Problematic Prejudice and Sneaky Selection

 

The Roman historian Cicero wrote: “The first law of the historian is that he shall never dare utter an untruth, the second is that he shall suppress nothing that is true, moreover there shall be no suspicion of partiality in his writing” however… Contemporary historians understand that there are biases in all the information we attain. For example, we see in the quote that Cicero assumed that all historians would be male, which was the case when he wrote more than 2,000 years ago, but obviously is no longer true now. Levels of bias can vary in sources, from the extreme right-wing paranoia of Breitbart News with its partisan ramblings about conspiracies involving Hillary Clinton, to more subtle biases such as the verbal acrobatics politicians employ to avoid suggesting that Taiwan is a fully-fledged country, as its leaders maintain. And, as Cicero recognised, there are errors of omission, such as the Nazi party’s efforts to ignore and underplay the success of black athletes at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

How Soviet Propaganda Presented Collective Agriculture in the 1930s

Knowledge can be attained from sources influenced by bias and selection, but ultimately all sources are influenced by the cultural context in which they were created. Historians therefore have to recognise and acknowledge the bias of the sources they are using and to use those sources to give specific knowledge in their attempts to understand the past. Sources should be evaluated, rather than used unquestioningly, and the biases may themselves reveal much about the intention and concerns of the creator. For example, a Soviet government photograph depicting tractors working on a collective farm in the 1930s may not show you what agriculture was actually like at that time, however the photo reveals much about the Soviet’s preoccupation with heavy industry, and Stalin’s desire for the collectivization of peasant agriculture to be seen as successful.

Historians recognise the ubiquity of bias, and history as an area of knowledge is comfortable at analysing the bias of sources and indeed the bias of historians themselves. For example, the naval historian James Davey in his book “In Nelson’s Wake”, uses sources as diverse as the letters and diaries of British naval officers, court-martial records, and a range of pamphlets and newspapers from the period of the Napoleonic War, as well as printed secondary sources by other historians. None of these sources could be said to be without bias, but Davey collates and reviews them to structure his narrative of the Royal Navy fighting in the final ten years of the Napoleonic wars. However, whilst historians are comfortable to acknowledge and manage bias when they evaluate the usefulness of sources, this is not true in other areas of knowledge.

Here is a video showing the Thermite reaction

A central belief in the natural sciences is that scientific discoveries are replicable or reproducible by anyone, anywhere, regardless of the beliefs of the scientists conducting the work. For example, the thermite reaction in chemistry is a process in which a mixture of metallic fuels is combined and ignited. Provided the correct methods are followed, and the right chemicals used, this reaction will play out the same way anywhere on the planet, whether or not the people involved understand the chemistry involved. When bias creeps into the natural sciences this can lead to findings which cannot be replicated and are eventually discredited because the data from the experiments are not consistent and the conclusions are not valid. For example, Chris Lee writes about confirmation bias in science and how to avoid it and describes the N-ray experiments done in France during the 19th century. Driven by national pride, French scientists claimed to have discovered so-called N-rays in an attempt to undermine the German discovery of X-rays. Lee describes how N-rays were “an ephemeral thing: observed only as a corona around an electric discharge from certain crystals”. They could only be seen by the human eye, making them difficult to measure. However, an American scientist, Robert Wood found that the N-rays failed to vanish when their source was removed and that the desire of the researchers to make a finding had blinded them to the truth. No amount of bias or belief on the part of researchers can overcome the constraints of the scientific method and the demand for replicability.

History as an area of knowledge embraces bias and selection and synthesises that bias as part of its analysis. Historians can accommodate bias in the sources they use and gain valuable insight into events in the past and the intentions of people in history. Different historians can use the same source differently as part of their analysis. The Natural Sciences on the other hand are an area of knowledge where consistency and replicability and objectivity are paramount. Scientists studying the thermite reaction, for example, cannot draw different conclusions on the underlying chemical reaction because the scientific method can generate only one true outcome. Therefore, it is possible to obtain knowledge despite bias in history but not in the Natural sciences because each historical event is unique whereas science is about studying universal and replicable findings.

