Monday, January 28, 2013

Human Adaptations

A cold climate is not joke. Have you ever visited Canada when it is really cold, and maybe even in the negatives? Well, go back a few centuries and you would not have even survived the temperature. Human's had to adapt to the cold because of many reasons. First of all, crops freeze over, and it is hard for them to make food that they can eat for the winter, or other times that there are cold temperatures in a certain geographical location. Another negative is hypothermia or loss of some motor function. When someone is cold, they can lose some of their motor function because their muscles freeze and cannot flex the same. Also hypothermia can occur which can lead to the loss of a limb or even death. In the cold it can be hard for blood to circulate throughout the body. 
Humans have adapted in many ways to the cold. There used to by methods such as drinking warm drinks and eating warm food, or hurling together to keep body warmth, but those were only temporary solutions. Humans have learned that shivering can warm the body (developmental). If the muscles with in the body are working to shiver, then your metabolism is running, and your body gets warm. This has even started to become a subconscious action, meaning that it the body starts to get to cold, the muscles will start to move without you even thinking about it first. Other than that, a person can eat many carbohydrates (facultative). In this way, the body works to break up the nutrients in the complex carbohydrates and gets the metabolism going as well. This will allow the body temperature to heat up as well. Another way is called Vasoconstriction (developmental), where the body restricts the capillary blood flow to the surface skin, keeping more heat in and not letting as much be released This is a very efficient method of heating the body. Lastly, a person can start to use different, warmer shelters or different clothes that would keep them warmer and let out less heat. This would be a cultural adaption.






















Studying human adaptions to the cold climate would allow people to know how exactly to handle the cold. For example if a guy and his friends were going camping, they may want to bring food such as bread and other complex carbohydrates. Also they may want to bring a tent, some blankets, and a lot of layers of warm clothed or food. Also if they keep moving hen it will keep them warm. These things would allow the humans to know how to deal with the cold.
I do not really think that the view on the subject as race is concerned would change the outcome. The only thing that race might do is change the location of the product. Therefore, if there was an African American man that we were talking about, we might assume that back then, they were in Africa, and did not have that much to do with the adaption to the cold climates. They may have not realized what to do in the cold, and therefore moving to a place with the cold climates would be very hard for these people to do because they would not know how to deal wight he weather. Other than this factor, race really does not play into this adaptation process because cold is an uncontrolled variable and does not differ with race.


Tuesday, January 22, 2013

The Piltdown Hoax





The Piltdown Hoax started when Charles Dawson found pieces of a fossil that resembled a human, but also an ape in certain ways in Piltdown, East Sussex. The jawbone, was the key find in this archeological dig. It had characteristics of an ape, but the teeth were flat, and more shaped like human teeth. Nobody doubted the find as it was a time of scientific integrity and scholarship. Dawson got two other people involved in this archeological find. Arthur Smith Woodward and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin soon joined the process. This is why, when the scientific methods came about to place the bones at a generalized date, the bones were placed merely one hundred thousand years before; however, this would have been way to early for these fossils to be from. This is why they did a full fledged test on the fossils, and found that the bones had actually only been from about a hundred years in the past.
This threw scientists off. This was what led the teeth under a  microscope. Researchers found that the teeth had been filed down to be like someone had wanted them. Also the bones had ben broken so that the scientists could not tell the true origin of the bones, a female orangutang. The suspects were immediately the founders of the fossils. This led to the theory that Dawson worked with one of Woodward's employees to stain the fossils and create the fake evidence. However, this theory has not been proven and could have simply been the employee helping the investigation of the faked fossils. This led to a new age of suspicion in science rather than the integrity and belief that came before.
The faults that come into play in the Piltdown hoax are greed for fame, and for one's own personal works to be renown. This makes the scientific process a lot less trustworthy. This means that with every knew find, other, new scientistic have to bc up the information and check it. Scientific advancements made it possible for the fossils to be revealed as fakes. A process by which researchers check the levels of fluorine in bones to be able to tell when around the fossil originated from. Sand, gravel, water, dirt, etc. can provide random fluorine particles that the fossils pick up. Therefore, by taking the fluorine levels, they can give a rough estimate of how long ago the fossil is from.  do not believe that it is possible to remove scientists from the scientific process because even with the technology we have today, there would need to be a scientist to use it, and develop the tests. I think that events like this are very rare, and that even if it was possible to take scientist out of the process, I do not think it is the right thing to do. It eliminates the opportunity for growth and innovation. I think that scientists will always be at the head of the scientific revolution, and they are needed to expand our views on science and its methods.
I have learned that you cannot always base everything on faith. It seems that, although someone may be in high regard, like a scientist, you cannot just trust his or her word. Testing their theories, findings, experiments, etc. is a way of eliminating this problem. These hoax type situations need to be prevented from polluting the minds of America with false evidence of history. Basically, everything needs to be double checked before it is just believed. Also, greed for glory or fame does not get you far. Dawson's works may have been respected, but when the truth was found our, he was discredited from the scientific world. 



Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Homologous and Analogous Traits


The whale and the bat have a very similar shaped bone structure in the whale's fin and the bat's wing. The whale's fin is designed to help it maneuver around in the ocean. It allow the wale the muscle power and steering accuracy it needs swim deep under water. The bat's wing is designed to help it maneuver in the air. The wing can help the bat keep itself suspended in air, as well as steer themselves in the right direction. The wing can also be use for protection; however, both are very similar in their structures, showing that they came from a common ancestor before they evolved into different animals.

An example of analogous structure would be the Butterfly wing (first on the left), and the wing of a bird such as a seagull (third from the left). These two wings are completely different yet alike in many ways. Both of these wings are used to help the animal fly and maneuver through the air; however, they are structured completely differently. These traits are not the same through common ancestry. These traits have been adapted by these animals that are not related. The butterfly is an insect, and the seagull is a bird, so they do not have a common ancestor that contains this trait. Evolution had split these animals into two different categories, before pressuring both into developing wings.

Tuesday, January 8, 2013