Gregor Mendel Biography Essay Example for Free

Gregor Mendel Biography Essay His first conclusion was his Law of Segregation, which said that dominant and recessive traits are passed down randomly from parents to offspring. He also provided and alternate way of heredity through his Law of Independent Assortment, which established the idea that traits were passed down independently from traits from parent to offspring. Although his work was overlooked for some period of time, his work later became appreciated by biologists and botanists who were also doing work on heredity. Mendel’s work became the basis and formed the foundation of genetics, in the study of heredity. Although all his work was done through experimentation with pea plants, his laws can be applied on all living organisms that exist today. With his work, people have been able to create anything as crops resistant to harsh weathers reducing the risk of famine, and been able to modify certain traits not just in agricultural life to our benefit. In medicine, doctors have been able to practice preventative medicine now that they know that certain people are at risk for certain diseases. There’s a lot more things, just think how much Mendel’s help at understanding heredity has benefited the human race. Gregor Mendel was born Johann Mendel on July 22, 1822, to Anton and Rosine Mendel, on his family’s farm in Austria. He was given the name Gregor later on in life when he joined the St. Thomas Monastery in Brno. Once his brilliance was noticed by his local school teacher, he was sent to a secondary school in Troppau to continue his education. The Mendels were somewhat poor, but they were able to find enough money for his tuition. It was a hard strain on the family, and also a hard experience for the young Gregor Mendel who suffered of depression, but that didn’t keep his from excelling in his studies, and he graduated in 1840 with honors. He wanted to continue his education, and so he enrolled at the Philosophy Institute of Olomouc. After two years, he was recommended by one of his teachers to go to the St. Thomas Monastery, where he was seen to be of worth to become a monk by the head of the monastery. Here was where he adopted the name of Gregor, to follow tradition. Even after joining the monastery at the age of 21, Gregor further pursued his education and went to the University of Vienna to continue his studies in science, at the monastery’s expense. Here he studied physics and mathematics under Christian Doppler, the same man that the Doppler effect wave frequency was named after. After finishing his studies in 1853 he came back to the monastery, and began teaching secondary school for about a decade, which is where he began most of his experiment which he is best known for. Mendel did not begin his work on heredity using pea plants, but rather with mice. It was on mice on who he began his first experiments, due to his interest in the inheritance of the color of mice coats. He kept doing so until the head of the monastery, Abbot Nap, suggested that looking at mice mate wasn’t the best task for a religious Catholic monk, and so he switched to plants. Mendel chose to use pea plants for his experiment because offspring could be quickly produced, and so he didn’t have to wait too long for them to grow. He cross fertilized pea plants that had opposite characteristics, such as tall with short, smooth to wrinkled, and those containing green seeds with those containing yellow seeds. It is here where he reached to his two most famous conclusions: The Law of Segregation, and the Law of Independent Assortment. Even though Mendel himself believed that this only applied to certain species and certain traits, it became the theory that this applies to all existing organisms. When he was older Mendel became having problems with his eye sight, which kept him away from continuing his experiments. He died on January 6, 1884 at the age of 62. His funeral was well attended, but his work still remained very unknown. He too did not seem to promote much of his work, but not until about a decades later this his work become appreciated and his studies began to be called Mendel’s Laws. It is these laws that are the foundational principles in biology today.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Implications For Brain Essay -- Chemis

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Implications For Brain Throughout the course of this semester we have examined numerous issues which have all had different implications for the brain = behavior argument. Some who have been skeptical of the validity of this idea have been swayed by observations that processes and behaviors they originally thought to have a cloudy neurobiological basis in fact have a sound biological and physiological underpinning. One such phenomenon which can help elucidate the ongoing brain = behavior debate is Post-Traumatic Stress disorder, or PTSD. Most people are familiar in some sense with the phenomenon of PTSD. This phenomenon has been renamed, reworked, and redefined numerous times over the past century. The approach to understanding PTSD and the more general notion of traumatic experience has been an interdisciplinary undertaking, involving the fields of medically oriented psychiatry, psychology, sociology, history, and even literature (1). The reason for this interdisciplinary approach is that the greater perception of the phenomenon is seen as having much more than a simple biological basis. It is seen as having multiple external influences. This view is a result of the often overwhelming sense that whatever biological mechanisms are present must be unintelligibly complex. However, there are certain aspects of PTSD which, upon examination, allow one an easy foray into the neurobiology of the disorder. Cathy Caruth, a leading trauma theorist, discusses the definition of PTSD: "While the precise definition of post-traumatic stress disorder is contested, most descriptions generally agree that there is a response, sometimes delayed, to an overwhelming event or events, which takes the form of rep... ... , by Cathy Caruth, a leading trauma theorist. http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro02/web3/ 2) Sensorimotor Psychotherapy: One Method for Processing Traumatic Memory," from Traumatology , by Pat Ogden and Kekuni Minton. http://www.fsu.edu/~trauma/v6i3/v6i3a3.html 3) Of One Blood , a novel by Pauline Hopkins. http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Rivers/ 4)"The Repression of War Experience" , by W.H.R. Rivers. http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Rivers/ 5) "The Neurophysiology of Dissociation and Chronic Disease," from Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback , by Robert C. Scaer. http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Rivers/ 6) "Approaches to the Treatment of PTSD" , by Bessel A. van der Kolk and Onno van der Hart. http://www.trauma-pages.com/vanderk.htm 7) The Psychology of Fear and Stress , by J. Gray. http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro02/web3/

