Anne's New and Hot - week 6

This week I read two interesting articles that relate to the Galapagos Islands and to eachother. I visited the Galapagos when I was eleven years old, and when I went the Galapagos was an extremeley exotic destination for most Americans. In fact, the only reason I went is becaue I am half Ecuadorian and I was living in Venezuela at the time. When I went, I didn't see any other Americans (except for Martha Stuart. ) When I read about the Galapagos Islands in the New York Times Travel Section, I was extremely surprised. The article is entitled, "Galapagos Unbound" and as I read I quickly realized the deeper significance of this title. All of the sudden a trip to the Galapagos is main stream for the American tourist. The article that I read describes a new brand of kayaking tours through the Galapagos. The tone of the article makes it seem like the Galapagos is just another typical adventure vacation. I find that troubling when it comes to the next article I read recently in the BBC.

The aricle in the BBC, entitled, "Galapagos Islands 'facing crises'" describes the new problems in the delicate habitat of the Galapagos Islands. The article was published in April 2007. Apparently, recently, a UN delegation from Unesco, the environemental branch of the UN, gave an official warning of threats to the ecology in the Galapagos. The article mentions the increase in tourism as one of the possible effects, but I see it as a major effect. With articles like the one in the New York Times it is clear that there has to be some sort of control of the toursim. However, as a major source of income in Ecuador, it is difficult to see any possibile solution.

The articles can be found here:
New York Times article: http://travel.nytimes.com/2006/01/08/travel/08galapagos.html?pagewanted=1
BBC article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6543653.stm

Anne’s Review of The Voyage of the Beagle

Charles Darwin's account of his journey to South America is a detailed daily account of his trip and the detail and accuracy with which he describes the scenes is truly remarkable. The fact that Darwin compiled and published his actually travel log from his trip presents the modern day reader with a unique view into Darwin during his formative years. The adventures and dangers that the young Darwin encounters on his epic journey show a side of the great scientists that I hadn’t thought of when I think of the most famous photograph of the frosty-bearded and mysterious scientist dressed all in black.
While reading his accounts, and the great detail involved in his observation it is easier to understand the uniqueness that such an acute attention to detail brings Darwin as a scientist. Darwin’s observations and reflections span from the behavior and appearance of certain birds and insects, to the strata in mountainous cliffs, to the habits and differences among various indigenous groups. The ways Darwin forms relations among such groups gives us insight into the synthesizing power of his mind. It is this very synthesizing power which aids him later in his ultimate formulation of the theory of evolution. I give Darwin’s “Voyage of the Beagle” four and a half out of five stars.

Sagar's New and Hot (Week 6)

During the recent Republican debate, a moderator asked Senator McCain whether or not he believes in evolution and then asked the entire field the same question. The short clip can be found on youtube here . Although the transcript has already been posted, I think actually seeing it being played out makes it easier to take the journey. One interesting note about the three Republicans who raised their hands against evolution is that it seems that none of them intend to actively pursue placing intelligent design into science classes. This question arose in this article and Huckabee, one of the three candidates, responded that he does not expect public schools to teach creationism.

On to a more scientific new and hot: the first marsupial genome has been completely mapped!!!! And the lucky marsupial is none other than the lucky opposum. It was found that that oppossum has 18,000 to 20,000 protein coding genes, many of which have counterparts in placental mammals. When scientists looked at the newer elements of the human genome that are not present in marsupials, they found that 95% of the new changes did not affect protein coding genes but rather the regions of the genome that regulate gene activity. This means that lots of recent (and by recent I mean from 180 million years ago to now) evolution has involved regulating genes differently rather than making or altering protein coding genes. The article can be found here . Check it out!

Also here is my review of Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle.

Alex's New and Hot and Beagle Review

New and Hot:
The Encyclopedia of Life

So basically, check this website out when it goes live: www.eol.org A coalition of 7 major museums and institutions, including the Smithsonian, Harvard University, Chicago's Field Museum, the Marine Biological Laboratory in Massachusetts, the Biodiversity Heritage Library Consortium, the Missouri Botanical Garden and the Atlas of Living Australia have gotten together to undertake the monumental task of making an Encyclopedia of Life. The first few webpages of this site apparently went live earlier this morning.

The basic premise of this website is that all 1.8 million known species in the world will be categorized and the information recorded on the website, which will be freely accessible to everyone. So for instance, an entry on any particular organism might have pictures, sounds, amateur sightings, etc. But in addition to that, the website caters more than just the amateur web-surfer by offering links to hardcore science articles as well.

Here are images of the first few demo pages that were released to the public today. Polar Bear entries:

• Novice Mode
• Expert Mode
• OMG-SUPERHARDCORE-Expert Mode.

Now for some numbers:

• 1.8 million species they know for sure.
• 8 millions species is their estimate of total that are in existence right now.
• 10 years is how long they think the project will take.
• $12.5 million is the amount of grant money they have for the first two and a half years. From the MacArthur and Sloan Foundations.

