Preventing the spread of Malaria? Or polluting the Earth?

Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring is one work among many that caution against the overuse of chemical sprays such as pesticide and fungicide across the world. The argument in these books is that using these products without discretion can lead to the poisoning of environments, and furthermore the habitats of countless species including Humans who live in the area. These books have succeeded in the sense that people are more aware of the harms of using chemical pesticides and fungicides, but at what cost? The more pesticide produced, the cheaper it becomes. Africa is a nation that is plagued by Malaria, a disease spread by pests (primarily mosquitos.) Africa is also a nation that is plagued by poverty. Pesticide has been proven to be extremely effective and useful in the prevention of the spread of Malaria, and Africans need that pesticide to defend themselves from the transfer of Malaria through mosquitos. Indoor residual spraying, insecticide treated sleeping nets, and chemically treating known mosquito breeding areas are common practices in Africa, but are not universal and are not used by many areas in Africa for monetary reasons.

Probability of...

Probability of contracting cancer in lifetime:

Men = 44% (1/2) Female = 38% (1/3)

Interesting article about death probabilities: http://gravityandlevity.wordpress.com/2009/07/08/your-body-wasnt-built-to-last-a-lesson-from-human-mortality-rates/

Cool application to calculate death probability based on the Gompertz law of human mortality: http://forio.com/simulate/simulation/mbean/death-probability-calculator/

Probability of your house getting struck by lightning this year:

0.5% (1/200)

Probability of getting a royal flush in poker:

.000154% (1/650,000)

Probability of dying in a plane crash:

.0000111% (1/9,000,000)

Probability of having twins (or more than 2):

2% (1/50)

Probability of baby being born on due date:

less than 5% (1/20)

Mitochondrial Eve -- Mother to us all?

Mitochondrial Eve is the name given to the idea of our most recent matrilineal decedent of mitochondrial DNA. In other words, she is the woman who all current living humans can trace their lineage back to, a distantly related mother to us all. This theory states that this common ancestor wasn't necessarily even close to the first woman alive, but that all other women's ancestors eventually did not produce female offspring and therefore their mitochondria line died off.

Tribes of Men:

Ashanti tribe in the area of Ghana

Dogon tribe of cliff-dwelling people in Mali Africa

Elderly Indian man showing signs of adaptation to a harsher, desert-like habitat
European woman (Queen Elizabeth) showing the loss of pigmentation from a habitat with less harsh UV sunlight
Native American Apache dressed in ceremonial clothing

Elderly Mexican woman

It is definitely possible for us to have all descended from a common ancestor. Migration and then many many years of adaptation to environments can explain the differences in culture and appearances of today's diverse people. I believe that in 1000 years, the people of earth will still be just as diverse as today, obviously with different, blended "races," but still diverse nonetheless.

Life

The two essential features of life are replication and metabolism. Our book, The Origins of Life, uses a computer analogy to describe these two essentials.

Metabolism is like the hardware of a computer system: it processes "information," keeps the cell alive, and is primarily thought of occurring with the protein of a cell.

Replication is like the software of this computer system: it embodies "information," allowing copies of the cell to be made, and is mostly thought of as occurring in cell Nucleic acids such as DNA and RNA.

Using this analogy, the author makes the argument for a dual-origin hypothesis in which the first life only had metabolic functions, and replication was added later. This makes sense in the analogy because without hardware, software cannot run, but hardware without software functionally does not make sense. Thus 'software' (nucleic acid) came along as a parasitic existence after metabolic life had been around for some time, using the protein based metabolic cells as hosts to live off of.

Polywater

Polywater is a theoretical version of water that, through heating to boil and letting to cool in quartz capillaries, could re-structure itself and become more viscous and have a higher boiling point and lower freezing point. It was first brought to the public in a lecture in England by the Soviet scientist Boris Valdimirovich Derjaguin, who claimed that Soviet scientists had already discovered how to create polywater, which is not surprising seeing as this was during the Cold War and was probably meant to strike fear in those who opposed the USSR.

Citations:

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/ATG/polywater.html

http://itotd.com/articles/588/polywater/

Amphioxus

"Amphioxi are small marine animals found widely in the coastal waters of the warmer parts of the world and less commonly in temperate waters. Both morphological and molecular evidence show them to be close relatives of the vertebrates." - http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/21580/amphioxus

The Amphioxus is important to scientists because of its possible link to all modern vertebrates. These links are used to support the evolution theory that all organisms are decedents of one common ancestor.

Two Fake Websites

This one is pretty amusing,

http://www.bobsagetisgod.com/

And I have no idea who would believe this was accurate:

http://www.thepregnancytester.com/