Neil+Anderson

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**Post number One December 17, 2012**
=**The Genographic Project**= //​//

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**Beginnings**
===The Genographic Project was launched by National Geographic in 2005. It was created to help the process of advanced DNA analysis and worked with indigenous communities across the globe to help answer fundamental questions about where humans originated and how we came to populate the Earth. It was driven by our curiosity about where exactly the first homo sapiens came from and where we went from there.===

===**The Genographic Project** is a multi-year research initiative that is led by a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, Dr. Spencer Wells. Dr. Wells leads a team of renowned scientists from the international scientific community who are using cutting-edge genetic and computing technologies to analyze historical patterns in the DNA from participants around the world to better understand our human genetic roots. IBM's Computational Biology Center—one of the world's foremost life sciences research facilities—and a global team of prominent research scientists from 10 research centers around the world are also working on the project.===

==="Together we can chart a more complete map of the early stages of human history by carefully comparing the DNA from world populations that have been genetically, and geographically, stable for hundreds or thousands of years."- [Genographic project website]===

==="How many migrations out of Africa were there? What role did the Silk Road, with its caravans and bazaars, play in dispersing genetic lineages across Eurasia? What can our genes tell us about the origins of languages? How did the great empires of history leave their genetic marks on our DNA? And if we all share such a recent common ancestry, why do we all look so different?"- [Genographic Project website]===

The project has three goals
> >
 * ===To gather and analyze research data in collaboration with indigenous and traditional peoples around the world===
 * ===To invite the general public to join this real-time scientific project and to learn about their own deep ancestry by purchasing a Genographic Project Participation and DNA Ancestry Kit, Geno 2.0===
 * ===To use a portion of the proceeds from Geno 2.0 kit sales to further research and the Genographic Legacy Fund, which in turn supports community-led indigenous conservation and revitalization project===

**The GenoChip**
===The Genographic Project has developed a cutting-edge new tool which is called the “GenoChip,” it has been designed solely for the study of genetic anthropology. Using scientific information gained from the first phase of the Genographic Project, it includes a unique collection of nearly 150,000 markers that the project believes offer the best ancestry-relevant information.===

Origin of Homo Sapiens
===Our species originated in Africa, it is where we first evolved, and where we have spent the majority of our time on Earth. The earliest distinguishable fossils modern //Homo sapiens// appear in the fossil record at Omo Kibish in Ethiopia, around 200,000 years ago. Although earlier fossils may yet be found over the coming years, this is our best understanding of approximately when and where we originated.=== ===According to the genetic and paleontological record, we only started to migrate away from Africa between 60,000 and 70,000 years ago. Why we did this is still uncertain, but we think it has something to do with major changes in climate that were happening around that time—a sudden cooling in the Earth’s climate driven by the onset of one of the worst parts of the last Ice Age. This stretch of cold weather would have made life difficult for our African ancestors, and the genetic evidence points to a sharp reduction in population size around this time. In fact, the human population is likely to have dropped to fewer than 10,000.===



==="Almost 99% of the genetic makeup of an individual are layers of genetic imprints of the individual's many lineages. Our challenge was whether it was even feasible to tease apart these lineages to understand the commonalities," said IBM researcher Laxmi Parida.===

Working with Dr.Wells and ten other research centers worldwide, to delve deeper into our genetic history as a species.
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//National Geographic//

https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/

https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/about/

https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/news/

https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/human-journey/

//BBC News//

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15565654

//IBM//

http://www.ibm.com/solutions/genographic/us/en/landing/J924705T12391A66.html

//Discover Magazine//

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2012/07/the-genographic-project-onto-the-autosome/#.UM-9j3c31DU

[[image:220px-Charles_Darwin_by_Julia_Margaret_Cameron_2.jpg]]
===Here I am going to try to explain how the Darwinian Theory of Evolution and Natural selection by survival of the fittest applies to homo sapiens and where we``ve tended to stray away from survival of the fittest. In Nature the struggle for existence drives the competition between the members of each species to get food, habitat or mates. The basis for survival of the fittest is that animals who are best adapted face a better chance of survival in the wild, by domesticating wild animals we remove the need to adapt. It is now artificial selection. So how does it work for humans. We have technically removed ourselves from the wild and created societies, thus removing most dangers faced in the wild. Is it to safe to say that our internal conflicts between our race are a version of survival of the fittest, this is where it gets complicated. Modern medicine means that even the unfit can live.===

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===Evidence has been found that, while we have tamed our surroundings and protected ourselves from the rawness from Nature , we as a species are not immune to the process Natural Selection as we had been lead to believe. The study states that as recent as the nineteenth century natural selection was still shaping us .===

===The findings for this project come from an analysis of the birth, death, and marital records of 5,923 people born between 1760 and 1849 in four farming or fishing villages in Finland. Researchers were led by evolutionary biologist Alexandre Courtiol from the Institute for Advanced Study Berlin. He picked this time period because agriculture was well established by then and there were strict rules against divorce and extramarital affairs. The team looked at four aspects of life that affect survival and reproduction, key parts of natural selection: Who lived beyond age 15, who got married and who didn’t, how many marriages each person had (second marriages were possible only if a spouse died), and how many children were born in each marriage. “All these steps can influence the number of offspring you have,” says Courtiol.===

