Week 8: Human Variation & Race

1) High levels of solar radiation and its effects on human homeostasis.

Depending on the origin of a person, solar radiation can have some serious negative impacts on them. If they originated from near the north pole and suddenly were moved to central Africa, they would not be able to handle the intense solar radiation and probably get severe skin burns and possible epidermic cancer as a result. They wouldn't have nearly as much melanin as someone who is from there.

2) Adaptations: Solar radiation

Short-term adaptation: In people who have less melanin, it is common to see sunburns on the skin (or even worse, sun bleaching). Exposure to UVA and UVB rays cause sunburn if not properly protected or if you have very low melanin in your skin.

Facultative adaptation: In some instances, humans have adapted to tan, allowing for slightly more protection from the sun.

Developmental adaptations: Populations located closer to the equator generally have darker skin. They are exposed to the sun's rays for far longer than people who live farther north and as a result have developed more melanin.

Cultural adaptations: Humans culturally have adapted to protect themselves through a numerous amount of ways. Clothing, large hats and sunscreen are all great examples of man-made items that protect the skin from the harsh radiation of the sun.

3) Some benefits that can come out of studying a population in any given environmental cline is that we see how the world and nature affects them, and how they naturally adapt and change to survive the given cline over generations. These can lead to breakthroughs in technology and medicine by studying how different environments change us. For example, watching the changes of a sudden migration of one population to another location could help us better understand how these environments affect us, and prepare us for different clothing, cosmetics and medicines based on these findings.

4) I would use race to understand the variations listed in question 2 by explaining the geographic location commonly associated with a race. Different races are more common from different areas and we can study how these changes came to be by looking at where geographically they originated from. An example would be someone who was Caucasian versus someone who was African-American, you would know someone could have originated from a place closer to the equator by looking at their melanin levels evidently exhibited on their skin.

Week 7: Language Blog

Part 1

Speaking without any means of formal communication, such as speaking and writing proved to be extremely challenging. It almost became a game of charades and got quite silly quite fast. The person I chose to "speak" to was my mother, and she ended up asking me questions in the form of yes or no, and to emote my feelings on questions she had that were unable to be asked in a yes or no format.

I was not really in control of the conversation because it was difficult to begin new topics. I could show interest or disinterest in something but it was up to my mom to talk about new things. I've had times where I've not spoken in group conversations before, and I've noticed that no one really engages me in conversation, which made me a bit upset. I could see similar happening with the experiment.

I think if the conversations represented which culture spoke and which did not, perhaps it would be more beneficial to have spoken language. Stories could be passed down from generation to generation with exact understanding of what someone was talking about, and not much could be left to interpretation.

Part 2

Speaking without physically emoting or showing expressiveness I found to be absolute torture. Personally, I am a very expressive and animated person who has grown custom to moving alongside my speaking to engage my audience, and just to feel what I am saying. Removing that factor and trying not to move was extremely hard and I was often caught and had to restart the exercise a few times before I got it perfect. My mother had no trouble understanding me but she said I looked stiff.

This experiment shows that communication goes beyond words. Thinking of examples like misinterpretation of words from a text where if the person were there physically to tell you something and show you their body language, you would understand their sincerity a lot more.

At its most extreme, reading body language can effectively save your life. If someone is clearly agitated and showing aggressive behaviours in their bodies you can know better to run or evade this person.

My brother who falls in the Autism spectrum actually has a hard time reading body language and understanding cues like that. I notice it on a daily basis. However, this could be extremely beneficial if someone is fidgety and trying to talk, they could ignore that distraction and get important information as needed.

Week 5: Piltdown Hoax

1. The Piltdown Man hoax was an earth 20th century scientific hoax that misled scientists for 40 years by the "discovery" of a potential ancestor that they believed to be close to a million years old. The fossil was discovered in a village named Piltdown in England in 1912 and reported by Charles Dawson. If it was accurate, it would have suggested that brain size developed before upright walking, but we now know by looking at data of legs that the opposite is true. The hoax was found out in the late 1940s and early 1950s as they ran a series of chemical tests to try and date the fossil, first having it be suggested it was only 100,000 years old, later less than 100 years old and belonging to an orangutan. Observations showed that the fossil had parts broken off, false staining and the teeth were filed down and scratch marks remained.

2. Probably the biggest issues that came out of human error were some people trying to satisfy their own ego, and others being too naive and trusting. Because of this, deceit was easily concocted and people were none the wiser for 40 years!

3. Kenneth Oakley had run chemical tests on the fake fossil to try and date them, and proved they were fraudulent fossils. I think a positive outlook on this is that people developed chemical dating further and were able to detect hoaxes easier from this process. If people also didn't question and took everything at face value we might have a totally different understanding of science as we know it today.

4. The human factor of science is to ask questions ultimately. There are those who seek to sabotage that integrity and are not true scientists if they do not ask questions and seek factual truth. I do not think removing the human element, if even possible, would be wise. If we removed asking questions, there would be no room for discovery and exploration of things we could only dream of finding.

