Monday, February 8, 2010 by angel.

I was watching television with my mom a while back, when this Geico commercial aired. “Oh Golly,” my mom said, visibly distressed and protectively crossing her arms in front of her chest, a move she usually reserves for a kissing scene or any reference to homosexuality.

Having observed neither of the above-mentioned offenses, I was confused. Could my mother be upset at Geico’s diminishing the racism experienced by millions every day? Could my mother be broadening her viewpoints, empathizing with others? What would be next - would she let my gay cousin visit her house? Almost excited, I asked, “What’s bothering you?”

“Oh, nothing,” my mom said with a huff. In my peripheral vision, I noticed my brother waving his arms. I glanced his way while prodding my mother for more information, understanding his silent don’t-ask gestures a bit too late. “Well,” my mom began, and my brother dropped his head into his hands.

“I don’t believe in cave men,” my mom spat.

“Oh,” my disappointment was evident. I looked to my brother. His hands were in a prayer-like fold. Please, let it go, he was urging.

I did.

For like two more commercials. “You know, I saw the coolest documentary the other day.”

“Really? What was it about?” Mom was interested, my brother eyed me suspiciously.

“Dinosaurs,” I replied. My brother sighed, stood, and left the room.

“You see, collagen-proteins have linked birds to dinosaurs, and scientists are studying those dinosaur-like traits that birds still carry in their DNA. One scientist has been able to isolate certain proteins in embryonic chickens so that they develop dinosaur-like tails. Pretty neat, huh?”

My mother looked at me, flabbergasted, for a full three minutes. By her blinking eyes, I knew she was still conscious.

Suddenly, she raised her arms in the air as though telling traffic to her right and her left to stop. “All I know,” she began triumphantly, “is they thought there would be a whole lot of dust on the moon because it’s sooooooooo old, and there was only a few inches.”

I watched her smile for about 10 seconds before speaking again.

“Dinosaur tails, Mom. Dinosaur tails.”

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Friday, June 12, 2009 by admin.

Much thanks to My Female Sexuality for letting us run their post on the Medical Benefits of Masturbation.

Masturbation, it seems, is a form of genital “housekeeping”. Women experience the urge to masturbate as a way to eliminate debris or genital “gunk” that inhabits the mucus of the vagina and uterus (i.e. menstrual remnants, old sperm, or colonies of invading viruses and bacteria at the opening of the cervix). Baker explains, ” An orgasm via masturbation solves a dual problem. In the absence of the spoiling effects of semen, the orgasm rids her cervix of older mucus, relining the vaginal walls, ready to lubricate her next intercourse. An orgasm without semen present makes the remaining cervical mucus more acidic, hence more resistant to infection.”* Daily discharge routinely keep the vagina clean, but the urge to masturbate comes when there is more debris than the daily discharge can accommodate.

For men, the housekeeping benefits of masturbation are equally important. Millions of fresh sperm cells are necessary for optimum baby making, so unused sperm lingering around in the testicles too long are encouraged to leave the warm, scrotal sack to make room for a fresh batch. That means a quick ejaculation. Baker and his colleagues showed that the male body would spark the urge to masturbate in anticipation of intercourse in order to have the freshest sperm possible. “By masturbating, the result is that when he next inseminates a woman, he does indeed ejaculate fewer sperm - but they are younger and more active. A greater number manage to escape the seminal pool, and because they are younger, they live longer. Just as with a woman and her cervical mucus, a man’s body keeps an eye on the health and vigor of the sperm he has in storage, and when it decides it needs to be shed it triggers in him an urge to masturbate.”* So if your sperm are more than three days old, you’re going to be feeling the urge to mate - or at least to find the baby oil to ejaculate on your own.

So what happens if you refuse to give into those healthful but lustful urges to bring yourself to orgasm? It turns out that solo orgasms are such an intrinsic part of genital health, that if the urge to masturbate is suppressed in both men and women, then the body simply causes you to have nocturnal emissions - or wet dreams. Those sexy thoughts you have during REM sleep are produced by your body to keep it primed, healthy and ready to reproduce. The only problem from the resulting orgasms is that it leaves you with extra laundry. So the moral of all this is give in to those primal urges to get intimate with yourself. Despite all the centuries of bad press, the truth is that masturbation is downright good for you and as important to your health and well being as blowing your nose or brushing your teeth. Amen.