===Another study was done on an island population in Quebec. The study used data from 30 families that settled on île aux Coudres, located in the St. Lawrence River outside of Quebec City, between 1720 and 1773. A church on the island held historical records of all births, deaths and marriages on the island, from which researchers were able to pull enough information to build intensive family trees.=== ===The researchers analyzed the data from women who married between 1799 and 1940, comparing their relations, any social, cultural or economic differences, and the age at which they had their first child.=== ===The researchers found out that over a 140-year period,the age at first reproduction dropped from 26 to 22, with somewhere between 30 percent and 50 percent of this variation being explained by genetic variation in the population, not by other factors, such as changes in cultures or social attitudes.=== ==="We think, traditionally, that the changes in human population are mainly cultural, which is why a non-genetic hypothesis is given priority over a genetic or evolutionary hypothesis, whether or not there is data to support that," Milot said. "We have data that we analyzed from the genetic and nongenetic point of view, and we find that the genetic factors are stronger."===

==="We are living records of our past," says Dr Pardis Sabeti, a geneticist at Harvard University. "And so we can look at the DNA of individuals from today and get a sense of how they all came to be this way.``===

[] [] [] []

Prentice Hall Biology, Kenneth Miller,Ph.D , Joseph Levine, Ph.D , 2008 Pearson Prentice Hall 15-3 Darwin Presents His Case pages 380-381

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/09/120907-men-women-see-differently-science-health-vision-sex/

**Post Number Three January 13,2013**
=**Cognitive Functions of the Brain**=

[[image:mind-brain-electrodes_8903_600x450.jpg caption="Electrodes monitoring a Tibetan Monk's Brain activity"]]


===The Brain is a mysterious thing. It is the reason we can see, touch, or feel. It controls every aspect of our lives from the day we are born until the day we die. It controls how we breath, how we move and how we perceive the world around us. At the bottom of it all is the Neuron. We know alot about the brain but there is still not much we actually understand.===

===The views of ancients differed from the current view we hold on our great controlling organ. The Egyptians thought so little of the brain that it was scooped out of the nose for burial. They believed consciousness lay within the heart, this view was shared by later Philosophers ,such as Aristotle. This view was held by people as late as the 1600's. Around this time French Philosopher, Rene Descartes came up with theory known as "dualism". He thought consciousness lay within thought. It was his words //**Cogito ergo sum ("je Pense Donc Je Suis") "I think;therefore, I am" that forged the views of a Descarte contemporary, Thomas Willis, considered the father of "Neurology". He**//===

was the first to suggest that not only was the brain itself the focus of the mind, but that different parts of the brain give rise to specific cognitive functions.
===It is said the mind is a very powerful tool. It can be said that "we do not see with our eyes ;but,perceive with our mind" So it can be also said we are all experiencing totally different perceptions, none too alike. For thousands of years monks have been using meditation to bring peace to the mind, does it actually work. We will find out.===

[[image:12.9-Tibetan_female_monks.jpg caption="Female Tibetan Monks"]]
===For 2,500 years Buddhists have employed strict training techniques to guide their mental state away from destructive emotions and toward a more compassionate, happier state of mind. Driven by a cast amount of new evidence for the brain's plasticity, Western neuroscientists have taken a keen interest. Can meditation literally change the mind?=== ===For the past several years, Richard Davidson and his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have been studying brain activity in Tibetan monks, both in meditative and non-meditative states. Davidson's group had shown earlier that people who are more likely to fall prey to negative emotions displayed a pattern of persistent activity in regions of their right prefrontal cortex. In those with more positive temperaments the activity occurred in the left prefrontal cortex instead. When Davidson ran the experiment on a senior Tibetan lama skilled in meditation, the lama's baseline of activity happened to be much farther to the left of anyone previously tested. Judging from this one study, at least, he was quantifiably the happiest man in the world.===

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===It may work for monks, but are we the average people in control of our own minds as much as we think we are. There are just some things in our own minds that are just beyond our reach or control. Locked in some deep dark part where the cobwebs are, lies memories and other things that we do not know. Can memories be suppressed. It seems sometimes a traumatic event can essentially turn a memory off.===

===With so many systems going on subconsciously, why do we feel unified? A very Interesting question. It is believed that the answer to this question resides in the left hemisphere and one of its parts that was happened upon during o years of research, particularly while studying split-brain patients.=== ===Some people with intractable epilepsy undergo a process called split-brain surgery. In this procedure, the large tract of nerves that connects the two hemispheres, the corpus callosum, is cut to prevent the spread of electrical impulses. Afterward, the patients appear completely normal and seem entirely unaware of any changes in their mental process. But it was discovered that after the surgery, any visual, tactile, proprioceptive, auditory, or olfactory information that was presented to one hemisphere was processed in that half of the brain alone, without any awareness on the part of the other half. Because tracts carrying sensory information cross over the midline inside the brain, the right hemisphere processes data from the left half of the body, and the left hemisphere handles the right.===

===The left hemisphere specializes in speech, language, and intelligent behavior, and a split-brain patient’s left hemisphere and language center has no access to sensory information if it is fed only to the right side of the brain. In the case of vision, the optic nerves leading from each eye meet inside the brain at what is called the optic chiasm. Here, each nerve is split in half; the medial half (the inside track) of each crosses the optic chiasm into the opposite side of the brain, and the lateral half ( on the outside) stays on the same side. The parts of both eyes that attend to  the right visual field send information to the left hemisphere and information from the left visual field goes to and is processed by the right hemisphere.===

It all sounds very complicated, thats because it is . Its sheer complexity is the reason we do not understand much about how the brain actually functions.
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[]

[|http://discovermagazine.com/2012/brain/22-interpreter-in-your-head-spins-stories#.UPNcqWc31DU]

http://discovermagazine.com/2012/apr/13-long-successful-search-where-memory-lives#.UPNh2Wc31DU

http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v16/n1/full/nn.3269.html