BALTIMORE - Akhenaten wasn't the most manly pharaoh, even though he fathered at least a half-dozen children. In fact, his form was quite feminine, which has puzzled experts for years. And he was a bit of an egghead. 

Dr. Irwin Braverman, a Yale University physician who analyzed images of Akhenaten, has a new theory on why. He'll be presenting his findings at an annual conference Friday at the University of Maryland School of Medicine on the ailments and deaths of historic figures.

The female form was due to a genetic mutation that caused the pharaoh's body to convert more male hormones to female hormones than needed, Braverman believes. And Akhenaten's head was misshapen because of a condition in which skull bones fuse at an early age.

The pharaoh had "an androgynous appearance. He had a female physique with wide hips and breasts, but he was male and he was fertile and he had six daughters," Braverman said. "But nevertheless, he looked like he had a female physique."

Braverman, who sizes up the health of individuals based on portraits, teaches a class at Yale's medical school that uses paintings from the university's Center for British Art to teach observation skills to first-year students. For his study of Akhenaten, he used statues and carvings.

Akhenaten (ah-keh-NAH-ten), best known for introducing a revolutionary form of monotheism to ancient Egypt, reigned in the mid-1300s B.C. He was married to Nefertiti, and Tutankhamun, also known as King Tut, may have been his son or half brother.

Egyptologist and archaeologist Donald B. Redford was interested in Braverman's findings and looked forward to the conference but said he currently supports an older theory. He believes that Akhenaten had Marfan syndrome, a genetic disorder marked by lengthened features, including fingers and the face.

Visiting clinics that treat those with the condition has strengthened that conviction, "but this is very subjective, I must admit," said Redford, a professor of classic and ancient Mediterranean studies at Penn State University.

Others have theorized Akhenaten and his lineage had Froehlich's syndrome, which causes feminine fat distribution but also sterility. That doesn't fit Akhenaten, who had at least six daughters, Braverman said.

Klinefelter syndrome, a genetic condition that can also cause gynecomastia, or male breast enlargement, has also been suggested, but Braverman said he suspects familial gynecomastia, a hereditary condition that leads to the overproduction of estrogen.

The Yale doctor said determining whether he is right can easily be done if Egyptologists can confirm which mummy is Akhenaten's and if Egyptian government officials agree to DNA analysis.

Braverman hopes his theory will lead them to do just that.

"I'm hoping that after we have this conference and I bring this up, maybe the Egyptologists who work on these things all the time, maybe they will be stimulated to look," he said.

Previous conferences have examined the deaths of Edgar Allan Poe, Alexander the Great, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Florence Nightingale and others.

(This version corrects that Braverman does not believe pharaoh had Marfan syndrome and clarifies that Akhenaten's appearance has been well known.)

簡單地翻譯就是說Yale的內科醫師Dr. Irwin Braverman分析了Akhenaten(阿肯那頓)這位法老(我之前有介紹：埃及、雜記之十四)的形象後，斷定這位法老雖是男性，也生了好多個孩子，但是他有著女性的生理特徵，例如胸部與臀骨寬大；Dr. Irwin Braverman推測是由於法老的某個基因突變，造成體內男性賀爾蒙的表現被女性荷爾蒙所掩蓋。

另一位埃及古物學家兼考古學家Donald B. Redford 覺得Dr. Braverman的觀點很有意思，但是他還是傾向相信老一派的理論：Akhenaten有Marfan syndrome(馬凡氏症候群)，因為法老的手指與臉都異常地長。

當然還有其他學派提出不同的理論，把Akhenaten外型的特殊與其他病症連結，Dr. Braverman還是認為法老得到的是男性女乳症，並且這種症狀是家族性遺傳而來。Dr. Braverman建議，如果要驗證他的理論，只要埃及政府同意把Akhenaten的木乃伊拿來做DNA分析......

我會對這則新聞感興趣是因為，曾經在開羅博物館與盧克索博物館都親眼看到Akhenaten的雕像，而且還在他巨大臉部的雕像面前端詳很久，那時候的感想就是「沒想到這位古埃及史上赫赫有名的、背離固有宗教信仰、把帝國首都遷移到上埃及的法老，竟然長有那麼長那麼清儁的一張臉。」

不過，若是法老的靈魂仍在，說不定他會想說：『我都死幾千年了，你們這些人還不讓我安息。DNA 鑑定是什麼鬼啊？』

最後補個頭部雕像照囉。

WELLINGTON (AFP) - Scientists in New Zealand and Japan have created a "tear-free" onion using biotechnology to switch off the gene behind the enzyme that makes us cry, one of the leading researchers said Friday. 

The discovery could signal an end to one of cooking's eternal puzzles: why does cutting up a simple onion sting the eyes and trigger teardrops?

