sfairfield's blog

          The debate over evolution is divided into two main sides, with detractors of evolutionary theory promoting intelligent design as a counterargument to the Darwinian theory advanced by scientists. Intelligent design is the belief that life, or the universe, did not originate by chance, but rather was designed and created by some intelligent entity, with many of the proponents expressing the belief that the designer is the Christian deity. Intelligent design advocates assert that natural selection could not create the complex biological systems observed in living organisms, because such elaborate and interdependent anatomy must be the deliberate product of an engineer, not random variation and cumulative natural selection as Darwin theorized. In contrast, the biological evolutionary theory describes a gradual change in allele frequency within a population through natural selection and various other mechanisms. In this scientific theory, random mutation results in new variation, the environmental pressures on organisms select for those with the most advantageous traits by allowing them to better survive and reproduce, and this natural selection works alongside other mechanisms to cumulatively cause change in species over time. The key distinction between this and intelligent design is that biological evolution is random and operates blindly, with no foresight or end goal. Meanwhile, intelligent design is entirely based on the idea that an organism’s form follows a deliberate blueprint sketched out by a provident entity who is responsible for the creation of all life.

The article Cancer Disparities by Race/Ethnicity and Socioeconomic Status examines disparities in cancer incidence, mortality, and survival in relation to race, and census data on poverty in the county or census tract of residence. It highlights differences in cancer risk factors, screening, stage at diagnosis, and treatment between population groups that could be reduced or possibly eliminated by applying current knowledge about cancer prevention, early detection, and treatment equally to all segments of the population. The data compiled illustrates that among both men and women, five-year survival for all cancers combined is 10 percentage points lower among persons who live in poorer areas than those who live in more affluent census tracts. Even when census tract poverty rate is accounted for, however, African American, American Indian/Alaskan Native, and Asian/Pacific Islander men and African American and American Indian/Alaskan Native women have lower five-year survival than non-Hispanic Whites.

          Green is the New Black is a speech made by Majora Carter to the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights’ Solutions Salon, on May 19, 2006. She describes how her neighborhood in New York City handled 40 percent of the entire city’s commercial waste, acting as home to a sewage treatment plant, a sewage sludge pelletizing plant, four power plants, the world’s largest food distribution center and other industries which brought in tens of thousands of diesel trucks to the area each week. Carter uses her first-hand knowledge of the rampant pollution of the Bronx to depict how environmental degradation and social and economic divestment go hand in hand, and how these circumstances inevitably produce negative health outcomes for the members of the communities which they affect. She went on to explain how she and her peers employed grass roots activism to fight against the damage being done to their community, and outlines strategies that can be used to improve the environmental, and subsequently medical and economic, conditions of communities like the Bronx

          The debate over nature vs nurture has been going on for at least hundreds of years, and our modern understanding of DNA and the research around behavioral genetics is just another facet of that discussion. We already know human responses to various stimuli are triggered by numerous neurochemicals and molecular signalling pathways, which are in turn regulated by the activation and deactivation of particular genes. The way that I’ve always understood it, though, is that while there are certain sets of genes that, if inherited, may predispose you to be more susceptible to addiction or obesity or whatever else, it is not in any way guarantee that you’ll actually exhibit these traits. In addition, the field of epigenetics has also revealed that environmental factors can impact when and how a gene is activated or deactivated. For instance, in the article by Kathleen Mcauliffe, Jaroslav Flegr’s research into T. gondii did not illustrate human genes driving disordered behavior, but rather external environmental factors which were, in this case, the presence and disruptive influence of the T. gondii parasite. As discussed in Amy Harmon’s article “The DNA Age”, some people see themselves as “hostages” to their genes. I disagree with this attitude, excluding in cases of diagnosed disorders, because I believe it overstates how much individual genes can direct complex and variable human behaviors. I personally think of it as DNA acting as a foundation for what might be possible, and then factors from both the physical environment and the social environment build up from there and result in the formation of what behavioral tendencies are exhibited.

           The last statistics class I took was AP Stats in my senior year of high school. The AP credit I entered UMass with satisfied my biology major statistics requirement. However, statistics have come up in many of the other classes I have taken at UMass. I remember my high school teacher saying there were two categories of statistics, which were exploratory and inferential. Exploratory statistics was for describing variables, and included things like mean, median, mode, variance, and standard deviation. Inferential statistics was for finding differences or relationships between variables, and involved things like t-tests and chi-square. I remember t-tests and chi-square involved p values. I’m pretty sure p values represent the probability of getting whatever results you observed if the null hypothesis is true, with the null hypothesis being that there is no difference or relationship among whatever variables you’re testing. The conventional p value is 0.05, representing a 95% confidence that you can reject the null. However, in my Genomics and Bioinformatics class that I am taking this semester, my professor made the distinction between statistical significance and biological significance by explaining that some results may not conform to the 0.05 p value, but that does not necessarily mean they should be disregarded, because the 0.05 p value is only convention and does not represent some mathematical absolute. She said that depending on the research question, the 0.05 p value may not be valuable. I also remember there are type one and type two errors that can come up related to the null hypothesis. One of the errors involves rejecting the null when the null is true, and the other involves accepting the null when the null is false, but I don’t remember which is which. 