 

 

Awesome Autonomy or Morally Corrupt Machinery?

Could these remarkable robots become a frightening fact on the battlefield and not just a video game fantasy?

Credit to: (http://conceptartworld.com) 

An article titled “Prepare for rise of ‘killer robots’ says former defense chief” reports on the protests against potential advantages of artificially intelligent war machines that could make decisions, learn, and open fire without human control by Gen Sir Richard Barrons, former UK Joint Forces Command, which had responsibility for preparing for future conflicts. The now-retired veteran spoke after more than 100 technology leaders wrote an open letter calling on the United Nations to outlaw so-called lethal autonomous weapons. The topic of armed autonomous robots has arisen after the Russian arms manufacturer Kalashnikov last month announced a machine gun-armed “fully automated combat module” it claimed can identify targets and make decisions on its own.

Kalashnikov has announced a ‘fully automated combat module based on neural network technologies that enable it to identify targets and make decisions’

Credit to: (Kalashnikov Group)

The reason that these new robots are being developed is because “this technology is likely to be cheaper than the stuff they have now and therefore more affordable and effective,” Sir Richard said. He continued by saying that automated armed sentries that could guard nuclear reactors, or keep people out of restricted areas such as the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea, could be among the first uses.

Liz Quintana, director of military science at the Royal United Services Institute agreed saying: “It’s one thing to actually agree on a ban and it’s another to implement it.”

I think that this is something that needs to be seriously discussed within the international community because currently only Britain has said that its weapons will always maintain human control, and the consequences of having robots that could act on their own, making decisions on whether to open fire or not, could be catastrophic and completely change the way wars are fought and how the civilian population is implicated in violence.

For more on this check out the Telegraph with the full interview with Gen Sir Richard Barrons at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/08/27/prepare-rise-killer-robots-says-former-defence-chief/

 

 

 

Environmental Sciences Internal Assessment Topic: Hostility and its effect on Habitat

For my IA, I hope to investigate to impacts war has on the surrounding environment, namely, by comparing the impacts of the Vietnam war on Vietnam’s tropical rainforest, with the effect the Gulf War had on Kuwait. I have compiled a large collection of sources and evidence to, ultimately, show the devastating damage war can have on different ecosystems, and suggest that more needs to be done to protect the environment in future conflicts. The International Humanitarian Law, and the Geneva conventions, do prohibit “severe or long-term damage to the environment”, but these are laws rarely heard about and rarely enforced, with ecology often being just another innocent bystander to war with no voice. In a world of rising global tension, and a slowly withering environment due to climate change, the future of ecosystems are in a fragile situation, and enforcing tighter legislation to preserve the environment in the face of conflict is necessary if we don’t want to have to face severe long term damage to habitat as repercussion for our own selfish bloodshed.

Below is the document I used to compile my research to make life easier in December when we eventually have to write this IA…

ESS IA Research – Impact of War on the Environment

To See Or Not To See, That Is The Question…

Many of the great achievements of the Natural Sciences have been based around empirical observations: from Galileo observing the moons of Jupiter, to Isaac Newton’s tale of a falling apple inspiring the theory of gravity, to Charles Darwin’s work on the origins of the different Finch beaks in the Galapagos Isles. However, as science has become more specialised and complicated, empirical observations have become harder and harder. I recently viewed a TED talk by Aowama Shields describing the growing field of astrobiology and its search for life beyond Earth. So far, astrobiologists have received lavish funding from NASA and the US government but have nothing to show for it. Various planets have been detected in the so-called “habitable zone” which may have water present, and various probes have been dispatched around the solar system to search for signs of life, whether in the red sands of Mars or the icy seas of Europa and the volcanoes of Io. So, this leads us to ask, what role does observation play in defining the practice of the Natural Sciences?

