Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Elephant comes from the Greek word "elephas" meaning ivory. This, of course, refers to their tusks. In scientific nomenclature, elephants belong to the order Proboscidae. This word is also Greek referring to the other distinctive elephant anatomy, the trunk.
In understanding elephant evolution, I think we should first discuss zoological nomenclature. In science, animals and plants are classified and named using a universal system and language. At the narrowest or top level is the genus and species. Every animal and plant can be identified by its two-word (genus and species) name. (i.e. Homo sapiens: man). When subspecies are present, this can be a three-word name. (i.e. Elephas maximus maximus: Sri Lankan Asian elephant). If you think of species denoting one kind of animal or plant, then genus would include more than one kind. From the top level to the bottom level the number of animals or plants included in each group increases. In general the major categories of classification listed from top to bottom or low to high are:
Sunday, May 24, 2009
animal
HELLO WAS A MONKEY A GOOD ANIMAL, I CAN TRY AND ANSWER THE QUESTION MONKEY IS GOOD CREATURE, ALWAYS LIKE IN CLAMPING THE TREE AND ALSO, FLY FROM ONE TREE TO ANOTHER, lets hear what Harry F. Harlow, LET SEE WHAT HE SAID ABOUT THE MONKEY
The famous experiments that psychologist Harry Harlow conducted in the 1950s on maternal deprivation in rhesus monkeys were landmarks not only in primatology, but in the evolving science of attachment and loss. Harlow himself repeatedly compared his experimental subjects to children and press reports universally treated his findings as major statements about love and development in human beings. These monkey love experiments had powerful implications for any and all separations of mothers and infants, including adoption, as well as childrearing in general.
In his University of Wisconsin laboratory, Harlow probed the nature of love, aiming to illuminate its first causes and mechanisms in the relationships formed between infants and mothers. First, he showed that mother love was emotional rather than physiological, substantiating the adoption-friendly theory that continuity of care—“nurture”—was a far more determining factor in healthy psychological development than “nature.” Second, he showed that capacity for attachment was closely associated with critical periods in early life, after which it was difficult or impossible to compensate for the loss of initial emotional security. The critical period thesis confirmed the wisdom of placing infants with adoptive parents as shortly after birth as possible. Harlow’s work provided experimental evidence for prioritizing psychological over biological parenthood while underlining the developmental risks of adopting children beyond infancy. It normalized and pathologized adoption at the same time.
How did Harlow go about constructing his science of love? He separated infant monkeys from their mothers a few hours after birth, then arranged for the young animals to be “raised” by two kinds of surrogate monkey mother machines, both equipped to dispense milk. One mother was made out of bare wire mesh. The other was a wire mother covered with soft terry cloth. Harlow’s first observation was that monkeys who had a choice of mothers spent far more time clinging to the terry cloth surrogates, even when their physical nourishment came from bottles mounted on the bare wire mothers. This suggested that infant love was no simple response to the satisfaction of physiological needs. Attachment was not primarily about hunger or thirst. It could not be reduced to nursing.
Then Harlow modified his experiment and made a second important observation. When he separated the infants into two groups and gave them no choice between the two types of mothers, all the monkeys drank equal amounts and grew physically at the same rate. But the similarities ended there. Monkeys who had soft, tactile contact with their terry cloth mothers behaved quite differently than monkeys whose mothers were made out of cold, hard wire. Harlow hypothesized that members of the first group benefitted from a psychological resource—emotional attachment—unavailable to members of the second. By providing reassurance and security to infants, cuddling kept normal development on track.
What exactly did Harlow see that convinced him emotional attachment made a decisive developmental difference? When the experimental subjects were frightened by strange, loud objects, such as teddy bears beating drums, monkeys raised by terry cloth surrogates made bodily contact with their mothers, rubbed against them, and eventually calmed down. Harlow theorized that they used their mothers as a “psychological base of operations,” allowing them to remain playful and inquisitive after the initial fright had subsided. In contrast, monkeys raised by wire mesh surrogates did not retreat to their mothers when scared. Instead, they threw themselves on the floor, clutched themselves, rocked back and forth, and screamed in terror. These activities closely resembled the behaviors of autistic and deprived children frequently observed in institutions as well as the pathological behavior of adults confined to mental institutions, Harlow noted. The awesome power of attachment and loss over mental health and illness could hardly have been performed more dramatically.