Satire and Social Criticism

The Enlightenment is a period in history that was characterized by diversity of advances in philosophy, science and medicine. The main theme of the enlightenment was the belief that people of the world could actually make an effort to create a better world. In the process, the philosophers embraced different figurative tools to enlighten the people, and among these, satire stood out. Satire especially assumed the form of bitter, harsh criticism to hypocrisies, injustices and inhumane practices that characterized the society at the time. Candide by French philosopher Voltaire is a bizarrely humorous tale chronicling the adventures of a young man throughout the world, but the aspect that has made it generate so much interest is how it satirically challenges the social norms and optimism that characterized the age. First, Voltaire pokes fun at the noble family by naming the barony Thunder-ten-tronckh, a silly set of words aimed at attacking the pride the baron’s family have in their noble heritage. Voltaire is challenging natural superiority assumed by aristocrats. For example, the baron’s sister, despite being the mother of Candide, refused to marry his father merely because he had 71 noble lineages while she had 72 (Voltaire, 2008). The satire here manages to make the concern nobles had over â€Å"lesser people† look primitively absurd. Dr. Panglos (the name translates to â€Å"all-tongue†) belonged to the â€Å"metaphysico-theologo-cosmolo-nigology† school of thought. He often taught the young Candide the principles of his doctrine which upheld the belief that all things were created with a purpose, which is ultimately the best purpose (Voltaire, 2008). Voltaire uses Pangloss to parody the philosophers of the 17th century and before who debated topics of no benefit to humanity. Voltaire most likely felt that the verbal acrobatics of these thinkers were so ridiculous and critics of this tale feel that he was lampooning the philosophies of Leibniz. Leibniz believed that a pre-meditated harmony existed in the world and that the world must be the best place ever since a perfect God had created it. Voltaire, on the other hand, is an opponent of this blind optimism on account of the tragedies that afflict mankind. He uses the difficulties Candide has to endure and the Lisbon earthquake which claimed over 75 percent of the city despite a ritual which involved burning some people in a slow fire in order to prevent catastrophes like these having been conducted. The tragedies that Candide suffers in the hands of the Bulgarian army underline the cruelty and suffering that existed within armies. Noblemen started war, and it was the common men serving in the battlefields that bore the full brunt of conflicts (Voltaire, 2008). While the people are suffering, clergymen hypocritically squabble over religious doctrines and worry more about converting people into their faith instead of tackling the wars, famines and oppression which plague the society. Many satirists have developed a sense of satire that is more or less in line with the stances Voltaire adopted in his effort to reform the society. I choose to analyze the Daily Show hosted by Jon Stewart since 1999. Jon Stewart applies satire to address the social, political, and economical issues facing the American society in the present time. Among his themes are political tolerance and the extent to which current events affect the youth not only in America but also in the whole world (The Daily Show, 2007). The Daily Show has aired every Monday to Thursday since July 1996 on Comedy Central and hosts a variety of political and celebrity figures with the aim of getting their opinion on current socio-political issues affecting the American society. Watching an episode of the Daily Show, I visualized Jon Stewart wanting his audience to approach current issues with pragmatism. I watched the episode in which he hosted 2008 republican presidential candidate John McCain. McCain, as part of his presidential campaigns, had announced that he would make an appearance at Liberty institution, an institution founded by Jerry Falwell who McCain had earlier denounced as an agent of intolerance (The Daily Show, 2007). Stewart rightfully identified the hypocrisy of the appearance knowing that it was in direct opposition of the principles McCain so often preached. It was an attempt to just secure votes against the values the candidate had preached all along. Jon Stewart’s show assumes that that any political leader should stand his ground and stick to his or her beliefs with regard to the issues that affect the society (The Daily Show, 2007), failure to which he or she would be drifting into â€Å"madness†. Desperate attempts to win over public support in policy issues should be based on conviction rather than on hysteria as stirred by those seeking political office. Stewart wanted the society to see people for what they really were, as a strategy to establishing a just system, rather than the instantaneous stances they adopt when the need arises.

A feminist reading of Doris Lessing’s ‘To Room Nineteen’...

A feminist reading of Doris Lessing’s ‘To Room Nineteen’ and ‘Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ by Robert Louis Stevenson using ideas discussed in ‘The Second Sex’ by Simone de Beauvoir. The concept of Simone de Beauvoir’s myth of women discussed in ‘The Second Sex’ was still very much prevalent in the 1960s when ‘To Room nineteen’ was set and certainly at the time of ‘Strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’. In the 1960s, in accordance with the second wave of feminism, women were thought to be more conscious and aware of their rights as a woman because of the media (Hanisch)1 and this is what we, as a reader could easily deduce from the beginning of Doris Lessing’s ‘To room nineteen’. This new- found consciousness however†¦show more content†¦She relies on Matthew for comfort when she isn’t feeling herself and she eventually relies on him to give her the money so that she can rent out a room in a hotel; room nineteen. ‘She only had to run across and fling herself into them, onto his hard, warm chest, and melt into herself, into Susan’. This shows how Susan relies on Matth ew to feel herself, without him she feels like a stranger: soulless, nothing. ‘She cannot think of herself without man† (de Beauvoir, 1949 p.16). At this point however she feels too distant from him that that place in his arms isn’t hers any longer and she eventually feels like ‘[†¦] an imposter’. In addition, although being dependant on Matthew, Susan is given the freedom to essentially do what she wants. Matthew gives her the money for the room, allows them to have an au pair girl and is even accepting of Susan’s fabricated lover. This would, at the surface go against de Beauvoir’s view of the ‘Other’ being a person who is not free. On closer examination however this statement seems to be fundamentally flawed. To Susan, even when alone in the house with Mrs. Parkes, she still feels a certain restraint and unavoidable attachment to her life and worries. When she first rents room nineteen, the texts quotes ‘She was alone. She was alone. She was alone.’ The repetition of this highlights how unhappy she is