Blog post 8

 High altitude impacts us with lack of oxygen in each breath due to air getting thinner the higher and higher it gets. This will shorten life span due to the heart having to pump more blood to get the same results. The colder temperature will also restrict movement as well as need to keep shelter. Another negative impact is every day performance with things such as walking, working or herding, being physically tired a lot faster also means in the event of predators or life risk situations, the body would have a harder time to preserve one self.     

 

 A short term adaptation to high altitude would be heavy breathing, it would be the easiest way for the body to adapt to lower oxygen environments.  Some of the stress from homeostasis with high altitude and short term adaptation.

An example of facultative adaptation is the adaption is the resistance to mountain sickness from  slowly getting used to the altitude from staying in the area for a longer period of time such as settling in an area. A developmental adaptation would be higher lung capacity from generations spent in high altitude as well as colder temperature resilience. A good example of cultural adaptation would involve people that live in such places as Peru where the people living in the sierras are now wearing thick clothing made of wool as a part of their every day life.

Some of the benefits of studying human variation from this perspective across environmental clines would be that we can see how each different part of our species will slowly adapt into the environments and perhaps in many millennia different adaptations of homo sapien will turn into a more advanced homo.  Some of the benefits of this will be that as we adapt to these environments include prevention of diseases in other places of the world that involve lack of air such as things experienced in high altitudes.

Race is the most basic for of adaptations or areas, one of the things with high altitude is that certain traits will show more than others, height, weight and strength will change which will also change depending on the diet in the immediate area. The study of adaptations with race will let us understand more of the differences between someone from the high altitude mountains as suppose to someone from nearby from the beach area, the easiest example would be countries in south America and how some differences in environment can drastically change your looks.

week 7 Assignment

Part I

-          For the first part of the assignment I found this a little difficult. One of the hardest parts was getting my points or opinions across on subjects, things such as explaining getting a puppy, or having to get my car washed, this felt like trying to communicate with someone who spoke a different language so I tried to get my points across by doing motions that would be easily figured out, such as putting both hands in front of me as if I was driving a car. As we got further into the conversation, my partner had to really pay attention to my movements and ask a little bit more questions that were yes and no as I made my gestures. As my partner did change to better understand the way I talked I also realized unconsciously she slowled down the way she spoke as if she was speaking to someone who barely understood her questions like an individual who is maybe not familiar with English. If me and my partner were two different cultures meeting for the first time, due to the fact she has more ways of communicating, she had a bigger advantage in the language/culture barriers. It is really hard for me to fully express myself lacking ability to use symbolic language, so I do think in some way someone with more expressions and ways of explaining their points or views will have the advantage. The speaking culture might get frustrated after some time due to the fact they have to concentrate harder to get the other cultures point across. One of the cultures that has trouble communicating in a similar way to this exercise would be first generation Hispanic individuals due to the fact a lot of them do not understand English too well. Some of the reason that they have a disadvantage as well is that there are very different parts of the English language with a lot of words that sound the same. This affects how they interact everyday with friends, or co-workers in a big way so they have to become very body language expressive. IF there was anything that could make it easier for them to communicate is to better look at facial expression as well as gestures of the other conversation partner.

Part II

-          To be fully honest this part of the assignment was very easy for me, to keep a monotone voice and no hand gestures. My brother has been doing something similar for a while where he changes accents such as Irish or imitates different people. So after observing him do that random I thought I would give this a good shot at a place with a lot of random people. So to do this part of the assignment I did it at a St. Patrick’s Day party. Most people that saw the way I was acting at first a little weird, and as I continued the assignment I realized a lot of people would notice me say something to maybe a joke with no change in a tone of voice so they didn’t know whether I was being sarcastic or truthful with my statements. The difficulties of this other than not being able to see if someone is joking or being serious was that there was no follow through with certain words when explaining a story such as a car accident that I happen to drive by, without those expressions it was just clear that people had a hard time in a bit of a way following along to what I said. I can see groups of people that have no social skills or maybe that were home schooled to have issues with things such as body language due to only experiencing it from a few group of people but none to the extreme of the exercise, I can also see people with language barriers having issues with body language due to each “culture” expressing differently though achieving the same result. One of the adaptive benefits to reading  body language would be that you can get a point across or lead a conversation with such things, the more visuals you can bring to somebody in a conversation the easier it is to follow along which allows from a better relation within those boundaries. It is really hard to see it sometimes because we get very interested in products but when shopping for things such as cars or maybe cell phones, we like ask questions which we might know the answer to, but in the way sales people will get you fascinated and keep you interested is by working a lot with their body movements and reading yours. Sales people guide you to where you feel most comfortable within a conversation, so I do believe that not showing body language or exercising in those point would be best fit for when going around and shopping for certain things. One of the other things about this is that if you chose to ignore a salesperson’s body language, there si a big change what they are trying to excite you about will not leave you surprised or wanting exactly what they are inending to sell you. So in a real life situation there is benefits to no body language as well as monotone speech.

Assignment week 5

1. During the an excavation in 1908 a skull and jaw were discovered in Sussex, England and is now considered on of the most interesting and changing events in science. The discovery of Piltdown hoax was done by one of the mine workers that appear to be a fossilized coconut so it was broken. After a few years this was determined as real pieces of a skull, then the Geological Society in London. At first the scientist became very interested in this but continued to dismiss it as forgery due to the fact that it mixed human and ape features which had not ever been discovered before. It was then after 40 years that this was credited as a link between ape and human species. This was one of the biggest discoveries to turn the focus of geological studies to the study of human evolution.

2. Some of the flaws that often impair scientist as well as drive for new discoveries is rationalizing and second guessing original discoveries. Often especially with things that are hard to believe we can turn them down as fake, with the Piltdown hoax it definitely seemed to be that way especially after it had been crushed. If at times scientist had come together and decided to re build and accredit this as a link of evolution, perhaps an earlier understanding and higher desire to study further into the relations between apes and Humans. This could have also accelerated medical research along with deeper interest on how we became the type of creature we are today.

3. Some of the issues regarding the Piltdown Hoax was that it completely contradicted the directions  fossils previously discovered. Along with that certain scientist such as Charles Dawson who was considered the main forger is supported by the accumulation of previous incidents. As the research continued more and more doubts about the skull drew, it was only the fact that other scientist doubted each other that ultimately caused the entire science society valuable time with the discovery to determine more about it.

4. Removing the “human” factor from science to reduce the chance of errors happening is nearly impossible, to remove human factors would also mean to remove our rationality along with our instinct. I would not remove the human factor from science because the only reason science has expanded as far as it has, is because we as humans have an enormous sense of knowing and conquering our surroundings. And in order to do so, we need to know the most about ourselves as well as how we got where we are at today.

5. Some of the things that can be learned from this is that not everything source can be trusted (certain websites, people regarding word of mouth) and that even after a source or information that you have been told can always be researched to prove its credibility. If there was one thing I personally take into consideration as well as hope others would apply it, is that everything should be studied as though it was real until proven fake.