jeskill

The Selfish Gene by Dawkins is also great, but probably too old. The Beak of the Finch : A Story of Evolution in Our Time. Weiner (1994) is good too, but may be too old. The problem is that influential books are going to be older. If you want new information (that's not necessarily old enough to be influential) you could also look at books that specifically tackle interesting questions within evolutionary biology. For example, sex is always interesting: e.g. Sperm Competition and Sexual Selection. Birkhead and Møller (1998) Sexual Conflict. Arnqvist and Rowe (2005)

In animals with the vomeronasal (pheromone) organ still intact, MHC molecules are functionally associated with one of the pheromone receptor families (V2R). - see Dulac and Torello (2003) in Nature Reviews 4:551 You are right that association doesn't prove causation, but studies on mice MHCs have shown this phenomenon too. Of course, we don't have working pheromone receptors, so the question becomes, how are we sensing pheromone-like odours, if we indeed are sensing them (i.e. odours that cause behavioural or physiological changes)? What else do you think it could be?

I didn't spend any money and my boyfriend bought me flowers. I feel guilty now because I thought we were sort of boycotting too.

Oh, how I hated the highschool years. All those hormones messing with the emotions and the dumb social rules that I never really understood. The teenage years were the epitome of hell.

Oh my Goodness. You aren't even out of highschool yet and you're bemoaning the fact that you aren't making 70 000 dollars a year and you don't have a date for Hallmark-let's-make-people-spend-more-money-Day? All I have to say is, wait a few years. I'm sure you'll have no problem. Highschool sucked for me -- I didn't date at all because I didn't like highschool guys (sorry) -- but college and my 20s? Great times. Just figure who you are and what type of person you want to be with, stay away from people who want to change you, don't take rejection all that seriously and you'll be fine.

I apologize, I thought you were Muslim. While I was on an exchange to Turkey, I had interesting discussions with Muslim friends about modesty. I do believe that one of the reasons cited for covering the female body is modesty (Kind of a side note, but a Muslim friend of mine believed that modesty came from within -- therefore she has no problem wearing skimpy dresses but she refuses to have premarital sex or drink. I thought that was an interesting concept.) Anyways, in Turkey, there are separate beaches and separate swimming pools for men and women so that women can maintain their modesty. So I just wonder if the reason why there's not a lot of Islamic women in the Olympics is because wearing a lot of clothes will hinder performance. It seems there are two choices: either have a swim meet where only women can participate and observe, or you don't play.

So, Tiger's Eye, just out of curiosity, how do you make female sports jive with the whole modesty thing?

I love this story and it was retold in my evolutionary ecology class today so I thought I'd bring it here for discussion. (Feel free to correct me if I get anything wrong). MHC, the major histocompatibility complex in vertebrates (HLA in humans), is a group of many, highly variable genes involved in immune response to viruses, bacteria, parasites. More variability seems to be correlated with an increased resistance. Therefore, there is an advantage to mating with individuals whose MHC genes are different than yours. Apparently, we can smell the MHC type of other individuals, hence one of the reasons why people have distinct odors. It's thought that this distinct odor is the result of an interaction between the "internal flora" (read Bacteria) and peptides associated with the MHCs. As evidence, Claus Wedekind, a zoologist at Bern University in Switzerland performed the famous "T-shirt" study, where males wore the same shirt for a couple nights without bathing or putting on deodorant, then females smelled the shirts to determine who had the sexiest scent. The results: Women consistently picked men with different MHC types than their own UNLESS they were one the pill, then they liked similar MHC types. Second piece of evidence: Manfred Milinski and Claus Wedekind published a study in 2001 that shows that people prefer to wear the perfume scent that matches their own MHC type, perhaps because it amplifies our MHC types and it could mask the smell of illness, make us smell healthier. Now for the business idea: What about starting an online business that uses molecular markers to determine an individual's MHC-type and then matching them with perfume that is designed to smell most similar to their MHC type? How much do you think it would cost per individual (not including start-up costs)? Happy Happy.

I agree with you that the main reason why contraceptives fail is because they are used incorrectly, either out of of laziness or misinformation. Some women who take the pill for a long time, and who miss occasionally or take it late without problems will start to think that they can't get pregnant ... hence the laziness. That being said, one way that you can get pregnant while taking the pill correctly is if you have a really short period (i.e. 4 days) and you ovulate before you start up the pill up again. Because everyone always leaves 7 days for the period.

I don't know Aardvark. I think that contraceptives fail more often than we think. But it's such a taboo subject that nobody really talks about it. We're told that contraceptives are 99% effective, I think we also get a little lazy sometimes -- we think it's not going to happen to us. It always happens to those "other" women. You know, the women who have unsafe sex. Not to people who use condoms or have been on the pill for XX years. I don't know how accurate that stat is. But I don't really think that abortion is used "casually" by most women who end up making that choice. At least, all the women I've talked to about it were definitely not casual about it.

