Month: December 2012

Why Diversity is Important

Diversity has been a recurring theme this semester. It started with the diversity conference our middle schoolers attended earlier this year, which, unfortunately, I’m not sure they got a lot out of. As a result, I’ve been making a little bit of a point to bring up the subject when it intersects with our work. This week were were talking about evolution and natural selection, as was able to talk about the practical advantages of both genetic and social diversity.

When the environment changes, species don’t usually have time to adapt. Instead, individuals who already have the genes for beneficial existing traits — traits that work well under the new conditions, like the ability to survive warming climates — will tend to breed more, and over the generations, more and more of the population will have the advantageous trait.

Therefore, to ensure the continuation of the species, we’ll want to have the maximum amount of genetic diversity.

Then I tacked. I asked if anyone was not interested in seeing the continuity of humanity, and the usual wags piped up to say that they could take homo sapiens or leave it. So I showed them the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement website. VHEMT advocates that people voluntarily stop having kids so that humanity eventually will become extinct, restoring the Earth’s environment to a healthy state. Their motto is, “May we live long and die out.”

The class was pretty uniformly aghast.

I particularly like the VHEMT website because it’s really hard to tell if they’re serious or not; which drove my students a little bit crazy. And I eventually got the key question I was angling for, “How could anyone want humans to go extinct?”

My response was, for them at least, quite unsatisfactory, because I chose to answer with a different question: “Do you think that diversity of thought is good?”

For some, their answer was no. However, I then reminded them of that first amendment to the U.S. constitution has to do with freedom of expression, which does seem to suggest that the founders thought diversity of ideas was a good thing. Just like species, countries with greater diversity of ideas are more likely to be able to adapt to changing conditions and succeed.

The application of evolutionary theory to social situations has, historically, been fraught with abuse (see the eugenics movement in particular). I also did not have time to bring the conversation back to why we might want to protect biodiversity. However, this particular lesson gets the point across that diversity has some important practical benefits that might not always be obvious.

Notes

An interview with VHMET on the Discovery Channel:

Semi-artificial Selection?

Just like drug resistant germs (we’ve discussed earlier), the rats are evolving.

“They’ve also mutated genetically and are bred to be immune to standard poisons.

“We have had to start using different methods such as trapping and gassing, which can be less effective and more costly.”

–Graham Chappell, from Rapid Pest Control in Newbury in Rowley (2012): Home counties demand stronger poison to deal with mutant ‘super rats’ in The Telegraph.

Homework or Not?

The Finnish and South Korean educational systems are ranked number one and two in the world, yet they’re at opposite ends of the homework assignment spectrum. Louis Menand elaborates:

Students [in Finland] are assigned virtually no homework; they don’t start school until age seven; and the school day is short.

[South Korean schools] are notorious for their backbreaking rigidity. Ninety per cent of primary-school students in South Korea study with private tutors after school, and South Korean teen-agers are reported to be the unhappiest in the developed world. Competition is so fierce that the government has cracked down on what are called private “crammer” schools, making it illegal for them to stay open after 10 P.M. (though some attempt to get around this by disguising themselves as libraries).

— Menand (2012): Today’s Assignment in The New Yorker.

via The Dish.

Empathy

Empathy is seeing the world through the eyes of others. Adolescents tend to look inward, not outward, but empathy is the basis of morality, so exposure to others and other points of view is an important element of their education. I find the following video interesting (much like the Bright Eyes video) because in its hints at so many hidden messages and meanings. It provokes thoughts about who these kids are, what is life like for them, and how do they see the world.

Note: David Brooks argues that while empathy orients one toward moral behavior, it’s really sacred moral codes that convert that orientation into action.

Genetics: Tracing the Gypsies back to India

A recent genetic study has confirmed that gypsies (Romani) probably originated in India. Dean Nelson summarizes.

Scientists from Hyderabad’s Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology collaborated with colleagues in Estonia and Switzerland to compare more than 10,000 samples, including from members of 214 different Indian ethnic groups. They were analysed to match a South Asian Y chromosome type known as “haplogroup H1a1a-M82”, which passes down male bloodlines, with samples from Roma men in Europe.

While there were matches with samples from men throughout the Indian sub-continent, the closest match and the least genetic variation occurred with those from north-west India.

When the researchers overlaid the closest matches onto a genetic map of India, the highest density was in areas dominated by India’s “doma”, “scheduled tribes and castes” – the low caste dalits or untouchables who suffer widespread and generational discrimination and usually do society’s dirtiest jobs.

The researchers believe the descendants of today’s Roma gypsies in Europe began their westward exodus first to fight in wars in what is today Punjab between 1001 and 1026 on the promise of a promotion in caste status.

— Nelson, 2012: European Roma descended from Indian ‘untouchables’, genetic study shows in The Telegraph.

This type of genetic study looks at sections of the DNA sequence, specifically a certain group of genes that is slightly different in people from India compared to everyone else.

A gene is a section of DNA that does a certain job, such as producing a specific protein that results in a certain physical characteristic like eye color. Everyone has the gene for eye color, but some people have a version that gives blue eyes, while others might have a green eye version. The different versions of genes are called alleles, so you can say that some people have the allele for blue eyes while others have the green eye allele. Groups of alleles are passed on from parent to child, which is why children look like their parents, and why different ethnic groups from around the world look different from each other.

So if we take a group genes (call it a haplogroup) and compare the versions characteristic of Indians to those of Gypsies, we can see how similar the two groups are. This study (Gresham et al., 2001) found that Romani and Asians share 45% of the alleles within this haplogroup, which is pretty high. They also looked at another haplogroup in the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) that is only passed on from mothers to their children (it’s matrilineal) and found a 26% match.

Making the assumption that mutations in genes occur at a constant rate, the new study estimates that the Roma emigrated out of India somewhere around 1000 years ago.

The relatively recent ages determined for haplogroup VI-68 and M in this study suggest that the ethnogenesis of the Roma can be understood as a profound bottleneck event. Although identification of the parental population of the proto-Roma has to await better understanding of genetic diversity in the Indian subcontinent, our results suggest a limited number of related founders, compatible with a small group of migrants splitting from a distinct caste or tribal group.

–Gresham et al., 2001: Origins and Divergence of the Roma (Gypsies) in The American Journal of Human Genetics.

This is however, not the only evidence of an Indian origin. There are also significant similarities between the Romani and Indian languages that were noted long before. In fact, there is a fascinating, and my modern sensibilities, quite politically incorrect article on the topic of the origin of the Gypsies in the February, 1880 issue of Popular Science Monthly.

$10.09 per ton of Carbon Dioxide

… one metric ton of carbon dioxide is what’s produced by an average month of electricity use in a U.S. home.

— Troeh (2012): California’s first carbon auction launches pollution market on Marketplace.

California recently auctioned off a set of carbon emission permits as the start of an effort to reduce emissions of greenhouse gasses with an emissions trading system.

The first 23.1 million permits sold out at $10.09 per ton.

Eve Troeh discusses: