History remembers Charles Darwin’s time on the H.M.S. Beagle as his journey through the Galapagos Islands, but there was so much more to his amazing adventure. In The Voyage of the Beagle (1839), Charles Darwin recounts the five-year span over which he traveled throughout the world and made the observations that would be the foundation for his scholarly works for the rest of his life. This book takes you all over the world as you get to experience the geological and biological observations of Charles Darwin.
The detail with which this book is written provides an interesting insight into Darwin’s thought process: you are able to see the world as he does, which is a remarkable thing. For example, I can still recall his vivid description of the fossilized shell that he encountered when crossing the Andes from Chile to Argentina as though it were something I personally witnessed. Though you may be wary to read something written by Charles Darwin if you’ve been exposed to his dry, meticulous writing style in his masterpiece, On the Origin of Species (1859), rest assured: this is a different sort of Charles Darwin. The Voyage is a fast-paced and fun read as you recount adventure after adventure with Charles Darwin to show you the way.
My Review on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Voyage-Beagle-Charles-Researches-Classics/product-reviews/014043268X/ref=cm_cr_pr_viewpnt_sr_5?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&filterBy=addFiveStar
Darwin Rocks.
Sam
lunes, 7 de junio de 2010
domingo, 6 de junio de 2010
Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers
Dr. Robert Sapolsky at Stanford University wrote this book explaining how our stress mechanism that was essential for our survival in the world of predators and prey, but is now killing us in our modern world of psychological stressors functions. The concept is:
You wake up from a resting heart rate and mild levels of nerve activity and a lion pounces on you. You jump immediately as nerve impulses shoot through your body spiking your heart rate and injecting tons of hormones into target organs. Your bladder relaxes, your leg muscles tighten, and you may vomit that heavy meal you ate. Your body is losing the dead weight as you start to run. A large chunk of your side is missing and it appears as if you can see your intestine but you can't feel any of it because receptors are being blocked. You can worry about pain when you're not going to die immediately.
Now you're staring at a blank word document. You may want to vomit but I hope you don't piss yourself. Tons of hormones that are toxic to your body at elevated levels are pumped to target organs. Your heart races and you break out in a cold sweat. The response is not nearly as severe but then it lasts for the 6-12 hours it takes you to crank out that 20 page paper. You don't increase your blood flow to increase circulation of oxygenated blood and blood containing elevated levels of hormones pools in various places in your body. This response is triggered by many common things throughout your day, causing your body to have little life-or-death crises. The sound of your alarm, the minute hand on the clock, forgotten assignment slowly accumulate as little detrimental effects to your health.
The activation of your sympathetic nervous system leaves levels of hormones that won't allow your parasympathetic nervous system to put you to sleep. You develop insomnia, your immune system struggles, and your body tries to store energy for a crisis in the form of fat. Now your heart labors harder every time you activate these stress responses and it either starts to try to build muscle causing a thickened septum wall and smaller chambers with less blood flow, or there are platelet globules that formed on tears in the artery due to heightened pressure and get stuck in the valves or the brain.
It's an extreme spiraling cycle of stress and increasing incapability with handling it.
Spencer Castro
You wake up from a resting heart rate and mild levels of nerve activity and a lion pounces on you. You jump immediately as nerve impulses shoot through your body spiking your heart rate and injecting tons of hormones into target organs. Your bladder relaxes, your leg muscles tighten, and you may vomit that heavy meal you ate. Your body is losing the dead weight as you start to run. A large chunk of your side is missing and it appears as if you can see your intestine but you can't feel any of it because receptors are being blocked. You can worry about pain when you're not going to die immediately.
Now you're staring at a blank word document. You may want to vomit but I hope you don't piss yourself. Tons of hormones that are toxic to your body at elevated levels are pumped to target organs. Your heart races and you break out in a cold sweat. The response is not nearly as severe but then it lasts for the 6-12 hours it takes you to crank out that 20 page paper. You don't increase your blood flow to increase circulation of oxygenated blood and blood containing elevated levels of hormones pools in various places in your body. This response is triggered by many common things throughout your day, causing your body to have little life-or-death crises. The sound of your alarm, the minute hand on the clock, forgotten assignment slowly accumulate as little detrimental effects to your health.
The activation of your sympathetic nervous system leaves levels of hormones that won't allow your parasympathetic nervous system to put you to sleep. You develop insomnia, your immune system struggles, and your body tries to store energy for a crisis in the form of fat. Now your heart labors harder every time you activate these stress responses and it either starts to try to build muscle causing a thickened septum wall and smaller chambers with less blood flow, or there are platelet globules that formed on tears in the artery due to heightened pressure and get stuck in the valves or the brain.
It's an extreme spiraling cycle of stress and increasing incapability with handling it.
Spencer Castro
viernes, 4 de junio de 2010
John Herschel & the Mystery of Mysteries
Hola chicos,
So I the biography of Darwin that I was reading made mention a few times of the John Herschel fellow, so I thought I'd do a New & Hot on him and his influence on Darwin.
