Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Human Variation & Race Blog

1)      High altitudes, like in high mountains, have two major kinds of environmental stress. There are extreme temperature changes from ranging from hot in days to freezing in night.  Also the air pressure is lower. At high altitudes, the lower air pressure makes it more difficult for oxygen to enter our vascular systems.  The result is hypoxia, or oxygen deprivation.  Hypoxia usually begins with the inability to do normal physical activities, such as climbing a short flight of stairs without fatigue.  Other early symptoms of "high altitude sickness" include a lack of appetite, distorted vision, and difficulty with memorizing and thinking clearly.  In serious cases, pneumonia-like symptoms and an abnormal accumulation of fluid around the brain develop, leading to death within a few days if there is not a return to normal air pressure levels.  There is also an increased risk of heart failure due to the added stress placed on the lungs, heart, and arteries at high altitudes.
         2)

2)      People born at lower altitudes and high-altitudes natives differ in how they adapt to hypoxia. When people born at low elevations travel to higher ones, the process of acclimatization begins within a day or two increasing in respiration rate, heart rate, and production of red blood cells. In high-altitudes natives acclimatization occurs during growth and development. This type of acclimatization is found only in people who grow up in high-altitude areas, not moved there as adults. Compared to populations at lower elevations, lifelong residents of high altitude grow some-what more slowly and mature later. Also people from high-altitudes have larger chest size, associated, in turn, with greater lung volume and larger heart. Also people born at high altitudes are more efficient than migrants at diffusing oxygen from blood to body tissues.
3)      I believe the benefits are to know each other better. People think we are different because of the different skin color or different body size. But by studying this, we can learn how we became different in the first place and also learn that we are no different than any other people.
4)      By using race to understand the variation of the adaptations, in my opinion, you cannot go anywhere near to understand the variation of the adaptations. It is better way to understand human variation by environmental influences on adaptation because it is more clear and exact. It is more detailed since it gives what, why, when, where, and how to answer all the questions precisely. Also it gives evidence to these adaptations.

Monday, May 23, 2011

Language Blog Post

                Using only hand signs without language itself was very hard thing to do. They were having hard time reading my hand signs or my body language. No matter what I tried to say, my partners did not understand and, at least once, they always replied with “what?”  or “‘do’ that one more time”. Our conversation was based on talking about our family members but we were not even near to the finishing conversation. In these 15 min. my partners’ impression was changing from fun at first to frustrate as the time passed. Later, they were so frustrated that they just wanted to finish the conversation and get it over with. In my opinion, the speaking culture had the top hand on speaking complex ideas. With my body signs, they were limited to certain point where I cannot describe the word with my body like “He is Korean”. It seems simple but even though I tried every way to tell him he is Korean, my partners did not get what I was trying to say. In our communities, there are Deaf and Mute communities. Through this assignment I realized that they would have the most hard time communicating with speaking culture people. Even though Mutes can hear, they cannot talk, in other words they have to use sign languages with speaking culture people who is not aware of it just like my partners. Deaf communities would have the same problems since they cannot hear and uses sign languages. For speaking cultures, as my partners reacted, they would want to finish the conversation fast in frustration.
                The next part of assignment was insane! Even though I had the idea of how I should talk, my body won’t let me and they react on their own. I try not to move my eyebrows but they just move out of nowhere and when I’m surprised, there was no way of showing that I was shocked. Other than that, it was easy assignment. Whenever I was able to talk without any motions or movements involved, my partners were able to understand what I was trying to say. But even though, my partners were able to understand most of the times, time to time, there would be a pause from my partners not knowing if whatever I said was a question or just a statement. Not using any kinds of motions and movements, it limited my conversation with no emotions shown. In my opinions, using signs and body movements would make all the conversation clearer and more effective but does not affect too much on our conversation. I believe there are some people who are more accurate in reading body languages and sign languages but I have never seen one or either I’m not good at body language. Will there be any benefits from knowing body and sign languages? It is obvious question; it helps to find emotions, and questions clearer than people who do not. What is the benefit for not having the ability to read body and sign languages? In my opinion, there is none. Even though one would be able to communicate but there is a limitation on how much you can express. By expressing yourself to the fullest the whole world would be able to understand you in one or the other way.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Piltdown Blog Post

