BAMAD-92
Brit-Am Anthropology and DNA Update
2 May 2011, 28 Nissan 5771
Contents:
1. New Article. Is Not DNA Determined by the Environment???
2. DNA Findings: Unclean Animals Probably Cause Diseases.
3. Babies May make Racial Distinctions.
Caucasian Infants Scan Own- and Other-Race Faces Differently
Andrea Wheeler et al.
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1. New Article.
Is Not DNA Determined by the Environment???
http://www.britam.org/DNAenvironment.html
Contents:
1. Introduction.
2. The Applicability of DNA Findings. Answer to Question from Maria.
3. Conquests of the Long-Legged Hawaiian Cane Toad; A Biological Example.
4. Conclusion. Three Cheers for Brit-Am!
Extracts:
This article was originally taken from a Web Site dedicated to PROVING (or attempting to prove) the false Theory of Evolution. To our mind its proves the opposite.
In other words when the Hawaiian toads invade an area the population gives rise to many more specimens with longer legs.
The longer legged specimens are the offspring of both longer-legged parents and shorter-legged ones.
Longer legs are needed when occupying a new area. This helps them move faster and facilitates their conquest. After they are settled in the toads go back to breeding shorter legs.
They therefore have an inbuilt adaptation apparatus that works throughout their population.
There is a genetic trigger that over the whole community goes on and off according to need.
DNA and genetics are synonymous.
Every physical inherited trait is controlled by DNA.
If inherited physical traits change there must have been a change in the DNA.
2. DNA Findings: Unclean Animals Probably Cause Diseases.
From: Max Rambow <irmrambow@yahoo.com>
Not earth shaking but kind of interesting.
Max
--- On Thu, 4/28/11, randy champion <randychampion@hotmail.com> wrote:
Kinda makes me wonder how many other "diseases" might be linked to the "not food/unclean" group of animals....
DNA tests link Southern leprosy cases to armadillo
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/
us_med_leprosy_armadillos
Extracts:
AP
By ALICIA CHANG, AP Science Writer Alicia Chang, Ap Science Writer. Wed Apr 27, 9:17 pm ET
LOS ANGELES. With some genetic sleuthing, scientists have fingered a likely culprit in the spread of leprosy in the southern United States: the nine-banded armadillo.
DNA tests show a match in the leprosy strain between some patients and these prehistoric-looking critters, a connection scientists had suspected but until now couldn't pin down.
"Now we have the link," said James Krahenbuhl, who heads a government leprosy program that led the new study.
Only about 150 leprosy cases occur each year in the U.S., mostly among travelers to places like India, Brazil and Angola where it's more common. The risk of getting leprosy from an armadillo is low because most people who get exposed don't get sick with the ancient scourge, known medically as Hansen's disease and curable if promptly treated.
Armadillos are one of the very few mammals that harbor the bacteria that cause the sometimes disfiguring disease, which first shows up as an unusual lumpy skin lesion.
Researchers at the National Hansen's Disease Programs in Baton Rouge, La., led an international team of scientists who published their findings in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine. They think it requires frequent handling of armadillos or eating their meat for leprosy to spread.
Scientists also took skin biopsies from 50 leprosy patients being treated at a Baton Rouge clinic. Three-quarters had never had foreign exposure, but lived in Southern states where they could have been exposed to armadillos.
An analysis found that samples from the patients and armadillos were genetically similar to each other and were different from leprosy strains found elsewhere in the world. The unique strain was found in 28 armadillos and 25 patients.
Of the 15 patients for whom researchers had information, seven said they had no contact with armadillos; eight said they did, including one who routinely hunted and ate them.
While the work did not document direct transmission from animal to human, "the evidence is pretty convincing that it happens," said Dr. Brian Currie, an infectious disease expert at Montefiore Medical Center in New York, who had no role in the study.
Leprosy remains a problem in tropical hot spots of the world with some 250,000 new infections reported each year. Like tuberculosis, it can stay dormant for years before attacking the skin and nerves.
While leprosy is infectious, it's hard to catch. Those most at risk are family members who are in constant contact with an untreated person. Leprosy can't be spread through casual contact such as handshaking, or sexual intercourse.
The disease has long been misunderstood and those who contracted it were often shunned. Fear of its spread led some countries to quarantine people. False stories about fingers and toes falling off added to the stigma.
The disease is curable with prompt treatment of antibiotics before complications set in. The drugs typically kill the bacteria within days and make it non-contagious. It usually takes a year or two to fully clear the germ from the body.
If left untreated, leprosy can cause nerve damage so severe that people lose feeling in their fingers and toes, leading to deformity and disability.
While the germ attacks the skin, hands and feet of humans, it tends to infect the liver, spleen and lymph node of armadillos.
"Leave the animals alone," advised lead researcher Richard Truman of the National Hansen's Disease Programs.
3. Babies May make Racial Distinctions.
Caucasian Infants Scan Own- and Other-Race Faces Differently
Andrea Wheeler et al.
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2011/04
/discriminating-babies.html
Young infants are known to prefer own-race faces to other race faces and recognize own-race faces better than other-race faces. However, it is entirely unclear as to whether infants also attend to different parts of own- and other-race faces differently, which may provide an important clue as to how and why the own-race face recognition advantage emerges so early. ...We found that even though infants spent a similar amount of time looking at own- and other-race faces, with increased age, infants increasingly looked longer at the eyes of own-race faces and less at the mouths of own-race faces. These findings suggest experience-based tuning of the infant's face processing system to optimally process own-race faces that are different in physiognomy from other-race faces. In addition, the present results, taken together with recent own- and other-race eye tracking findings with infants and adults, provide strong support for an enculturation hypothesis that East Asians and Westerners may be socialized to scan faces differently due to each culture's conventions regarding mutual gaze during interpersonal communication.
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