week 8: living in the moment

Immunology is fascinating. We're having the short course, flying through it in just a month. We've also been speeding through development, and most everyone has the same thought: it's amazing that any of us manage to make it out of the womb intact.

The most interesting tidbits from class:

• Women (at least according to some studies*) prefer the body odor of men with different MHC alleles than themselves.
• Our brains use the equivalent of about 72 Hershey's kisses worth of glucose each day. Should one fast until glycogen stores are depleted, the body can replace about 75% or 54 kisses' worth of glucose with ketones, derived from fats, but the remaining 25% must run on glucose.

Test 4 went better than the previous. I also went to the opera with some friends today to celebrate, and that was surprisingly better than I anticipated.

*Psychoneuroendocrinology 2009 May;34(4):497-512. Epub 2008 Dec 2.