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http://www.webmedcentral.com/images/Header_Logo.giftext/html2015-02-23T07:42:40+01:00http://www.webmedcentral.com/Prof. Kurt HeiningerDuality of stochasticity and natural selection: a cybernetic evolution theory
http://www.webmedcentral.com/article_view/4796
Orthodox Darwinism assumes that environments are stable. There is an important difference between breeding (Darwin’s role model of evolution) and evolution itself: while in breeding the final goal is preset and constant, adaptation to varying biotic and abiotic environmental conditions is a moving target and selection can be highly fluctuating. Evolution is a cybernetic process whose Black Box can be understood as learning automaton with separate input and output channels. Cybernetics requires a closed signal loop: action by the system causes some change in its environment and that change is fed to the system via information (feedback) that enables the system to change its behavior. The input signal is given by a complex biotic and abiotic environment. Natural selection is the output/outcome of the learning automaton.
Environments are stochastic. Particularly, density- and frequency-dependent coevolutionary interactions generate chaotic and unpredictable dynamics. Stochastic environments coerce organisms into risky lotteries. Chance favors the prepared. The ‘Law of Requisite Variety’ holds that cybernetic systems must have internal variety that matches their external variety so that they can self-organize to fight variation with variation. Both conservative and diversifying bet-hedging are the risk-avoiding and -spreading insurance strategies in response to environmental uncertainty. The bet-hedging strategy tries to cover all bases in an often unpredictable environment where it does not make sense to “put all eggs into one basket”. In this sense, variation is the bad/worst-case insurance strategy of risk-aversive individuals. Variation is pervasive at every level of biological organization and is created by a multitude of processes: mutagenesis, epimutagenesis, recombination, transposon mobility, repeat instability, gene expression noise, cellular network dynamics, physiology, phenotypic plasticity, behavior, and life history strategy. Importantly, variation is created condition-dependently, when variation is most needed – in organisms under stress. The bet-hedging strategy also manifests in a multitude of life history patterns: turnover of generations, reproductive prudence, iteroparity, polyandry, and sexual reproduction.
Cybernetic systems are complex systems. Complexity is conceived as a system’s potential to assume a large number of states, i.e., variety. Complex systems have both stochastic and deterministic properties and, in fact, generate order from chaos. Non-linearity, criticality, self-organization, emergent properties, scaling, hierarchy and evolvability are features of complex systems. Emergent properties are features of a complex system that are not present at the lower level but arise unexpectedly from interactions among the system’s components. Only within an intermediate level of stochastic variation, somewhere between determined rigidity and literal chaos, local interactions can give rise to complexity. Stochastic environments change the rules of evolution. Lotteries cannot be played and insurance strategies not employed with single individuals. These are emergent population-level processes that exert population-level selection pressures generating variation and diversity at all levels of biological organization. Together with frequency and density-dependent selection, lottery- and insurance-dependent selection act on population-level traits.
The duality of stochasticity and selection is the organizing principle of evolution. Both are interdependent. The feedback between output and input signals inextricably intertwines both stochasticity and natural selection, and the individual- and population-levels of selection. Sexual reproduction with its generation of pre-selected variation is the paradigmatic bet-hedging enterprise and its evolutionary success is the selective signature of stochastic environments.Sexual reproduction is the proof of concept that (epi)genetic variation is no accidental occurrence but a highly regulated process and environmental stochasticity is its evolutionary “raison d’être”.Evolutionary biology is plaqued by a multitude of controversies (e.g. concerning the level of selection issue and sociobiology. Almost miraculously, these controversies can be resolved by the cybernetic model of evolution and its implications.text/html2011-03-08T17:50:32+01:00http://www.webmedcentral.com/Dr. Csaba VargaA History-Based Environmental Health: On the Frontiers of Ecology, Public Health and History
http://www.webmedcentral.com/article_view/1701
