This just in: house mice cause breast cancer

And I’m not kidding. It seems that a mouse mamillary tumor virus can jump from mice to humans and is found in 40% – 60% of human breast tumour cases in continental populations where mice are prevalent. Furthermore, genetic fragments of the mouse virus are found in as many as 15% of the U.S. population, presumably putting those people at greater risk for breast cancer.

This ecological and evolutionary perspective gives us a chance to fight, detect, and even prevent breast cancer. Deep thanks to The Examining Room of Dr. Charles for this one.

WWP Web sites

I’m not sure what these are… collections of country links and useful links for commerce?

This will slay you

The U.S. Food & Drug Administration has decided to release one of the last potent antibiotic for use in cattle feed for overcrowded cattle in feed lots.

The drug, called cefquinome, belongs to a class of highly potent antibiotics that are among medicine’s last defenses against several serious human infections. No drug from that class has been approved in the United States for use in animals.

That means that sooner rather than later a resistant strain of bacteria will evolve. It has happened before, several times. Acting against scientific advice, they’re going ahead anyway — mustn’t keep the cattle industry waiting!

They haven’t shot themselves in the foot. They’ve shot us in the foot.

Build a paper pelvis!

Activities for students: print this PDF file, then cut out the pieces and assemble a three-dimensional model of the human pelvis. Good for rainy days, those in-school detentions, or home-schoolers. Designed by H. Thewissen.

Irony department

Stony Brook University, employer of the evolution-denier Michael Egnor, has Maeve Leakey for an adjunct professor and established a Turkana Basin Institute for the study of human evolution.

In conjunction with Richard, Meave, and Louise Leakey, Stony Brook University has created the Turkana Basin Institute (TBI), an international research institute to facilitate and support paleontological, archeological, and geological research in the Turkana Basin.

For the past four decades, the Turkana Basin has been the source of unparalleled discoveries in vertebrate, primate, and human evolution and archaeology. However, despite over 70 years of field research in paleoanthropology in Africa, huge gaps remain in our knowledge of human origins and vertebrate evolution in Africa. TBI will help to fill those gaps.

TBI has its principal academic home at Stony Brook University and three proposed field research facilities in Kenya surrounding Lake Turkana, an area of exceptional richness for paleontological and archaeological research. Stony Brook is particularly appropriate for the academic hub of this institute because of its longstanding position as a world-renowned center of paleontological and anthropological research, especially in the areas of primate and human evolution.