Quacks in the ER

 
Here's what the emergency room would look like if homeopathy and naturopathy became real medicine instead of alternative medicine.

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[Hat Tip: Pharyngula]

Nobel Laureate: Leopold Ruzicka

 

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1939.

"for his work on polymethylenes and higher terpenes"




Leopold Ruzicka (1887 - 1976) won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his contributions to organic chemistry—especially the structures of polymethylenes and higher terpenes.

One of the structures that Ruzicka solved was that of muscone, the molecule responsible for the smell of musk. The perfume industry required large supplies of this molecule which could only be prepared from the musk gland of musk deer. The preparation of synthetic muscone probably saved the musk deer from extinction.

Ruzika was born in Austria-Hungary but he spent most of his career in Switzerland. Do to political circumstances in 1939, the prize was awarded at a special ceremony in Switzerland in January 1940. Ruzika attended another ceremony in Sweden at the end of the war. He shared the 1939 Nobel Prize with Adolf Friedrich Johann Butenandt.


The special award presentation describes the work on sex hormones.
THEME:
Nobel Laureates

When studying the natural odorants occurring in musk and civet, muscone and civetone, little known until then, Ruzicka obtained fundamentally new and surprising results during the years 1924-1926. He discovered that the molecule of muscone as well as that of civetone contains one single ring of carbon atoms, the number of which was considerably larger than that in all hitherto known cyclic molecules, larger even than had been considered possible. During his investigations of these odora he synthesized many kindred macrocyclic compounds, and drew attention to the plant-physiologically remarkable fact that these could be prepared from natural fatty acids.

Many interesting relationships exist between the polyterpenes studied by Ruzicka and a series of physiologically and medicinally important groups of compounds, viz. the bile acids, the sterols and the sex hormones. Among the many interesting results obtained by Ruzicka and his collaborators with sex hormones, the preparation of compounds with the same action as male sex hormones is of signal importance. It is his merit that by establishing preparative methods for androsterone and testosterone the technical synthesis of these two hormones has been made possible.

Moreover, the numerous new related compounds prepared by Ruzicka have contributed fundamentally to our knowledge of the physiologically so very important sex hormones, thus creating a sound basis for future investigations.

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[Photo Credit (bottom): ETH-Bibliothek Zürich, Bildarchiv: Creative Commons License]

The images of the Nobel Prize medals are registered trademarks of the Nobel Foundation (© The Nobel Foundation). They are used here, with permission, for educational purposes only.

Nobel Laureate: Hans Spemann

 

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1935

"for his discovery of the organizer effect in embryonic development"

Hans Spemann (1869 - 1941) won the Noble Prize in 1935 for his contributions to developmental biology. He worked mostly with the eggs of newts and frogs and through careful observation of the developing embryo he was able to work out the fate of many cells in the early embryo.

Spemann reasoned that some cells in the early embryo were able to direct the fate of other cells. By transplanting parts of one embryo to specific locations in another embryo he determined which cells acted as organizing centers, presumably by secreting regulatory molecules [see Monday's Molecule #126 and The Spemann–Mangold organizer experiment in 1924].

Here's an excerpt from the Presentation Speech.
THEME:
Nobel Laureates

Much thought has been given to the nature of the forces and causality regulating this development. It is at this point that Spemann's researches begin. He used eggs of various animal species which differ in colour, and with his simple instruments transplanted small pieces of tissue in different stages of development. By this means he was able to establish that, for example, a cell mass normally destined to become ventral epidermis - Spemann calls it presumptive ventral epidermis -could develop into nerve tissue if it were put in the place where the spinal cord was to develop. Hence, the course of development of these cells was not laid down in advance or it could - if such was the case - be altered by transplantation; so that the transplanted portion adjusted itself to its new environment. When Spemann then transplanted the anterior lip of the blastopore of an embryo into the ventral side of another embryo it grew a new brain and spinal cord. This brain and spinal cord did not arise from the transplanted cell material, but from the presumptive ventral epidermis whose course of development was thus altered by the presence of the blastopore. From this Spemann could ascertain that the blastopore had an organizing influence on its environment. The cell material which was grafted into the ventral epidermis and caused the development of the new spinal cord was actually of the kind that, developing normally, would have given rise to the notochord. Further experiments showed that it is the notochord primordia which organize the development of the primordial spinal cord, while, on the other hand, the mesoderm in the head causes the development of a primordial brain. Near this arise the so-called optic vesicles which are the origin of the retina of the eye. Where these approach the ectoderm of the head they organize the development of the lens of the eye. Or, to take another example: the anterior end of the primordial gut (the oesophagus) organizes the development of a primordial mouth and primordial teeth inside it. Thus, we now see how cell masses originally undifferentiated have the course of their development laid down by the influence of rudiments of organs formed earlier. Thereafter, a cell mass such as this can assume the role of organizer in relation to its environment.

