Cafe Science in Cafe Valparaiso
Wednesday February 04, 2009
Free - 7-9pm
East Bay Science Cafe: Feburary 4, 2009 7pm
Milkshakes and melanin: Evolutionary adaptations out of place in a modern world?
Millions of years of evolution have resulted in who we are and how we vary. However, that evolution took place in environments very different from the one we experience in the United States today. The ramifications of this evolutionary history span from race relations and modern medicine, to whether you order that latte with skim milk or soy. Understanding the evolutionary history of human variation, and why it often clusters by geography, affects how we perceive and place value on things like obesity, skin color, and lactose intolerance. Join Leslea Hlusko in a conversation about the implications of human evolution for your everyday life.
Leslea Hlusko is an associate professor in the Department of Integrative Biology at UC Berkeley. Her research investigates how genes influence skeletal variation and how that has evolved through time, with a special interest in understanding our own evolution. She teaches a large undergraduate course on human biological variation and spends a lot of time in eastern Africa looking for fossils.