John Herschel was primarily an astronomer, and also a wildly popular scientist back in the day (the day being the first half of the 19th century). He was in fact so popular that he moved to South Africa to get away from the mobs of fans. Ok that's a little bit of an exaggeration. But not much- he said he was quite happy to leave the pressure of living in England. The main reason he was there, though (and why Darwin and Fitzroy could stop in and say hi to him on their way back to Britain) was to study the stars of the Southern Hemisphere. While he was in South Africa though, he and his wife decided (as people from this time period so often seem to do, because they were just so ridiculously multi-talented) to take up botany, making drawings of the local plants using a combination of new photography techniques and technology. He was also like Humboldt a little bit, it turns out, in that he advocated doing science by carefully collecting data, recording observations, and then using inductive reasoning to come up with theories to explain them. I mean, this is (I'm pretty sure) how we do science nowadays, but I guess back then it was like a big leap or something. And Darwin was affected by Herschel's thoughts on this subject as well. Herschel also read Lyell's Principles of Geology, and his quote that Darwin used about the "mystery of mysteries" was actually from a letter that Herschel sent to Lyell. Darwin might also have gotten it while they were hanging out in South Africa, though.
Anyway, Herschel seems like a pretty interesting guy. Darwin was buried near him in Westminster.
Cheers,
Kersten
So I the biography of Darwin that I was reading made mention a few times of the John Herschel fellow, so I thought I'd do a New & Hot on him and his influence on Darwin.
John Herschel was primarily an astronomer, and also a wildly popular scientist back in the day (the day being the first half of the 19th century). He was in fact so popular that he moved to South Africa to get away from the mobs of fans. Ok that's a little bit of an exaggeration. But not much- he said he was quite happy to leave the pressure of living in England. The main reason he was there, though (and why Darwin and Fitzroy could stop in and say hi to him on their way back to Britain) was to study the stars of the Southern Hemisphere. While he was in South Africa though, he and his wife decided (as people from this time period so often seem to do, because they were just so ridiculously multi-talented) to take up botany, making drawings of the local plants using a combination of new photography techniques and technology. He was also like Humboldt a little bit, it turns out, in that he advocated doing science by carefully collecting data, recording observations, and then using inductive reasoning to come up with theories to explain them. I mean, this is (I'm pretty sure) how we do science nowadays, but I guess back then it was like a big leap or something. And Darwin was affected by Herschel's thoughts on this subject as well. Herschel also read Lyell's Principles of Geology, and his quote that Darwin used about the "mystery of mysteries" was actually from a letter that Herschel sent to Lyell. Darwin might also have gotten it while they were hanging out in South Africa, though.
Anyway, Herschel seems like a pretty interesting guy. Darwin was buried near him in Westminster.
Cheers,
Kersten
jueves, 3 de junio de 2010
Joan Roughgarden
Joan Roughgarden is an evolutionary biologist at Stanford that challenges Charles Darwin’s theory of sexual selection. Roughgarden is calling for an overhaul of the way science defines the mechanism for natural selection, which Darwin introduced as sexual selection. In her most recent book, The Genial Gene (2009), she has proposed an alternative theory, social selection, which is focused on the prevalence of teamwork and co-operation throughout nature, rather than the narrative from sexual selection which presents the world as fundamentally at conflict and individualistic. Her major opposition has come from modern-day Darwin theologians who feel that her examples, which she claims are counter to the sexual selection narrative, can all fit into it. They firmly believe that Darwin was limited by his times, but fundamentally, he was correct and thus his theory merely needs to be adapted to the times.
In a class I took from her in the fall we spent a great deal of time debating the need for social selection, while also questioning whether natural selection needs a similar overhaul. In the end the distinguishing factor between natural selection and sexual selection was the validity of the fundamental principles. For natural selection, the fundamental principle is that evolution occurs through a step-by-step mechanism of random mutations that survive and spread throughout the population if they give the individual an evolutionary advantage. If this is true, than Darwin was right and everything since can build off of his idea. In sexual selection, the fundamental principle is that the default behavior of nature is selfishness and conflict.
An interesting side note, which alas, never seems to be deemed unimportant, is the personal life of Joan Roughgarden. She is a M2F transsexual and has admitted, “she has an agenda: to develop a theory with room for outsiders like gays and transsexuals.” This agenda, however, does not mean she’s wrong. The question remains, what is the fundament principal of life, co-operation or competition?
Review of The Genial Gene: http://www.theamericanscholar.org/the-peacock-problem-by-long/
Impact: http://autogynephiliac.blogspot.com/2009/12/joan-roughgarden-on-social-evolution.html
Still I think Darwin Rocks. Right or wrong, he got the conversation started.
