Life Sciences Commons^™

Video: Body Languages: Choreographing Biology, Katja Kolcio

Katja Kolcio Ph.D.

Co-taught by professors Manju Hingorani and Katja Kolcio at Wesleyan University, this course was an introduction to human biology. From scientific and choreographic perspectives, students practiced movement awareness and learned basic principles of choreography, and applied these skills to the exploration of human biology. Manju Hingorani, Professor of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry Katja Kolcio, Associate Professor of Dance and Environmental Studies

Varroa In The Aloha State, Tammy Horn

Tammy Horn

The Hawaiian word for fate is hopena, and since the early 1900s, it’s been a matter of hopena that Varroa mites would eventually come to the Islands. The inevitability increased in 2001 when APHIS/USDA forced Hawai’i to allow transshipments of queens and package bees from New Zealand to Canada to pass through its ports. Since Varroa arrived on Oahu in 2006 and on the Big Island in 2008, many agencies have been working together to create appropriate infrastructure to address the latest arrival. According to Hawai’i Department of Agriculture (HDOA) branch chief Neil Reimer, 'Before Varroa showed up in Hawai’i, …

Happy Serf Liberation Day: China And Tibet, Stephen Asma

Stephen T Asma

No abstract provided.

The Graphic Novel As A Choice Of Weapons, Tammy Horn

Tammy Horn

In the late 1930s, the photographer Gordon Parks arrived in Washington, DC, to work with Roy Stryker, director of the Farm Security Administration. Parks' first assignment was to tour the nation's capital, a city still governed by Jim Crow laws. Stryker locked Parks' camera in a closed and then bade the young black man adieu, with the expectation Parks would not return for a week.

Honey Bees: A History, Tammy Horn

Tammy Horn

Long known as the angels of agriculture, honey bees have received global attention due to losses attributed to a combination of factors: Colony Collapse Disorder, mites, deforestation and industrial agriculture. Honey bees provide pollination for crops, orchards and flowers; honey and wax for cosmetics, food and medicinal-religious objects; and inspiration to artists, architects and scientists.

Coal Country Beeworks: An Experiment In Apiforestation, Tammy Horn

Tammy Horn

The Coal Country Beeworks promotes a fundamental principle: diverse economies depend on diverse landscapes. In order for the colonial status of Appalachia to change, the unique mesophytic forests that existed prior to mining need to be reestablished so local people can be beekeepers, honey producers, queen rearers,scientists, etc. In this way,the two-tier economy that has defined Appalachia for the past hundred years can be diversified.

Inheriting Inherit The Wind: Debating The Play As A Teaching Tool, Edward Larson, David Depew, Ronald Isetti

David J Depew

No abstract provided.

Looking Up From The Gutter: Pop-Culture And Philosophy, Stephen Asma

Stephen T Asma

No abstract provided.

Holy Toyland, Stephen Asma

Stephen T Asma

No abstract provided.

Darwinism, Design And Complex Systems Dynamics, David Depew, Bruce Weber

David J Depew

No abstract provided.

Evolution And Learning: The Baldwin Effect Reconsidered, David Depew, Bruce Weber

David J Depew

The role of genetic inheritance dominates current evolutionary theory. At the end of the nineteenth century, however, several evolutionary theorists independently speculated that learned behaviors could also affect the direction and rate of evolutionary change. This notion was called the Baldwin effect, after the psychologist James Mark Baldwin. In recent years, philosophers and theorists of a variety of ontological and epistemological backgrounds have begun to employ the Baldwin effect in their accounts of the evolutionary emergence of mind and of how mind, through behavior, might affect evolution.

The essays in this book discuss the originally proposed Baldwin effect, how it …

Developmental Systems, Darwinian Evolution,And The Unity Of Science, Bruce Weber, David Depew

David J Depew

No abstract provided.

Genetic Biotechnology And Evolutionary Theory: Some Unsolicited Advice, David Depew

David J Depew

In his book The Biotech Century Jeremy Rifkin makes arguments about the dangers of market-driven genetic biotechnology in medical and agricultural contexts. Believing that Darwinism is too compromised by a competitive ethic to resist capitalist depredations of the “genetic commons,” and perhaps hoping to pick up anti-Darwinian allies, he turns for support to unorthodox non-Darwinian views of evolution. The Darwinian tradition, more closely examined, contains resources that might better serve his argument. The robust tradition associated with Theodosius Dobzhansky, Ernst Mayr, and others provides an alternative, scientifically sound basis for challenging the rhetoric of genetic reductionism.

The Baldwin Effect: An Archeology, David Depew

David J Depew

Abstract: “The Baldwin effect” stands for a wide variety of ways in which learn ing can be conceived as guiding adap tive evolution ary change. An analysis of the history of this notion reveals that it does not reliably refer either to a theory-neutral empirical phenomenon or to a single theoretical hypothesis. On the contrary, articulations of the general idea depend on distinctive, but in commensurable, theoretical backgrounds. In reconstructing the conceptual history of the Baldwin effect I hope to support contemporary explorations of idea by encouraging the articulation of new theoretical frameworks in which it might make sense. I …

Darwinism And Developmentalism: Prospects For Convergence, David Depew

David J Depew

No abstract provided.

