Hemi

        **WEEK FOUR: HYBRID ANIMALS** ﻿I remember, one day, I went to fourth period bio class, and they were watching a TED Talk video about hybrid animals. So I'm going to write about them, because seventh period bio class never got to watch that video... Anyway, the only thing I remember from that video (I wasn't really paying attention.) was a //cama //, A cama is a hybrid between a male camel and a female llama, first artificially produced in Dubai, 1998. The goal was to create an animal with the size and strength of the camel, but the more cooperative temperament and the higher wool production of the llama. It eats shrubs and other plants and could also survive without water for long periods, just like camel. I thought the idea of scientists putting the advantages of two animals together in one animal was pretty cool, so I looked up some more hybrid animals. This is a wholphin. It is a cross between a false killer whale and an Atlantic bottlenose dolphin, and wholphins are hybrids that have been reported to exist in the wild. I thought it's interesting how the wholphin's size, color, and shape are intermediate between the parent species. For example, their number of teeth is mixed; a bottlenose dolphin has 88 teeth, a false killer whale has 44 teeth, and a wholphin has 66. The offspring of a grizzly bear and a polar bear, a grolar bear is one beast you don't want to meet in the woods. Interestingly, unlike many hybrid animals, grolar bears are known to occur naturally in the wild. Some experts predict that polar bears may be driven to breed with grizzly bears at an increased frequency due to global warming, and the fact that polar bears are being forced from their natural habitats on the polar ice.

Read more: [] As it turns out, hybrid animals has become a very exciting and unique method that scientists have introduced into the world. An animal that bears the description of being hybrid has been cross-bred with another animal with similar genetics. And I started thinking... before we say they are 'cute' or 'cool,' we have to keep in mind that the majority of so-called 'hybrids' die after being bred and those that are fortunate to survive live a life of extreme loneliness and depression - on top of the inevitable mutations and disorders that come upon them. Also, I'm afraid that these animals will be industrialized and zoos will start producing these hybrid animals to attract more families (more$$$)...

**WEEK THREE: GLOBAL WARMING AND YOUR HEALTH - MENTAL ILLNESS AND CANCER** A Human Health Perspective on Climate Change - PDF //A Human Health Perspective on Climate Change//, published by the Interagency Working Group on Climate Change and Health states that global warming could lead to an increase in both mental illness and cancer worldwide, and it calls for more federally funded research to determine how that might happen. SUMMARY: Cancer and mental illness aren't usually associated with global warming, but they both will surely be affected. Increased exposure to toxic chemicals and heavy rainfall (both caused by global warming) will wash the toxic chemicals into the water, which will lead to higher incidents of cancer. Hotter temperatures may also make the toxic chemicals even more toxic. Another way that global warming will cause more cancer is from increased exposure to ultraviolet radiation, which causes some types of skin cancer. Ultraviolet radiation exposure occurs with all sun exposure but global warming will make it worse, leading to potentially more skin cancer. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, sexual dysfunction, and drug abuse are among the mental health conditions that will be exacerbated by global warming, because a variety of psychological impacts can be associated with extreme weather and other climate related events. Climate Change Takes a Mental Toll - More on global warming and mental illness! **WEEK TWO: THE OVERPOPULATION MYTH** Until last week, when I heard people talking about the world overpopulation and how serious it is and what not, I never really doubted it and thought it could just be a 'myth.' So I read more about it, and found some interesting facts: Here's a (really long) quote by Dr. Jacqueline R. Kasun from //<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">The War Against Population: The Economics and Ideology of World Population Control //, also supporting the overpopulation myth:
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">The population of the entire world could fit shoulder-to-shoulder in a space about the size of Jacksonville, Florida.
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Ninety-seven perfect of the earth's land surface is empty.
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">If you allotted to each person 1,250 square feet, everyone in the world would fit into the state of Texas.
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, world food supplies exceed requirements in all world ears, amounting to a surplus approaching 50% in 1990 in the developed countries, and 17% in the developing regions.