In this way we begin to understand how the laws of development work. We begin to perceive why a primordial head arises at the anterior end of the embryo, why a brain always arises in the head and never anywhere else, or why the mouth always has its place below the primordial brain and never elsewhere.

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[Image Credit: E. M. De Robertis and Hiroki Kuroda (2004)]

The images of the Nobel Prize medals are registered trademarks of the Nobel Foundation (© The Nobel Foundation). They are used here, with permission, for educational purposes only.

Canadian Cynic Is Coming to Town

 
Don't forget that Canadian Cynic is giving a talk tomorrow night at CFI Toronto [Creationism, ID and the Douchebaggery of Really Bad Arguments: An Evening with the Canadian Cynic].

This is your big chance to meet the man behind the blog.

We'll be getting together for food and beverages before his talk. Email me if you'd like to join us.

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Monday's Molecule #127: Winner

 
The molecule is muscone or [R]-3-methyl-cyclopenta-decanone. This is one of the main ingredients in the musk odor used in perfumes. The original chemical is the R-enantiomer shown below. It was extracted from the musk glands of musk deer (right). Modern perfumes are made from synthetic muscone, which is a mixture of the R- and S-enantionmers.

The Nobel Laureate is Leopold Ruzicka, who worked out the structure of muscone.

This week's winner is Dima Klenchin of the University of Wisconsin.

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Today's molecule stinks.¹ You have to identify it by giving me the common name and the IUPAC name.

There's only one Nobel Laureate whose name is linked to this molecule. The Laureate was responsible for determining its structure.

The first person to identify the molecule and the Nobel Laureate, wins a free lunch. Previous winners are ineligible for six weeks from the time they first won the prize.

There are seven ineligible candidates for this week's reward: Michael Clarkson of Waltham MA (USA), Òscar Reig of Barcelona, Maria Altshuler of the University of Toronto, Mike Fraser of the University of Toronto, Jaseon Oakley of the University of Toronto, Bill Chaney of the University of Nebraska and Ian Clarke of New England Biolabs Canada in Pickering ON, Canada.

Bill Chaney has donated his free lunch to a deserving undergraduate so I'm going to continue to award an additional free lunch to the first undergraduate student who can accept it. Please indicate in your email message whether you are an undergraduate and whether you can make it for lunch.

THEME:

Nobel Laureates
Send your guess to Sandwalk (sandwalk (at) bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca) and I'll pick the first email message that correctly identifies the molecule(s) and names the Nobel Laureate(s). Note that I'm not going to repeat Nobel Prizes so you might want to check the list of previous Sandwalk postings by clicking on the link in the theme box.

Correct responses will be posted tomorrow.

Comments will be blocked for 24 hours. Comments are now open.

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1. Opinions may vary.

Genes, Phylogeny, and Orangutans: A Correction

 
In a recent posting I described how New Scientist devoted several pages to the idea that orangutans could be our closest relatives [Genes, Phylogeny, and Orangutans. Here are my exact words,

It's a lesson that New Scientist should have learned. They devote several pages to the Grahan and Schwartz paper thereby giving it much more publicity than it deserves [Could the orang-utan be our closest relative?]. The article is written by Graham Lawton who you might remember from the "Tree of Life" episode [see: Explaining the New Scientist Cover]. The editors of New Scientist knew full well that their decision would be controversial so they took a proactive position by writing a short editorial [In praise of scientific heresy ]. [my emphasis - LAM]

I've received an email message from Graham Lawton, Deputy editor of New Scientist and the author of the article. He points out correctly that the article was exactly two pages long and the editorial was 400 words. He thinks that this is significantly less than "several pages" and asks me to correct my "mistake."

So, for those who think that two pages and a short editorial don't qualify as "several pages," I apologize for my "mistake." I only wanted to make it clear that the coverage was not just a few lines in their weekly survey of press releases.

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Does Teaching Science Lead to Atheism?

