Week 8: Human variation

High altitude is a great subject to study.

Higher altitude environments have much less availability of oxygen due to the lowered atmospheric pressure, which makes it slightly tougher for human's to get the required oxygen into their bloodstreams. This obviously disturbs our homeostasis because our body isn't entirely used to trying to survive on less oxygen, so our body will work harder to get the oxygen it needs.

A short term adaptation to this lowered oxygen level is that our bodies increase our breathing and heart rate by as much as double, and our pulse rates and blood pressure increase due to the heart trying to pump more blood to get oxygen to cells. A facultative adaptation is rather hard to pinpoint here... The decrease in air pressure causes many changes in the body, but i guess the best example I can think of is how our ears adapt to the change in pressure. As our bodies move up and down through altitudes, our ears tend to 'pop' which isn't really a necessary feature of our bodies adapting to a change of external pressure. A developmental adaptation that our bodies do in order to adapt to a decrease of air pressure is that our bodies increase our red blood cell and capillary counts through a process known as acclimatization. Our lung size increases to contain the osmosis of oxygen and carbon dioxide. A cultural adaptation to higher altitudes could be how people have changed their own breathing styles. Some people have more hemoglobin, which allows them to expand their lungs much better than others. Some people have increased their rate of breathing to also adapt to the lowered oxygen levels.

High altitude training is a very common form of training for professional athletes. The benefits of higher altitude training is the fact that it increases your lungs ability to process oxygen and increases red blood cell counts. The study of how humans adapt to lowered oxygen environments has helped the world of professional athletes because it is a natural, and legal, way to train your body to be better than it was before.

Well, sickle cell anemia is a disease that is very problematic when it comes to higher altitudes. Sickle cell anemia is a disease that is predominant in people from tropical and sub-tropical regions where malaria is common, so it is a rather racial disease that could cause some very serious complications when introduced into an environment with lowered oxygen levels. Even still, the study of the environmental influences on high altitude adaptation is better than to just use race because it is a selective disease. The disease is basically reacting to the environmental changes that occurs around the body, so that is why it is better to study the environmental changes.

Week 7: talking without communication

Part 1.) This experiment was particularly easy for me, personally, but I can definitely see how it would be difficult to have an intelligent conversation. It was easy because the conversation was simple and I tend not to talk a lot anyways. The other participants in this experiment didn't change the way they talked normally... they only noticed that I hadn't said anything and just asked if anything was wrong and, when I shook my head, the conversation continued. Obviously the culture that would have the advantage is the one with a spoken language and the speaking culture would either try and adopt their form of communication into the one without. Individuals who might have difficulty communicating with a spoken language are people with hearing disabilities, problems with muteness, or any kind of disability that causes a barrier between having a conversation with someone else. Trying to communicate with someone who cannot communicate back is not easy, many times it requires writing down what you are saying, or having some kind of translator. Either way this extra mediator will lose some of the meaning of what you are saying.

Part 2.) Yes, I was able to last the full 15 minutes without anything but speech. It wasn't very difficult for me because I don't move very much in the first place and the conversation didn't really have anything that would call for any kind of emotion. The other participants weren't entirely affected by my lack of expression, but talking in monotone was making them fall asleep. Without any extra signs while we talk, it gets very difficult to get the emotion of what you are saying to stick with them and it is important to show some kind of extra embellishments to enhance what your saying and to get the primary point across. I am sure there are some people who have difficulty reading body language. For example, a blind person would not be able to see any kind of movements from another person. When you are able to see body language, you can see beyond a person's words. If someone was mad you could see it in their movements, even if their words are saying otherwise. I guess the only time that it would be appropriate to not be able to read body language is if you didn't want to know the truth about something that someone had said.

week 5 piltdown hoax

The piltdown hoax was about an archaeology site in England  in which ape and human fossils were discovered; however, after a short  examination of the fossils, it was discovered that the primate skull was not of  ancient age.  In 1953  the hoax was revealed as piltdown man. It was discovered to be a hoax when the fossils were  actually examined, instead of just plaster molds.
 Although  scientists can be very creative, they are also human which means they are prone to make mistakes. In the piltdown case, the scientists took the evidence at face value without examining the evidence in person. This makes the entire scientific community look bad. The scientific investigation team observed filing  marks on the teeth of the primate using a microscope. And upon  further investigation of the skull, it was discovered that the skull had been washed in an iron and chloric acid solution.
I do not believe that you can remove the human factor from it.  If it were  possible to remove the human factor, I  don't believe it would be very beneficial compared to the detrements of missing the human influence.
 Obviously the life lesson is  that we shouldn't take things at face value  because it can easily be false.