Europa’s Icy Surface

Io’s Volcanic Surface

Empiricism is the theory that all knowledge is based on experience derived from scientific observation. Astronomy, the parent discipline of astrobiology, is driven largely by empirical observations. These observations are replicable and consistent. By definition, successful astronomers find things in the universe. For example, Edwin Hubble, one of the most important astronomers of all time, provided evidence that the speed at which a galaxy was moving away from the Earth increased with its distance from the Earth. He used this observation to formulate “Hubble’s Law”, which was then used to provide evidence for the Big Bang theory. Similarly, Milankovitch studied orbital inclination, axial tilt, and precession of the Earth to support his theory on climate change. From this, we can see that empirical observations pave the way for scientific breakthroughs. The challenge facing astrobiologists, like Aowama Shields, is that they currently have no observations to support the existence of life anywhere outside Earth at any time.

An Example Of The Flaws Of Empiricism – Experience Influences Our Observations

However, inductive reasoning based on observation has its flaws. Another practise used in science is falsificationism, as propounded by Karl Popper to address the “All swans are white” fallacy. The “All swans are white” fallacy describes the limitation of inductive reasoning based on empirical observations. Until the discovery of Australia, all observed swans had been white, but one black swan disproved the entire theory, despite the thousands of observations which supported the theory. Popper suggested that scientists should always seek evidence to falsify their theories and not validate them. He envisioned progress in the natural sciences through the rejection of falsified theories, which were then replaced by theories with better explanatory power. For example, the famous Michelson-Morley experiment failed, thus discrediting the Youngian wave theory of light. This paved the way for Einstein’s theory of special relativity, which could account for the outcome of the failed experiment better. Popper used falsification to demarcate between those theories that are scientific (such as astrobiology’s theory on life beyond Earth) and those that are unscientific (such as astrology, which posits that an individual’s birthdate dictates the course of their life).

In conclusion, for something to be considered science, it needs to follow a very specific path that involves extensive observation, measurable experiments, and follow-up repetition of these experiments in order to communicate a set of results. So far, astrobiology has not observed a single living entity other than ones that manifest on earth. On the other hand, astro-physics, astro-chemistry and astro-geology have successfully conducted a series of experiments that solidified their fields. By contrast, astrobiology remains highly speculative due to the lack of biological evidence. But, it would only take one observation of a living organism outside Earth to validate astrobiology as a discipline.

At present, the premise that we are not alone in the universe is faith-based rather than fact-based. However, intuitively humans find it hard to believe we are alone, because of the sheer scale of the universe. The prevalence of alien life in popular culture and science fiction shows the enduring attraction of astrobiology as a discipline, albeit an attraction tinged with fear and paranoia (Daleks, Cybermen, Martian Ice Warrior, Sand people, Klingons etc).

Dr. Who’s Cybermen

Two other real life situations that these conclusions can be translated to are:

• The quest for new species in remote parts of our own planet. At the moment, scientists continue to search for new species, be it deep in the ocean or in dense rainforests, without conclusive proof that they are there, based on the supposition that they might exist.

Black Smokers

• Finally, my father lost three pairs of beautiful cufflinks when we moved house in Singapore in 2012. He continues to hope and hunt for them to this day despite any evidence that they remain in our possession.  

The Famous Lost Cufflinks

Here is Aowama’s TED Talk: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch? time_continue=319&v=yBdyFKqwKy0

 

Astonishing Art with Complex Concerns and Unusual Ethics

In the Middle Ages, in Europe, art had a clear ethical purpose. It was an expression of piety by the Church to instill, and reinforce, Christian religious belief. Much of this work has stood the test of time, as we can still see today in ecclesiastical architecture, with the beautiful stain glass windows of the saints, the paintings of Christ in altarpieces, and sculptures of Biblical scenes in high Gothic cathedrals, such as the Duomo in Milan.  But, over the succeeding centuries, with the rise of competing and alternate ideologies, such as capitalism, secularism, nationalism, and communism, the role and definition of art have changed significantly. This provokes us to ask, to what extent are the arts ethically beneficial to society today?