* Baby Wars, Baker, Robin & Elizabeth Oram. 1999. Harper Collins, Toronto. Pages 25-26

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Friday, June 12, 2009 by admin.

Much thanks to My Female Sexuality for letting us run their post on the Medical Benefits of Masturbation.

Despite all information affirming masturbation is harmless, normal and under no circumstances hair growth on your palms, many people in our culture still consider it a taboo. People believe masturbation a somewhat seedy thing to do to yourself, or something that only happens during a weak moment or extra-long showers. During the latter part of the 60’s the slogan “Make love not War” abounded, groundbreaking sexual researchers Masters and Johnson were proponents of masturbation as a relaxation technique and an important part of healthful, stress-free living. At about the same time, many organized religions were condemning masturbation as an evil temptation and encouraging parents to discipline their children against it.

The good news is that thanks to Masters and Johnson and 20th Century researcher Dr. Robin Baker we now know that masturbation is as good for us as eating our Wheaties or taking our vitamins. So why are we still uncomfortable with the subject matter?

The old adage about male masturbation still seems to be true that 99% of men engage in it and the other 1% lie about it. For women the numbers are slightly lower, but the landmark “Sex in America” study put the numbers of female masturbators at about 85%. These studies also go on to reveal that 54% of men and 62% of women won’t admit to a partner that they do actually masturbate. So the majority of the population it seems, are chronically taking advantage of themselves even if they still believe there is something wrong with this behavior

Sex therapists have long proposed regular masturbation as a way of learning about your bodies and keeping the equipment from going rusty in a “use it or lose it” sort of fashion. Woody Allen called it “Sex with someone you love”. Either way masturbation is intrinsic to understanding your own sexuality. What I say to my patients is, “if you can’t play with your own equipment, then you shouldn’t be playing with someone else’s”. How can you tell someone how you would like to be touched if you’ve never touched yourself?

Masturbation teaches you what you love, what makes you uncomfortable and all the things in between. It’s also fun! Masturbation can give you the most powerful orgasms of your life and give you the chance to relax at the end of a busy day. Masturbation is however, more than just learning how to give yourself a quick climax, releasing sexual tension or getting a good rush of endorphins. The urge to masturbate stems from powerful physiological factors that have evolved as a way to keep us healthy. Evolutionary biologist Robin Baker details the medical necessity of both male and female masturbation in his landmark book about sexual response called “Sperm Wars” and the recently published follow up “Baby Wars”.

Love yourself more!

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Thursday, May 28, 2009 by giodasilva.

A major misconception about the theory of evolution is that humans come from monkeys. That is absolutely wrong and a travesty to the actual nature of how evolution works.

The correct statement is that in terms of primate genetic relationships, we are related.

However, here is another misconception: not only are all primates related, but all mammals are positively genetically related also. Oh, and not only mammals but also all forms of animal life!

At one point in time the common ancestor, whatever it was, changed; and by point I do not mean second, minute, day, nor week; by one point in time I mean evolutionary time which generally falls in the scale of geological timelines (thousands to tens of thousands of years). Now, short of taking a course in genetics, it is hard to fathom how some species can be 99% identical in terms of genetic makeup, yet so different in terms of morphology (how they physically look). The clarification is simple and something the general public likely does not know.

Of the billions of nucleotide base pairs which make up our genetic material only a very small percentage codes for physical traits.

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Thursday, May 28, 2009 by giodasilva.

I can see how religion would have a problem with such randomness; the universe according to Aristotle was supposed to be a very ordered place. Suddenly the Earth is no longer the center of our Solar system, and the existence of humanity seems like pure chance.

Those are truths.

The fear of not belonging, of being alone, cuts to the core of humanity. We are social beings with close ties to our parental male/female pairs. But to keep drawing the evolutionary line back in time and find something that is neither human nor ape, nor anything we can recognize, makes it seem like we are left in a random mess.