 
Does science lead to atheism? My short answer is "no" just like the answer given by John Wilkins and Matt Young. Their emphasis is on whether scientists are always atheists and whether those who are atheists became atheists because of science or whether they picked science as a profession because they were nonbelievers. Not all scientists are atheists, therefore science doesn't inevitably lead to atheism. That's their position.

Let's ask a different question. Would good science education in the public schools convert religious students to atheism? No, it is not true that exposing students to good science teaching will inevitably make them abandon their religion.

Is that all there is? No, the question can't be answered in such a simple manner. I think that a good science education will threaten most religious beliefs and in some cases will cause students to abandon those beliefs.

Let's imagine what a good science education would look like. The teachers would explain how science works. They would teach that scientific explanations require evidence and logic and that everyone should learn to be skeptical of all claims. Teachers would use examples like evolution, plate tectonics and cosmology to describe good science and how new ideas are incorporated into our understanding of the way things work. They would use astrology, homeopathy, and the deluge as examples of how some explanations do not conform to the expectations of science. The goal is to stimulate students to think and teach them how to do it in a scientific manner.

Imagine that there are religious students in the class. There seem to be three possible ways they could incorporate their knowledge about science into their religious worldview.

1. It will have no effect on their beliefs.
2. It will cause them to question and possibly abandon some of their beliefs.
3. It will reinforce and strengthen their beliefs.

I strongly suspect that more students will start questioning their beliefs when they are exposed to good science education but I admit I have no data to support that suspicion. Does anyone think that the net effect would be to strengthen beliefs or leave them unaffected?

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Genes, Phylogeny, and Orangutans

Jeffrey H. Schwartz is well known to talk.origins veterans because we discussed his book (Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, and the Emergence of Species) back in 1999. Schwartz tried to make the case for a "groundbreaking and radical new theory of evolution." This "theory" was based on the idea that new species spring into existence very quickly when a mutation in a homeobox (HOZ) gene arises in a population. It's a "theory" of saltation but it's based on such a flawed understanding of genetics that you really have to read to book to see just how bad it is. Sudden Origins is a leading candidate for the worst science book ever published.

In case you want to see a shorter version, the basic idea is explained in Schwartz (1999).

Over the years, Schwartz has published many other ideas that are controversial. Lately he has been pushing the concept that molecular phylogenies are unreliable. In part this is because he is opposed to gradual change as documented in the record of the genes. He thinks that real evolution takes place when alterations of regulatory genes result in major new phenotypes. Thus, the best way to discover the history of life is to examine anatomical homologies and differences.

But part of the problem lies in Jeffrey Schwartz's idiosyncratic understanding of genetics and molecular biology. When you put these together, this is what you get in Schwartz (2009).

This having been said, systematics and evolutionary biology need not remain estranged. Developmental biology increasingly makes clear that organismal change (and by extension, evolution), is not how it was imagined when the synthesis emerged (see reviews in Schwartz 1999, 2009b; Maresca and Schwartz 2006). Further, because of the interrelation between, e.g., the physical properties of cells, signaling pathways, epigenetic effects and development and consequently the origination of form, the false dichotomy of ‘‘molecules versus morphology’’ that resulted in the 1980s from the dethroning of morphology by the hegemony of molecular analyses is no longer tenable (Schwartz 2009a). Indeed, the undeniable hierarchical continuum from the molecular through the morphological, firmly centralizes morphology (as understood via development) in systematic endeavors (Schwartz 2009a).

Grahan and Schwartz (2009) have just published a paper in which they claim that orangutans are more closely related to humans that are chimpanzees. According to them, the molecular data is not reliable. They claim that detailed morphological comparisons show that orangutans are our closest ancestor.

John Hawks asks the question "Are orangutans our closest living relatives?" and he comes up with the best possible answer to scientists with a well-known history of promoting "unusual" positions on evolution.

It's a lesson that New Scientist should have learned. They devote several pages to the Grahan and Schwartz paper thereby giving it much more publicity than it deserves [Could the orang-utan be our closest relative?].¹ The article is written by Graham Lawton who you might remember from the "Tree of Life" episode [see: Explaining the New Scientist Cover]. The editors of New Scientist knew full well that their decision would be controversial so they took a proactive position by writing a short editorial [In praise of scientific heresy ].

If its claims are so outlandish, should the research even have been published? Some scientists would clearly have preferred it if the paper had never seen the light of day, and question the judgement of the journal.

That is territory we should tread with care. Ideas that mainstream opinion "knows" to be wrong occasionally turn out to be right. The insights of Galileo, Stan Prusiner - who discovered prions - and many others were once denounced as heresy. And even those that are wrong can be valuable.

