Mismatch once more?

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-myopia15-2009dec15,0,6467519.story

Here is a piece in the LA Times about nearsightedness and the increasing rates in all ethnic groups.

Last Class!

The last presenters will start on Tuesday afternoon 12/15/09 at 3:00pm, not 4:00pm. You are encouraged to bring snacks and/or holiday food for this last marathon session.

See you then!

JA

final presenters

I guess I have to feel pretty good about the semester when the students seem to be able to teach the class at the end of it!

One thing to remember is that the bar is set a little bit higher for the graduate students in the class than the undergraduates; two of the presentations today were from graduate students.

Good elements in the presentations thus far include the following: clearly delineating between proximate and ultimate causation in a disease, spending more time on ultimate (evolutionary) causes of the disease, stating the evolutionary medicine category that applies to the presentation, and exploring the consequences of the evolutionary concept to the cause and/or treatment of the disease.

We will have to be a bit more careful with time on thursday. Be sure to practice and try to keep your talk to 15 minutes!

See you thursday.
JA

Final Example

Chris Engdahl has graciously offered to post his presentation from last year (2008).

C.Engdahl on Phage Therapy

This is a very good powerpoint and might be a starting point to organize your presentation. But remember, I want to encourage originality, so do not feel constrained by this format.  You do not need to use powerpoint. You could do a presentation with overheads, or using the board, or using handouts. Remember also, sometimes less is more. I would recommend no more than 14 slides.

Good Luck!!

JA

Final Projects

I hope that everybody had a fantastic Thanksgiving!

Final projects will be graded depending on the following elements:

General

a) Does the topic relate to a disease of humans?

b) Does the project include one of the categories of evolutionary medicine hypotheses we have covered in class?

c) Is the evolutionary hypothesis presented clearly?

d) If there are alternative hypotheses, are they discussed?

e) Does the presenter demonstrate an understanding of natural selection/evolutionary biology in describing their project?

Originality

a) Is this a novel hypothesis or concept?

b) If not, does the presenter clearly describe his or her own ideas about the hypothesis?

b) If it is an existing hypothesis, does the presenter think of new ways to test the idea?

Reasoning Skills

a) Does the presenter make a logical argument?

b) Does the presenter explain the predictions and existing evidence for a hypothesis?

Style Points

a) Does the presenter keep to the time limit for the presentation?

b) Does the presenter make eye contact with the audience?

c) Does the presenter answer questions concisely and clearly?

d) If powerpoint is used, are slides crafted without excessive text or unreadable figures?

e) Does the presenter give a summary of the presentation?

 

Readings for 11/24/09

In honor of Thanksgiving – I will present a discussion of the Holiday meal, in light of evolutionary hypotheses of diet, especially the Paleolithic diet. If modern environments are to blame for our ill health, perhaps we would be better off eating as our ancestors did. But what did they eat anyway?

Readings:

http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicle/98/3.5.98/spices.html

Eaton (2006)-Ancestral human diet

Eaton 2000

Last Writing Project

Babies that are fed formula have more E. Coli (a potential pathogen) in their stool that babies who are fed breast milk. Breast-fed babies have mostly bifidobacteria (a benign commensal) in their stool. Breast milk differs from formula in having more oligosaccharides (dietary fiber) and a different mixture of fatty acids (more short chain fatty acids).

Here is a news report about breast oligosaccharides:

http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/09/08/loc_loc1amilk.html

Breast milk seems to be the perfect food for babies in part because it lowers the population of pathogenic bacteria in the infant gut. In fact, breast fed babies have a lower death rate from diarrheal diseases.

Based on what you learned in lecture, would you predict that breast fed babies would have more or less visceral fat accumulation than formula fed babies? What would you predict about the incidence of insulin resistance in formula-fed babies compared to breast-fed babies and why?

11/17/09 Fat and Inflammation

Tuesday’s reading is here:

The Role of the Gut Microbiota in Energy Metabolism and Metabolic Disease

Last week we introduced the concept that visceral fat may play a protective role in early childhood. As was mentioned in class, visceral fat is innervated by sympathetic nerve fibers. When under stress, the sympathetic nervous system causes the release of catecholamines – including adrenalin (epinephrine). Sympathetic innervation of visceral fat also leads to the release of free fatty acids from fat depots into the bloodstream. Free fatty acids are important in feeding the brain, but also elicit inflammatory effects. Inflammation might be useful early in life, promoting survival from infection, but can cause diabetes and heart disease later.

The Cani and Delzanne reference is a great review of what we know about gut pathogens and inflammation. I will also present data that support the hypothesis that inflammatory pathways from fat evolved because of the effect of fat on pathogens.
JA

Final Project Comments

“The ideas that are being tossed around for presentation are incredibly creative and insightful.  It’s going to be a lot of fun hearing your presentations!  I would add that many ideas have been posed have fallen under the ‘novel modern environment’ umbrella (this often includes the gene-mismatch and by-product hypotheses).  These are completely acceptable and important approaches.  But if you can, try to stretch to include other categories, such as tradeoffs between two adaptive arenas, antagonistic pleiotropy before/after reproductive years, expected sex differences or demographic differences, or build a case for a highly specific design (vs a by-product of another design or adaptation), et cetera.  Stating your hypothesis about your chosen ‘adaptation’ (or by-product of another clearly defined adaptation) in terms of its proposed function will be key.  Coming up with a testable hypothesis is the goal.  Try to imagine an experiment that might convince NIH to provide funding, or even just a preliminary pilot study….”

MF

Today’s Discussion

For today’s Thursday Discussion (Nov 12), please bring your idea/s for presentation including perhaps any associated articles or research that you may have gathered thus far.  We will have an open brain-storming session during which we as a class will respond to ideas by exploring evolutionary hypotheses, perhaps attempting to come up with focused experiments, as well as offering up suggestions and comments for publications that support the ideas.  It should be fun applying your evolutionary training in ways that help each other out.  The goal for each of you is to go away feeling inspired about your presentation.  By next week, you should have emailed both Dr Alcock and I and received the go-ahead for your presentation idea (joealcock@gmail.com; melfrank@unm.edu)

MF