Would God do that to us?

The answer is yes.

Here is the reason: the Theory of Evolution does not explain and cannot explain creation; it only attempts to explain how the machinery of life has moved forward and adapted to the ever-changing landscape of the earth. How much more powerful is a god that creates a self-evolving machine than a god that snaps its divine fingers and makes things happen?

I’ll put it this way: have you ever seen your old VW Beetle suddenly transform itself into a gorgeous new BMW? I bet that would be far more interesting than trying to buy a BMW outright! Certainly, you would be more impressed with the engineer of such a vehicle.

People reconcile faith with the facts of science every day. The Catholic Church has issued statements admitting to the fact evolution is real. Recently the Anglican Church announced a public apology to Darwin (I guess better late than never) realizing the folly in its criticism.

A good scientist will never try to prove nor disprove the existence of a god. Science relies on the ability to design experiments to prove or disprove a hypothesis. No such experiment can be devised to prove or disprove God (yet).

However, thousands of experiments have been performed and are now routine techniques (which will likely be updated and revised over the course of scientific progress) which have shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that evolution is a fact.

No matter how many revisions take place, mutations will happen in random spots at a constant rate, and the selection process will determine which of those are viable or not.

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Thursday, May 28, 2009 by giodasilva.

Along with evolution comes a very closely related process: selection. Mutations or changes in the genetic material will happen at a constant rate and generally are non-deleterious. Why would that be? Well, if it is not broken, there is not a need to fix it, but nothing is wrong with a little tweaking! Now here comes the catch: mutations can cause some very serious changes. A single amino acid mutation in hemoglobin causes sickle-cell anemia, a serious genetic disorder. Animal life has been evolving for millions of years on land and sea. With each passing generation it is the “survival of the fittest” concept that promotes successful vs. deleterious mutations to the life of the organism.

Nature selects which mutations are successful by simply exposing those mutations to the environment.

It is wrong to think that the environment makes the gene change; that process would be far too efficient at selecting genes and cause overpopulation (think of it as never picking the fat kid to join your team – btw, I was that fat kid and it still hurts). Instead, even though the mutation rate is constant, the nucleotides which mutate are random. There are probabilities that go along with the randomness but in statistics there are no absolutes, so no single nucleotide is safe. Once a random mutation happens that, for example, results in a longer neck where the vegetation up high happens to be quite abundant, the animals with longer necks face less competition for food and are able to more easily pass on their mutated genes, rinse and repeat for generations and eventually you have a giraffe. Meanwhile the shorter necked ancestors eventually die out from starvation. That is the impact of the environment. The environment only offers a “brick wall” or a “sieve” so that only those mutations which are viable for the survival of the organism persist.

These are scientific facts which are proven daily in biology and biochemistry labs across the world. No single evidence has been found to refute this process.

Now with every scientific theory or law, there are revisions which take place as we learn more. For example, not until Stephen Jay Gould presented the theory of evolution did it make total sense to me in the form of Punctuated Equilibrium.

To sum it up, the processes which lead to morphological and physiological changes are due to mutations in single nucleotides in the genome of an organism (there are other mechanisms like exon shuffling and genome duplication events but this is not an evolutionary biology book so we will stick with the basics). Because the genetic code is degenerate, mutations can accumulate for decades, centuries, or even millions of years before changes are observed in species. Evolution as a process is not linear in time; it is marked by long stagnate plateaus of apparent inactivity, and decorated by spikes of small, or even major changes. There is no way to predict what will occur.

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Thursday, May 28, 2009 by giodasilva.

Change is constant.