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">"Problems commonly blamed on 'overpopulation' are the result of bad economic policy. For example, Western journalists blamed the Ethiopian famine on 'overpopulation,' but that was simply not true. The Ethiopian government caused it by confiscating the food stocks of traders and farmers and exporting them to buy arms. That country’s leftist regime, not its population, caused the tragedy. In fact, Africa, beset with problems often blamed on 'overpopulation,' has only one-fifth the population density of Europe, and has an unexploited food-raising potential that could feed twice the present population of the world, according to estimates by Roger Revelle of Harvard and the University of San Diego. Economists writing for the International Monetary Fund in 1994 said that African economic problems result from excessive government spending, high taxes on farmers, inflation, restrictions on trade, too much government ownership, and over-regulation of private economic activity. There was no mention of overpopulation. The government of the Philippines relies on foreign aid to control population growth, but protects monopolies which buy farmers' outputs at artificially low prices, and sell them inputs at artificially high prices, causing widespread poverty. Advocates of population control blame 'overpopulation' for poverty in Bangladesh. But the government dominates the buying and processing of jute, the major cash crop, so that farmers receive less for their efforts than they would in a free market. Impoverished farmers flee to the city, but the government owns 40% of industry and regulates the rest with price controls, high taxes and unpublished rules administered by a huge, corrupt, foreign-aid dependent bureaucracy." <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">"The Coming Population Crash": The Overpopulation Myth  <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">I found this article really interesting. In this article, Salon, the website, interviews an English journalist Fred Pearce. Pearce tells us how feminism and pop culture help save the planet. "Feminism, I suspect, is as much a consequence of falling fertility as a cause, though I am sure they reinforce each other. If you only need to have two or three children to secure the next generation, that is what women will do. And that gives them more options for a wider role in society. I think the reproductive revolution and the feminist revolution through the second half of the 20th century have gone together. On the one hand, thanks to advances in sanitation and medicine, women no longer need to have five or six children to make sure that two of them will live to adulthood. On the other hand, we've had the push for women’s rights in the workplace. The consequence of that is we now have many more women taking their proper role in society in so many ways, arguably for the first time in millennia."  <span style="background-color: #fef1f4; color: #030391; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">**WEEK ONE: SUSTAINABILITY AND POPULATION**  <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Last week, "thinking long-term, defining it and understanding it," we learned about sustainability in class. Sustainability is the capacity to endure, and for humans, sustainability is the potential for long-term maintenance of well being, which has environmental, economic, and social dimensions. Well, what does this have to do with population? and overpopulation? The two parts of sustainability are consumption and population; the world could possibly reduce consumption down to a very basic level, but if population keeps growing, eventually that will not be enough. Even today many are living on a sub-sustainable level, due in part to an uneven distribution of resources, but also because, in many regions, population has outgrown essential resources for that region. Latest official current world population estimate, for mid-year 2010, is estimated at //6,852,472,823//. <span style="display: inline! important; font-size: 12px;">Long-term estimates of global population suggest a peak at around 2070 of nine to ten billion people, and then a slow decrease to 8.4 billion by 2100. <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">media type="youtube" key="b98JmQ0Cc3k?rel=0" height="251" width="305" align="right" <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">World Overpopulation Awareness (WOA) - Why Population Matters <span style="display: block; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; text-align: left;">These articles discuss the problem of overpopulation and the importance of population in general. Reading these articles, I noticed that some people believe that overpopulation is just a "myth." One of the articles states that, "Neil Reynolds in his recent editorial said overpopulation was a Malthusian myth, arguing that it is ridiculous to think that there are too many people on the planet when the entire world population could fit into Texas. Evidently, Reynolds considers drying rivers, disappearing species, razed forests, eroding soils, melting glaciers, and vanishing fish stocks to be random events unrelated to a growing human population with ever-rising demands for space, energy, food, water, lumber, minerals, and other resources." However, on the contrary the United Nations seem to believe that overpopulation is a highly dangerous problem... I guess we will just have to wait and see. <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">World Overpopulation Awareness (WOA) - Sustainability, Carrying Capacity, and Overconsumption <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">The title tells it all; rather than just talking about human overpopulation, these articles go over the relationship between sustainability, carrying capacity, and overconsumption. What I found interesting is that a lot of poor countries such as Sudan and Ethiopia exceed biocapacity, because China and other more rich/strong countries are making crop land grabs in those poorer countries. Here's a list of countries that currently have a self-sufficiency rating of 100% or more: <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Somalia (105.2%), Cambodia (105.5%), Africa (106.3%), Panama (107.1%), Senegal (109.4%), Gambia (109.4%), Botswana (110.1%), Lithuania (110.2%), Venezuela- Bolivarian Republic of (113.7%), Niger (114.2%), Kyrgyzstan (118.1%), Ecuador (121.2%), Sudan (126.4%), Sierra Leone (129.4%), Chile (132.1%), Lao People's Democratic Republic (132.9%), Mali (136.8%), Estonia (140.1%), Russian Federation (142.5%), Nicaragua (145.3%), Norway (145.4%), Latvia (157.3%), New Zealand (159.0%), Myanmar (160.7%), Côte d'Ivoire (174.8%), Cameroon (185.1%), Solomon Islands (185.3%), Chad (192.3%), Guinea (200.6%), Mauritania (203.0%), Colombia (206.5%), Papua New Guinea (219.1%), Oceania (220.9%), Latin America and the Caribbean (222.8%), Liberia (224.8%), Eritrea (225.9%), Peru (226.9%), Argentina (234.9%), Finland (235.7%), Zambia (244.6%), Madagascar (270.9%), Namibia (290.4%), Canada (296.6%), Paraguay (321.8%), Guinea-Bissau (335.4%), Angola (355.1%), Congo- Democratic Republic of (361.6%), Central African Republic (585.7%), Bolivia (803.9%), Congo (1372.7%)