Week10

media type="youtube" key="56mjwycKuXA?fs=1" height="390" width="480"Race…. There has been lots of jabber about what race is scientifically and socially, how the word Race evolved, and what it means to people today. People want to know, why cant we all understand that we are all the same race? People want to know when the dark plague of Race will be part of our past. On and on these questions concerning RACE continue. The human race has been categorizing, compartmentalizing, and segregating people based on similarities and differences since the beginning of history.

Today the issue is Race and Racism, but really it has been among us in many forms throughout time. People often think lesser of those who are very different from themselves. People don’t like change, they prefer to be around people with similar ideas, and habits, similar religious views, similar language, and similar morals.

Do you think humans segregating each other in some form will ever be part of our past?

Do you think that the energy and efforts to discourage Racism today are beneficial and long lasting?

Personally I think, like all things in life a few bad people will always ruin the hope for equality for everyone. And it is almost certain these people will be politicians or ruler of some sort, those hungry for power use this card to their advantage.

http://scienceblogs.com/mikethemadbiologist/2011/04/why_biologists_problems_are_un.php#more

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http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/deangelis/110401

Why did many prominent scientists buy into Euteligenics when there was still no scientific basis behind it?

My question is about the genetic disorders of Down Syndrome, Crie du Chat, and Kleinfelter's syndrome. Previously it was talked about the genes code for proteins, and that changes in the base pairs of the DNA would result in different proteins which would cause differences. These people's genes aren't mutations, its all the same "genes" just more of them, so what is it about having too many genes that produces these differences, since it would seem that they would have all the same proteins as the "normal" person?

My question is about mitochondrial DNA. I understand that it is only inherited from the mother, and according to the article on wikipedia, an individual egg cell contains about 100,000 to 1,000,000 molecules of mitochondrial DNA. With such a large amount of mitochondrial DNA being inherited from only one parent, how does genetic variation occur? Are all the mitochondrial DNA identical in the egg? Are mutations that frequent that it can cause such variations that we saw in that video? If I remember correctly, some students had at least 5 or so differences between their mitochondrial DNA and someone else's in a sample of about 300 base pairs, and the typical variation with regular DNA is about 1 out of 1000. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_DNA

I am sure this will be covered in today's class, however how large is the following of socio-biology currently. It seems a mere hypothesis to answer questions beyond those of natural selection, it seems to have difficulty being placed in human behavior convincingly. http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/ http://richarddawkins.net/

Obviously sociobiology was a very controversial topic when it first emerged. When reading Edward Wilson’s keynote address I noticed he discussed some of the activism against sociobiology such as the spreading of leaflets and writing of articles. I was wondering how large was this “resistance” against it was and what else they did to convey their beliefs. http://www.ucsusa.org/about/founding-document-1968.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_for_the_People

Can "the meaning of life" be summed up by the book The Selfish Gene? Based on its interpretation, the purpose of life is for an organism to protect and maintain the health of its genetic material until the organism is ready to reproduce and pass on its germ-plasm. Is there nothing more to it than that? Surely we live life for other reasons, such as improving living conditions for current and future generations and pursuing experiences that bring us happiness. But maybe these are simply ways to pass the time and build up the quality of our genes. After all, happiness is certainly a desirable trait to be carried on to offspring. So underneath the daily activities, is everything centered around just preserving the quality of our genes and then passing them on? It seems that this idea is at the heart of Sociobiology. But at what point are genes too selfish? With overpopulation becoming a greater problem in the world, is the meaning of life undergoing a change?

In yesterday's lecture we ended around the concept that we are simply machines designed to propagate our DNA. In particular, you put forward the "greedy gene" or somesuch as the prime motivator for self-preservation, often at the expense of others. I've heard a great deal of (philosophical) debate over whether self-preservation or self-sacrifice in the interest of the group (family, community, species, etc) is "better." My question pertains to the scope that the self-preserving gene encompasses. By your definition, a "perfect being" would devise a way of replicating himself indefinitely and then kill every other living thing on the planet. In a sense, I suppose that there are a number of single-celled organisms which essentially strive toward that very goal. That "grey goo" that encompasses the earth may very well end up being a bacteria that became resistant to everything we tried to kill it with. Furthermore, how do you explain nice people? To say nothing of philanthropists, why would anyone ever help anyone else? I suppose the cynical explanation is that they're simply mentally defective. On the other hand, I can think of many situations where it would be advantageous to you to provide some sort of assistance to others, with the likelihood that you will be repaid at some point. But then again, what of people who give a homeless person their change? I admit, these questions of mine aren't new, though your lecture certainly widened the can of worms already open in my soul.

http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/03/24/big-dust-up-about-kin-selection/ media type="youtube" key="wKbj3ZDmvdU?fs=1" height="390" width="640"

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