Myfootprint

1. What is your ecological footprint? (That is, if everyone lived like you, how many earths would it take to support the world population?)
3.94 Earths

2. As the world population grows, how will this impact the amount of resources (food, electricity, water, etc.) each person can consume and still remain within the sustainability of our planet? That is, what lifestyle changes will we need to make in order to ensure there is enough food and energy to sustain everyone?
There will be a large decrease in food and natural resources, and a rise in energy use. As for lifestyle changes, I think a large population as a whole don't really care because of their own unawareness or disbeliefs (such as people who say global warming is bs), but people are capable to make changes to ensure that less and less resources are being wasted.

3. What is the IPCC? What does it do?
The IPCC is the intergovernmental panel on climate change. It is an organization to get awareness on the climate shifts and potential consequences.

4. Which climates require the most energy and the least energy on average to live in? (Give an example of a country for each)
Cold climates require the most energy (such as Russia) and tropical, relatively dry including savannahs (example: Brazil)

5. What is the Climate Action Network? What does it do?
The Climate Action Network (CAN) is an networkof 500 Non-Governmental Organizations promoting governments and individuals to take actions in limiting the human-induced climate changes to a safe level.

6. How do energy efficient appliances, line-drying your clothes, and using compact fluorescent light bulbs each help to reduce carbon emissions?
Energy efficient appliances, line-drying clothes, and using compact fluorescent light bulbs collectively impact carbon emission output even though at a glance people don't think much about them. More work is done (kW-hrs) if we did not have energy efficient appliances or used the dryer all the time or using regular light bulbs; not only does it raise carbon emissions, but raises your electricity bills too!

7. Why are compact urban living and rural living more energy efficient than sprawling suburbs?
The thing about compact urban living is that it has lots of local and commercial buildings (walking distance). Rural living take very few trips if they need to go to the store or something and rely on themselves for resources. In suburban areas more energy is used per person because public/commercial transportation is varied and also housing is a factor.

8. What are carbon offsets?
Carbon offsets are offsets that help people calculate their carbon footprints and are used to try and make vehicles, houses or individual use carbon neutral.

9. Why does eating meat require more energy than eating plants?
There is much more room and energy involved in growing, feeding and allocating room to animals (meat) rather than grow and cultivating plants.

10. How do food miles and food processing and packaging play a role in a person’s ecological footprint? How do personal and community gardens help alleviate this?
The value of transporting and refrigerating requires energy, food that comes in paper uses trees. It's more advantageous for the environment if people buy food and groceries at local markets. Also, research shows that community or personal gardens make an impact on the value of food produced per year.

11. What is a “food footprint?” What is a “housing footprint?”
Food footprint is how large the food you eat energy-intensive wise, from raising and space to grow.

12. What construction and design features contribute to green buildings?
Passive solar heating, water efficient fixtures, recycled materials, and other green building materials

13. Finish the following statement: Energy is required to deliver and treat fresh water. We can reduce our water footprint by using water saving features and adopting water conservation habits.


14. Describe two benefits of “green” cleaning products.
No harmful chemicals
Won't contaminate water, fish, or wildlife (chemicals that leak into rivers, oceans, lakes)

15. What is planned obsolescence? How can we counter it?
Planned obsolescence is deliberate manufacturing of products that wear out quickly. To avoid this, we should try to repair as much as possible and only buy only products that are designed to last.

16. What are the five environmental and economic benefits of recycling?
Reduced landfill space
Fewer demands for raw materials
Less air and water pollution
Lower waste-disposal bills
Cheaper goods

17. Click the “Reduce your footprint” link at the end of the survey and write a one-paragraph plan for how you intend to reduce your footprint. Your plan should include a list of behaviors you are committed to changing. Ideally, I would like you to select at least one behavior from each of the seven categories on the “Reduce your footprint” page that you are going to work on.
To reduce my footprint, I suppose I can do more carpooling, but there's always a problem in trying to find a person to carpool with since schedules don't necessarily match. I don't own a home yet, so I don't think I could do anything about housing footprints except to turn off any electronics I'm not using or water-saving habits, which I already do. However I think I would have to work on my food footprint the most, such as eating less meat, but meat is so good!

Why you can read this - and the chimps can't

Though genes are over 90% similar between chimpanzees and humans, the way the gene expression occurs still differs. "In brain cells, the number of genes and the proteins they expressed differed at least five times more between humans and chimps than among the other species in the study." Those differences can make up what how the brain works from genes on and off taking place in the human brain and chimpanzee brain such as reading.

Humans, Chimps Not as Closely Relasted as Thought?

Studies showed that the DNA is a few more percent different than expected (from about 98.5% to 95%). The causes that relate to this shift is possible occurrences of mutations - substitution, insertion, and deletion in the nucleotides. By studying the human and chimpanzee differences, researchers hope to find insights on illnesses that affect humans regularly and not chimpanzees.

Humans: Riddle of the Bones

1. What is "Lucy" and how did it get its name?
Lucy is a fossil of the A. afarensis species and shows some of the earliest human ancestors. It got its name from the song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" which was a song that was playing.

2. Which hominid species does this activity focus on?
A. afarensis

3. Why do scientists believe these species all belong to the same family?
Found various fossils and were known as the First Family. They were the remains of 13 individuals and had characteristics that showed they were similar from one another species.

4. How old is each set of fossils shown in this activity?
Both the First Family fossil set and Lucy are 3.2 million years old, the Hadar Skull is 3.0 million years old & the Laetoli Footprints are 3.6 million years old.

5. Based on the description of each set of bones and the footprints, did this species live in trees or on land? Explain and defend your answer by referencing the evidence in your explanation.
I believe land, because Lucy's leg bones showed it being angular inwards as in humans

6. How did males and females of this species differ?
Males have larger muscle scars and females have a wider pelvic inlet.

7. How did the brains of this species compare to modern humans? What evidence supports this?
Small-sized brains about the size of chimps

Humans: Babies By Design

There are always pros and cons especially for creating babies by design. It would be quite fortunate if all babies were genetically modified so that they wouldn't have an inevitable death because of a disease, but parents on their own should be aware of any genetic diseases that might affect them in creating a baby. However, I would most likely support the should not create babies by design, because our genetic code creates our own individualism and that's something I find as aesthetic.

Humans: Origins of Humankind

Species that lead to humans:

Orrorin tugensis
Australopithecus anamensis
Kenyanthropus platyops
Homo habilis
Homo erectus
Homo sapiens

Survival: Microbe Clock

A) Describe in detail how Streptococcus pneumoniae has developed antibiotic resistance over the past century.
Streptococcus pneumonia has developed resistance over time against antibiotics and over drugs. Those bacteria that remain rapidly evolve and replicate leaving those that are susceptible to die out, and leaving the ones which are resistant to survive.

B) Start the clock. The one minute of division here represents 186 days of actual division. How many times did the cells divide in this time? How many total cells resulted at the end of this time? How many mutations occcurred in the population during this time?
Replicated 13,391 million times; population of 313, 753 million; 1,326 mutations