1.       In 1912, Charles Dawson of Piltdown, England claimed to have made an earth-shattering discovery: the fossilized skeleton of a creature that was the link between apes and humans. The jaw bone with canine tooth showed that this creature might be the ancestors of human beings. The world was riveted. Some anthropologists even staked their careers on the discovery wasting their whole life to find the remaining skull of this creature. Finding this skull, British scientists were now proud to be in same level as England and other big countries who have found the ancient fossils.
2.       The desire to be part of a great discovery blinded those charged with authenticating it. Also maybe national pride had kept the researchers from noticing the scratch marks made by the filing of the jaw and teeth. Wanting to be the part of this great discovery that gave national pride to them, wanting for it to be true, it completely blinded them to find the evidence that it is fraud.
3.       Since 1953 the name "Piltdown" hasn't been associated with great scientific discovery, but great scientific fraud. It was in that year that a group of scientists, lead by Kenneth Page Oakley, attempted to use the new method of fluorine testing to get a more exact date on the bones. What the test showed surprised them: The jaw was modern and the skull only hundreds years old. Additional analysis soon confirmed the fluorine tests. The jaw was really that of an orangutan. Also observing the teeth in microscope, they found another shock that it was carved by someone. They evidence was that there were deep scratch marks on the teeth.
4.       I don’t know if it is possible to remove “human” factors from science since we are human and whatever, or however we do, we are still a human. However, I believe it will be a great help removing the “human” factors from science just like robots or computers time to time but not always. In my opinion, science need human factors to find more discoveries and many more. By mistake we learn and by that, our learning source is limitless which could be “human’s” strong point.
5.       What I learned from this is that do not let anything blind your sight and stay on focus what you have to do.  Also do not make fraud to make yourself famous or your country proud because it only makes it worse.

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Comparative Primate Blog Post


 Lemurs  are a clade of strepsirrhine primates endemic to the island of Madagascar. lemurs merely share morphological and behavioral traits with basal primates. Madagascar is known to have so many different environments and frequent changes of seasons. Different types of lemurs have evolved unique combinations of unusual traits to cope with Madagascar's harsh, seasonal climate. These traits can include seasonal fat storage, hypometabolism (including torpor and hibernation), small group sizes, low encephalization (relative brain size), cathemerality (activity both day and night), and strict breeding seasons. Since the lemur was found all over Madagascar and with different adaptation, they had different sizes; some were large and some were small. Extreme resource limitations and seasonal breeding are also thought to have given rise to three other relatively common lemur traits: female social dominance, sexual monomorphism, and male–male competition for mates involving low levels of agonism, such as sperm competition. Since the Madagascar is large in size with different environments across this huge island, lemurs were able to live through out the island with their adaptation skills, making them have around 100 different lemur species.

 Spider monkeys of the genus Ateles are New World monkeys in the subfamily Atelinae, family Atelidae. Like other Atelines, they are found in tropical forests of Central and South America, from southern Mexico to Brazil. The disproportionately long limbs and long prehensile tail makes them one of the largest New World monkeys and gives rise to their common name. Spider monkeys live in the upper layers of the rainforest and forage in the high canopy but sometimes avoid high canopy of the trees because the thin branch cannot support them. Due to their large size, spider monkeys require large tracts of moist evergreen forests and prefer undisturbed primary rainforest. Also the interesting fact about spider monekys, females rather than males disperse at puberty to join new groups. Males tend to stick together for their whole life. Hence males in a group are more likely to be related and have closer bonds than females. The strongest social bonds are formed between females and their young offspring.

 Baboons are African and Arabian Old World monkeys belonging to the genus Papio. There are five species, which are known to be one of the largest non-hominid members of the primate. In all baboon species there is pronounced sexual dimorphism, usually in size but also sometimes in colour or canine development. Males of the Hamadryas Baboon species also have a large white mane. The Baboons were known to become more aggressive day after day and I believe they are becoming aggressive because the fact that their mentality is set to survival mode, just to try to feed their babies and themselves. The environmnet in Africa and Arabian might be hard to find foods so they would do whatever it takes to get the food and feed the babies.

 Gibbons are apes in the family Hylobatidae also called the lesser apes, gibbons differ from great apes (chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans and humans) in being smaller, exhibiting low sexual dimorphism, in not making nests, and in certain anatomical details in which they superficially more closely resemble monkeys than great apes do. Gibbons occur in tropical and subtropical rainforests from northeast India to Indonesia and north to southern China, including the islands of Sumatra, Borneo and Java. Depending on species and gender, gibbons' fur coloration varies from dark to light brown shades, and anywhere in between black and white. It is rare to see a completely white gibbon. Many gibbons are hard to identify based on fur coloration and are identified either by song or genetics. These morphological ambiguities have led to hybrids in zoos. Zoos often receive gibbons of unknown origin and therefore rely on morphological variation or labels that are impossible to verify to assign species and subspecies names, so it is common for separate species of gibbons to be misidentified and housed together. Because China being large with different environments all over the countries, it is unknown for the people where some of the gibbons are from and how they got that traits.