In subsequent experiments, Harlow’s monkeys proved that “better late than never” was not a slogan applicable to attachment. When Harlow placed his subjects in total isolation for the first eights months of life, denying them contact with other infants or with either type of surrogate mother, they were permanently damaged. Harlow and his colleagues repeated these experiments, subjecting infant monkeys to varied periods of motherlessness. They concluded that the impact of early maternal deprivation could be reversed in monkeys only if it had lasted less than 90 days, and estimated that the equivalent for humans was six months. After these critical periods, no amount of exposure to mothers or peers could alter the monkeys’ abnormal behaviors and make up for the emotional damage that had already occurred. When emotional bonds were first established was the key to whether they could be established at all.
For experimentalists like Harlow, only developmental theories verified under controlled laboratory conditions deserved to be called scientific. Harlow was no Freudian. He criticized psychoanalysis for speculating on the basis of faulty memories, assuming that adult disorders necessarily originated in childhood experiences, and interpreting too literally the significance of breast-feeding. Yet Harlow’s data confirmed the well known psychoanalytic emphasis on the mother-child relationship at the dawn of life, and his research reflected the repudiation of eugenics and the triumph of therapeutic approaches already well underway throughout the human sciences and clinical professions by midcentury.
Along with child analysts and researchers, including Anna Freud and René Spitz, Harry Harlow’s experiments added scientific legitimacy to two powerful arguments: against institutional child care and in favor of psychological parenthood. Both suggested that the permanence associated with adoption was far superior to other arrangements when it came to safeguarding the future mental and emotional well-being of children in need of parents. SO THAT IS THE ONE OF HIS OWEN EXPERIENCE AND ALSO U CAN HAVE YOUR OWEN HAS HIS, MONKEY IS GOODS NEVER YOU FOLLOW PEOPLE THAT WENT AND KILL MONKEY IN THE BUSH, CAUSE MONKEY HAVE A FUTURE.
The famous experiments that psychologist Harry Harlow conducted in the 1950s on maternal deprivation in rhesus monkeys were landmarks not only in primatology, but in the evolving science of attachment and loss. Harlow himself repeatedly compared his experimental subjects to children and press reports universally treated his findings as major statements about love and development in human beings. These monkey love experiments had powerful implications for any and all separations of mothers and infants, including adoption, as well as childrearing in general.
In his University of Wisconsin laboratory, Harlow probed the nature of love, aiming to illuminate its first causes and mechanisms in the relationships formed between infants and mothers. First, he showed that mother love was emotional rather than physiological, substantiating the adoption-friendly theory that continuity of care—“nurture”—was a far more determining factor in healthy psychological development than “nature.” Second, he showed that capacity for attachment was closely associated with critical periods in early life, after which it was difficult or impossible to compensate for the loss of initial emotional security. The critical period thesis confirmed the wisdom of placing infants with adoptive parents as shortly after birth as possible. Harlow’s work provided experimental evidence for prioritizing psychological over biological parenthood while underlining the developmental risks of adopting children beyond infancy. It normalized and pathologized adoption at the same time.
How did Harlow go about constructing his science of love? He separated infant monkeys from their mothers a few hours after birth, then arranged for the young animals to be “raised” by two kinds of surrogate monkey mother machines, both equipped to dispense milk. One mother was made out of bare wire mesh. The other was a wire mother covered with soft terry cloth. Harlow’s first observation was that monkeys who had a choice of mothers spent far more time clinging to the terry cloth surrogates, even when their physical nourishment came from bottles mounted on the bare wire mothers. This suggested that infant love was no simple response to the satisfaction of physiological needs. Attachment was not primarily about hunger or thirst. It could not be reduced to nursing.
Then Harlow modified his experiment and made a second important observation. When he separated the infants into two groups and gave them no choice between the two types of mothers, all the monkeys drank equal amounts and grew physically at the same rate. But the similarities ended there. Monkeys who had soft, tactile contact with their terry cloth mothers behaved quite differently than monkeys whose mothers were made out of cold, hard wire. Harlow hypothesized that members of the first group benefitted from a psychological resource—emotional attachment—unavailable to members of the second. By providing reassurance and security to infants, cuddling kept normal development on track.
