12 DEC 2017 by ideonexus
Wheat Domesticated Homo Sapiens
Think for a moment about the Agricultural Revolution from the viewpoint of wheat. Ten thousand years ago wheat was just a wild grass, one of many, conFolksonomies: artificial selection
Folksonomies: artificial selection
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notes18 JAN 2017 by ideonexus
Hot Red Chili Consumption Lowers Mortality
The evidence base for the health effects of spice consumption is insufficient, with only one large population-based study and no reports from Europe or North America. Our objective was to analyze the association between consumption of hot red chili peppers and mortality, using a population-based prospective cohort from the National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey (NHANES) III, a representative sample of US noninstitutionalized adults, in which participants were surveyed from 1988 to...Folksonomies: longevity
Folksonomies: longevity
1 24 JAN 2015 by ideonexus
Profiting on Asteroids
Some of the first questions which come up in any practical discussion of space colonization are questions of economics. Suppose we go out and settle on a convenient asteroid with our little spaceship, what do we do when we get there? How do we make a living? What can we expect to export in order to pay for necessary imports? If space colonization makes any sense at all, these questions must have sensible answers. Unfortunately, we cannot hope to answer questions of economics until the asteroi...Folksonomies: space colonization
Folksonomies: space colonization
1 notes
notes22 FEB 2014 by ideonexus
Nature Doesn't Need Our Help to Destroy the Earth
For me, the most paralyzing news was that Nature was no conservationist. It needed no help from us in taking the planet apart and putting it back together some different way, not necessarily improving it from the viewpoint of living things. It set fire to forests with lightning bolts. It paved vast tracts of arable land with lava, which could no more support life than big-city parking lots. It had in the past sent glaciers down from the North Pole to grind up major portions of Asia, Europe, a...Folksonomies: nature environmentalism
Folksonomies: nature environmentalism
1 notes
notesObservation by Kurt Vonnegut that nature does a fine job of making the Earth uninhabitable regularly on its own.
27 JUN 2013 by ideonexus
Psychology Studies Sample WEIRD Humans
[This paper is] about another exotic group: people from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and
Democratic (WEIRD)societies. In particular, it’s about the Western, and more specifically
American, undergraduates who form the bulk of the database in the experimental branches of
psychology, cognitive science, and economics, as well as allied fields(labeled the “behavioral
sciences”).
[...]
Who are the people studied in behavioral science research? A recent analysis of the top
journals in ... 1 notes
notesA culture not representative of the species.
11 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
What Happened to the Roman Apartment Buildings?
It is both a sad and a happy fact of engineering history that disasters have been powerful instruments of change. Designers learn from failure. Industrial society did not invent grand works of engineering, and it was not the first to know design failure. What it did do was develop powerful techniques for learning from the experience of past disasters. It is extremely rare today for an apartment house in North America, Europe, or Japan to fall down. Ancient Rome had large apartment buildings t...Folksonomies: engineering
Folksonomies: engineering
1 notes
notesUnlike the structures that survived to today, they must have all collapsed under poor engineering.
22 MAR 2012 by ideonexus
The Success of Zoos
Given that 143 million people visit accredited zoos and aquariums each year, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums is entitled to the claim that the association is building North America's largest wildlife conservation movement. Zoos and aquariums are mainstream environmental organizations. Their supporters, some 48 million registered members, are extraordinarily committed to conservation, and AZA zoos and aquariums back up their boast with money, spending some $250 million in 2006 on i,719 c... 1 notes
notesAs an example of a capitalist solution to conservation.
15 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
French Encyclopedists Disparage Wildlife in the New World
We formerly remarked, as a singular phaenomenon, that the animals in the southern provinces of the New Continent, are small in proportion to those in the warm regions of the Old. There is no comparison between the size of the elephant, the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, the camelopard, the camel, the lion, the tiger, &c. and the tapir, the cabiai, the ant-eater, the lama, the puma, the jaguar, &c. which are the largest quadrupeds of the New World: The former are four, six, eight, and...
1 Buffon states that mammals of North America are smaller and its Native Americans less developed than European life, owing to the continent's lack of resources and cold climate. Reptiles and insects thrive, however.
10 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
Don't Descriminate Against Species Just Because They are ...
Most human and natural communities now consist both of long-term residents and of new arrivals, and ecosystems are emerging that never existed before. It is impractical to try to restore ecosystems to some ‘rightful' historical state. For example, of the 30 planned plant eradication efforts undertaken in the Galapagos Islands since 1996, only 4 have been successful. We must embrace the fact of ‘novel ecosystems' and incorporate many alien species into management plans, rather than try to achi... 1 notes
notesInvasive species are everywhere and they cannot be undone, what's important is how a species interacts with its environment.
18 APR 2011 by ideonexus
The Story of Inoculation Being Brought to the West
In 1717 Lady Mary travelled to Turkey with her husband, the British Ambassador at Constantinople. There she first witnessed variolation. She described the procedure in a letter to her friend Sarah Chiswell:
The small-pox, so fatal, and so general amongst us, is here entirely harmless by the invention of ingrafting, which is the term they give it. There is a set of old women who make it their business perform the operation every autumn... People send to one another to know if any of their f... 1 notes
notesLady Mary Wortley Montagu introduces inoculation to small pox to the wester world.