Sam
In a class I took from her in the fall we spent a great deal of time debating the need for social selection, while also questioning whether natural selection needs a similar overhaul. In the end the distinguishing factor between natural selection and sexual selection was the validity of the fundamental principles. For natural selection, the fundamental principle is that evolution occurs through a step-by-step mechanism of random mutations that survive and spread throughout the population if they give the individual an evolutionary advantage. If this is true, than Darwin was right and everything since can build off of his idea. In sexual selection, the fundamental principle is that the default behavior of nature is selfishness and conflict.
An interesting side note, which alas, never seems to be deemed unimportant, is the personal life of Joan Roughgarden. She is a M2F transsexual and has admitted, “she has an agenda: to develop a theory with room for outsiders like gays and transsexuals.” This agenda, however, does not mean she’s wrong. The question remains, what is the fundament principal of life, co-operation or competition?
Review of The Genial Gene: http://www.theamericanscholar.org/the-peacock-problem-by-long/
Impact: http://autogynephiliac.blogspot.com/2009/12/joan-roughgarden-on-social-evolution.html
Still I think Darwin Rocks. Right or wrong, he got the conversation started.
Sam
Richard Dawkins and Children
One of the most well known modern evolutionary authors is Richard Dawkins. He has written such best sellers as ¨The Selfish Gene¨ and ¨The God Dilusion.¨ With his next book however, he is looking for a slightly different genre and audience. He plans to write a children´s book that addresses what he views as ¨putting unscientific views in the minds of our children.¨ He remembers growing up reading children´s books where princes turned into frogs and things is now debating whether this has a ¨pernicious¨ effect on the minds of our young. Most recently, he has condemned Harry Potter even though he admits that he has not read the books themselves.
What he aims to accomplish with one or more children´s books is to help children to learn to ¨confront and deal with the evidence. He does not hold children at fault for not being taught these things, but even sees children that are exposed to these types of books as "abused." He even goes on to claim that this type of abuse is actually worse than conventional child abuse and that his books will help to remedy this problem. He claims that these are the types of books that he would have wanted to read when he was a kid. Will others agree??
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/31/arts/31arts-THEGODDELUSI_BRF.html?_r=1
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/3255972/Harry-Potter-fails-to-cast-spell-over-Professor-Richard-Dawkins.html
Zach Ming
What he aims to accomplish with one or more children´s books is to help children to learn to ¨confront and deal with the evidence. He does not hold children at fault for not being taught these things, but even sees children that are exposed to these types of books as "abused." He even goes on to claim that this type of abuse is actually worse than conventional child abuse and that his books will help to remedy this problem. He claims that these are the types of books that he would have wanted to read when he was a kid. Will others agree??
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/31/arts/31arts-THEGODDELUSI_BRF.html?_r=1
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/3255972/Harry-Potter-fails-to-cast-spell-over-Professor-Richard-Dawkins.html
Zach Ming
martes, 1 de junio de 2010
Chimp or Human?
Last fall, the discovery of a new skeleton in Ethiopia was hailed as a breakthrough in early Human evolution. The skeleton, classified as Ardipithecus ramidus and nicknamed "Ardi", is a million years older than the famous "Lucy." Ardi is believed to be one of the first to walk on two feet instead of knuckles, and is believed to have lived in woodland areas. This first shocked scientists who originally believed that humans started walking upright when they moved from tress onto the grasslands of the savannah. Now the entire study is being questioned as the classification of the skeleton is being doubted. Some scientists are starting to see if whether the skeleton is actually an ancestor of the modern chimp instead of modern Humans. This would require a stretch, others believe, because it would mean that the ape reverted back to more ancstral morphologies when evolving to become the chimpanzees we know. Some are also studying the surrounding fossils to determine the exact flora that surrounded Ardi during its life. The thoughts that it lived in a woodland area is being explored further as the fossilized vegetation may show otherwise. Missing Link? Or two new spaces to fill?
Jason
Link: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hbeoT7UVejy3nQodKBfYAaQ28N_gD9FVB6L00
Jason
Link: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hbeoT7UVejy3nQodKBfYAaQ28N_gD9FVB6L00
George R. Price: Altruism and Evolution
I satisfied my Darwinophilia today with an article on George Price (1922-1975), a geneticist and evolutionary theorist. Price contended that altruism in nature could be explained by evolution. His equation, creatively named the Price Equation, provided a model for this pattern. Altruism occurs in his model when a certain action increases both the fitness of the organism and the average fitness of its population (or possibly, community).
Price diesplayed altruism in his own life, at one point housing four homeless people in his house, as he slept in his office. Mentally unstable for much of the later part of his life, he commited suicide at the age of 52.
Links: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/Selflessness-of-strangers/624232
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_R._Price
Ian
Price diesplayed altruism in his own life, at one point housing four homeless people in his house, as he slept in his office. Mentally unstable for much of the later part of his life, he commited suicide at the age of 52.
Links: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/Selflessness-of-strangers/624232
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_R._Price
Ian
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