Name: Paul Grobstein
Username: pgrobste@brynmawr.edu
Subject: Welcome
Date: Mon Aug 31 10:50:08 EDT 1998
Comments:
A place for thoughts, questions, comments, whenever you happen to have them. And to see what other people are thinking ... and to leave thoughts you have in response. Hope you find it a useful adjunct to the course.

Name: jenny yuh
Username: jennyuh@rocketmail.com
Subject:
Date: Thu Sep 3 12:50:03 EDT 1998
Comments:
Serendip is an excellent resource! Glad to see professors are taking advantage of technology to better the classes. I'll be looking forward to see up and coming additions!!!

Name: amie kershbaum
Username: akershba@ada.brynmawr.edu
Subject: text vs. lecture
Date: Wed Sep 16 15:13:18 EDT 1998
Comments:
I think the difference between Proff. Grobstein's lectures and the textbook is a difference in focus. The textbook is very rigid and fact oriented, while the lectures are more philosophical and focus on overriding themes. Compared to other biology textbooks I've had, however, this book does a better job of reinforcing the theme of evolution throughout the chapters.

Name: Chris Marchionni
Username: cmarchio
Subject: better
Date: Fri Sep 18 10:58:39 EDT 1998
Comments:
There is a big and better difference between the text and the lectures. The lectures are not as dry or as in your face as the text can be sometimes. While I do not mind the text readings I definately find that the lecture is a great way to suplement what the text takes for granted.

Name: amie kershbbaum
Username: akershba@brynmawr.ed
Subject: francesca's comment
Date: Mon Sep 21 20:27:09 EDT 1998
Comments:
I think the remark Francesca made in class today about viewing Spanish history in terms of evolution not towards better, but just towards different mixtures of cultures was phenomenal! I am a history major and have studied Social Darwinism and the Hegelian dialectic of the evolution of the Volkgeist, both of which consider history as a progression towards a higher good. Viewed in light of our class' defintion of evolution these argumetns lose their weight. Additionally, remembering that present cultures are not "better" than past cultures helps us to approach them with less prejudice and more respect for their differences.

Name: Paul Grobstein
Username: pgrobste@brynmawr.edu
Subject: matters arising
Date: Wed Sep 23 10:33:31 EDT 1998
Comments:
I too was struck by Francesca's comment in class. And like Amie's further extension of it. One of the interesting questions about biology is: what ways of thinking does it suggest that would be hard to get to in other ways? And evolution has always been a rich source of such maybe generalizable ways of thinking, sometimes for the good, other times maybe less so. "Survival of the fittest" is one example, perhaps with both bad and good aspects. The idea that part of the explanation of things is in the past rather than the present ("history dependence") is another. A third, which we'll talk a lot more about, is the idea of order emerging from selection from a randomly generated set of possibilities. To which we can now add the Francesca/Amie principle: change over time does not necessarily mean that what appears later is better than what was present earlier; the past may well persist as an important element of the present.

There are a couple of other things that might be worth talking more about. One is the thought from last lecture that living and non-living things don't differ in the components of which they're made but only in the organization of those components. What do people think of that as an implication of current biological understanding? And is it usefully generalizable? It might also be interesting to go back to the question I posed a week or so ago. How is our definition of a living organism different from that in the textbook? Did anybody notice that "autonomy" isn't in the textbook list? Wonder why, and what else that idea might or might not be useful for?

Hope everyone is continuing to enjoy life.

Name: amie kershbaum
Username: akershba@ada.brynmawr.edu
Subject: lipids value
Date: Sun Oct 4 14:35:27 EDT 1998
Comments:
Because lipids are the biological molecules with the highest capacity to store energy, human's affinity for them makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. In pre-agrarian times, food was available on a very irregular basis, and lipids would have been the best consumption option, as they offered the most energy. Also, the so-called "obesity-gene" found in mice and beleived to be in humans could thus be viewed as a genetic atavism, a survival of an evolutionary adaption that no longer seems adaptive. This suggests the notion that not only are there physical vestigial structures, but genetic ones as well.

Name: amie kershbaum
Username: akershba@brynmawr.edu
Subject: another thought on fats
Date: Thu Oct 15 16:30:00 EDT 1998
Comments:
The text explains that fats are the most efficient means of energy storage, in part because carbohydrates expand to twice their weight in water. And it gives an example of how much more a woman would weigh if the same amount of energy were stored in glycogen than in fat deposits. This makes me think that fat really isn't such the nutritional "enemy" that its made out to be in the health food movement. I think this illustrates how easily information can be manipulated to make an argument and how knowledge of science helps clarify misinformation.

Name: amie kershbaum
Username: akershba@brynmawr.edu
Subject: social organization mirroring cellular organization
Date: Fri Oct 23 18:46:19 EDT 1998
Comments:
The importance of the division of labor made possible by the internal boundedness in eukaryotic cells reminds me of the fundamental impact of specialization in industrial production of goods. It is interesting to observe that the same basic ordering principles acheive remarkable efficiency in both the natural and "manmade" worlds. This cdan be related to the notion of "clumpiness" in diversity, and suggests that certain improbable assemblies are more efficient than others.