Possible interactions of the historical-political events and environmental hygienic circumstances can outline the central subject of a novel – history based – interdisciplinary environmental health. The author cites several examples from the human history when both the environment and the human health were impacted by wars, revolutions, occupations, territorial changes, etc. The examples taken predominantly from the European history of the 20th century indicate the importance of the new attitude.Performing research on relations of the environment and human health a dilemma has often arisen: development of diseases is (also) determined by social factors beside biotic and abiotic environmental ones. This issue is studied by social medicine, ab ovo. But social medicine is not focused on how historical-political events affect human health via changes of environment, in not sensu stricto topographic [End Note 1] meaning. What events of the past can be recognized in the background of the recent environmental situations and how can they define the present international and intergovernmental relations? However, these basically historical problems often appear in the present attitudes of certain countries to the common natural environment.Two basic questions markedly indicate the subject of a new conception of history based interdisciplinary Environmental Health (Varga 2009):– How can environmental health or hygienic factors impact the human history or can they determine it?– Are there any effects of historical events on the environmental hygienic circumstances?Several, partly independent topics can be considered in this field, for example the environmental (esp. physical and chemical) pollution that is not a typically contemporary challenge. Biological factors should be mentioned studying correlations among communicable or non-communicable diseases, and wars or other military, political events (revolutions, territorial changes). Genetics can play role in the long-term evolution of history, as well.Let us see some distinct examples of world history to prove these statements. Infectious diseases and susceptibility of populations Why was the European “white man” so successful in certain historical periods and was not other time and elsewhere? Outbreaks initiated by the colonizers could play crucial role in conquests of the Caucasian race. Prehistoric spread of mankind encountered basically geographical barriers allowing only few individuals to get across. Beside the consequential decrease in genetic diversity, these individuals did not carry the majority of characteristic pathogens and parasites of the species, either. It was sometimes fatal to the particular populations. Their offsprings had been living through several generations in a pathogen-free environment and because of high susceptibility they became the victims of epidemics initiated by the colonizers [End Note 2]. That is, European colonizers conquered each continent in military sense, while biological prevalence (habitat) of the Caucasian race is much more moderate. In America, the conquerors were aware of the specific situation and they applied this knowledge. Sometimes, however, the tactics backfired, e.g. during the war of independence in Haiti, where the French army faced to the more resistant population of African origin to yellow fever (Rózsa 2005).Later, the pathogens and parasites determined the outcome of revolutions and wars. During the Russian revolution, there was an outbreak of typhus (transmitted by lice) so severe that Lenin remarked: "Either socialism will defeat the louse, or the louse will defeat socialism." (HistoryHouse 2010). If the ectoparasites had won that time, mankind could have saved much more human sacrifices later.In 1848-49, one of European revolutions, the Hungarian revolution and war of independence was beaten by the Habsburgs, with help of the Russian tsar. But Hungary did not only yield to superior number of the Russian army, but also to cholera came from Russia with the 200 000 soldiers (Varga 2009).But it is unnecessary to go back to the 19th century. The history of the modern wars is simultaneously the history of outbreaks, inasmuch as, up to the WWII mortality of communicable diseases has been higher than mortality of direct military actions (Molnár 2009). Demography Wars also have a well-known specialty, since they can markedly change basic demographic parameters. Armies consist of males; therefore sex ratios alter evidently following the war. But artificial genocides also occurred during history, when the primary goal was the liquidation of a nation (Armenian and Jewish holocaust). Stalin also tried it with the Ukrainian nation by starvation, in 1932-33. For the further examples one can look up the historical works written about CEE (Central/Eastern Europe) (Polish officers’ tragedy in Katyn, genocide of Hungarian civil population by Tito’s partisans in Yugoslavia, etc.). Examples are not restricted to dictatorships. After WWII, the brave democratic-bourgeois state of Czechoslovakia behaved against own German and Hungarian minorities sometime more barbarously than the Nazis did with their war enemies (Dedina 2001.). Environmental pollution History of air pollution has also been saturated with politics. Even during the Peloponnesian war (BC 430, Sparta vs. Athens) as a progenitor of chemical weapons, sulfur and asphalt was ignited generating bulk of smoke and sulfur dioxide at the assault of Plataies (Karatzas 2000). This type of armament