Much of what that passes as art today, would not have been recognized as such previously. Consider the following works of art:

“Balloon Dog” by Jeff Koon:

“My Bed” by Tracey Emin:

Damian Hurst’s tiger shark pickled in a tank of formaldehyde titled “The Physical Possibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living”:

The works of Wim Delvoye, who is devoted to tattooing live pigs in China and then stuffing them:

Andy Warhol’s “Campbell’s Soup Cans”:

Marina Abramović’s self-harming performance art scenes:

As we can see from the above, contemporary art is so diverse, subjective, and open ended, that it is almost impossible to draw ethical conclusions from them. Indeed, with Marina Abramović’s self-harming scenes, she herself has highlighted how not even the professional art critics can agree:

“A few days ago, I woke up and I looked at the Guardian and I read the critic saying that my work was honest, remarkable. Then I read the New York Times, who said the complete opposite. Oh my god, did you see that one? This guy said I was pretentious, outrageous, masochist — completely pretentious and fake.” – Marina Abramović December 2^nd 2016

Therefore, in the postmodern, relativist, era, where anything can be considered art, and anyone’s interpretation and judgement is also considered valid, which means that drawing ethical conclusions from this art is impossible. Indeed, it is also possible that radically different and completely different interpretations be attributed to the same piece of art.

For example, the 1987 photograph “Immersion” (Piss Christ) by Andres Serrano, depicts a small plastic crucifix submerged in the artist’s own urine. Some Christian observers considered the piece, “blasphemous”, “sacrilegious” and completely disrespectful. Serrano received death threats and hate mail, and a print of “Piss Christ” was vandalized by protesters in France in 2011. However, one catholic nun said that the work was a powerful statement on what contemporary society has done to Christ and the Christian religion, whilst the art critic Lucy Lippard characterized the work as “mysterious and beautiful”, and “ominous and glorious”. Serrano himself has said the work relates to the cheapening of Christian icons in contemporary culture. Therefore, we can attribute ethical benefits to society to the arts, as Serrano did for that piece, but these are very like the nature of art itself in the modern world; they are in the eye of the beholder, open to debate, and often highly contested.

“Immersion” (Piss Christ) by Andres Serrano:

However, many governments and opinion formers consider the arts to be beneficial to society. Across the world, governments heavily subsidies the arts as a public good. In 2015, the Tate Modern Gallery, received an extra £6m in government funding in London. The profits of the National Lottery, in the UK, are also partially devoted to the arts, including the creation of Antony Gormley’s sculpture “The Angel of the North”. Similarly, in the United States, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) provides Federal support through direct financial grants to orchestras across the country. In 2016 the NEA made 2,128 grants of over $53m to support artworks and art outreach. Another controversy surrounding the “Immersion” (Piss Christ), was that Serrano received government funds. Detractors clearly felt that the work was not worthy of tax payer’s money, and not beneficial to society, ethically or otherwise.

Antony Gormley’s sculpture “The Angel of the North”:

Totalitarian governments have especially believed that the arts should be used in pursuit of their political and ethical goals, censoring undesirable art, and promoting art they deemed worthy. In 1937, the Nazis held a “Degenerate” art exhibition, which condemned “barbarous methods of representation”. The Nazis also burned black listed books on the streets, and Stalin murdered writers, painters, and composers whom he disliked. The Night of the Murdered Poets, saw the execution of 13 Soviet Jews in 1952, for counter revolutionary crimes. As well as suppressing the art deemed dissident, totalitarian states have been keen to use positive images to drive their message home to society. For example, the “Storming of the Winter Palace” by Pavel Sokolov Skalya, and “Lenin on the Tribune” by Gerasimov are both examples of graphical art promoted by the USSR for their ideological benefit to Soviet society and Communist ideals. Totalitarian governments have always considered art important for ethical and ideological reasons. Indeed, much totalitarian art, such as the Saddam Hussein’s massive public sculpture of crossed swords in Baghdad “Arc of Triumph”, has outlived the totalitarian regimes that created them.