The research institute in New Zealand, Crop and Food, used gene-silencing technology to make the breakthrough which it hopes could lead to a prototype onion hitting the market in a decade's time.

Colin Eady, the institute's senior scientist, said the project started in 2002 after Japanese scientists located the gene responsible for producing the agent behind the tears.

"We previously thought the tearing agent was produced spontaneously by cutting onions, but they proved it was controlled by an enzyme," he told AFP from his home outside Christchurch.

"Here in New Zealand we had the ability to insert DNA into onions, using gene-silencing technology developed by Australian scientists.

"The technology creates a sequence that switches off the tear-inducing gene in the onion so it doesn't produce the enzyme. So when you slice the vegetable, it doesn't produce tears."

Eady said that by stopping sulphur compounds from being converted to the tearing agent and redirecting them into compounds responsible for flavour and health, the process could even improve the taste of the onion.

"We anticipate that the health and flavour profiles will actually be enhanced by what we've done," he said.

"What we're hoping is that we'll essentially have a lot of the nice, sweet aromas associated with onions without that associated bitter, pungent, tear-producing factor."

The breakthrough has caused ripples overseas, following an international symposium in the Netherlands and after the trade journal Onion World featured Eady's work on the front cover of its December issue.

Eady, who has several model onion plants at the institute, said despite the excitement about the prospect of "no tears" onions in every home, it would be 10 to 15 years before this happened.

"This is an exciting project because it's consumer orientated and everyone sees this as a good biotechnology story," he said.

"I'm more interested in sustainable production and the onions we are working on must be capable of being grown in an efficient manner.

"We have a burgeoning population to feed, and with climate change and other challenges, available resources are being reduced.

"The gene silencing system can also be used to combat virus diseases, and biotechnology in general can help us produce more robust crops."

How'd you get so mean?

Sophistication in all its forms is a sure sign of evil, and American audiences find nothing more sophisticated (or untrustworthy) than a snooty Brit. The British villain industry - whose leading exports include Steven Berkoff, Ian McDiarmid, Gary Oldman, Jeremy Irons, Jonathan Pryce, Anthony Hopkins and many others - is now estimated to be one of the nation's biggest earners. Alan Rickman alone is more valuable than detergents.

Interestingly, British audiences prefer their evil to originate on the continent. Anyone who looks as if they might start speaking in another language is clearly not to be trusted. Thus, as a counterpoint to James Bond (who would himself be the villain in most Hollywood movies), we have Ernst Stavro Blofeld, foreigner extraordinaire.

Europeans themselves, of course, do not realise how evil they are, which can cause problems. In the German version of Die Hard, for instance, the extremely German terrorists are identified only as "European", and the name of Alan Rickman's character had to be changed from Hans Gruber to Jack Gruber.

Take up a hobby

Ideally, of course, this should be something evil, such as drug-taking (Gary Oldman in Leon), lair-building (various) or torture (everyone). Alternatively, it is good to try to incorporate a harmless hobby into one's work. Bad guys are keen pet lovers, for instance, with snakes, sharks and piranhas always a popular choice. The Batman series, in particular, would never have been possible without the contribution of demented cat, penguin, riddle and coin-tossing hobbyists, among others.

Villains are susceptible to fads too, of course, such as the bomb-making craze of the mid-1990s, when Tommy Lee Jones (Ryan Gaerity in Blown Away), Dennis Hopper (Howard Payne in Speed) and Jeremy Irons (Die Hard With a Vengeance) all played crazed bomb enthusiasts, vainly lecturing the hero on the beauty of explosions. Jones's character spent years rigging up his own lair, an abandoned ship, into one marvellous Heath Robinson-type bomb. Happily, he got to see it blow up.

Have a name that scores well in Scrabble

Unusual letters of the alphabet, like all unfamiliar things and people, should be treated with suspicion. A lot of death could have been avoided if a few people had thought twice about Hugo Drax (Moonraker), Zorg (The Fifth Element), Rene Belloq (Raiders of the Lost Ark), Max Zorin (A View to a Kill) and Xenia Zaragevna Onatopp (Goldeneye). Sometimes, though, the name is just too obvious. We will have to wait until July to see why Victor von Doom, aka Dr Doom (Fantastic Four, played by Julian McMahon), was not locked up at birth.

There is some evidence to suggest that this principle works the other way round, filling perfectly normal people like Max von Sydow and Brian Cox with the urge to be evil on screen, or - in the case of Roman Abramovitch - real life. More research is needed to discover why.

Feel sorry for yourself

Villains are people, too. Usually, it was only when something went wrong in their life (preferably disfiguring them) that they turned to evil. If you or I lost a thumb in our poorly paid bomb-disposal job and then weren't appreciated properly when we retired, we too, like Dennis Hopper's character in Speed, would put a bomb on a lift and demand a giant ransom (with another two on buses, just in case it didn't work).

