Social Ecology Study Guide

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

6:48 PM

Questions Missed from 1st Midterm:

Multiple Choice Responses
The reappearenece of Dryas Octopetala in lower altitudes, some 15000 to 10000 YA indicated
The onset of a mini ice-age .
The Younger Dryas motivated the adoptionof agriculture by:
Severe lowering the temperature in plains in coastal plains.
Because they support a wide variety of wild stocks and are less severely affected by climate change, the domestication of plants first emerged in:
Mountainous regions
The 2nd and 3rd waves in the epidemiological transition were or are still significantly motivated by post-Neolithic increases in human population density.
The "drone of modern life" refers to drone as:
Incessant background noise
Which environmental change turned our previously adaptive "fight or flight" response into a Neolithic and then present-day health threath?
High Population density and attachments to land.
Humans can adapt faster than any other animals to environmental changes because
Humans are Polyploid
80% of the world's population presently lives in less developed regions.
Written Questions
Your text uses the experience of contemporary ethnic groups, such as Samoans or the Pima, to support the "thrifty gene", prolifigate tastes" hypothesis. Describe the
experience of one such group and explain why it supports the hypothesis.
Low metabolism good for prolonged Samoan voyages but produce obesity in food-rich, low exercise environment.
Spencer Wells asserts that the origins of human culture, agriculture, and aquaculture are closely analogous. Explain.
All are adaptive responses to environmental crises.
Use persistence of the lactase gene among adult Europeans to exemplify the concept of "landscaping the genome"
Maintain pasture for dairy -> selective pressure favoring lactase gene -> gene altered.
The Natufians were the first to adopt agriculture because they were pushed into a corner by climate change. Explain why they didnt just move away to continue gathering
food in another area.
Natufians attached to their location: site of villages, preferred food. Also too many people to move easily.

Questions Missed from 2nd Midterm:

Multiple Choice Responses
The modern decline of "mythos" has occurred simultaneously with a rise in:
a. Blatant materialism
b. Islamic fundamentalism
c. Christian fundamentalism
d. People who feel bypassed by secular society.
e. All of the above
Across the spectrum of economic security, from absolute poverty through extreme affluence, the trend in tabacco use most closely resembles:
The trend in obesity
Today's sedentary lifestyles make which adaptive paleolithic trait a present liability?
The capacity to burn as little body fat as possible.

Consequences of sedentary lifestyles include:

Increased risk of chronic non-infectious diseases
Home cooking in the US has declined only among women who work outside the home, and little or none among those women who work exclusively at home.
False
Mass produced factory food has contributed to the decline of home cooking by:
a. Saving time
b. Saving direct costs
c. Intensive use of fat, sugar and salt
d. Promoting novelty
e. All of the above
Roughly what percentage of Americans live in cities?
80%

Which pair correctly lists per capita GDP from lower to higher?
Northern Africa, Western Asia

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 Northern Africa, Western Asia

UK GDP is roughly ____ times higher than China's.
6.
Latvia's TFR is considerably less than 2.1; therefore, its most plausible long range age profile is:
Rectangular, but getting narrower toward the base
The case of Charlie and Jamie Whitaker demonstrated a new technology but failed to answer:
Whether the technology should be used.
Wells argues that big killer diseases are less susceptible to genetic engineering solutions because of:
a. Pleitropy
b. Small genetic effect sizes
c. Interaction of genes with behavior
d. Interaction of genes with environment
e. All of the above

Written Questions
Articulate the similarity between events (natural and human) during the Younger Dryas and events projected during the next 50-100 years.
Dryas climate change stress -> invention of agriculture, new way of life . 21st century climate change stress likely also to force enormous changes.
"We can perhaps take as a moral guide the mythos of the world's remaining hunter-gatherers: we can learn to want less."
Wells: Paleolithic mythos of human expansion, control of nature unsustainable; must yield to wanting less to assure future human survival.
Obesity rates and home cooking vary inversely across national populations .
Home cooking less fat, sugar, processing than packaged food or take out, therefore less likely to cause obesity.
National populations vary dramatically in their age composition. Explain how age composition shapes national consumption priorities.
Diff generations -> different needs/priorities. "Older" populations high priority for pensions [or healthcare], "middle" for home ownership,
"younger" for education [or jobs].

