Human Variation & Race Blog

For an environmental stress I chose the cold weather. This environmental stress impacts the human body in many different ways. The cold is especially harmful to people of older age. With the cold weather also comes many other risks. When the weather temperatures drop people tend to spend more time in close contact with others or they spend more time inside other places with others such as malls and stores and the flu is especially prone to spread among people. The heart is especially at risk in colder weather because the cold narrows the blood vessels in the heart and there is a higher risk of a heart attack. Hypothermia is when the internal temperature of the body falls too low when the body's temperature falls too low the body loses heat faster that it can produce it and it can lead to heart failure and eventually death.

A short-term adaptation to the cold for the human body is when the body feels the cold the skin receptors in the body react to cause the body to shiver and for goosebumps to rise on the service of the skin. The body strives to generate heat and it shivers in response. 

A facultative adaptation is a genetic trait the humans posses to help itself from the cold weather. The heart has the ability to constrict the vessels in the heart. This process is called vasoconstriction and it increases the blood pressure and the heart works harder. 

A developmental adaptation that humans posses in response to the cold is that people that live in colder climates tend to be shorter and rounder. This helps people in colder climates to stay warm during the cold. Since the person is more rounder the fat stored in the body has the ability to spread within the body and it keeps the organs warm.  
As a cultural adaptation to the cold people in colder climates tend to drink more alcohol. Alcohol makes people feel warm by increasing blood flow to the hands and feet of people. This gives people the warm feeling in these climates.





Race can be used to understand variations in adaptations by seeing how countries that live in colder climates adapt to living in these conditions. I would use the Russians in this examples. Russian people live in a cold country. They have adapted over time to handle these conditions when Napoleon tried to invade Russia many died because they could not handle the cold climate that surrounded Russia. The study of environmental influences on adaptations is a better way to understand the adaptations above because all adaptations are different throughout the human race. Race is mostly understood as a physical attribution, people have different ways to adapt and countries have their own ways as well so race is not so accurate when it comes understanding adaptations. Natural selection also plays a big role because people throughout time develop traits and adaptations that help them be better prepared for cold climates or other types of climates that the human race faces.

References

3 ways your body battles the cold. (n.d.). Retrieved December 05, 2016, from http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/three-ways-your-body-battles-w/19490777

Hypothermia. (2014, May 26). Retrieved December 05, 2016, from http://umm.edu/health/medical/altmed/condition/hypothermia

Publications, H. H. (2014, December). How does cold weather affect your health? - Harvard Health. Retrieved December 05, 2016, from http://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/how-does-cold-weather-affect-your-health

Language Blog

Part 1:
      In this first part of the experiment I found that it was fairly easy to communicate even if I was not able to speak with my partner. I did explain to my niece that we were going to be doing this experiment so that she would not find it to be rude for not speaking to her when she was talking to me. My niece did change the way she spoke to me in the aspect that she was constantly looking at me and seeing my expressions and my hand gestures. When there is an absence of communication I do think that people tend to change the way they talk to someone because they want others to feel like they are being payed attention and partners have to find an easier way to communicate and make sure that the information is going through to the other person.
     To me I felt like I was in charge of the conversation because my partner in this instance my niece had to keep looking at me and pay more attention to my body language to see if I was paying attention to her and to see the way I was responding to her story. She initially started the conversation with me. She was changing subjects from things that made her happy throughout the day and other things that made her day go bad and she changing and adding funny stories all throughout the entire conversation we had. She was asking questions every now and then and sometimes using my hands I was also able to ask her some questions when you are using your hands in a conversation it can be easy to find a hand movement that can easily be interpreted as a question gesture. I think in these kind of conversations with multiple people could sometimes leave people feeling excluded because when you are not focused on one person it can be hard to be talking to someone and be looking at the other to see if they are following along with what you're saying because I feel like people tend to pay more attention with someone they can communicate easily with. In this experiment I feel that when it was just my niece and I there was a balance in power due to the fact that at times she would start the conversation and she would change the subjects but I also had power in the aspect that she had to constantly had to be looking at me to see if I was paying attention or if my hand signals were asking her to explain more.
     The spoken culture to me would have more of an advantage in communicating because to my point of view when you can communicate with others using a spoken language it can take to someone who can speak the language and it will be easier to communicate. But the same could also be said to the cultures that do not use spoken languages for example the Deaf community which is an amazing community that some are able to speak but they have their own language and their own signals which is kind of captivating. This can be a little more difficult because not all countries have a universal sign language there is American Sign Language and there is also British Sign Language and they have different expressions for different words. Modern situations that mirror the relationship between cultures that can speak and those who can not would be the Deaf community withing those who can speak. Nowadays there are many materials available for people who can not hear, more people are learning how to communicate with each other and in some instances there are even coffee shops that have people who can order in sign language through the drive through because those who speak are learning how to communicate with others using hand gestures.
Part 2:
     The second part of this experiment was much more complicated than I thought. It difficult because I am the type of person who likes to speak and use my hand and I believe that naturally our voices mirror the expression we are trying to convey to others. My partner did not know how to act because I think she was trying to get some emotion of my responses as she told me her stories. It was very difficult for me at times to keep a straight face and control the emotion in my voice to match a monotone aspect to how was I was speaking. My niece did ask me if there was something wrong with me when we were speaking because unlike the first part of the experiment in which I explained what we were doing I tried to keep her in the dark on this part of the experiment so she was taken aback at my sudden change in communication.
     Non speech techniques are very important in our ability to communicate effectively because because signs and gestures are a way that can make communication between others effective. I think that when people pay attention to the body language someone is giving you, you can tell if that person is actually listening to you. There are different ways our body reacts to certain things. For example when I was talking with my niece I was trying so hard to lean into the way she was sitting and to look at her and I wanted to use my hands to show her how excited I was about hearing that she had passed her exam. She thought for a moment that I was not happy. Our body language can let many people know if we are interested or not and it helps people notice how something is making you feel.Having the ability to read body language is beneficial because it will enable to see if a person is paying attention to you. This ability is helpful when surviving, obtaining resources, and reproducing successfully because all the signs your body gives or the way that you move enables someone to establish a connection with you. For example when you are first starting a relationship you can tell someone is into you if their body language shows you that they are, their are certain moves like getting closer to you or paying extra attention to you it helps others see that you are truly interested. When you go in for a job interview they have videos showing you how you should sit how you should place your hands so that a possible employer will see that you have confidence and that you are formally interested in an opportunity. Being able to read all these signs our bodies give while we are having conversations with others can make conversations go smoother and we are happy that someone is paying attention to what we are saying.
     Yes, some people can have trouble reading body language because there are times where mixed signals can be pushed. For example I think that sometimes you can not really read someones true intentions and they tend to be not good. Some people you believe that people are reliable because you read their body language but they are not. When someone hires someone because they have out good body languages and they are always calling in or having excuses as to why they cannot work, the people who initially hired others can be like I thought they were gonna be good but they are not. A situation where it would be beneficial for someone not to read someones body language would be when you are walking down a street and you see someone who is selling things and they come up to you trying to sell you something even if they look like good people or their body language tries to imply that they are good you can never be too sure that their body language is reliable. I think it is possible to fake body language so that others think that you are listening or that some people are good.

