádraig’s life harvesting peat from the bogs; he’s long dead and probably would have hated you. Embrace what and where you are and utilize and improve what you actually have.
- Comment on Wikipeter was the founder of the site in 1993 when he wanted to know more about model trains without having to visit the library 3 days ago:
Or that the editor misquoted the source entirely. I’ve even found articles that are littered with “citation needed” that have persisted as such for weeks or months.
I think sometimes people unfairly discount Wikipedia’s utility and overinflate its problems, while others are too cavalier about them. Wikipedia is a useful starting point for research as long as the researcher has the knowledge required to evaluate articles and perform further inquiry into their sources.
- Comment on My kitten loves his hammock in the bathroom window, but my neighbor's trash pile ruins pictures 6 days ago:
I was thinking a “poorly aimed” bottle rocket “from a neighbor kid”.
- Comment on I need to vent about plastic milk jugs 1 week ago:
This is awesome. Thank you! I think the collective efforts of everyone here may have made this the Internet’s definitive post about milk jug construction.
I’ve now spent literal hours reading about and discussing jugs for milk, something I don’t drink. This isn’t even my area of expertise! I’m providing all of this to my therapist as further proof that yeah, I’m probably autistic.
- Comment on I need to vent about plastic milk jugs 1 week ago:
Bingo, you got it. It only shrinks so much in volume because there’s a ton of surface area. If it was something with less surface area in relation to volume, like a sphere, it’d be much less dramatic.
Yeah, the shipping thing doesn’t really make sense for exactly the reasons you stated. The issue is more about the temperature when the bottle is made. This is done by inflating a warm plastic tube in a mold. Cooler plastic has a bit more rebound, where it shrinks a little when the air pressure is removed. This still happens in the summer, but since the environment is a touch warmer, it shrinks just a bit less. Since a 0.5-1.0% overall change has a significant effect on the volume, you get the compensating dimple.
- Comment on I need to vent about plastic milk jugs 1 week ago:
You’re welcome and encouraged to look into it yourself. You misunderstand what I’m saying and draw further conclusions based on that, though, so I can see why it doesn’t make sense. I’ll take a stab at explaining.
I did mean surface area, not thickness. As volume decreases, so do the dimensions of the object. The thickness of the plastic is already negligible and any change within that plane is a fraction of that, so even less pertinent here. The remaining two planes of the exterior, being several orders of magnitude larger, do experience functionally significant, easily measured change. Those two planes as they relate to volume are most succinctly explained as surface area.
I mentioned the SA:V change to illustrate that this size change isn’t visually apparent, so it’s important to adjust the volume via the dimple. This maintains a steady milk level so jugs can hold an entire gallon in the winter and ensures customers don’t think jugs are underfilled in the summer. In cold weather, the dimensions of the jugs reduce less than 1%, which means visually the change is difficult to notice, but the volume changes a fair amount, around 5%. A change in size imperceptible to most reduces the volume of the jug by about 1/20 without compensation*.
- This is how manufacturers can so easily fly under the radar with shrinkflation. It’s hard to see, especially since they use shapes that obfuscate these changes, but they’re easy to calculate.
- Comment on I need to vent about plastic milk jugs 1 week ago:
You’ve got it! My work was about sustainability, but that includes plastic consumption, so I learned about the factors that affect the amount used. You’re right on the process - they’re gross immediately after molding, so washing is next. The molds are water cooled, so they’re pretty consistent, it’s just heating the tube and the temperature of the compressed air that’s affected the most.
The volume change is unintuitively high. Jugs have a high SA:V ratio, being a curvy semi-rectangle with a hollow handle. A 1% surface area reduction results in a >5% drop in volume, about 7 fluid ounces per 1%, or 0.875 cups. Manufacturers really only see <1% reductions, but if they stuck with the same mold through the summer, they’d end up with a jug that looks to be about 0.5-0.75 cups low after filling. That’s pretty conspicuous for customers, especially since the top portion tapers, making the level drop even more dramatic.
- Comment on I need to vent about plastic milk jugs 1 week ago:
Believe it or not, this person is correct. It’s to adjust for differences in jug size caused by temperature.
Plastic jugs are made by blow molding, where a tube of plastic is warmed, then inflated within a mold using compressed air to create its shape. In winter, the air and environment are cooler so the plastic is also cooler and accordingly a bit less elastic while getting blown. This results in jugs that contract a bit more while cooling and are a bit smaller. To compensate, winter jugs have a shallower dimple. The alternative is either warming the air or warming the molds more, both of which cost more, while this actually slightly saves money by using a bit less plastic. The converse is true for summer jugs - bigger dimple, warmer air - as the warmer plastic molds more easily.
The dimple also adds a bit of structural stability, so the jugs can be made of slightly thinner plastic. These factories pump out millions of jugs, so even a $0.005 saving per jug adds up.
I actually did some work for a company that makes plastic containers, so I got it straight from them. Otherwise I’d provide a source. What I could find online that corroborates is low quality local reporting, so I didn’t bother with URLs.