Chapter 3: Diseased

Dollywood boasts extremely high levels of obesity - clinically obese - with body mass index (BMI) of 30 or greater.
Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi, among the fattest states in the country.
Mississippi, 1/3 of people are clinically obese - fattest state in the country.
Mississippi, Arkansas, and West Virginia are the poorest states in the country.
Poorest states also have 20 percent of population not completing high school.
85% of Americans now consider obesity an epidemic.
Obesity now the second most important root cause of illness and mortality (after cigarette smoking).
Richer countries tend to have lower obesity rates in the US.
In Europe, countries with lower average levels of education and per capita gross domestic product to have higher levels of obesity.
Key to producing an obesity epidemic is for a society to have just enough money and education to give it access to an excess of processed food and an inactive
lifestyle.
Diet of agriculturalists is fundamentally different from that of a hunter-gatherer. In general, Agriculturalists have a much higher percentage of carbohydrates in
their diet.

Chapter 4: Demented

Schizophrenics, psychotics, and manic-depressives showed they were very good artists.
Genome Scan - an analysis of hundreds of variable locations in the genomes of KE family members with and without the speech disorder.
By the time of the Neanderthals, around 500,000 years ago, spoken language had appeared.
FOXP2 gene thought to be responsible for development of speech!
Neanderthals would have been at a disadvantage in an environment like the one during the ice age 35,000 years ago, due to their hunting methods.
Climate change and social sophistication gave modern humans an advantage over Neanderthals.
40,000 years later Homo Sapiens had expanded to nearly every habitable location on the globe, settling Asia, Europe, Australia, and the Americas in only around 15
hundred human generations.
Complex speech allowed early humans to communicate new ways of solving the problems that came their way.
Our migrations were probably set in motion by necessity.
Volcanoes and Macromutations
Lake Toba (Northern Sumatra) is water -filled caldera of a dormant volcano (Mount Toba).
Toba was one of the largest volcanoes ever, it erupted sometime between 75,000 and 70,000 years ago.
Eruption resulted in "volcanic winter", cooling effect lasting several years.
Effects would have been devastating to early human populations.
World population at this time fell to fewer than 10000, maybe even fewer than 2000.
Human response was a change in culture.
First evidence of art shown in hand-carved ochre around 75000 years ago.
Great Leap Forward - abrupt change in behavior that heralds the Upper Paleolithic period, or Late Stone Age.
Seemingly trivial changes in an organism's DNA can have an enormous effect on its physiology or behavior.
Richard Lenski, through a computer program, showed that microevolution could explain traits like eyes after all, and thus in the end Darwin was right.
Process of trial and error coupled with better communication became the model for human innovation.
The Drone of Modern Life

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The Drone of Modern Life

Lives now lived in a state that could be called "stream of subconciousness."
150 is the average number of meaningful social relations a person can keep track of.
By 2020 mental illness will be the 2nd most important cause of disability and mortality worldwide.

Chapter 5: Fast-Forward

Charlie Whitaker diagnosed with Diamond-Blackfan anemia (DBA), leading family to seek designer baby for perfect bone marrow donor.
July 1978, Louise Joy, first child ever conceived by in vitro fertilization (IVF) - the original test tube baby.
Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) allows IVF team to predict the characteristics of future child.
Mohamed Taranissi - Whitakers' Physician.
June 16, 2003, Whitaker's baby is born c-section (Jamie)
Summer 2004 procedures begin, July 30 Charlie returns home after procedure.
Charlie declared officially cured in March 2007
Successful IVF pregnancy: 40% in women under 35, 10% in women >40
Average age of first pregnancy: 21.4 in 1971, 25.2 in 2003
Between 1960 and 2003, percentage of first births for women over 30 tripled from 7 to 22 percent.
10% of women >35 and 22% of women >40 use IVF to conceive.
The PGD procedure is increasing at a rate of 15 to 30 percent per year
PGD tests aneuploidy; abnormal chromosome count
Pleitropy: the many effects of a gene on the organism's phenotype.
Sickle-cell carriers: people with one mutated copy of the Malaria gene.
Trisonomy 21 - presence of 3 copies of chromosome 21 (Down's Syndrome)
People genetically similar can have different disease rates, depending on their lifestyle.
Genes alone dont tell the whole story; ultimately your DNA influences your health, doesnt determine it.
More than 90% of couples choose to terminate pregnancy and try again if fetus has down syndrome.
Healthcare costs increasing at 11% per year.
2008 - Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (protect rights of people with genetic disorders)
52% said they would use PGD for disease, 10 and 13 for height and intelligence.
Disinhibition - the lack of a behavioral "edit" mechanism, by which people limit their activity
One or two copies of genetic variants that predispose you to schizophrenia may also predispose you to being a great mathematician or composer.
W. French Anderson - first to treat genetic disorder with gene therapy.
The Wisdom of Repugnance - subconscious sense of right and wrong in biological modification.