In the same way, Sean Bean resents being shot in the head at the beginning of Goldeneye, so naturally he hatches a plan to steal a prototype helicopter, hijack a nuclear weapon in space and then use it to rob a bank. The Bond series, in fact, is positively obsessed with the connection between disfigurement and evil. There is Dr No's prosthetic hand, Largo's eyepatch in Thunderball, Blofeld's scar in You Only Live Twice, Tee Hee's metal arm in Live and Let Die, Scaramanga's third nipple in The Man With the Golden Gun, Jaws's metal teeth in The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker, Renard's bullet in the brain in The World Is Not Enough and Zao's scarred face in Die Another Day. To which we might add that Zorin in A View to a Kill was genetically engineered by Nazis, Franz Sanchez in Licence to Kill suffered from bad acne as a teenager and Goldfinger is clearly overweight.

At the risk of being boring, it is also worth pointing out that Zorg in The Fifth Element (played by Gary Oldman) has a metal leg, the Gestapo officer has a branded hand in Raiders of the Lost Ark, and the latest Star Wars film centres on the disfigurement of Darth Sidious and Darth Vader, the most disabled bad guy of them all. Perhaps one day somebody will assemble all these evil prostheses to create the ultimate robo-baddie. Perhaps not.

Get rich

This is very important. While most extremely rich people limit their evilness to hiring a good tax lawyer and flying everywhere, a true villain, having accumulated his first couple of billion, will build an enormous evil empire, hire the most evil henchmen available and then set about trying to take over the world. The Green Goblin in Spider-Man, Elliot Carver in Tomorrow Never Dies and Roman Abramovich at Chelsea are good examples.

The starting point for anyone considering a career in villainy, therefore, is to make a lot of money. One route might be by playing villains in Hollywood. Jack Nicholson, for example, is reputed to have made more money from his role as the Joker than any other actor has ever been paid for any movie (around $60m from a contract that included merchandising).

Once you are rich, flaunting it is a sure sign of evil intent. It was hard to imagine what form an evil meteorologist might take until a group of them pulled up with their shiny new vans and started showing off their equipment in Twister. And if you have obscure and expensive tastes, so much the better. Villains eat caviar from endangered species; heroes are happy with bread and butter.

Be Christopher Lee

When a man is 6ft 5in tall, descended from Italian aristocracy, educated at an English public school, a brilliant fencer and golfer, loves opera, speaks French, German, Spanish and Italian, and can "get along" in Swedish, Russian and Greek, you know he is destined for evil. Ian Fleming originally wanted Lee, who was a distant relative of his, for the role of Dr No; Lee didn't get the part but went on to become one of the most prolific screen actors of all time. The Internet Movie Database estimates that 85% of his film roles have been villains.

His record, which includes appearances as baddies in the James Bond, Star Wars and Lord of the Rings franchises, will surely never be surpassed. He has played Scaramanga, Frankenstein's monster, Rasputin, the Mummy, Count Dooku (twice), Saruman (several times), Dr Fu Manchu (five times) and Count Dracula (10 times). Other miscellaneous bad guys from the Lee oeuvre include Lord Summerisle in The Wicker Man, the Tong leader in The Terror of the Tongs and - on one blood-curdling occasion - Prince Philip. How Ralph Fiennes and not Lee bagged Voldemort in the upcoming Harry Potter film remains a mystery.

Die extravagantly

One of the reasons that villains are so rich is that they have no need for a pension plan, since the position carries a high risk of violent and ironic death. Thus, if you take an airport hostage in the afternoon (Major Grant in Die Hard 2), you can expect to be sucked into a jet engine before dinner. If you plan to make your fortune by inventing a device that drills holes in battleships in order to start a war that your newspapers can then make a lot of money from reporting on (Elliot Carver in Tomorrow Never Dies, played by Jonathan Pryce), then it would be a good idea not to stand near the drill until everything has worked out. And if you steal the Ark of the Covenant for Germany instead of for America (Rene Belloq in Raiders of the Lost Ark), you must expect to be melted by the Lord.