What exactly did Harlow see that convinced him emotional attachment made a decisive developmental difference? When the experimental subjects were frightened by strange, loud objects, such as teddy bears beating drums, monkeys raised by terry cloth surrogates made bodily contact with their mothers, rubbed against them, and eventually calmed down. Harlow theorized that they used their mothers as a “psychological base of operations,” allowing them to remain playful and inquisitive after the initial fright had subsided. In contrast, monkeys raised by wire mesh surrogates did not retreat to their mothers when scared. Instead, they threw themselves on the floor, clutched themselves, rocked back and forth, and screamed in terror. These activities closely resembled the behaviors of autistic and deprived children frequently observed in institutions as well as the pathological behavior of adults confined to mental institutions, Harlow noted. The awesome power of attachment and loss over mental health and illness could hardly have been performed more dramatically.
In subsequent experiments, Harlow’s monkeys proved that “better late than never” was not a slogan applicable to attachment. When Harlow placed his subjects in total isolation for the first eights months of life, denying them contact with other infants or with either type of surrogate mother, they were permanently damaged. Harlow and his colleagues repeated these experiments, subjecting infant monkeys to varied periods of motherlessness. They concluded that the impact of early maternal deprivation could be reversed in monkeys only if it had lasted less than 90 days, and estimated that the equivalent for humans was six months. After these critical periods, no amount of exposure to mothers or peers could alter the monkeys’ abnormal behaviors and make up for the emotional damage that had already occurred. When emotional bonds were first established was the key to whether they could be established at all.
For experimentalists like Harlow, only developmental theories verified under controlled laboratory conditions deserved to be called scientific. Harlow was no Freudian. He criticized psychoanalysis for speculating on the basis of faulty memories, assuming that adult disorders necessarily originated in childhood experiences, and interpreting too literally the significance of breast-feeding. Yet Harlow’s data confirmed the well known psychoanalytic emphasis on the mother-child relationship at the dawn of life, and his research reflected the repudiation of eugenics and the triumph of therapeutic approaches already well underway throughout the human sciences and clinical professions by midcentury.
Along with child analysts and researchers, including Anna Freud and René Spitz, Harry Harlow’s experiments added scientific legitimacy to two powerful arguments: against institutional child care and in favor of psychological parenthood. Both suggested that the permanence associated with adoption was far superior to other arrangements when it came to safeguarding the future mental and emotional well-being of children in need of parents. SO THAT IS THE ONE OF HIS OWEN EXPERIENCE AND ALSO U CAN HAVE YOUR OWEN HAS HIS, MONKEY IS GOODS NEVER YOU FOLLOW PEOPLE THAT WENT AND KILL MONKEY IN THE BUSH, CAUSE MONKEY HAVE A FUTURE.
Friday, April 10, 2009
THE HISTORY OF OWL
LETS US LOOK SOME OF THE HISTORY OF OWL AS A BIRD
The Purdue OWL originated as a collaborative effort by Dr. Muriel Harris, Director of the Purdue University Writing Lab, and Dave Taylor, a graduate student in Educational Computing who redesigned the e-mail server and developed the gopher and Web sites. Their goal was to provide a resource for students who sought writing help but couldn't make it into the physical writing lab during operating hours. Since that time, our OWL has become a complement to classroom instruction, a supplement to face-to-face tutorials, and a stand-alone reference for thousands of writers worldwide.
A number of Purdue students have facilitated and effected the arduous process of getting instructional materials online. Particularly valuable were the contributions of Michael Manley, who initially developed OWL as an e-mail server; and Michelle Sidler, Norman Vierstahler, Clinton Wong and Trish Jenkins, each of whom were instrumental in the development of the OWL during its formative stages. Special thanks goes to David Elderbrock, Humanities Coordinator for the Instructional Technology Program at UC Berkeley who helped us with a survey to identify the needs of our users.