Chapter 6: The Heated Argument

Heated Argument: Climate change Is a Younger Dryas moment.

Tuvalu: by the end of century would be underwater.
China largest market for automobile sales.
Auto sales in the US peaked at 17.4 million in 2000, only to begin decreasing, reaching 10.4 million in 2009.
US didnt sign Kyoto Protocol because
Economic Costs were too high for implementation
It wanted emissions standards for developing countries as well.
China has much lower emissions per capita than the US.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007 released report on importance of Carbon Dioxide levels to global temperatures.
Average carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere over the past 650,000 years has varied between 180 and 300 parts per million (ppm).
Currently increasing at 1.9 ppm per year (2008 - 387 ppm)
Hockey Stick Graph - Shows temperatures from past millennium, showing dramatic increase from 1950 onwards.
Whatever we do to mitigate global warming, the forces we have set in motion will radically change the world over the next millennium.
April 5, 1815, Mount Tambora erupted
Ash thrown 25 miles into the sky, 3 days of darkness (deadliest eruption in history)
Ruined crops around Europe, cause Cold Front.
As many as 200,000 Europeans may have died as a result of the cold weather.
2007-08 rise in prices of tangible goods and commodities.
Food prices fell through the latter part of the 20th century due to the Green Revolution, despite the increase in population of 2.5 billion between 1970 and
2000.
Cultivation of crops enabled all subsequent technological innovations of the Neolithic Era .
Americans on average use more than 270 kilowatt-hours each day, while people in India and Africa average just over 10.
Peak Oil - the point at which oil is maximally available from any particular source.
One possible answer to energy needs is Nuclear technology.
Hydrogen Cells - generating and burning hydrogen as fuel
Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion - Making use of the difference in temperature between deep and shallow water.
Australia: driest contiguous landform on Earth; most urbanized, 90% live in cities
California estimates water shortfall by 2020.
Earth's supply of fresh water is much wasted
New supplies must be found, or people relocate to areas with reliable water supplies.
Globally, 800 trillion gallons of water are consumed daily.
With a rising world population, we are still likely to need far more water than we have easy access to.
More people are now forced to leave their homes because of environmental disasters than because of war.

Chapter 7: Toward a New Mythos (the effects on our "moral compasses")

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Chapter 7: Toward a New Mythos (the effects on our "moral compasses")

Handzabe Tribe: ancient surviving group in Tanzania (hunter/gatherers)

Lewis Morgan (social theorist): Human Cultural Evolution: savagery, Barbarism, Civilization
19th Century progressive thinking was that the goal of humanity was to arrive at the form of civilization found in Europe and other advanced societies.
Focus: How do we define morality?
Prisoner's Dilemma: provides framework in which to investigate the development of morality.
Fear of retaliation keeps one's baser instincts in check.
Greed is what society thrives with, happens to be a catholic sin.
Fundamentalism born of desperation and anger.
1960s Rise of Christian Fundamentalism
Religion played role in political process with Reagan's election
Al-Qaeda founded in 1988.
Today's violent fundamentalist movements claim to be doing God's will.
80% of people in major European countries and Japan accepted evolution (2006)
40% of people in major US accepted evolution in 2006.
Between 1985 and 2006 the number of people "unsure" about evolution increased from 7% to 21%
Mythos: a mystical way of viewing the world
Logos: the realm of rational thought, science, enlightenment
One dominant feature of fundamentalism is that of SEPARATISM; a desire to build an alternative culture outside the mainstream of the modern world.
1500, 15000 languages spoken, today only about 6000 languages.
Hadzabe Tribe - leaves bodies for animals to eat.
Only by wanting less will we come to terms with the challenges of climate change.
Pioneer sent to Aldebaran in 1972, last signed received January 22, 2003

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