This is a simple yet encompassing statement. No matter what, no single moment in time is like the other. Every day is composed of 24 hours, but each of those is undeniably different. Each Monday is so inherently unlike the other, and some are even good ones. The same is true on the molecular level. To understand how, you’ll need the following far-to-brief crash-course in biochemistry (further research is highly encouraged!):

Inside of the nuclei of each cell that contains one (some cells do not), billions of nucleotides arrange themselves linearly and in base pairs in a sequence. The sequence may seem random, but in reality it is the famous DNA double-helix. The central dogma of biochemistry states that DNA codes for RNA (a type of messenger and primordial genetic and catalytic molecule), which in turn codes for proteins. Proteins, in turn, are made up of amino acids. This is a very clever molecular bureaucracy because it allows for stringent regulation of processes. Tight regulation is a good thing. Imagine not knowing exactly if you will have to get a haircut 5 minutes after you just got one!

The four nucleotides which code for the animal genome (and plant as well) are aligned in groups of three, called codons. Each codon in DNA can be transcribed to a corresponding set in RNA, and in turn translated into one of the 20 amino acids. Even though there are only 20 commonly occurring amino acids, there are 64 codons. The more specialized amino acids have fewer codons and the less functionally important amino acids have more codons; the system is therefore degenerate, yielding a sort of flexibility in coding. A good comparison is a chess set where there are more pawns than knights and so on.

Billions of these codons make up our DNA. With each passing generation and through the variation in population migration patterns and our choices in mating partners, the chromosomes of each offspring become slightly different. Scientists can measure this mutation rate (how often changes in codons or just in any base pair happen), and we know that the rate is constant, much like we know there are 60 seconds in one minute. However not all mutations cause changes in our morphology or physiology, in other words, not all changes are visible. Remember that the genetic code is degenerate, so there is room for error. One thing to keep in mind is that no machine is perfect; all of them malfunction. This is where natural selection comes in.

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Saturday, May 23, 2009 by giodasilva.

Science and religion have been at constant odds. I believe that religion was the first method humans had to explain how something worked. It likely goes back to the moment where humans were able to create things, taking the liberty to use “create” as a synonym for “manufacture”. I can only imagine (without evidence, of course, because imagination requires no evidence) that when early humans manufactured tools or were able to harness the power to generate fire, one question would come to the primitive mind: if we made these things and we control them, then what/who made us and controls us? Taking the liberty to imagine myself as an early Homosapien, I would likely see the creator (me) as more powerful than the things that I “created” and could easily destroy. The inference being that there is something more powerful out there that can make us and destroy us.

One basic religious concept that is universal, whether you are discussing the Judeo-Christian tradition or an Eastern religion, is that there was creation. A moment in time when from nothing, the Universe as we know it came to be. Religion across the globe continued this sort of general explanation about the birth and fate of the Universe for many centuries, relying mostly on Aristotelian reasoning (or lack thereof). In an interesting twist of fate, very religious men and women, often funded by the Catholic Church, began to question the workings of the Universe based upon observation and the primitive mathematics available after the Dark Ages. The consequence of which was a friction that would last to this day. As the bastard child of religion, science stopped caring about why, instead focusing on how the Universe worked. Religion is the architect and science is the engineer; one relies upon the other.

The topic of this series is one of the most elegant and often misinterpreted scientific theories in the history of science thus far. When Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species, the devout Christian gentleman set forth a debate that cuts to the very core of humanity: the need to belong. What Darwin unwillingly and unknowingly managed to do was to strike a very sensitive nerve in Western faith. Adam and Eve were no longer viable allegories for the birth of humanity, and now we could explain in detail how humans, or any species on earth, came to be. Evolution unintentionally challenged the concept of a humanity created in the image of the Old Testament God.

As a scientist, I recognize the enormous disconnect between scientific discoveries and their communication to the general public. Perhaps people are turned off by our society’s stereotype of a scientist: the socially-awkward, creepy, reclusive, and often not-so-attractive individual (think Quasi Moto). Looking around at my peers, I generally agree. But stereotypes should not inhibit scientific discourse and understanding. That’s why I’ve written this series about the theory of evolution.

This is not an attempt to persuade or dissuade anyone’s opinion. Rather, it’s an attempt to address misconceptions and offer a clear picture the Theory of Evolution as it stands today. While not scholarly in the traditional sense, I hope that the series perks your interest and inspires you to research this topic. I will be very glad to field any questions in terms of hard science and detailed explanations about the experimental process on an individual basis.

Let’s begin!

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