Currently, our OWL consists of several hundred nodes, including approximately 200 handouts available in hypertext and printer-friendly forms. It also includes a wide array of links to sites relevant to various aspects of writing and written communication. Current foci for continued development include an expanded job search section and more interactive exercises.
Past OWL coordinators include Stuart Blythe , currently an assistant professor at Purdue University, Fort Wayne, Teddi Fishman, who teaches in the MAPC program at Clemson, and Jon Bush, a recent Purdue University Ph.D. Our 1998-1999 technical coordinator, Liz Thelen, is now faculty at Niagara University. Matt Mooney, our 1999-2000 technical coordinator, is now a distance education specialist at a university in Arizona. Our 2000-2001 coordinator, Dave Neyhart, has been doing editorial work in southern California and Spain, and our 2001-2002 coordinator, Geoff Stacks, is currently an editorial assistant for Modern Fiction Studies, a well-known journal of literary criticism. Brian Yothers, the OWL coordinator for 2002-2003, completed his Ph.D. at Purdue Unversity. Erin Karper, our OWL technical coordinator from 2000-2004, is an assistant professor at Niagara University.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Birds HISTORY
Birds
Birds are animals that have feathers and that are born out of hard-shelled eggs.
Some people think that what makes an animal a bird is its wings. Bats have wings. Flies have wings. Bats and flies are not birds. So what makes an animal a bird?
Introduction
In the recent upsurge of interest in the early evolution of birds, Australia has not contributed to the debates on bird-dinosaur relationships or on the origin of feathers or flight. Nonetheless, it does have interesting, albeit patchy, record of birds across the past 110 million years. The record is poor compared those of Europe and North America, in both temporal and faunistic representation. There are a few intervals with rich, diverse avian records, several scattered periods with small to moderate representations and some extensive gaps at critical times.
The earliest Australian record of birds, from the Early Cretaceous (110-100 million years ago -mya), comprises five small indeterminate feather impressions from Koonwarra, Victoria and a few small bones from southern Victoria, north central New South Wales and western Queensland. The feathers have been known for some time, but unfortunately the birds from which they came have not appeared from the deposits. Likewise, little can be said about the Victoria and New South Wales fossils.
The bones from Queensland can be attributed to an enantiornithine bird. The recognition of the subclass Enantiornithes has been a major advance in understanding bird evolution. These strange birds differed from modern birds in a variety of major features of the skeleton. They appear to have been the dominant lineage of birds through the Cretaceous, and their fossils are now known from every continent, including Australia. Like the dinosaurs, this group of morphologically diverse birds became extinct by the end of the Cretaceous. The Queensland fossils, which have been named Nanantius eos, show that these birds were in Australia.
Birds are animals that have feathers and that are born out of hard-shelled eggs.
Some people think that what makes an animal a bird is its wings. Bats have wings. Flies have wings. Bats and flies are not birds. So what makes an animal a bird?
Introduction
In the recent upsurge of interest in the early evolution of birds, Australia has not contributed to the debates on bird-dinosaur relationships or on the origin of feathers or flight. Nonetheless, it does have interesting, albeit patchy, record of birds across the past 110 million years. The record is poor compared those of Europe and North America, in both temporal and faunistic representation. There are a few intervals with rich, diverse avian records, several scattered periods with small to moderate representations and some extensive gaps at critical times.
The earliest Australian record of birds, from the Early Cretaceous (110-100 million years ago -mya), comprises five small indeterminate feather impressions from Koonwarra, Victoria and a few small bones from southern Victoria, north central New South Wales and western Queensland. The feathers have been known for some time, but unfortunately the birds from which they came have not appeared from the deposits. Likewise, little can be said about the Victoria and New South Wales fossils.
The bones from Queensland can be attributed to an enantiornithine bird. The recognition of the subclass Enantiornithes has been a major advance in understanding bird evolution. These strange birds differed from modern birds in a variety of major features of the skeleton. They appear to have been the dominant lineage of birds through the Cretaceous, and their fossils are now known from every continent, including Australia. Like the dinosaurs, this group of morphologically diverse birds became extinct by the end of the Cretaceous. The Queensland fossils, which have been named Nanantius eos, show that these birds were in Australia.
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