Science proceeds by questioning its own assumptions and regarding every "fact" as provisional, so alternative hypotheses should be given an airing, if only to reaffirm the strength of the orthodoxy. Science that pulls up the drawbridge on new ideas risks becoming sterile. The journal recognised that and should be applauded for its decision to disseminate this challenging paper.

There's some truth here, but only some. You can't use Stanley Prusiner as an excuse to publish every crazy idea that comes along. Some ideas really are crazy—they are not revolutions in disguise. The plain fact is that Jeffrey H. Schwartz has already had his chance to make his case and he has not been successful. How many chances does he get before we draw the obvious conclusion?

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1. The article was two pages long and the editorial was much less than one page. This may not qualify as "several" pages by some definitions.

[Photo Credit: Daily Mail]

Grehan, J.R. and Schwartz, J.H. (2009) Evolution of the second orangutan: phylogeny and biogeography of hominid origins. Journal of Biogeography, published online June 22. 2009. [doi:10.1111/j.1365-2699.2009.02141.x]

Schwartz, J.H. (1999) Homeobox genes, fossils, and the origin of species. Anat Rec. 15:15-31. [PubMed]

Schwartz, J.H. (2009) Reflections on Systematics and Phylogenetic
Reconstruction. Acta Biotheor 57:295–305 [doi: 10.1007/s10441-009-9078-9]

What Can Scientists Do to Help Science Journalism?

 
This week's issue of Nature has a number of articles devoted to science journalism. Their publication coincides with the 6th World Conference of Science Journalists in London, UK.

One of the articles is an editorial, Cheerleader or watchdog?, about what scientists can do to help science journalism.

Scientists can do little to stem this bloodletting. But whatever they can do to engage with those caught up in it, and ensure that questioning and informed science journalism persists, will be worthwhile. If there is to be a transition to new — perhaps philanthropic — business models for in-depth reporting or new types of analytical media, science journalism will integrate into them all the better if scientists are taking an active interest in its health. And if the future of the media truly is a dire landscape of top-100 lists, shouting heads and minimal attention span, then such efforts might at least defer the grim end.

Even amid the turmoil, however, scientists can help ensure that reporting about science continues to be both informed and accurate.

I agree that scientists should work on trying to make science reporting more accurate. So far, we haven't been too successful.

But there's another important contribution we can make. We can help clean up our own act so that less bad science is published. This will not only make science better, it will have the spin-off effect of making life easier for science journalists. At the very least, we should make sure that press releases coming from our institutions are accurate. Every scientists should have to stand behind and endorse the press releases from their supporting institution. Let's take responsibility.

Also, wouldn't it be nice if most of the papers published in the scientific literature were careful to put their work in the proper perspective? Wouldn't it be nice if scientists themselves stopped exaggerating their contributions and stopped making outrageous claims? Science journalists have not done a good job of sifting the wheat from the chaff, in spite of what they think. They are far from blameless but scientists carry a bigger share of the blame for the sorry state of science literacy.

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Campus Excitement

 
There's usually something exciting happening on the University of Toronto campus during the summer.

It's a popular location for shooting movies and TV shows and you never know what you'll find on any given day. This is the scene that greeted me today when I emerged from the subway station. It took a few seconds to realize that I wasn't in the middle of a real emergency.

Last week the front campus was the scene of a bank truck robbery in Germany, just in front of a sidewalk café. I wish they'd left the outdoor tables and umbrellas and kept serving the wine and food.

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Monday's Molecule #127

 

Today's molecule stinks.¹ You have to identify it by giving me the common name and the IUPAC name.

There's only one Nobel Laureate whose name is linked to this molecule. The Laureate was responsible for determining its structure.

The first person to identify the molecule and the Nobel Laureate, wins a free lunch. Previous winners are ineligible for six weeks from the time they first won the prize.

There are seven ineligible candidates for this week's reward: Michael Clarkson of Waltham MA (USA), Òscar Reig of Barcelona, Maria Altshuler of the University of Toronto, Mike Fraser of the University of Toronto, Jaseon Oakley of the University of Toronto, Bill Chaney of the University of Nebraska and Ian Clarke of New England Biolabs Canada in Pickering ON, Canada.

Bill Chaney has donated his free lunch to a deserving undergraduate so I'm going to continue to award an additional free lunch to the first undergraduate student who can accept it. Please indicate in your email message whether you are an undergraduate and whether you can make it for lunch.