“Storming of the Winter Palace” by Pavel Sokolov Skalya:

“Lenin on the Tribune” by Gerasimov:

Saddam Hussein’s “Arch of Triumph”: 

It may seem facile to compare Jeff Koon’s giant metallic balloon dogs, with the brutality of Saddam Hussein’s triumphant swords. However, it highlights the difference between art under a dictatorship and in an open society. The ethical benefits of the freedom of artistic expression in open, liberal, democratic societies should be obvious to all. Modern art can often seem nonsensical, idiotic, and superficial, like the cans of soup, pickled sharks, unmade beds, and tattooed pigs, but the benefits to society as a whole from artists being able to express themselves as they see fit are enormous. Throughout history, artists have been persecuted by tyrants for their work and many still are today, whether in repressive Islamic states or dictatorships like North Korea. Therefore, freedom of expression and its corollaries, the freedom to criticise and disagree, and the freedom to ignore, are ethically significant. Society benefits not necessarily from the art itself but from the freedom to think and to create.

Some useful links that connect to my post about art and ethics:

http://www.theoryofknowledge.net/areas-of-knowledge/the-arts/what-is-the-relationship-between-art-and-ethics/

https://prezi.com/rane1cgqkjom/art-ethical-limitations/

Enchanting Embryos: Entangled Ethics and the Primitive Streak

  Recently scientists around the globe have begun to question the validity and purpose of the so-called “14-day rule” that sets a boundary on the amount of time a test tube embryo can be grown in a lab before it has to be terminated. The 14-day limit was first proposed in 1979 by the Ethics Advisory Board of the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. It was then endorsed in 1984 by the Warnock committee in the United Kingdom, and in 1994 by the US National Institutes of Health’s Human Embryo Research Panel. However, these rules were put in place at a time when it was thought impossible to grow an embryo in a laboratory for more than 9 days, and scientists nowadays are wondering whether these perhaps outdated rules are relevant in today’s world.

Figure 1: Countries that have agreed to the 14-day rule or have laws that restrict in vitro research on human embryos

So, this provokes us to ask, what roles do faith and emotion play in the justification of ethical decisions? The first underlying boundary surrounding embryology is, of course, the 14-day rule, where a mixture of scientific and faith-based concerns played a part in its creation. The initial scientific hurdles these various advisory boards had to overcome was that an embryo had never previously been grown for longer than 9 days, so 14 days seemed like an impossible stretch that was far enough in the future not to be of trouble again. There were also various religious concerns as well that had to be considered. For example, Catholics believe in the sanctity of human life at any time after conception and are opposed to any embryological studies.  Jewish and Islamic faiths say that a “human” originates at the first heartbeat (about 3 weeks and 1 day) after fertilization. Finally, the Buddhist faith believes that it is when an umbilical cord is first cut. Thus, the 14-day rule was a convenient compromise which satisfied scientists, who had no way of exceeding it, and was set very low at a very early stage in the embryos development which helped subdue certain religious communities.

Figure 2: Embryo in petri dish and the primitive streak

It seems that now the 14-day has become an arbitrary date and is seen to be more of a restriction preventing breakthrough science rather than promoting ethically justified boundaries. Ali Brivanlou, a professor at The Rockefeller University in New York says: “I find this to be alarming and I find it to be a bit embarrassing… because I know more about the fruit fly and the frog and the fish and the bird than I know about my own [human] development.” Daniel Brison from the University of Manchester told BBC: “Given the potential benefits of new research in infertility, improving assisted conception methods, and in early miscarriage and disorders of pregnancy, there may be a case in the future to reconsider the 14-day limit,”. Thus, many scientists feel that the 14-day rule is obstructing valid scientific research.

Indeed, many ethical concerns over embryological research are grounded in religious beliefs. Even in America today, 46% of Americans consider themselves “pro-life” and 19% are completely against any abortion under any circumstance (Gallup survey May 2016), which is evidence enough to suggest that public opinion is very sensitive to the creation and termination of fetuses for scientific research. Religious advocates claim scientists are “playing God” and are treating potential human beings like laboratory mice.