- Comment on Some people prefer corn for some ungodly reason 2 weeks ago:
You can totally nix the pineapple! I’ve made it without when I didn’t have any. The dominant flavor is the corn and all spices. The drink tastes kinda like a very complex Kool Aid.
- Comment on Some people prefer corn for some ungodly reason 2 weeks ago:
I have an unhealthy love for corn. Ever try chicha morada?
- Comment on Some people prefer corn for some ungodly reason 2 weeks ago:
Onions make me ill in quantity so, uh, yeah.
- Comment on Are there supposed to be other options? 2 weeks ago:
I put on my robe and wizard hat.
- Comment on "No eating for free allowed! You must only watch it rot on the beach!" 3 weeks ago:
I assume the spiders would have died, and now you have delicious, brined cooking bananas!
- Comment on 4 weeks ago:
Seriously! BoF 1-3 with modern graphics and controls would be great .
- Comment on A Jamaican accent just makes me smile 4 weeks ago:
I’ve having a week and this is exactly what I needed. I’m now getting all my news from BBC Pidgin.
English headline: Trump wants to pause migration from ‘third-world countries’
Pidgin headline: Who be di ‘third world countries’ Trump say im go permanently pause dia migration to US?
- Comment on I support this 4 weeks ago:
I can’t fault you. At least we should organize into groups of 150 or less, the theorized maximum number of people that your average hairless ape can comprehend compassionately.
I propose a cell-based or council-network system that uses directly overlapping membership via 25 member subgroups, with each person a member of two groups. It maximizes empathic reach as members would better empathize with members of their two groups while increasing the likelihood members would empathize with members of a different group through the connection of another group member.
- Comment on how do plants in a green house get enough co2? 5 weeks ago:
I can’t tell if you’re joking or not. Unless a home is small, effectively airtight, filled with people, and the doors and windows are never opened, oxygen concentrations aren’t going to fall enough to be impactful.
- Comment on Feeling that groove 1 month ago:
I’m a microbiologist. That’s pretty normal. Things that look smooth and even when viewed normally frequently look different when significantly magnified. Your eyes can’t resolve the fine details so your brain fills in the gaps.
- Comment on Racism restaurant 1 month ago:
It’s a process cheese product! My uncle used to work at a factory that made it so I know their process.
It was only about 40% cheese, and the cheese utilized was a blend of the bits left over from making things like cheese sticks. This was combined with milk, milk proteins, and several emulsifiers to keep it from separating into oil and solids as it solidifies and again if it’s melted.
It’s called a “pasteurized prepared cheese product” because it doesn’t contain enough cheese to legally call itself cheese or any variant of processed cheese.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
All men are people but some men are more people than others.
- Comment on Labcoat! 1 month ago:
Just like my ochem lab partner. We just huffed diethyl ether on the sly and tried not to fuck up too much.
- Comment on Knows more than most scientists… according to one extremely reliable source: themselves 1 month ago:
Here on Lemmy, I recently learned of a far-reaching conspiracy that by its nature involves bribing research scientists and their support staff across the globe to falsify their data and support the falsified data of others.
I was quite surprised, having worked as one for over a decade and never receiving a cent of my universal bribe income (UBI). I’ve filed grievances with requests for back pay from both ANSO and the ISC, but they’re denying any knowledge of it.
- Comment on Scientists of Lemmy, explain: 1 month ago:
How about this one?!
- Comment on Not impressed 1 month ago:
Yep, traditional (non-phylogenetic) taxonomy creates problems like protists, the grab bag of eukaryota.
There are more species labeled protists than the sum of all their descendants.
Are they animals, plants, or fungi? Sure, why not!
Some are heterotrophs (eat things), some are autotrophs (energy from sun or chemicals), and others are mixotrophs (some of both). Some are motile, others immotile. Some are multicellular, most unicellular.
The problem is all taxonomy is arbitrary, and traditional taxonomy is pretty inconsistent. Phylogenetic taxonomy is still arbitrary, but using evolutionary relationships instead of “this monkey looks like other monkey” at least gets you more consistency in that system.
- Comment on Anon takes a DNA test 1 month ago:
Also “Turned out my father isn’t my real dad” is BS. Genetic test results are useless for determining such.
Wait, what now? The AncestryDNA test isn’t WGS, but it analyzes 700K loci. One can infer relatedness with an insanely high degree of accuracy with that number. For reference, the standard US paternity test uses 20 loci and it’s more than 99% accurate.
Or do you mean one needn’t be a biological parent to be a real father to a child?
- Comment on NEW TOAD ALERT 1 month ago:
TOAD! TOAD! TOAD! TOAD!
- Comment on Game marketing company takes down blog post bragging about how good it is at astroturfing Reddit after Reddit finds the post 1 month ago:
I see you too are familiar with Heart Forth Alicia.
- Comment on Become unrecognizable 1 month ago:
At least your face wouldn’t burn
- Comment on turing completeness 1 month ago:
Percent of Alovoa PC users on Linux: 93%