 Chimpanzees are our closest living relatives, sharing more than 98 percent of our genetic blueprint. Humans and chimps are also thought to share a common ancestor who lived some four to eight million years ago. Chimpanzees live in social communities of several dozen animals, and can habituate themselves to African rain forests, woodlands, and grasslands. The male common chimp is up to 1.7 metres (5.6 ft) high when standing, and weighs as much as 70 kilograms (150 lb); the female is somewhat smaller. The common chimp’s long arms, when extended, have a span one and a half times as long as the body’s height and a chimpanzee's arms are longer than its legs. They are known to walk on four legs but sometimes they can walk with two legs just like humans. Chimpanzees live in large multi-male and multi-female social groups called communities. Being alike to humans, their communities are similar as humans; they have leaders who leads the group.

 Studying and researching about these primates, I kind of understood the influence of environment to these primates. Sexual dimophism most of the times results from sexual selection. Using spider mokey as an example, the sizes of these primates matter from which environment they are living because as I said in the research, because of their large size, spider monkeys require large tracts of moist evergreen forests and prefer undisturbed primary rainforest. I did not know the environments are so important to all these primates and how they can adapt to survive. This research assignment was very interesting to do.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Analogy & Homology Blog Post

1------Homology------
  1.      Two different species that I chose to describe homology were dragonfly and butterfly. Dragonflies have four long wings two on each side and butterflies have wide four wings two on each side. Dragonflies have long body shape like butterflies. It is easy to come up with an answer that dragonflies and butterflies share same trait of wings even though their wings look different.
  2.     Dragonflies and butterflies share similar body shape but different shape of wings. Even though their wings seem different, they have common function, flying.
  3.      Dragonflies and butterflies share same ancestors from way back in centuries even when dinosaurs were existed and they also had wings to fly around to find food or run away from predators. In other words, the ancestors of these species share same trait and considered homologous.


2------Analogy-------
  1.       Two different species that I chose to describe analogy were sharks and dolphins. They both live underwater, and also have fins that look alike. The sharks’ and dolphins’ appearances are very similar but inside of the body structure is very different. While shark use gills to collect oxygen underwater, dolphins go up to the surface to breath air. Their trait of fins seemed to be passed on from same ancestors but they are not.
  2.       Dolphins and sharks have very similar body structure having streamed body shape and triangular fin on their back. The function of theses traits is to live underwater. But even though they have same function, since shark uses gills to collect oxygen, shark is considered as fish but dolphins are considered as mammals since they breathe atmospheric air.
  3.       Dolphins evolved from a land mammal with closest relative of hippo. Hippos don’t have any fins just like any mammals. That means whales and dolphins evolved their fins independently of sharks in different lineages. For the sharks, sharks are from fish ancestors, which lived underwater for centuries. However, the pectoral fins of sharks and dolphins are homologous. The dolphin’s pectoral fins evolved from the tetrapod hand, and tetrapod hand was evolved from pectoral fin of lobe-finned fish. Recent studies showed that lobe-finned fishes have the same number of bones as the pectoral fins of sharks which means that the front limbs of tetrapods evolved from the pectoral fins of the common ancestor of sharks, ray-finned and lobe-finned fishes.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Friday, April 15, 2011

Darwin's Theory

Eui Yun
Professor Laurie
Anthropology 101
15 April 2011
Charles Lyell
Charles Lyell was a geologist who believed in uniformitarianism which deals with geological and biological forces were acted same over and over again with same force throughout the Earth’s past and present that caused to have the landscape we have today on Earth. According to Allaboutscience Organization, Lyell's work formed the foundation of belief in a universe billions of years old. Lyell was a geologist that enabled him to see how old the rocks were and came with a conclusion of Earth is old. Charles Lyell’s concept “deep time” was one of the most significant contributions to the discovery of evolutionary principles.
Charles Lyell and Charles Darwin were good friends who believed their theories together. Charles Darwin, who thought of evolutionary theory, did not have any proof until Charles Lyell came up with “deep time” concept which made Darwin’s theory logical. Charles Lyell, knowing, the Earth was very old, demonstrated that forces of natural disasters and weathers that have changed the geological landscape until now, but is till consistently changing now. In other words, lots of species and living organisms were changing throughout the time.
I believe if it wasn’t for Charles Lyell supporting Darwin’s theory, the evolutionary theory could have been another imagination to many people. Because Charles Lyell had a proof of changing of landscape of Earth, it made it possible of living organisms changing through over time to adapt to their environment. This supported Darwin’s theory a lot.
The church’s attitude toward Darwin’s theory was negative due to the fact that his theory was going opposite direction from bibles. Church’s idea was humans were fixed body from before and Darwin’s idea was that humans were evolved from other species. After Darwin completed his work and published “On the Origin of Species”, public opinion was negative but the book was scholarly praised and the support of Darwin’s theory gradually increased.