          Intelligent design is the theory that life, or the universe, did not originate by chance, but rather was designed and created by some intelligent entity, with many of the proponents expressing belief that the designer is the Christian deity. Intelligent design advocates assert that natural selection could not create the complex biological systems observed in living organisms, because such elaborate and interdependent anatomy must be the deliberate product of an engineer, not random variation and cumulative natural selection as Darwin theorized. In contrast, biological evolutionary theory describes a gradual change in allele frequency within a population through natural selection and various other mechanisms. In this theory, random mutation results in new variation, the environmental pressures on organisms select for those with the most advantageous traits by allowing them to better survive and reproduce, and this natural selection works alongside other mechanisms to cumulatively cause change in species over time. The key distinction between this and intelligent design is that biological evolution is random and operates blindly, with no foresight or end goal. Meanwhile, intelligent design is entirely based on the idea that an organism’s form follows a deliberate blueprint sketched out by a provident entity who is responsible for the creation of all life. (Discovery Institute)

          In James Cameron's film, Avatar, an alien tribe on the distant planet of Pandora fights the human invaders bent on mining their forest home. In The Nature of Things episode, titled The Real Avatar, the indigenous people of the Cordillera del Condor area of Peru face a similar predicament, as they fight against the Peruvian government and private mining and oil interests to defend their home, in an effort to preserve both biodiversity and their traditional way of life. Though there had been a previous agreement between the tribe and the government to establish a protected conservation area, the election of a new president, Alan García, led to the passage of new laws to open that land to privatization and development in the name of profit. These decrees disregarded the prior promises made to the indigenous people, and instead granted access to corporations, including a Canadian mining company and an American oil company. According to environmental scientists, these extraction activities threaten to pollute the area. The mountain range where many of these private development projects are meant to take place overlaps with a portion of the Amazon Rainforest, and also acts as the sources from which rivers flow. The local tribes rely on these ecological features, traditionally viewing their environment as a living thing which provides for them and which they must protect. Though the tribes have engaged in impassioned protests against the actions of corporate interests, the continued lobbying by mining, oil, and other companies for permission to exploit the resources of the tribal lands has thus far won out against the pleas of the indigenous people and the concerns raised by environmental scientists.

          Because of the spiritual connection they felt to their land, as well as the desire to preserve their traditional way of life that would be threatened by these development projects, the indigenous people protested in response. One group even detained some miners, in an effort to force the government to negotiate with them and restore their promise of conserving the tribes’ land. Some protests resulted in violent confrontation between the between the tribe and government police, which garnered sympathy for the tribe’s cause from many within the broader Peruvian populice. However, the tribes were labelled by the government as backwards and primitive, and their concerns were dismissed by the Energy Ministry of Peru as evidence of their ignorance of modern extraction practices, which the government and the mining companies insist does not cause pollution. Environmentalists disagree, and argue that the forests and rivers of the area are sourced out of the same mountain range where extraction projects are meant to take place, and this will potentially contaminate the natural resources on which the tribe relies. The companies also try to sow discord between members of the community with promises of jobs and money, to make easier their incursion and weaken the tribes’ united front against them. This succeeded and resulted in internal conflict, causing the disruption of social bonds within families and communities, and thus further threatening traditional practices.

          The Methods Project was an activity assigned in the Writing in Biology class during the Spring 2019 semester at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The project aim was to produce a multi-panel scientific figure of an interspecific interaction and a set of methods for the reproduction of said scientific figure. The interaction displayed in my figure was between a fiddle-leaf ficus and a leafy vine plant which grows up its trunk. I needed to control for the day of the week and time of day due to Durfee Conservatory, which houses the aforementioned species, only being open during certain times, as well as the location of the photographer, orientation of the camera, and framing of the subject, the editing program used, and the the size, color, and placement of all of the components of the figure. I observed and documented the differences between the original and replicate figures and speculated as to reasons why these differences occurred. These differences could be categorized in five ways: as variations in color, framing, placement, size, and style of the components of each of the figures. The factors which likely contributed to the differences I observed between the figures were the lighting in the greenhouse, the position of the photographer, as well as the height and angle of the camera, unfamiliarity with the tools by which the components of the figures were sized and arranged, and lack of specificity in my methods. Through these activities, I learned about the necessity of clear communication in scientific writing to both convey the findings of a paper as well as allow for replicability.