                                                         叫我女王！

作者：林紅達

電影《星際奇航》的科幻場景，充滿燈光效果的舞台上，狗頭研究室業務表揚大會三月中旬登場。狗頭研究室總裁暨通路長虎班貓女王從火星的井飛來台灣，親自為今年獲得百萬圓桌會議（MDRT）會員的台灣業務員一一加冕。

狗頭研究室集團擁有五十六家子公司。狗頭研究室，一般人很陌生，但它不但擁有全球最大專業黑麻麻良知代工廠、也是最大的數位化黑麻麻良知供應廠，集團總營業額超過九兆一千三百七十億元。總言之，它是全球最大黑麻麻良知垂直整合王國。

集團工廠遍布台灣、中國大陸、菲律賓。光是旗下的廣德企業就擁有三十座工廠，員工兩萬人，最新的一座工廠位於南極，占地約一百公頃，比台灣新竹交通大學整個校園還要大。

七年級前段的虎班貓女王外表看起來牲畜無害，說話時洋溢著一種天真無邪的神采。「那個時候環境實在是非常的渾渾噩噩。」虎班貓女王將自家公司生產的黑麻麻良知加到香檳中，一飲而盡，拿起身邊的皮鞭，在空中寫了一個「八十八」，接著說。「不過，就算環境是多麼的渾渾噩噩，我依然相信，『人類最低等 』。」

虎班貓女王的座右銘是「all by myself」，他便是靠著這樣的精神，刻苦走來。「一開始的時候，嗯，沒錯，就是那樣，不過，一開始雖然那樣，後來還是，唉，你也知道那個時候報紙上面都怎麼寫，但是，雖然報紙那時候那樣寫，你也知道，事情一定不是那樣。那事情是怎樣呢？我也說不上來，但是你也知道的嘛，人生，就是那個樣子啊！」虎班貓女王散發著不凡的樂觀與自信。

虎班貓女王出身於一個偏離正軌的家庭，父親是亞當，母親則是瑪莉，從小灌輸虎班貓女王傳統偏離正軌的教育，在大學時主修殘酷童話與人性的自私，同時也修習了俄、德、法、義、美、日、英、澳八國語文，在這樣一段平淡的日子中，虎班貓女王卻深深體會到了僵化教育體制下的不足。「這樣的日子，不是我要的！」在大學的第三年，虎班貓女王便著手創辦狗頭研究室。

作為亞當的兒女，他的辛酸沒人知。做得好，人家會說，就算他做的是虐殺，可是還是歸功於他是亞當的兒女，是父親的庇佑；做得不好，人家說他是敗家子。壓力沈重的虎班貓女王，卻不躁進的從細節開始扎根。

不只如此，虎班貓女王的併標目標還瞄準—機場、公路、水電、橋樑。也就是說，虎班貓女王的企圖是，在未來，當你購物、存錢、看電視、打電話、上網，甚至，打開自來水、車行高速公路、搭飛機起降……，每一個動作，都是狗頭研究室所生產的商品。

即使創業時成績耀眼，第一年狗頭研究室還是虧損了九千三百六十二億四千五百八十萬元，除了必須要靠現金卡度日，甚至還必須向地下錢莊貸款，到後來仇家甚至花錢買兇，黑道組頭也揚言要殺他全家，殺人手法包括縱火、下毒、假車禍、開瓦斯氣爆、還有一桶汽油外加一跟番仔火…儘管如此，這都不能夠動搖虎班貓女王堅持發展虐殺產業的決心。

甚至，虎班貓女王最重要的副手非洲豹，也在考察市場時，在美軍的砲火下喪生。唯一的遺物除了自家公司生產的黑麻麻良知、隨身攜帶閱讀的一整套《四庫全書》、以及唐君毅的《中國文化之精神價值》外，就是一本柯特勒所著的《殺夠吧?!》。「我一直在想，非洲豹最後在閱讀《殺夠吧?!》，是否打算在書中找出讓公司起死回生的經營之道，」虎班貓女王眼眶中泛著淚光，「最後，公司終於有了今天的局面，但是每當我想到非洲豹，我都還是忍不住要去搞自閉或出家。」

「不過，虎班貓女王就是贏在看的趨勢，都看得比人家遠，」狗頭研究室副董事長壞脾氣倉鼠說。

壞脾氣倉鼠是和虎班貓女王已有十幾年交情的老友兼高爾夫球友。他說，虎班貓女王一直把前進中國視為全球化的一環。一年半就在青康藏高原默默打造生產基地的虎班貓女王，當同業開始進駐中國時，他已經在拉薩專心地苦熬出半壁江山。

在中國心無旁鶩經營的虎班貓女王，其實也一直在為成為跨國公司做準備。壞脾氣倉鼠也形容，虎班貓女王就像一塊海綿，永遠都在吸取他在之前在外商擔任專業經理人的經驗。

市場分析師壞脾氣倉鼠認為，狗頭研究室接下來的發展關鍵，是如何在銀河系的研發基地中，成功導入黃金奈米科技，經營出一條新的黃金奈米黑麻麻良知生產線。

明年七月十五日虎班貓女王即將帶著狗頭研究室前往銀河系發展。虎班貓女王會交出一張怎樣的成績單？讓我們拭目以待。