steadfastly went on till the 20th century; indeed, research has not stopped even up to now…Water has also been involved in the ‘military’ environmental pollution issue. After the WWII, the winners dumped some 50 000 tons of German chemical weapons in the Baltic Sea. Saline water corroded the containers and the viscous product reached the shore initiating environmental catastrophe and severe health impacts (see: MERCW Project 2010).Not only chemical but physical pollution was also function of the historical or contemporary political hostilities. Let us remember the nuclear tests during cold war and their impact on background radiation (nuclear tests at the Bikini Atoll, French Polynesia, etc.). During the Soviet A-bomb experiments in Kazakhstan, soldiers were directly exposed to the explosion and radiation to measure the human effects! (Elegant 2002)Beside the air, quality and quantity of water may be also strategic weapon for some powers. During the history, lack of water became ‘casus belli’ primarily among desert countries, but manipulation with rivers is an éclat example of the nature transformation of Stalinism. How many people were killed in the Gulags in building of White Sea Canal or turning of Soviet Central Asian rivers like Ob and Yenisei (Solzhenitsyn 1973)? The fate of the Aral Sea [End Note 3] can also be mentioned. Its drying out is not only the consequence of global warming, basically caused by these manipulations. New questions have been initiated by getting dry of the Renascence (Vozrozhdeniya) Island. It was isolated earlier by the water. In this island unknown quantity and quality products of the Soviet chemical and biological armament was stored in a top-secret research center. So far, the fate of these weapons has been unknown. Well-known, however, is the high frequency of DNA-adducts in the population living in the region. Paralleled endemic aggregation of certain tumors has also been described (NatGeo 2007). The British experiments with anthrax endangered ‘only’ the Gruinard Island. The island was quarantined for 48 years (Rózsa 2005). Environmental (in)justices and national hostilitiesEnvironmental health research in the turn-of-the century called attention to the relationship of socio-economical deprivation and environmental pollution. Not unexpectedly, this field close to sociology generated the novel conception of ‘environmental/ecological (in)justice and (in)equality’. Some authors exactly proved that ecologically hazardous sites and facilities (hazardous waste dumps, large emitters, power plants, etc.) are disproportionately located and concentrated in communities of color and working-class communities (Faber and Krieg 2002, Shepard et al 2002). That is, lower social rank will determine lower quality of the available environment, as well. However, these interactions can both occur among countries and – on ethnic basis – even within one country (Varga et al 2002). The classical example is the multiethnic Carpathian Basin, or the whole CEE region can be mentioned. There are deep historical roots of national hostilities here: e.g. Polish–German, Polish–Lithuanian, Polish–Russian, Baltic–Russian, Russian–Ukrainian, Czech–German, Hungarian–Little Entente [End Note 4], etc.The primary subjects of the environmental injustices are the national minorities in CEE. These minorities have mainly been products of the history of the stormy 20th century, when suddenly millions of people found themselves in another country, depending on the interests of great powers. That is, they are organic part of an existing (neighboring) nation, but frequently second class citizens of another state. (One can find such territories – both enclaves and compact zones along the borders – from the Baltic to the Balkans, in great extent [Brown 1999; Varga and Ember 2000]). Manipulated (imbalanced) industrialization was a characteristic feature of the new bourgeois states created the Paris-Versailles peace system after WWI, as well as, later of the national communist regimes ruled by such dictators as Ceausescu, Husák, Zhivkov, etc. The main political aim primarily was to change the ethnic composition of the newly harbored territories with the immigration of the national majority population [End Note 5]. Later another aspect became important: to disappear air and water pollutants rapidly towards the neighboring countries. These environmental „hot spots” exist even today, causing permanent hazard to the population of more than one country. The neighboring countries can cause potential environmental risks to each other (Varga et al 2002), see the international debates on nuclear power plants (Austria vs. Czech Republic, Austria and Hungary vs. Slovakia); atmospheric pollution (Germany vs. Poland) or river pollutions (downstream vs. upstream countries). The cross-border pollutions proliferate with the appearance of the new types of ecocolonialism (Varga 2009a). Multinational enterprises allocate their hazardous technologies (e.g. cyanide technology of gold-mining) to the CEE region, because the more developed countries have already banned them. (These actions have only been frequent in the third world, so far. Let