Population Thinking And Tree Thinking In Systematics, Robert O’Hara

Robert J. O’Hara

Two new modes of thinking have spread through systematics in the twentieth century. Both have deep historical roots, but they have been widely accepted only during this century. Population thinking overtook the field in the early part of the century, culminating in the full development of population systematics in the 1930s and 1940s, and the subsequent growth of the entire field of population biology. Population thinking rejects the idea that each species has a natural type (as the earlier essentialist view had assumed), and instead sees every species as a varying population of interbreeding individuals. Tree thinking has spread through …

Following Form And Function: A Philosophical Archaeology Of Life Science, Stephen Asma

Stephen T Asma

No abstract provided.

Trees Of History In Systematics And Philology, Robert O’Hara

Robert J. O’Hara

«The Natural System» is the name given to the underlying arrangement present in the diversity of life. Unlike a classification, which is made up of classes and members, a system or arrangement is an integrated whole made up of connected parts. In the pre-evolutionary period a variety of forms were proposed for the Natural System, including maps, circles, stars, and abstract multidimensional objects. The trees sketched by Darwin in the 1830s should probably be considered the first genuine evolutionary diagrams of the Natural System—the first genuine evolutionary trees. Darwin refined his image of the Natural System in the well-known evolutionary …

Darwinism Evolving: Systems Dynamics And The Genealogy Of Natural Selection, David Depew, Bruce Weber

David J Depew

Darwinism Evolving examines the Darwinian research tradition in evolutionary biology from its inception to its turbulent present, arguing that recent advances in modeling the nonlinear dynamics of complex systems may well catalyze the next major phase of Darwinian evolutionism.While Darwinism has successfully resisted reduction to physics, the authors point out that it has from the outset developed and applied its core explanatory concept, natural selection, by borrowing models from dynamics, a branch of physics. The recent development of complex systems dynamics may afford Darwinism yet another occasion to expand its explanatory power.Darwinism's use of dynamical models has received insufficient attention …

Evolution, Ethics, And The Complexity Revolution, David Depew, Bruce Weber

David J Depew

No abstract provided.

A Comprehensive Genetic Linkage Map Of The Human Genome, Nih/Ceph Collaborators Mapping Group, Helen Donis-Keller

Helen Donis-Keller

A genetic linkage map of the human genome was constructed that consists of 1416 loci, including 279 genes and expressed sequences. The loci are represented by 1676 polymorphic systems genotyped with the CEPH reference pedigree resource. A total of 339 microsatellite repeat markers assayed by PCR are contained within the map, and of the 351 markers with heterozygosities of at least 70%, 205 are microsatellites. Seven telomere loci define physical and genetic endpoints for 2q, 4p, 7q, 8p, 14q, 16p, and 16q, and in other cases distal markers on the maps have been localized to terminal cytogenetic bands. Therefore, at …

Entropy, Information, And Evolution: New Perspectives On Physical And Biological Evolution, David Depew, Bruce Weber

David J Depew

Can recent developments in thermodynamics and information theory offer a way out of the current crisis in evolutionary theory? One of the most exciting and controversial areas of scientific research in recent years has been the application of the principles of nonequilibrium thermodynamics to the problems of the physical evolution of the universe, the origins of life, the structure and succession of ecological systems, and biological evolution. These sixteen original essays by evolutionists, ecologists, molecular biologists, physical chemists, physicists, and philosophers of science provide the best current summary of this developing research program.Chapters in the book's first part - by …

Evolution At A Crossroads: The New Biology And The New Philosophy Of Science, David Depew, Bruce Weber

David J Depew

No abstract provided.

Justice And The Treatment Of Animals, Michael Pritchard

Michael Pritchard

Rna Sequencing Provides Evidence For Allelism Of Determinants Of The N-, B-, Or Nb- Tropism Of Murine Leukemia Viruses, Jean Rommelaere, Helen Donis-Keller, Nancy Hopkins

Helen Donis-Keller

Previous genetic and biochemical studies identified three large RNAase T1-resistant oligonucleotides, each associated with either the N-, B- or NB-tropism of murine C-type viruses of BALB/c origin. These oligonucleotides were shown to lie in the 5′ third of the oligonucleotide maps of their respective viruses. We sequenced the three oligonucleotides and found that they share a 10 base sequence. Together these observations provide good evidence that the determinants of N-, B- or NB-tropism monitored by the three oligonucleotides are allelic.The oligonucleotides associated with N- and B-tropism differ in sequence at four of sixteen nucleotides, while the B- and NB-tropism-associated oligonucleotides …

Mapping Adenines, Guanines, And Pyrimidines In Rna, Helen Donis-Keller, Allan Maxam, Walter Gilbert

Helen Donis-Keller

The positions of adenines, guanines, and pyrimidines can be determined by partial nuclease digestion of a terminally labeled RNA molecule. In urea, at elevated temperatures, RNase T1 generates a pattern reflecting cleavage at guanines while RNase U2 cleaves only at adenine. A limited alkaline hydrolysis provides a continuum of fragments derived from breaks at every phosphodiester bond. The reaction products are electrophoretically fractionated by size in adjacent lanes of a polyacrylamide gel. An autoradiograph of the gel displays the sequence up to 100 nucleotides from the end of the molecule, although uracil cannot as yet be distinguished from cytosine. These …