graupel, avidin, basements and their lack.

Winter is no longer coming; Winter is here.

i learned a new word last night. A friend and i were talking about frozen precipitation (the sort that falls from the sky, not the sort that falls from your buffer), and he mentioned graupel. It's apparently the sort of of snowflake upon which water has condensed to form a ball of the super-cool rime. Reading through the official precipitation wikipedia page, there's also virga, which is apparently rain that evaporates before it hits the ground, and thundersnow, which happened this Christmas in Madison and i was totally bummed to miss (wait for it...).

Something half-remembered that i brought up in conversation with Jack, Holly and Tyler the other day was the fact that consuming large amounts of raw eggs will strip out biotin (vitamin B7, also called vitamin H for haar and haut, German for hair and skin) due to the large amounts of avidin found in the egg whites. This can and has been studied by inducing the deficiency in lab animals, referred to as egg white injury in those early papers. Anyway, KateB and i looked this all up when we were discussing streptavidin, the bacterial version, as used as a tag in biochemistry.

i very much am enjoying The Head and The Heart's music video for Lost in My Mind, partially because i like the song (and feel like i get bogged down in my own brain a lot), as well as for the scenery for the latter half of the song. Puddles of lamp(light) on what i take to be a frozen lake (based on the emptiness and surrounding trees)?. i doubt it's live, but who cares? Love.

Another note in the long standing update regarding running and proper form, a notice in the NYTimes today. It's pretty well done, discussing why running shoes traditionally have a cushioned heel (it's thought to lessen the impact when you DO heel strike), and that about 70 percent of adults assayed from a previously unshod tribe landed with their heels first while running a comfortable pace, but a large precentage then mid- and fore-foot struck when asked to sprint. This is kinda common sense (in my personal experience), but it's nice to see it documented.

Also, i'm from a place without basements. i have never questioned why there are not basements, because that's just how it is. i have answered off-the-cuff several times, mostly to the effect that there are high water tables and shallow bedrock.  Wikipedia provides a semi-official answer, "Structurally, for houses, the basement walls typically form the foundation. In warmer climates, some houses do not have basements because they are not necessary (although many still prefer them). In colder climates, the foundation must be below the frost line. Unless constructed in very cold climates, the frost line is not so deep as to justify an entire level below the ground, although it is usually deep enough that a basement is the assumed standard. In places with oddly stratified soil substrata or high water tables, such as most of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and areas within 50 miles (80 km) of the Gulf of Mexico, basements are usually not financially feasible unless the building is a large apartment or commercial structure."