full moon and wild geese

hi michael,

I don"t know what was wrong with your sophisticated calculation, but I could not spot any meteor this time ! I went over to Shafa, since her windows faces southward, and it is always fun to be with her and have a chat. So we were sitting in front of her big window, with tea and some sweets, but all we could see was the hugh full moon shining through the clouds. But unlike in August, when we were in the Park in Unterschleissheim to watch the Perseides, this time the sky was almost 100% covered with clouds. So I don"t know, whether we were blinded by the moon, or the stjaernfallen were all obscured by the clouds, anyhow there was nothing that looked like the amazing meteor we saw together in summer.

Have you been more successful ?

Thanks anyhow for the calculation - I have never seen your handwriting before.

take care

/ghazal

PS: I have not jet found sufficient data from the journals to make a firm conclusion about different UVA-repair capacity in different cells of the human body. You asked, why people study UV-repair in lymphocytes, considering they are in their normal physiological situation never exposed to UV-light.

But you should consider, that what we call UV-repair is in fact a DNA-repair mechanism that can process a larger class of damages, not just UV-induced ones. Base damages, nucleotide damages, O6-methyl-guanine and the like are all repaired by the NER- or BER-system that we study after UVA-exposure. And because lymphocytes (as well as other cells of inner organs) can always be affected by those types of DNA-lesions (for instance after free-radicals or just by replication errors), they are probably able to repair UVA-damage es well. The cell, at the end, does not know where the damage comes from (UVA or free-radicals), it just feels the damage and responds to it.

------------------------------------------------------------

Hi Ghazal, my Dear,

Yes, you are probably right, I had not considered this before. But I guess at the moment UV-repair is not so important, I mean because there is just no sunshine. At least here in Munich.

Hope it is more pleasant over there in Sweden.

So nice you acknowledged the calculation, although the clouds were not considered therein :-(

But at least the moon was visible from here and from your place, have a look I did a photo of it. And by chance there was a flock of wild geese flying across. Might be they came from Skandinavia, on their way to the south. Maybe you also saw them a couple of days before, while they were just starting their journey in Sweden.

Yesterday I passed along the cafe, where we went in May (think it was the 19th, after you did the test for the german course at the Gasteig evening school). I remember that you had an iced chocolate then, and I had a tea. The waiter was asking you where you came from, and you had to explain him all the details of your odyssee from Stockholm via London to Munich.

Yesterday, there were only a few people sitting inside the place, and all of them looked like regular customers, who use to go there frequently. They all seemed to be very cool, I guess none of them had any reason for an emotional irritation as I had, when I was sitting there with you. When I saw the place again yesterday, it all came back to my mind in a second. I hope you keep the place in good remembrance. I think you should, Ghazal, because at this time in May you perhaps haven"t been very confident about your MSc project yet, and how you will manage it. Maybe you have been afraid that this whole formal genetics would all be too complicate, and it will cause you only lots of stress but no scientific satisfaction. I hope so much, that now, after this half year you can laugh about the doubts you had in May.

Hope everything is o.k. with you, and that you enjoy every day.

TAKE CARE

Michael