Lastly, in what's yet another manifestation of Web 2.0, this EOL dealio will be user driven. AKA everyone apparently can contribute, making it basically a monstrosity much like Wikipedia, presumably. Awesome.

Beagle Review:
Click here.

This book was supposed to be the 2nd edition of Charles Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle. Definitely a classic and definitely worth a read. But you should probably buy another publisher's version because I found a few blatant typos in this copy. Although there weren't that many and it didn't detract from the reading too much, why own a copy with errors in it?

As far as the book itself is concerned, I thought it was pretty good in teaching us about Darwin and his travels. It reads a lot like a travel guide, in that he just catalogues all these animals and plants and things that he encounters. His skills of observation are amazing, it's really no surprise that he eventually gathered the data that he felt was necessary to back up his claims of evolution. He definitely pays amazing attention to detail.

On the other hand, he just jumps into chapter 1 page 1 with a lot of this dry detail and it was hard to get interested in the book at first. He definitely tries to use some fancy prose at parts ("Goodbye, Australia!"... I liked that part a lot) and he's really good at it, too, I wonder why he doesnt try to be more dramatic more of the time, haha.

The main thing that I found attractive about this book is that Darwin not only talks about the flora, fauna, and geology of the places he visited, but he also talked about the cultural and societal influences that they had. The section in his book about the South American gauchos was reallly really interesting. In addition, I'd read the Darwin Conspiracy (a novel!) before i read this book, it is very interesting to see how the descriptions of the Fuegians drastically differed, even though some of the actual events that occurred in the two works were the same.

And it's interesting that although Darwin does talk about the indigenous people somewhat, it seems that he focuses on the European Settlers (subsequent immigrants) and their culture a lot. And this part I found especially fascinating, I suppose because there wasn't that language barrier (Like the part where he criticizes Brazilian slavery).

Oh and the last thing I want to say is that the part on the Galapagos was really underwhelming. After all this buildup and suspense I thought he was going to say something really profound, haha. And he definitely did foreshadow some of the ideas of adaptive radiation in that chapter both about the finches and the tortoises, but it wasnt what I was expecting. In fact, the Galapagos chapter basically read like all the other chapters in its mechanical recollection of all the details of his observations.

Overall, awesome book.

Chad's New and Hot, Week 6

Darwin Exhibit!

My new and hot for this week is an article revealing that an exhibit on Charles Darwin is to be opened in Chicago Field Museum this summer. This exhibit, running from June 15 through the end of the year, will feature manuscripts and other pieces of Darwin’s personal belongings. The exhibit will focus not only on his writings while onboard the Beagle and the way that he developed his theory of natural selection, but it will also feature letters to his wife and family portraits that show Darwin’s human side.

To find out more about this exhibit, I visited the museum’s website and was amused to immediately find an example of a debate that we brought up earlier in class. Under the link for the exhibit’s info page, the first sentence of the description reads: “For 21 years, he kept his theory a secret.” I just found it pretty funny, but also a little troublesome, that they presented this reason for Darwin’s delay as a concrete fact although Darwin’s true motives are still not known for certain. Maybe this exhibit plans to emphasize the elements of Darwin’s life and writings, such as his religion, that support this particular theory. With the American Museum of Natural History (New York), the Field Museum (Chicago), the Museum of Science (Boston), the Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto), and the Natural History Museum (London) all cooperating on this exhibit, it promises to be an exciting one.

Julie's Voyage review

Here is my review of The Voyage of the Beagle.

I had the amazing opportunity to go to Torres del Paine while I was studying abroad in Chile last quarter. While I was there, I saw... guanacos! Here are a few photos I took of the guanacos. The second photo is a picture of a herd of guanacos.

Random side note: I also tried some alpaca (a relative of the guanaco) while in Peru. It tastes sort of like beef... :)

Roarke's New and Hot (Week 6)

A panel on the ethics of genetic engineering was held yesterday at Stanford, hosted by the Center on Ethics and the Program in Ethics and Society. The panel focused on the use of new technologies that are used to conduct genetic screens of embryos, allowing parents to pick and choose the "best." Such genetic "hyper-parenting" is sometimes compared to eugenics (the so-called "self-direction of human evolution"), which we'll talk more about when I give my presentation on Wednesday. Panelists included Professor Michael Sandel of the Program in Ethics and Society, Law Professor Hank Greely, and Pediatrics Professor David Magnus, three preeminent scholars in this area.

As the development of such genetic technologies will likely proceed at a faster rate than the government will be able to keep track of and control, discussions like this one held yesterday are urgently needed so that we, as a nation and a planet,, can develop legal standards to regulate such practices.

Is genetic engineering really unethical, or is it merely a more scientifically advanced way of ensuring a happy life for one's children? Hyperparenting is something parents of all species have been doing forever in countless other ways, from choosing a good mate, to providing nutrition, shelter, and support to the growing child, to more modern variations like paying for SAT prep and private school tuition, but is it going too far to actually genetically predetermine our childrens' traits? While such technologies will of course only be available to the wealthy, isn't that true to some extent for most of the advantages hyper-parents give to their kids today anyway?

Read the brief daily article here.

-Roarke