Name: Paul Grobstein
Username: pgrobste@brynmawr.edu
Subject: Lipids, social organization, and so forth
Date: Mon Oct 26 14:17:10 EST 1998
Comments:
Lots of "vestigial" genetic structures, almost certainly. And knowledge of science certainly helps with misinformation, but can also contribute to it. A concern about fats comes not only from the health food movement but also from biomedicine. An instructive story in this regard has to do with cholesterol, which has for years been publicly labelled bad based on studies showing that high levels of cholesterol correlate with increased risk of heart attack. There is nothing wrong with those studies, but what has tended to be ignored by investigators focused on heart disease is that overall mortality isn't reduced in low cholesterol populations, with the implication that some other cause of death is higher in such populations (see news story, based on an a recent article in Annals of Internal Medicine). As one might expect of improbable assemblies, one factor relates to lots of different things rather than to only one. Maybe what's important to avoid manipulation isn't so much scientific information as a scientific perspective (one with a reasonable level of skepticism).

I like your suggested parallel between specialization in cells and that industrial production. Want to carry it one step further and suggest that a non-hierarchical management scheme (as one finds in cells) might also be more "efficient" in some sense? Others have begun exploring such parallels in "complex systems". Out of Control, a recent book by Kevin Kelly, is an example.

Name: Selena Roker
Username: sroker@brynmawr.edu
Subject: Wednesdays lecture
Date: Thu Oct 29 16:01:31 EST 1998
Comments:
I don't know about everyone else but I really enjoyed Wednesdays lecture. I can now honestly say that I understand the process that cells go through to release genetic information. I just wish the text could have showed me in fewer words! I especially liked stepping away from the technology for a minute, I hope that we can have a few more lectures conducted in this manner!

Name: amie kershbaum
Username: akershba@brynmawr.edu
Subject: processes pertaining to genetic information
Date: Sat Oct 31 15:12:12 EST 1998
Comments:
Now that I understand that the nucleus, and therefore DNA, does not determine cellular behavior, I can more fully appreciate the argument for nurture vs. nature in development. Clearly, genetic information is only a possibilty on a cellular level highly susceptible to environmental influences. By extrapolating this conclusion on a much broader organismal level, one can notice far reaching implications on a variety of social issues including tendenccies to poverty, drug addiction, etc. in low income areas.

Name: Lily Nonomiya
Username: lnonomiy@brynmawr.edu
Subject: Cholesterol Article
Date: Fri Nov 6 00:20:01 EST 1998
Comments:
The article, "Study Links Low Cholesterol to Violent Death" was really interesting, and I recommend others take a look at it. It takes about a minute to read. The article made me think about how many misconceptions about scientific discovery there must be in the world, and why people have not done much to fix society's stereotypes about such things. The article showed that we, as the general public, have to read about scientific breakthroughs with extreme caution, and cannot even take reports on scientific breakthroughs (something we always thought were reliable and "are always true -- just because.") as seriously as we always have. The article made me think about why scientific discoveries become so falsely represented to the public: are the representations intentional? Or does science present the "truth" as it is, and we manipulate it (intentionally or unintentionally) as the general public? Why is it that we have always thought that high cholesterol (not low) has led to death? Where have we gotten the impression that fats are bad, when really they aren't. One would be inclined to say that the media is largely responsible for this, and if so, why is this message sent to us in the first place? I wanted to know what other people thought about the reliability of scientific discovery. Please share your thoughts. Our bio class has helped me be more aware of the reliability of what we read though, our previous lectures on fatty acids, protein structure, etc. have extreme practical value in following up on science today.

Name: amie kershbaum
Username: akershba
Subject: totipotency
Date: Tue Nov 17 08:49:13 EST 1998
Comments:
I was really fascinated by the concept of totipotency. I think it has a lot of significant implications in this age of genetic engineering, especially cloning. Theoretically, totipotency could be exploited to create several clones if the zygote was permitted to divide as many times as possible until it is about to lose totipotency. Such exploitation could probably speed the cloning process on a large scale. THe ethical complications of totipotency are intersting as well. One could argue that cloning is not unethical , it merely allows multiple copies of the same organism, which are inherently capable of existence to come into being.

Name: Lily Nonomiya
Username: lnonomiy@brynmawr.edu
Subject: Cloning
Date: Tue Dec 1 15:00:15 EST 1998
Comments:
I did my www report on the ethical issues surrounding cloning, and just wanted to share an interesting tidbit of information about cloning since we were discussing the moral and ethical implications of it earlier. Several articles I read on the web pointed out that two sexes would be unnecessary if our society were to endorse cloning, since only one would be needed to reproduce. Several articles I read pointed out that there would be "no need for men" if the reproductive process were to be reduced to. Whether this is a benefit or not, I am not sure, but I just wanted to point it out since it did not come up in our brief discussion in class on the subject. There is an article on the web from Time magazine entitled, "The Age of Cloning" which I think everyone should take a look at, since it lays out a very interesting argument about both sides of this issue, with particularly good points about the many benefits of cloning. Please post up comments/opinions, etc. if you have something to say!

Name: Selena Roker
Username: sroker@brynmawr.edu
Subject: Cloning
Date: Sun Dec 6 17:12:22 EST 1998
Comments:
Cloning is a phenomenal concept. Extraordinary break-throughs in science can be made possible through cloning. However, like any great thing there are setbacks! For example, where do we draw the line for using the cloning device? Who is to decide upon this? And how do we know that such a decision maker does not have malicious intents? (The entire world doesn't abide by the Honor Code as we do!) For reasons such as this, cloning should be outlawed for fear of abuse of power. Besides when you think about who will reak the benefits from cloning internal organs, (the rich), it is unfair to exclude people who are not as fortunate to gain the same benefits of cloning.