27 (f): OK, I know this is only for anti-abortionists, but I'm pro-choice and of course, I believe that rape victims should be allowed to abort if they choose to do so. A couple of comments to the other posters: E.coli: The best time to abort is between 7 - 12 weeks. It's more dangerous for the mother before and after that period of time (you can take RU-486 before 7 weeks if you wish). And studies have shown that a fetus can't feel pain until at least the 20th week (some researchers say they can't feel pain until after they're born). So, as gruesome as an abortion sounds, the fetus is not traumatized before it's killed. (Yes, it's alive, and it's killed, but I don't believe it's sentient. That's my line I draw.) What exactly does "abortion out of convenience" mean? For example, if someone has the choice of having a baby and NOT finishing school (possibly getting a lower paying job and not being able to provide for her child as well as she could), or finishing school and having a planned baby later, is that convenience? Is that a bad choice? I know three women who have been faced with the choice of having a baby by themselves (because their partners weren't willing to help or change their lives) or having an abortion. Is that convenience? Don't you think a child would be better raised if they had both parents to lean on? This is coming from someone who was raised by a single mom. I mean, kudos to women who can do it, but we aren't all superwomen. Other interesting tidbits: A nurse told me that by the age of 40, 50% of Canadian women (sorry, don't know the stats for other countries) will have had an abortion. Second, contraceptives, even the pill, are not 100% effective. I know at least 2 people who have gotten pregnant while on the pill. One person missed one pill, the other didn't miss at all. Luck of the draw. The pills with lower hormone concentrations are particularly tricky. So if you don't want to have to make that choice, don't trust the pill. Or don't have sex.

Is it just me, or did other people see a remarkable improvement in Sharon's disposition after the death of Arafat? Another probable reason why Bush in particular is a strong ally of Israel is because he's backed by evangelical Christians who believe that the Jews must own Jerusalem when the second-coming of the Messiah occurs. Not that the other reasons aren't valid, I just find this reason the most amusing. Stringtheory: You should read up on the persecution of the jews in Europe over the past ~2000 years. Anti-semitism is very old.

So, uh, I saw Munich last night. I didn't like it (too long, too methodical, too gruesome). The main message I got from the movie is that "eye for an eye" is neverending. Also, I wonder how much of the movie was made up. Either Spielberg has amazing sources or a fantastic imagination.

Yeah, amateur mycologists use pressure cookers to autoclave agar before plating. The green colony looks like a penicillium species to me (a fungus). They can be very pretty, they grow very quickly and after a while, they start to produce droplets of liquid in the centre of the colony. If you have a microscope, make a slide and look at it. You'll be able to tell what kind of fungus it is for sure by looking at the architecture of the sporulating hyphae. If you wait long enough, bacteria will probably grow on the dish too. Then you can isolate the bacteria if you want. But IMO, fungus is WAY more interesting .

Phil, what do you think the Bloq Québécois will do for Quebec? Are you hoping for another referendum? Technically, Jean Chretien "retired"

Religion and the quest for power. Iranians are proud of their Persian heritage and like to be seen as distinct from the Arabs, but the fundamentalists are bound with the fundamentalist Arabs by their religious zealotry and distrust of the western world's economic and cultural power.

I don't know if they would trouble him if he were Israeli. Him being jewish didn't pose a problem.

I voted "your a pinko commie" because I can't decide if America will invade Iran. I don't know if the States has the resources to do it, even if they wanted to. IMO, if it did occur, an invasion of Iran might go a little smoother than the invasion of Iraq. I say this because it seems as if many Iranians are pro-American, if only to be anti-Iranian government. Two of my friends went to Iran on two separate occasions and met a lot of pro-American-Iranians. (Although, it could be that those were the only people who would talk to them.) One of my friends wrote this story about it.

The textbook definition (from Genetics: Analysis of Genes and Genomes, 5th Edition by Hartl and Jones). This is a simplified version. The A, B and O red blood cells have different polysaccharide groups on their surface. People who have AA allele type have the A polysaccharide, and therefore have type A blood. People who have BB allele type have the B polysaccharide, and therefore have type B blood. People who have AB allele type have both polysaccharides on the red blood cell surface (codominance). The O allele has no polysaccharides and it is recesssive such that two OO alleles mean that the individual has an O blood type, AO means you have an A blood type (because O is recessive), likewise, BO is B blood type. The polysaccharide groups can be thought of as antigens, because they can be recognized by antibodies. Antibodies basically recognize viruses and bacteria by recognizing structural components. This can cause a signaling cascade that induces macrophages or the antibodies can cause the molecules with the antigen to aggregate. There is some mechanism that prevents an individual from producing antibodies against its own antigens (I don't know what this mechanism is) but people who can produce antibodies against foreign blood cells will and this causes agglutination (clots) of the red blood cells. In particular: People of blood type OO make both anti-A and anti-B antibodies, they are a universal DONOR because they don't have any polysaccarides. But they can only accept type OO blood because type A or B will be recognized by their antibodies. People of blood type AB make no antibodies because they have both the A and B antigens. Therefore, they are a universal receiver, but they can only donate blood to type AB people. It's pretty easy to figure out the other ones (AA, AO, BB, BO) through logic. Possibly the evolutionary reason why there are different alleles is that they are simply mutations of one original blood allele. The mutations do not seem to affect fitness, so I suggest that the alleles may have become common through genetic drift and other stochastic events.

So, just out of curiosity, e.coli, have you read much about this species concept debate? I'm assuming you use a phylogenetic species concept in your work? It's kind of a big issue with the stuff I work on (fungi). When I do phylogenetic comparisons, I use operational taxonomic units (OTUs) that are (sort of) arbitrarily decided on before analysis.

The chimp article is indeed very cool. But I'm confused as to how your link helps us better understand the complexities of comparative genomics. It seems to be more a diatribe against evolution using a few statements that are taken out of context. I'm also confused as to how exactly you would relate this article to species concepts of chimps/humans vs. bacteria.