Rachel Carson: Environmental Savior or Doombringer to Africa

Rachel Carson's book "Silent Spring" brought environmental concern to the American public like never before.  It explained the consequences of the overuse of synthetic pesticides.  While it was good to bring concern of overuse to the public it also brought panic.  The result was the disbanding of the use of DDT for pesticide control.
With DDT out of the picture, arguably one of the most effective chemicals to get rid of mosquitoes, diseases carried by mosquitoes continue unchecked in third world countries.  Around 2 million people in Africa die every year from malaria.  I think that her raised awareness for the environmental cause showed the American people that we need to preserve our planet.  But at what cost?  Millions of deaths could be prevented if DDT were put in use.

What is Life

As medical technology gets better our techniques for eliminating disease gets better.  Pathogens such as bacteria or fungi are not as deadly as they were in the past.  As we fight other pathogens such as viruses or prions the definition of living is brought into question.  How does one kill something that is not living?  Viruses, infectious strands of DNA or RNA, and prions, infectious proteins, do not follow the typical parameters for a living organism.  They ca not reproduce on their own and they do not have a typical cell structure with a metabolic cycle.  They are just chemicals that react with our bodies in negative ways.  If these pathogens are considered living then dead cells  should be considered living too.

Blood type diets

It is proposed that the different blood types evolved out necessity from the different cohorts of man.  According to some nutritionists each blood type harbor a diet that should be catered to its genetics.  For example:

O-Should eat high protein diets and avoid large amounts of carbohydrates
A-Should eat little red meat and have a heavy focus on fruits and vegetables
B-Has a very flexible diet and should consume a lot of dairy
AB-Follow a combination of the diets A and B

These diets are all speculation and no clinical research has been done.
http://www.webmd.com/diet/eat-right-for-your-type

Mitochondrial Eve

Mitchondrial eve is a common ancestor to all humans today.  We know this because of the mitochondrium, an organelle of our cells, has it own unique type of DNA.  This is passed down only by the mother in the egg.  This means that we all have an unblemished connection with this one unknown ancient human female.  From this information we are able to track the spread of humans across the globe.  We can learn how and perhaps why people are different from place to place based on their environment and how long they have inhabited that area.

In the 1200s the Mongolian army spread all across Eurasia conquering everything in its path.  To this day Mongolian traits can be found where their empire once was.

Mongolian ancestry

Polish ancestry

Kazakh ancestry

Chinese ancestry

Arabic ancestry

While today visual and genetic differences are becoming blurred there are still historical averages for certain areas as described on this page for artists.
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2ew0yb/www.cedarseed.com/fire/humantypes2.html

Extreme Environments and Their Inhabitants

One example of an environment that is highly toxic to many forms of life is a place called Mono Lake in Mono County, California.  It is listed as one of the oldest lakes in North America and it has no outlet to any other body of water; the only way for water to get out is by evaporation.

This results in increasing concentrations of salt and other minerals, and this lake has incredibly high salinity and alkalinity.  The lake has one main species of endemic brine shrimp that thrives off of plankton that flow into the lake via streams.  Populations of these shrimp are so high that they bring millions of bird individuals to the lake to feed on these aquatic crustaceans.

Also unique to this area is a bacteria, called GFAJ-1, which uses arsenic in its structure instead of phosphorus in small amounts.

This discovery leads scientists to believe that bacteria such as this could have existed around thermal vents around the time of the origin of life.

Sunflower

2/14 Planted the sunflower seed in a small white dixie cup in general potting soil.  I punched three holes in the bottom for drainage.  The cup currently rests on a tupperware lid on a window sill.

2/15 After sitting in the sun for an afternoon the soil dried out slightly so I wet the top with a little bit of water.

2/20 A small sprout formed I will most likely water it again once it rises completely from the soil.

2/27 The sprout fully came out of the ground and the petals opened.

3/1  I moved the sprout to a larger Tupperware container probably too soon.  The roots seemed pretty small, hopefully it will turn the corner.

3/18 Newer larger leaves have sprouted but the plant does not seem to grow vertically very much

3/23 More leaves have sprouted but the sunflower continues to grow slowly vertically.

4/10 Growth continues upward and the root ball has spread through almost all of the container.

Inductive v. Deductive reasoning

Inductive reasoning: inductive reasoning is where you take specific knowledge or observations and make generalized statements, or educated guesses, about things even if they are false.  For example, through my direct observations I could say every college student goes to class, but this statement is inherently wrong because some students take classes online and never physically go to class.
Deductive reasoning: deductive reasoning attempts to make conclusions at the combination of statement of facts. For example, basketball players are tall and Lebron James is a basketball player, therefore Lebron James is a basketball player.  This is an example of a deductive argument.  While one could find exceptions to my example most deductive arguments, based on deductive reasoning, are very sound.