Piltdown Hoax Blog Post

     In the early 1900's in a small town in England  man named Charles Dawson an amateur archeologist said he had found a strange piece of bone that could be a skull. This finding was very significant in the aspect that it was said to be the earliest human skull found. Charles Dawson took his finding to London's Natural History Museum where Sir Arthur Smith Woodward who was an eminent geologist helped him go back to the site where he found the piece of skull as he believed this could be very important to British history. The scientific community was very excited and they wanted to prove that the British also had primitive humans. Many newspapers and other people really believed that this was a true finding and movies were also made about the earliest ape men. Other countries like Africa and Germany had primitive human findings and the British also wanted to be the birth country of a primitive human. This whole thing turned out to be a hoax, it was announced in 1953 that this whole discovery had been a hoax. Kenneth Oakley an English physical anthropologist who worked in the museum applied a chemical test to help identify if the bones that had been found in Piltdown. This test brought out that the skull and the other fragments that were found were actually younger that what had been originally thought they were.
      There are many human faults that could have come into play with this whole Piltdown Hoax scenario. Ambition, jealousy, and greed were faults that attributed to the this hoax. The negatively affected the scientific process because many people earned a name from this hoax and there were people who genuinely thought that this things were actually real and that they proved that the British also had some form of primitive human. Charles Dawson wanted to be famous and known. He brought other artifacts into the museum and they all turned out to be hoaxes as well.
     With the chemical test that was applied by Kenneth Oakley it showed that the advances that were being made in the scientific community were showing that things could now be proven to be real or not. The new scientific processes also helped identify from what kind of species was the piece of skull came from. All these aspects were positive aspects that came up from the revealing of the Piltdown skull to be a hoax.
     Removing the "human" factor from science to reduce the chance of errors to my point of view would be pretty hard. As much as people want to remove the "human" emotion we are all humans and some people still have greed and jealousy and others want to be better than others. I personally would not want to remove the "human" factor from science because this is what gives people the drive to look for something or to prove it. If people did not have emotions or things that drove them, then science would not be something that people have a passion for.
     From this event I think that the life lesson I would personally take is that even if you lie and manipulate things or events to your benefit one way or another things will always reveal themselves. Taking information from unverified sources could also affect your credibility and they way people look and respect you. People always have to make sure that they use credible sources or make sure that they can verify it themselves as well before accepting anything as the truth.

References

Kenneth Oakley. (n.d.). Retrieved November 14, 2016, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Kenneth-Page-Oakley

The Boldest Hoax. (n.d.). Retrieved November 15, 2016, from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/3202_hoax.html

Protein Synthesis Blog Assignment

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If you were stranded on a deserted island what two items would you take with you and why?

If I were to be stranded on a deserted island I think the two items that I would like to take with me would be a box of matches and some kind of knife that I could use in case I needed it. The matches to me seem to be the most important things to have on you if there was ever a possibility you could find yourself stranded on a deserted island.These two items could be the two things that could help almost anyone to survive on a deserted island. A knife could help a lot in terms of having a supply that could enable to catch fish or cut food and the matches could help when it comes to making a fire that would help cook the food we are catching. These things to me would be the two things I would try to make sure I would take with me in case I ever got stranded on a deserted island.