THEME:

Nobel Laureates
Send your guess to Sandwalk (sandwalk (at) bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca) and I'll pick the first email message that correctly identifies the molecule(s) and names the Nobel Laureate(s). Note that I'm not going to repeat Nobel Prizes so you might want to check the list of previous Sandwalk postings by clicking on the link in the theme box.

Correct responses will be posted tomorrow.

Comments will be blocked for 24 hours.

---

1. Opinions may vary.

Grandpa Burger

 
When I was (much) younger I used to order the Teen Burger when we went to the A&W. Even after I stopped being a teenager I still got the Teen Burger 'cause I wasn't really eligible for any of the others.

While we were living in Europe there were no A&W's in our part of the world so I didn't have a problem choosing what to order. By the time we returned to Canada, Jane had been born and I could order the Papa Burger without feeling guilty.¹

Here I am at the the A&W yesterday, trying out the Grandpa Burger. Technically, I won't be officially eligible for the Grandpa Burger until next January. Coincidentally, that's when my daughter Jane and her husband Michael will be able to buy the Mama and Papa Burgers.

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1. I sometimes cheated and ordered the teenburger anyway.

[Hat Tip: A&W Grandpa Burger commercial.]

Everything You Wanted to Know About Canada but Were Afraid to Ask

 
The Canadian system of government can be a little difficult to understand and recent political events in Canada don't make it any easier. Here's a brief and dumbed-down lesson on Canadian politics. It's intended mostly for Canadians but foreigners might also find it helpful.

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Thanks to Greg Laden most readers on his blog are now much more knowledgeable about Canada than most Canadians.

The Great, Profound, and Valuable Works of Evolutionary Psychology

A few weeks ago I was having an email discussion about evolutionary psychology with Gad Saad. Readers may recall an earlier posting about Gad's work on the correlation between the length of one's fingers and the kinds of things one likes to buy in a store [Psychology and Finger Length].

One of my criticisms of evolutionary psychology is that its proponents don't usually seem to have a good handle on modern evolutionary biology. Gad argues that, while this may be true for some evolutionary psychologists, it's not a widespread problem. He, for example, considers himself to be very knowledgeable about evolution. His undergraduate degree is in Mathematics and Computer Science. He then went on to obtain an MBA, an MS in Management, and finally a PhD in Marketing [Gad Saad].

He is currently an Associate Professor in the Marketing Department at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. But over the years he has learned a great deal about evolution and in 2008 he was appointed to the "Concordia University Research Chair in Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences and Darwinian Consumption." Gad explained to me that this appointment was recommended by several experienced evolutionary biologists.

We weren't making much progress in our email discussions. It seemed that we had been reading different accounts of evolutionary theory because we couldn't agree on some basic concepts. Nevertheless, Gad advanced a number of vigorous defenses of evolutionary psychology including the following point that I reproduce from our email exchange with his permission. (Actually, he gave me permission to post his list of "great, profound, and valuable works" but not the actual paragraph where he made the claim. I posted the actual claim because it differs from what Gad said in the comment to my earlier posting.)

You are indeed correct that evolutionary psychology has at times succumbed to the allure of just-so storytelling. That said, it is unfair (and frankly dishonest of you) to place all evolutionary behavioral scientists under the negative umbrella that you repeatedly do. Evolutionary psychologists produce great, profound, and valuable works, and at times can produce weaker works with tenuous conclusions. This holds true of biochemists as well. Physicists disagree as to whether String Theory is valid or not. Should we equally view physicists as providers of shoddy and controversial work?

I was intrigued by the claim that evolutionary psychologists have produced "great, profound, and valuable works" and I asked for examples. He supplied them but around that time I got distracted by real life and didn't follow up on our email exchanges.

Now Gad has posted his list in the comments to yesterday's posting on Why Evolutionary Psychology Is False.

I think it deserves wider coverage so here, without comment, is Gad Saad's list of the great, profound, and valuable works of evolutionary psychology. This is the best of the best by one of the leading experts in the field. I think we can get a good sense of the overall quality of the discipline by examining the list.