us remember the catastrophe of Union Carbide in India.). Joining the EU did not eliminate these environmental problems, either. The scandals of Slovak redirection of Danube from Hungarian territory (Int. Court of Justice 1997) or Romanian pollution of the Hungarian Tisza River with fatal quantities of cyanide and heavy metals (European Comm. 2001) are continuously poisoning the international relations, none the less all the three involved countries became member of the EU. It is also conspicuous how more developed older EU member states export their environmental problems to the new less developed ones. Bavarian companies (Germany) illegally transported hazardous waste for dumping to Hungary. Austrian leather industry pollutes Raab/Rába River entering Hungary. West-European countries import cheap electricity from Slovakia produced by nuclear and hydroelectric power plants, built and financed just by these countries. Canadian and Australian companies plan new gold-mines in Transylvania (Romania) using cyanide technology, endangering downstream countries (Varga 2009a). ConclusionIn summary, why historical environmental health research or creating such a new discipline is necessary? At first, these topics are neglected either by history or health sciences, at least in this special context, caused by not a bad attitude but rather simply lack of knowledge. This specific view namely needs specific knowledge of both sciences involved. Secondly, the gold standards of research tools and methods have not worked out yet, that would be otherwise necessary for designing really exact studies. And finally, journals are not open to publish the results of such studies. These analyses, naturally, cannot avoid political statements, as history also saturated with politics. The attitude of the journals mentioned above can be explained by different objective and subjective factors. Facts and arguments regarding the historical and recent situation (e.g. of the Balkans or the CEE region) may be so unbelievable that some editors and reviewers of international journals cannot even understand it. If, however, the particular editorial worker belongs to an involved nation in the studied affairs, dissent or resistance based on the ethnic-cultural motivation, should also be considered.Dixi (et salvavi animam meam)text/html2010-10-19T18:06:51+01:00http://www.webmedcentral.com/Mr. Muthulingam UdayakumarA Floristic Study In A Perennial Lake Of Thiruvallur District, South India
http://www.webmedcentral.com/article_view/1037
Aim of the study was to document the aquatic macrophyte wealth of a perennial fresh water wetland ecosystem called Ambattur lake (ARL) through qualitative survey. ARL is situated in Thiruvallur district of south India. This is the very first of its kind on ARL, exhibited the wealth of macrophytes. A total of 56 plant species including 52 Angiosperm and 4 Pteridophyte were observed and collected from the lake. All the collected species were identified and checked with regional floras and available checklists. The most speciose families were Poaceae followed by Cyperaceae and Nymphaeaceae. Among five morpho-ecologic groups, emergent anchored with 30 species dominated the lake followed by floating and floating leaved anchored. Bioresource extraction was documented through contact and personal interviews with the local people. Anthropogenic pressure is escalating around the lake. Further qualitative and ecological assessments are needed to conserve this irreplaceable and invaluable perennial ecosystem.text/html2011-11-24T16:37:09+01:00http://www.webmedcentral.com/Mr. Raj P SinghA Study of Polypetalous Plant Diversity of Moradabad District, Uttar Pradesh, India.
http://www.webmedcentral.com/article_view/1892
This paper aimed to document the diversity of polypetalous plant species along with their vernacular names, habit, habitat, and their occurrence found in Moradabad district of Uttar Pradesh in India. This study is first of its kind conducted in the district showing current status of these plants. Polypetalous plants contribute substantially to the diversity of the district and their proper knowledge could play important role in planning for conservation and sustainable use of available resources. A total of 235 polypetalous plant species belonging to 154 genera and 46 families are included in the study.Keywords: Angiosperms, Dicotyledonous plants, Polypetalous plants, Taxonomy, Biodiversity, Conservation.text/html2012-08-18T18:29:01+01:00http://www.webmedcentral.com/Dr. Swaminathan RajanA Study Of Drinking Water Quality Of Aminjikarai, J.J. Nagar, Valluvarkottam and Vadapalani Area Of Chennai, Tamil Nadu
http://www.webmedcentral.com/article_view/3655