5. Definitely ask questions has to be the life lesson from this hoax. Ask questions and make sure hypotheses are falsifiable and make sure you have all your facts straight before you go public, lest you make yourself to look like a fool.

Week 3: Analogy/Homology

1. Homology

a) Two animals I am going to compare today are the Whale and Dolphin.

 



The whale and dolphin are both aquatic mammals that give birth to live young, have warm blood, flippers, a full bony skeleton and lungs.

b) Both these animals possess flippers, however, whales like the orca whale have larger bodies and larger flippers for more power, while dolphins are built more for speed so they are more slender.

c) Both these animals had a common ancestor that was a land dwelling creature, the Pakicetus. Over time it evolved to swim in water.

2. Analogy

a) Two animals I am comparing are the dolphin and shark.

b) Each species has flippers, although sharks are not as opposable as that of a dolphin's. Both are used to help maneuver in the water. The shark's pectoral fin (front flipper) is made of cartilage but resembles the bones inside the front fin of the dolphin. They are not related however because the shark is a fish with gills and the dolphin has lungs and a blow hole.

c) Because the dolphin and whale come from a mammal and the shark is more closely related to fish it would have to go back several mya to where mammals were evolving from the first land dwelling creatures from the sea. These traits are analogous because of the different origins of the species. Sharks started out in the water long before whales and dolphins have, as they are aquatic mammals and not fish.

Week 2 – Protein Synthesis

Here is a strange protein code for someone to decode....

GGUACGAUGCAAGTGCAAGGGAACGTAACATTAGGGCGTTGAUAGGAGGAA

kinda hurts my eyes.. who will be the first to decode it?

Week 1 – Historical Influences on Darwin: Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

1) An individual who has had a significant impact and influence over Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection has to be Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. He has been a positive influence towards the theory.

2) Jean-Baptiste Lamarck's contribution to the theory of evolution and natural selection was his proposition of the use-disuse theory. He suggested that over time, organisms adapted to their surroundings by the growing and shrinking of body parts to better suit their environment, with parts that were not used as often becoming non-existent. An example would be the giraffe, which was suggested to have elongated its neck as leaves became higher and higher off the ground. It was also suggested in his theory that animals over time were driven to more complex forms. "As organisms adapted to their surroundings, nature also drove them inexorably upward from simple forms to increasingly complex ones. Like Buffon, Lamarck believed that life had begun through spontaneous generation. But he claimed that new primitive life forms sprang up throughout the history of life; today's microbes were simply 'the new kids on the block.'" (1).

3) Points that were most likely influenced by Lamarck's theory are as follows;

a) If the environment changes, the traits that are helpful or adaptive to that environment will be different.
b) In order for natural selection to occur, reproduction MUST occur!
c) In order for traits to evolve and change, they MUST be heritable.

In regards to environmental changes, traits that occur between generations are suggested to change based on what is useful to the animal. Darwin probably noted Lamarck's theory of use-disuse and proposed this thought process. Lamarck suggested "that complexity evolved simply as a result of life adapting to its local conditions from one generation to the next, much as modern biologists see this process." (2). Traits that happen over time that can be passed down to better the animal's wellbeing in changing environments are what helps to keep a species alive. Again using the giraffe example, the longer neck genetic being passed down meant over time the neck could grow longer and longer to adapt to the trees getting taller.

Darwin however did have some disagreements with Lamarck's theories.

(3)

In this diagram provided, while there was some basis from what Lamarck suggested present in Darwin's theory, he offered alternative solutions and answers for questions that were raised. Some of his theory's ideas took upon Lamarck's ideas and expanded them differently.


4) I do not think Darwin would have developed his theory of natural selection without the influence of Lamarck because of their contrasting ideas as naturalists. Darwin and Lamarck while they had similar ideas still had dire differences in key points of theories. Darwin's points essentially challenged Lamarck's points, and I do not think that without the people who came before Darwin to propose their first ideas, would Darwin have challenged them with his own findings and theories.

5) "Darwin had delayed [publicizing] his ideas due to worries of a backlash from Britain's religious or scientific establishment. As he anticipated, it unleashed controversy, yet the scale of the uproar has often been exaggerated." (5). During this time period, the church was widely feared for heresy, but fortunately he was not the first to propose the theory of evolution (6).

Works used:

1-3) "Early Concepts of Evolution: Jean Baptiste Lamarck" Understanding Evolution. N.p., n.d. Web. <http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/history_09>.

4) "5.13: Influences on Darwin" Biology Concepts. N.p., n.d. Web. <http://www.ck12.org/book/CK-12-Biology-Concepts/section/5.13/.

5-6) "Darwin and the Church" Charles Darwin N.p., n.d. Web. <http://qi.com/infocloud/charles-darwin>.