1. Women alter their preferences for the facial features of men as a function of where they are in their menstrual cycles. When maximally fertile, they prefer men possessing markers of high testosterone.
2. Babies display an immediate instinctual preference for symmetric faces (at an age that precedes the capacity for socialization).
3. Children who suffer from congenital adrenal hyperplasia display a reversal in their toy preferences. Furthermore, using inter-species comparisons, vervet monkeys display the same sex-specific patterns of play/toy preferences as human infants. This suggests that contrary to the argument made by social constructivists, play has an evolved biological basis.
4. Individuals who score high on an empathy scale are more likely to succumb to the contagion effects of yawning. This is indicative that this particular contagion might be linked to mimicry and/or Theory of Mind.
5. How provocatively a woman dresses is highly correlated to her menstrual cycle (a form of sexual signaling found across countless Mammalian species).
6. Culinary traditions are adaptations to local niches. For example, the extent to which a culture utilizes meat versus vegetables, spices, or salt is a cultural adaptation (this is what behavioral ecologists study).
7. Maternal grandmothers and paternal grandfathers invest the most and the least respectively in their grandchildren. Whereas all four grandparents have a genetic relatedness coefficient of 0.25 with their grandchildren, they do not all carry the same level of "parental uncertainty." In the case of maternal grandmothers, there is no uncertainty whereas in the case of the paternal grandfather, there are two sources of uncertainty. This last fact drives the differential pattern of investment in the grandchildren.
8. Good male dancers are symmetric (paper published in Nature). One would expect that some behavioral traits might correlate with phenotypic quality as honest signals of an individual's desirability on the mating market.
9. Self-preference for perfumes is linked to one's immunogenetic profile (Major Histocompatibility Complex).
10. When a baby is born, most family members (especially those of the mother) are likely to state that the baby looks like the father. This phenomenon is found in countless cultures despite the fact that it is objectively impossible to make such a claim of resemblance. The reason for this universally found cultural tradition lies in the need to assuage the fears of paternity uncertainty.
11. Environmental stressors (e.g., father absence) and the onset of menarche (first menses) have been shown to be highly linked. In numerous species, the likelihood of a female becoming reproductively viable is affected by environmental contingencies.
12. Women are less receptive to mandatory hospital DNA paternity testing (for obvious reasons). In other words, their willingness to adopt a new product/service is fully driven by an evolutionary-based calculus.
13. Women can smell the most symmetric men. In other words, women have the capacity to identify men who possess the best phenotypic quality simply via their nose. This is what I have referred to as sensorial convergence.
14. Using fMRI, the exposure to ecologically-relevant stimuli (e.g., beautiful faces) yields distinct neural activation patterns in men and women.
15. In choosing a mate, humans tend to prefer the smell of others that are maximally dissimilar to them along the MHC. This ensures that offspring possess a greater "defensive coverage" in terms of their immunological system.

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Swine Flu Is Caused by French Fries

 
According the a report from Russia, the current swine flue pandemic is caused by genetically modified potatoes that are sold as French Fries in many Western industrialized nations [Russian Scientists Warn Of Genetically Modified Fast Food Link To Pandemic Flu].

Scientists from Russia’s Ministry of Health are warning in a secret report to Prime Minister Putin that they have discovered a ‘critical link’ between the H1N1 influenza (Swine Flu) virus and genetically modified amylopectin potatoes that are consumed in massive quantities nearly exclusively by Westerners and sold in fast food restaurants as French Fries.

According to these reports, the protease enzyme genetically modified in the potatoes being sold through Western fast food restaurants as French Fries to protect against Potato virus X causes an “explosive” replication of the H1N1 influenza virus by increasing the acidic conditions of the endosome and causing the hemagglutinin protein to rapidly fuse the viral envelope with the vacuole's membrane, then causing the M2 ion channel to allow protons to move through the viral envelope and acidify the core of the virus, which causes the core to dissemble and release the H1N1’s RNA and core proteins into the hosts cells.

Evidence confirming these dire findings by top Russian scientists is also supported by the World Health Organization who in their reporting on the current Influenza Pandemic, clearly shows that the H1N1 virus is nearly totally confined to those Western Nations allowing their citizens to consume these genetically modified potatoes, and which include: The United States with over 17,000 cases being reported with 45 deaths; Canada with 2,978 cases; the United Kingdom with 1,226 cases; and Australia with 1,823 cases.

This is very troubling. I'd like to be an accommodationist and pretend that the Russian kooks scientists are every bit as good as real scientists in other countries. On the other hand, my scientific instincts lead me to postulate that the claim is not very scientific and should be assigned to the urban legend category.

I'm in a quandary over whether I should believe this or not. We need the Russians as allies but we also need the French. Seems like one of them is going to be offended.

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