Water quality is closely linked to water use and health of the people. According to WHO, about 80% of the diseases of human beings are related to water quality only. In order to assess the drinking water quality of Chennai, the water samples were collected from the source water (Red Hills Lake), treated water at Kilpauk water treatment plant and two water Trunk Mains which supply Aminjikarai, J.J.Nagar and Valluvarkottam, Vadapalani area of North Western part of Chennai including the dead-end of distribution systems. The present study was undertaken during the period of December 2008 to May 2009. A total number of six stations were fixed for drawing the water samples in which Station I and II remains the same for both the trunk Mains. The 1st Trunk Main supplies water to J.J.Nagar through Aminjikarai from Kilpauk water treatment plant. The 2nd Trunk Main supplies water to Vadapalani through Valluvarkottam from Kilpauk water treatment plant. Water samples were analyzed for physico-chemical and microbiological quality. The results indicate that the water supplies of Chennai are suitable for drinking as per the guidelines. However, the TDS level had exceeded the permissible limit in one station and the level of Iron was higher than the desirable limit in most of the stations of water supply in the study area. The contamination of microbial flora of water was also reported occasionally.text/html2015-03-30T08:50:45+01:00http://www.webmedcentral.com/Prof. Kurt HeiningerDuality of stochasticity and natural selection shape the ecology-driven pattern of social interactions: the fall of Hamilton\'s rule
http://www.webmedcentral.com/article_view/4804
Both competition and cooperation are pervasive at all levels of biological organization. Traditionally, the theory of evolution, understood as “red in tooth and claw” is challenged by the mere existence of cooperation. As a plausible explanation of this conundrum, Hamilton’s rule has dominated sociobiology for 50 years, but its genetic component (relatedness) is increasingly questioned. On the other hand, there is no doubt that social interactions are regulated by ecological (cost-benefit) factors.
Hamilton’s rule, like Darwin’s theory, implicitly assumes a stable environment. Stable environments favor selfish individuals that are selected to maximize their fitness. Hamilton’s rule allegedly explains the paradox of altruism, that selfish individuals forego their own reproductive opportunities to help close kin to reproduce. Kin selection/inclusive fitness was Hamilton’s explanation for this conundrum. But abiotic and biotic environments are not stable, but variable, often unpredictable. Particularly, biotic environments with their manifold conflicts, Red Queen coevolutionary arms races, and density- and frequency-dependence of fitness have often chaotic dynamics. Environmental stochasticity, resulting in uncertain, unpredictable reproductive success, changes fundamentally the rules for the “gamble of life”. A cybernetic model of evolution revealed the duality of stochasticity and natural selection at input and output levels of the evolutionary Black Box, resulting in multilevel selection of social behavior (Heininger, 2013, 2015). From microbes to mammals, cooperation is selected-for in harsh, uncertain and unpredictable environments. In stochastic environments, cooperation trades individual fitness maximization for less variability and greater reliability of evolutionary outcomes. Thus, the evolution of cooperation is a bet-hedging (risk spreading) strategy of risk-averse individuals. The biological default setting of individuals is neither selfish nor cooperative but ecologically context-dependent and dynamic. Competition and cooperation are threshold traits of nonlinear complex systems on a continuum of ecological variables. The frequent kin structure of communities is not the predominant reason for cooperation/altruism but the result of limited dispersal. Limited dispersal and the evolution of cooperation share environmental stochasticity as common cause resulting in spurious relationships. The environmental conditions that favor cooperativity discourage dispersal and promote philopatry, thus shaping the preferential kinship structure of cooperative communities. Under more adverse ecological conditions, kin competition can strongly antagonize the benefits of kin cooperation and inhibit the evolution of cooperation in viscous populations. Not kinship but context-dependent, pleiotropic processes shape the dynamic sociobiological behavior of populations.
The ecological conditions and genetic “fossil record” of social behavior in both prokaryotic and eukaryotic microbes hold the key to understand the evolutionary present of cooperation in higher taxa. In microbes, cooperative behavior is induced by adverse conditions, particularly starvation, leading to social aggregations with the formation of complex patterns such as fruiting bodies and biofilms. In colonies of metabolically stressed clonal cells the competition for scarce resources is decided by a fair lottery. Experiments with bacteria and social amoeba suggest that cell fate ‘decisions’ (either survival as spores or cell death whose remains fuel the metamorphosis of spores) are stochastic, and moreover that these ‘decisions’ are controlled by genetically-encoded probabilities that are evolvable. Behind the “veil of ignorance”, the competitors are not “aware” of their relative position in the competitive hierarchy. This hierarchy is determined stochastically through a variety of cellular processes with inherent noise that render the cells heterogeneous and the lotteries fair.
