Scent and Incest, Polygamy Explained

A collection of the weird, the trivial, the funny, and the dumb

THE URINE FACTOR

PARIS

Indian scientists say cow urine is a "bio-enhancer" that can dramatically reduce dosages and side effects for patients taking antibiotics and cancer drugs, a specialist journal, Chemistry and Industry, reported in its July issue.

    The scientists have received an American patent, 6 410 059, for the discovery that a "distillate of cows' urine" greatly boosts the ability of cell membranes to absorb drugs. That boosts the drugs' potency, which means their dose can be cut back to achieve the same effect, it says.

    "This invention has direct implication in drastically reducing the dosage of antibiotics, drugs and anticancer agents, while increasing the efficiency of absorption of bioactive molecules, thereby reducing the cost of treatment and also the side effects due to toxicity," Murli Manohar Joshi, India's minister of science and technology, said.

    Lab tests showed "the killing activities of anticancer and antituberculosis drugs can be improved between two and 20 times, and that of antibacterials between two and 80 times," the article says. "Experiments with the anticancer drug Taxol showed that its killing activities against the breast cancer cell line MCF-7 were greatly enhanced."

    The distillate is obtained by heating cow urine to 40 to 50 degrees C (114 to 122 degrees F), extracting the resulting liquid with hexane and butanol to produce "a pale yellow precipitate that is thought to contain glycoside." Urine provided by "buffalo, camel, and deer" are thought likely to have similar properties.

WHO'S APING WHOM?

BANGKOK

The extramarital monkey business of men and women could be explained by studies on gibbons, which are abandoning monogamy in favor of multiple partners. Studies of gibbon species in Thailand, once known to mate for life, have shown the primates moving towards multiple partners due to changes in social structures and habitat pressures.

    "We discovered there is a variation from monogamy to polygamy in densely populated gibbon areas," Sompote Srikosamart, associate professor of biology at Mahidol University, said. Gibbons are primates, and they are closely related to humans, he explained. "What we learn from gibbons may reflect the condition that explains the dream of humans to be monogamous. But while the ethical rule is that we are monogamous, it is obvious that we are polygamous."

    Study of the primates may give an insight into the behavior of humans, Sompote said, but he stressed that a behavioral correlation was not scientifically proved. He said that as far back as 1980 he has conducted social studies on wild gibbon populations in eastern Thailand's Khao Soi Dao National Park, which showed the primates' predilection for polygamy.

    But the issue was revived by new reports that the animals were moving further towards having multiple partners. And, similar to human trends, increased gibbon populations in some national parks led to growing habitat pressure and a variation in social organization.

    "We started to discover that in quite a few groupings, there was one male and more than one female, or one female and multiple males," he said. "Whether they breed or not is another matter."

BROTHER, YOU STINK

PARIS

People can identify the odor of close family members but they don't like it, according to a researcher who suggests that this helps to prevent incest.

    A team led by Tiffany Czilli at Detroit's Wayne State University carried out an unusual experiment involving 25 families that each had at least two children between six and 15. The volunteers slept in the same T-shirt for three consecutive nights so that it was impregnated with their individual smell signature, and they washed using only scent-free soap.

    They were then asked to sniff two T-shirts-one worn by a family member and one worn by an outsider. Both mothers and fathers were able to detect T-shirts that had been worn by their preadolescent offspring, although they could not distinguish between their children. All the children recognized their father's smell, but only breastfed sons and older children, aged nine to 15, recognized their mother's smell.

    Asked which smells they liked, the volunteers said they far preferred the smells of outsiders to those of their own family. Mothers, in particular, said they disliked their children's smells, while children had "a strong aversion" to dad's scent.

    Czilli concludes that disliking the smell of close family may be an evolutionary mechanism that helps to prevent incest. She notes that opposite-sex siblings disliked each other's smells, while same-sex siblings did not.

    Dustin Penn, a University of Utah researcher, said it was possible that avoidance of inbreeding could be at work, but it may be unreliable to ask people about their preference. After all, liking someone's smell does not always mean that you would wish to sleep with them, he noted.

    In addition, research conducted earlier this year by the Museum of Science and Discovery in Birmingham, England offers a slightly contradictory view. It found that men and women are attracted to smells that remind them of their parents.

IS THAT YOUR TOOTH RINGING?

LONDON

It looks like a tooth, feels like a tooth, and no doubt gets plaque like a tooth. But this one, unveiled recently in London, can receive mobile telephone calls and radio signals too. A revolutionary implant placed inside the tooth during regular surgery, enables users to receive signals, which are then transmitted through the jawbone to the inner ear.

    It works through tiny vibrations created by a wireless receiver inside the tooth. They are carried by bone resonance, converting the digital signals to audio along the way, to the ear. The result is that the person with the tooth implant can listen discreetly to the sounds, enabling information to be received anywhere, anytime although they would not be able to make calls.

    It has been hailed as a possible tool for discreet, up-to-the-minute advice for anyone from politicians to stockbrokers.

    Its designer, James Auger, demonstrated the tooth at the Science Museum in central London. "It's not science fiction, it's the stuff of science fact," he said. "It's fairly simple technology and it was a conscious decision to put it in the tooth because this can be done during routine surgery. If you think about the Six Million Dollar Man with his X-ray eyes, that is not possible, but this is. We chose the tooth because we did not want to thrust this too far into the future to enable people to understand and believe it."

    Auger demonstrated how the invention worked by using a cocktail stick in his mouth. The stick, attached to a transmitter works in a similar way to the tooth implant by sending vibrations through the jawbone to the ear.

    He was helped in his invention by Jimmy Loizeau, who said the tooth was the next step in discreet communication. "We have hands-free sets for mobile phones, but this gives the possibility of completely discreet communication. It's in the realm of James Bond but this is real and this can actually be done."

NO LEMON, NO SEX

BANGKOK

Thai health minister Sudarat Keyuraphan has warned couples to stick with condoms and not switch to using lemon juice to prevent unwanted pregnancies or the spread of HIV. Sudarat's warning followed the suggestion by an influential nongovernment organization here that lemon or lime juice inserted into the vagina could act as an effective contraceptive and virus killer, the Nation newspaper said.

    The Population Development Association, run by Thailand's renowned "condom king" Mechai Viravaidya, had backed an Australian university theory that inserting a slice of lemon or lime in the vagina would neutralize sperm and prevent pregnancy.

    "I would like to warn the public that the report that using lime as a contraceptive is premature," Sudarat said. "It may not prevent pregnancy, so I do not want people to test this by using lime juice."

GENDER COMPETITION

PARIS

Researchers have come up with proof that males can be competitive to the point of daftness.

    Behavior specialists at McGill University in Montreal devised a game to see how the two sexes compete, enrolling 40 groups of four boys or four girls in two age brackets, five to six and nine to 10. The children had to thread beads on a stick until it was full, either taking the beads from a common pot or taking one from another player.

    One set of rules meant that everyone in the group won, so it was pointless to be grabby. But another set of rules allowed for only one winner, which made it sense for the kids to be competitive.

    Girls, they found, would wait and see whether it was worthwhile getting competitive, checking out the facial expression of their opponent as they decided whether or not to grab their bead.

    The older girls were especially smart. They wasted no effort on being competitive, except when it paid off.

    Boys, though, competed all the time, just for the sake of it. "It was way too much fun to take from others," lead researcher Rosanne Roy said.