So, perhaps the views of the scientists should override the views of the religious who have no background in science by appealing to the common good of humanity. For example, Lund University researchers have managed to simulate Parkinson’s disease in rat embryos and have discovered a way to eradicate the disease entirely from rats. Whilst there have been no human clinical trials of stem-cell-derived neurons, the researchers said they could be ready for testing by 2017. Human Embryo research would also bring IVF benefits that could give way to more successful techniques for assisted births and the preservation of eggs so that mothers can have children even if they are infertile. Thus, science’s utilitarian perspectives and possible solutions could counterbalance the opinion of the religious community as science’s solutions could help abolish certain genetic disorders and evolve IVF techniques, acting for the greater good of mankind.

Figure 3: IVF fertilization process

However, it could be that this is a political decision and not a scientific one. Since the government acts in the best interest of the people, maybe it shouldn’t be up to scientists to decide what is right for humanity. Since the legality of abortions in the United States in 1973, abortion providers have been the targets of more than 300 acts of extreme violence, including arson, bombings, murders and butyric acid attacks. These attacks in the US alone, along with the 46% of Americans that consider themselves “pro-life”, could help paint the picture that perhaps the public doesn’t want any further research done on human embryos and that the 14-day rule should remain in place. Governments in democracies often take into account completely uninformed opinions and emotions. In the United State’s case, it seems the government is willing to be swayed by the public’s emotivist ethical perspective, without considering countervailing factors such as scientific benefits , the rights on women and the complicated nature of reproductive situations.

Another thing to consider is that science needs ethical guidelines because scientific progress can open new possibilities that are potentially exploitable by the unscrupulous. There have been historical cases of unethical scientific research that have contributed to how scientists work today. The history of research ethics began with the tragic history of research abuse by Nazi doctors during World War II. Out of this horror, came the Nuremberg Code and other international codes of ethics written to protect research participants. This also led to standards in research requiring that subjects participate voluntarily and are informed of the risks of the research. But who informs embryos?

The relationship between religion and ethics is about the relationship between revelation and reason. Religion is based in some measure on the idea that God (or some deity) reveals insights about life and its true meaning, also known as deontology . Ethics, from a strictly humanistic perspective, is based on the tenets of reason: Anything that is not rationally verifiable cannot be considered justifiable. These principles are upheld for their value in promoting independent and responsible individuals—people who are capable of making decisions that maximize their own well-being while respecting the well-being of others. Aristotle said that cultivating qualities (he called them “virtues”) like prudence, reason, accommodation, compromise, moderation, wisdom, honesty, and truthfulness, among others, would enable us all to enter the discussions and conflicts between religion and ethics—where differences exist—with a measure of moderation and agreement. When ethics and religion collide, nobody wins; when religion and ethics find room for robust discussion and agreement, we maximize the prospects for constructive choices in our society.

This opinion, however, could just be ignorance on the public’s part, not informing themselves of recent scientific breakthroughs and not considering the possible good that could come about from further human embryo research. In a world where Brexit and Trump take place, and where fact and opinion is often confused and blended, misinformation spreads and perhaps the people do not know what is best for themselves and this leads to the government potentially acting in the best interest of what the people want, but not in the best interest of humanity overall.

On balance, it seems as if there is a valid reason to extend the limit of 14 days to a new maximum, but this will require consultation with the non-scientific population and the scientific population. However, there do need to be firm boundaries to prevent unscrupulous scientists abusing their power and exploiting any loopholes in the rules. Unborn children cannot speak for themselves and whilst embryos are not fully human no one can dispute that they are the foundation of human life. Whilst there might be important research into human cloning or the manipulation of human DNA to be done, public opinion and emotivist ethics are clearly not willing to countenance them at this time.

Personally, I think that there is more good that could come from further embryo research than bad, and that the international community, the public and governments should agree to extend the 14-day rule to accommodate new research and testing.  I think that faith and emotion does play a large part in ethical boundaries surrounding embryology, but I think that perhaps it has taken too much of a front seat and that we seriously need to consider the valid scientific point of view that could potentially benefit our species altogether. From this discussion, we can draw two absolute truths. Firstly, that members of the general public will always harbour scepticism towards scientists because scientific research is often flawed or inconclusive and, secondly, that if a boundary is set there is always an incentive to extend it, because, by definition, it has restricted progress beyond that point. These truths and the considerations surrounding the way ethical boundaries are set, can also be taken into the context of genetic modification, mitochondrial replacement therapy, euthanasia and DNA profiling of potential diseases and traits.

Figure 4: Human embryo

Here are a couple of videos to help paint the bigger picture and perhaps give you some more context to embryo research and the 14-day rule:

Interesting video giving a general over view on human embryo research and the 14-day rule.

Why are stem cells so important?

Sexy Spiders: Till Death Do Us Part

An Image of a Dark Fishing Spider munching on a fish it caught

Mating can be a cruel and unusual process across the animal kingdom, with rape common between dolphins, bedbugs inseminating inside their partners’ bellies and body cavities, and the common practice of eating one’s partner after sex in many species of insects and spiders.

It has now become clear that such cannibalism clearly brings about advantages to the female, who gets an easy snack, but the benefits for the male are less obvious, as shown by a recent study by researchers at Gonzaga University in the state of Washington, on the dark fishing spider.

Dr. Schwartz1 and Dr. Hebets, the zoologists behind the study, collected male and female dark fishing spiders and subjected them to an experiment. In one group of spiders, females were allowed to, as usual, eat their deceased partner after mating with them; in another group the male spider was removed, leaving the females with nothing to eat; while in the last group the females were given a cricket of about the same weight as the male spiders as a substitute.

The results were not surprising: the offspring of the females in the first group (where the females were allowed to cannibalize their partners) were bigger, more numerous and lived longer than those of the females in the second. The third group, with the substituted cricket, also had more fitter offspring, but did no better than those whose mothers were allowed to feed off their partner.

Evidently, something in the male dark fishing spiders flesh is particularly advantageous for the production and growth of young fitter offspring, and exactly what this is cannot be said yet. However, Dr. Schwartz and Dr. Hebets do have a theory about what’s happening with these spiders. The notion that the male spider dies after mating, thus making sure his body is available for consumption by his mate, suggests that the mysterious extra nutritional value of the male spider’s body has evolved specifically for the purpose of nurturing the eggs that will eventually grow up to be the spider’s offspring.

Perhaps, in the past, female spiders have been so successful at catching males that few survived to father a second brood of eggs anyway, and that in any case any adaptation to enhance the number and fitness of a males firstborn clutch, even at the expense of his life, would be favored by natural selection. As a male I can say that this sounds like the worst one night stand a man can possibly have.

I think that this article was really interesting and shows the sheer power and prowess of natural selection and selective succession has within the animal kingdom and on individual species themselves. I think that later down the line, I would be really curious to see what other species evolve in a similar way, or how the dark fishing spider develops over time.

To connect to this back to what we are learning is ESS, I thought that it was really interesting to see this species realized niches and how it has adapted to survive and thrive in an aquatic ecosystem, which is an unusual home for an arachnid. Interestingly, 8 of the 109 families of spiders survive off eating fish in aquatic environments, and span over every continent except Antarctica. An example of a realized niche is how these aquatic spiders eat fish and their mates after sex. An example of some fundamental niches are that all spiders eat insects and cannot eat their prey whole, they need to break it down with unique chemical enzymes which they inject into their victims.

Another thing we have studied is food chains and different trophic levels. On average predators are 42 times larger than their prey (National Geographic), but these aquatic spiders challenge prey sometimes 2-5 times larger than themselves. I think this is interesting in that since these spiders are predating upon a range of fish and insects it’s hard to gauge whether they are Secondary or Tertiary consumers in the food chain. However, considering that birds and specific birds of prey feast on these spiders, it is hard to justify them being top predators or Quaternary consumers.

With this, we have also studied outside factors that can impact the structure of a food chain, and I think in the dark fishing spider’s case, habitat destruction and pollution to their water sources would have a major impact on their livelihood and their prey’s livelihood.

Sources: The Economist Magazine, and the National Geographic Society

 

Captivating Cigarettes: Edwin Morgans Extraordinary Piece

Edwin Morgan writes a curious free-verse poem titles “One Cigarette”, that explores the emotions of someone thinking back on their lover. Morgan purposely withholds from disclosing the gender 0f our narrator to evoke emotion and feeling in any readers gender. Edwin Morgan uses irregular rhymes, and a mixture of sight and half rhymes, to help the reader see how corrupted our narrators thoughts are, and to show us how he isn’t in the right frame of mind. In “One Cigarette”, there is also the use of personification and an extended metaphor to bring to life this cigarette that the poem revolves around. With this, Morgan also fluctuates the length of each line to help the reader envision the image of a flame or the embers of a cigarette at first glance over his work.  Perhaps Edwin is presenting to us this idea that perhaps love and relationships are as futile as a cigarette, and that they eventually burn out and blow away into the wind as ash.

Inspiring Italy: A Very Personal PDW Adventure

              I will be responding to the question “To what extent is the knowledge you gained from you PDW personal to you and to what extent is it knowledge that others share?”

Over the week that we spent in Italy with our PDW group, leaders, guides and classmates, I learned a number of different skills, gained from a variety of different experiences, and got to learn a lot about myself and the effect I have on others and myself. Throughout the trip I gained a lot of A Posteriori knowledge, or knowledge gained from reasoning or experiences. Our guide, Adam, along with Dr. Badcock, taught us a lot about the effect we had on the environment and the consequences of our actions that occur in turn, as a result of our impact on the environment. We had a lot of discussion over our forest walk, and in the first couple evenings, about the relationship that we have on different environmental communities and how they in turn impact and affect our lives because of this, at times, symbiotic relationship. We also learned about all sorts of different environmental communities and the different scales and boundaries that can be put around said communities. However, our trip to Aramengo did not just revolve around A Posteriori knowledge, a great part of our experiences in Italy was about gaining Tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge is knowledge virtually impossible to explain to others, and something only ourselves as individual’s experience. One evening, our guide Adam took us out on a night walk to explore and talk about ourselves and coming to terms with our various “demons” or fears etc. Adam, spoke about all sorts of different stories and the morals that followed, coming to terms and facing anger, growing up surrounded by different communities and what it means to transition from a “boy” to a “man” in today’s world, and what this means to us and the people around us. That night really had a powerful influence on me and how I look on myself and the world around me. I have had reflective periods like this before but each time is different, and there are infinite things you can learn about from others and yourself, which makes each time a unique experience. The nights that followed spurred some very reflective discussion between me and some of the other members on the trip and I think that what I gained from these discussions will forever be ingrained in my sphere of knowledge about myself and the people around me for a long time to come. I really enjoyed my time in Italy, and as a new student, I really enjoyed meeting, connecting and relating with the people around me, learning about myself and overall having a good time along the way. I think that I learned a great deal about the impact we have on the environment and the diversity between ecological communities and what that should mean to us as community members, and how this can be shared with the people around me.

Astonishing Auschwitz Models: Bringing To Justice Nazi War Criminals

(Photograph showing SS personnel Auschwitz staff resort)

New 3D models have been created, recreating Auschwitz in incredible detail, helping German prosecutors catch some of the last living Nazi war criminals. The 3D model helps the court see what exactly some of these Auschwitz guards could see, and whether or not they have an excuse for their actions. Previously, many war criminals claimed they couldn’t see what was happening and since the court had a lack of knowledge of the reality of the situation, many Nazis were let free, written off as innocent and ignorant to the crimes they allegedly committed. However, now that these models have been produced, many old Nazis are going to be brought back to court to see whether or not their previous claims are true or not, possibly bringing to justice war criminals, who for decades have been seen as innocent or were let off the hook. I think that this article published by the Guardian describing in detail the steps the development team of this project has taken, and what steps they’ll take in the future to help bring to court Nazis who may or may not be innocent. Rommel, 44, said his team is investigating a few dozen suspects, of whom he estimates a “double-digit number” are still alive and could potentially face court. I think its very interesting to see that Germany is still taking steps to uncover its past and bring to justice any old war criminals that still stain Germany’s history.