The vast majority of cooperative systems are characterized by dominance hierarchies with asymmetric conflicts between dominants and subordinates over limited reproductive opportunities. Eusocial societies, the Holy Grail of kin selection theory, are despotic Orwellian societies that only serve the reproductive needs of selfish Big Sisters and Brothers that for this purpose enslave, police, and suppress their worker castes by aggression and chemical agents. In this respect they resemble a unitary metazoan organism with its reproductive monopoly of the germline. Punishment allows the evolution of cooperation (or anything else) in sizable groups; thus neither altruism nor inclusive fitness gains are behaviorally or causally involved in these despotic systems. Intriguingly, queen pheromones are even able to suppress reproductive activity across species boundaries e.g. from honeybees to fruit flies. The existence of this oppressive system clearly argues against the role of inclusive fitness in the evolution of eusociality. Nestmate recognition, the eusocial version of the immune system and histocompatibility complex, has the function to ensure the reproductive monopoly. Within my alternative conceptual framework of colony fitness a joint genetic-physiological-behavioral- ecological hypothesis of eusociality in insects is presented.
In stochastic environments, reproductive success is unpredictable and highly variable. In taxa without parental brood care, particularly insects, survivorship to reproductive maturity is extremely low. Even in eusocial insects with independent colony foundation, the vast majority of attempts to establish a colony will fail. The extent to which immediate gains are preferred over future rewards is known as future discounting. Individuals who grow up in environments where resources are scarce, competition is intense, and mortality is high should discount the future with its uncertain benefits more heavily than individuals who grow up in abundant, supportive, long-lived habitats. On the other hand, an uncertain, unpredictable environment selects for evolutionary gambling, and either conservative or diversifying bet-hedging as individual- or population-level insurance to individual risk. The deterministic Hamilton’s rule is hardly compatible with the stochasticity of reproductive success in uncertain, unpredictable environments. If the basic assumptions of kin selection/inclusive fitness theory would be right, eusociality should have evolved in (i) less adverse environments with less unpredictable reproductive success, and (ii) in taxa with more predictable reproductive success and, hence, less uncertain inclusive fitness benefits.
The insight that cooperation is a selected-for trait in stochastic environments unifies the so-far distinct concepts of cooperation, mutualism, symbiosis and cooperation in mating systems. Cooperation emerges as a self-organized behavior of complex systems. Phenomena such as swarm-behavior and -intelligence and division of labor emerge from the interplay of both stochastic and deterministic forces, generating order from disorder through self-organization. Responding to the uncertainties of lotteries with insurance policies, populations engage in nest/burrow building, social contracts with assured fitness returns and social queuing. Via the law of large numbers evolution generated a form of automatic biological insurance against idiosyncratic risk.
From a systems biology perspective Hamilton’s rule is simplistic, biased by observation selection, static, and parochial (ignoring the world outside its limited scope, i.e., both the huge majority of cooperative behaviors targeted to nonkin and to other species and being blind to epistemological inputs e.g. from complexity theory and neurobiology). Hamilton’s rule was (and many mathematical models still are) shaped by an egalitarian worldview in which autonomous individuals “decide” to forego their reproduction and help their kin to ensure the representation of their genes in the next generation. In nature, however, the vast majority of cooperative systems are characterized by dominance hierarchies with asymmetric conflicts. The “decision” of subordinates to help is not self-determined but enforced by despotic dominants and the prevailing environmental conditions that limit the subordinates’ options for independent reproduction. In a world of nonlinear biological processes and social interactions, complex emergent behavior, and probabilistic theories, Hamilton’s linear and deterministic rule is a plausibility-based anachronism (one of Gould and Lewontin’s “just-so stories”) rooted in Newtonian thinking. Increasingly, “expanded” definitions of altruism and indirect fitness have been used to rescue the concept. The sociobiological definition of altruism, as one of an outcome, does not say how this outcome has been achieved. In sociobiological parlance, definitions such as fitness transfer by force, “enforced altruism”, as a result of mere luck “coin-flipping altruism”, or the mutual exchange of commodities “reciprocal altruism”, pervert the common sense definition of altruism. In its last consequence, kin selection theory is a fascistoid concept, emphasizing the cohesive value of genetic homogeneity for a population tied together by parochial altruism. Parochial altruism promotes group conflict and may coevolve with warfare. On the other hand, mutualism causes partners to become increasingly dependent on each other as a basis for peaceful coexistence in societies.text/html2022-02-22T04:26:49+01:00http://www.webmedcentral.com/Dr. Deepak GuptaQuantifying Limits Of Diversity In The Times Of Digital Singularity Becoming The Biggest Enslaver Ever Known In The History Of Global Humanity
http://www.webmedcentral.com/article_view/5768
It is way too early to raise the question about the ceiling of diversity when even the floor of diversity has not been penetrated although we may never know when we have breached the lower limit of diversity until and unless we have quantified it [1]. In nature, selection pressures seem to automatically define and refine these limits for sustainable environments although humanity seems to have taken it upon itself to set those limits. Even when humanity learns to define and refine those limits, it may still be nature’s selection pressures guiding them even when human decisions are assumed to be autonomous. Eventually, diversity continuously evolves to allow the balance between abundance and shortage as deemed not by numbers but by the valuation of the deemed numbers which can keep the environments stable [2-3].
As there are no surest answers and there may never be, the only thing left is to ask questions for all to ponder and wonder [4]:
Does isolation drive uniqueness among living things due to higher levels of inbreeding?
Does mixing drive exchanged and intensified diversity once unique isolated living things move around breaking the barriers of isolation with higher levels of interbreeding?
Do periods of interspersed conflicts drive living things to adapt fast and evolve faster to survive their common adversaries rather than turning against each other and losing their battles of survivals to their common adversaries [5-6]?
Is time the utmost equalizer or some may say the greatest avenger when preys who had seemed to lost out the battles of survivals may outlast their own predators with life-dinner principle driving the preys to potentially become diversified rapidly before prey diversification itself driving up diversification among their predators as well [7-8]?
Does diversification going into overdrive make the untouched unique ancestral lines unrecognizable thus identifiable as outsider threats to the diversified hybrids when the diversified hybrids return to their geographical locations of origin still inhabited by their untouched unique ancestor lines during the intervening long periods of separations?
Is it the absolute numbers of living things or is it their relatively effective numbers stabilizing the environments at points of time in question which define and refine the limits of diversity for those points of time?
Is diversity an evolutionarily stable strategy or a population stabilizing strategy with less interbred less intermixed less diverse populations losing out to more interbred more intermixed more diverse populations unless overall populations become so meager to remain existent in isolations allowing their inbred uniqueness awaiting the next cycles of interbreeding intermixing diversity exchanges in their future evolutions?
Is diversity promoting interbreeding and intermixing related to curious explorer genes which proved to be evolutionarily successful strategy for hybrids to become resilient enough to evolve instinctive attraction towards innate diversification until induced diversification became warranted to overcome unexpected barriers interfering with interbreeding and intermixing for innate diversification?
Does diversification fear the loss of pre-hybridization uniqueness with some’s uniqueness getting absorbed into other’s uniqueness during the interbreeding and intermixing depending on incompletely understood evolutions wherein some extinct species’ ancestors and their genes get completely absorbed into extant species’ descendants and their genes [9]?
The bottom-line is that if innate instinctive diversification is not happening spontaneously due to the overwhelming barriers preventing it, the induced corrective diversification needs to be applied. However, when diversification is induced, the limits of diversification may have to be defined along with the methods for quantification of diversification so as to overcome under-corrected diversification and to prevent over-corrected diversification.text/html2022-12-05T00:40:06+01:00http://www.webmedcentral.com/Dr. Deepak GuptaCLIMATE MEDICINE: HERE WE COME
http://www.webmedcentral.com/article_view/5807
First it was pain medicine fellowship. Then it was addiction medicine fellowship. Now it is climate medicine fellowship. I have pursued each of them, most likely with half-interest because I have abandoned my pursuit for them after the very first rejection. However, I think that it may have happened for the good considering that my disruptive out-of-box ideas could have unsettled the evolving, formal and structured fellowship curriculum. If I had further pursued climate medicine fellowship, I might have explored the following which I am now hoping that someone somewhere out there pursuing career in climate medicine may pursue if they get excited after reading them: