Youth Radio - Topic: Evolution

New Initiative Hopes To Get Climate Change In Class Curriculums

squevedo — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 15:26:02 -0600

Climate change is starting to become a problem and I’m not strictly speaking to the melting ice caps or extreme weather—it’s creating a problem for teachers too. The debate about integrating climate change into class curriculums is one that is (no pun intended) starting to heat up. That’s why the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) has launched a new initiative to support the teaching of climate change in classrooms.

The initiative is sure to ruffle some feather but Robert Luhn, Director of Communications at NCSE, says the chances of finding a way to please those on both sides of the debate are slim. “You have to remember that science is not a matter of opinion. Science is about empirical data and what we can prove,” he said, “'Teaching the debate', as it’s often called, is really a smoke screen from deniers. Do you find yourself going into chemistry class and seeing someone teaching alchemy? Of course not. There’s no science behind it. It’s the same reason you don’t find someone teaching creationism and evolution at the same time.”

Luhn also says that not teaching about climate change is an issue, but often times uninformed teaching can pose a problem too. “Those that are [teaching about climate change] might not teaching it well because it’s a complex topic. We need more resources for teachers to really learn about the subject.”

Brains & Beakers: How Ants "Do It"

rgee — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 13:16:55 -0500

By Melvin Berry

Ant colonies are complex, much like human societies. In fact, as small as they are, ants in many ways remind me of people. But here's one big difference: while there's only one human species, scientists have classified over 22,000 distinct species of ants.

A thousand of them have been discovered by Dr. Brian Fisher of the California Academy of Sciences. We invited Dr. Fisher to Youth Radio to give us an overview of what he's learned hunting for ants in Madagascar. His wonderful presentation made me realize that there's a lot to know about ants.

It amazed me how the colonies are run by the worker ants -- they're the backbone of the colony. And, a lot of people don’t know that ants play a big role in many ecosystems all over the world, even in our urban ecosystem in Oakland!

Miss USA Contestants' Answers Will Surprise You

rgee — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 18:52:09 -0500

By Denise Tejada, Turnstyle News

Everybody has their own opinions about pageants, but if you're like me, you watch them for humor. California has taken the crown for Miss USA this year, but the amusement continued during the pageant.

I got a good laugh seeing several of the contestants respond to questions as eloquently as possible while making no sense at all, like Miss Teen South Carolina back in 2007. Showing that they're more than just good looking, or not, the contestants responded very firmly and honestly to the question "Should evolution be taught at school?"

Their answers may surprise you.

Evolution Beyond Grant's Finches

mdaly — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:26:40 -0600

New research done by Medical Research Council Scientists has unveiled a community in Papua New Guinea that has developed a genetic resistance to a fatal brain disease from their ritual practice of mortuary feasting, or the consumption of dead family members. This community of people in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea was originally affected by a pandemic of the "kuru" brain disease, but the inheritance of a new variation in a protein gene has built up a resistance to the disease among members of the community.

An article from Science Daily states,

"This gene mutation, which is found nowhere else in the world, seems to offer high or even complete protection against the development of kuru and has become frequent in this area through natural selection over recent history, in direct response to the epidemic. This is thought be perhaps the strongest example yet of recent natural selection in humans."

This new research is absolutely amazing to me, especially since I've been learning about evolution in my AP Biology class. Essentially, this population of Papua New Guinea underwent natural selection induced by their own cultural customs. Those who would consume the corpses of their dead infected with the disease would contract the disease and then die if they did not have the protein variation. Those with the variation would survive and pass on their genes to their children, effectively demonstrating Darwin's theory of evolution.

I hear about the Grant's finches on the Galapagos all the time in my biology class so it's a breath of fresh air to learn of current human evolution caused by a cultural practice.

(via Science Daily)

Previously:

Awarding Stupidity in Darwin's Name

cfoster — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 17:55:21 -0600

A man was found stabbed to death in his own home. No signs of struggle. No suicide note. A murder mystery? No, just another unfortunate winner of the annual and very popular Darwin Awards.

From our partners at the California Academy of Sciences:

The ignoble award’s theme is to celebrate people who have killed themselves in “idiotic” ways and will no longer be able to pass their genes down to their children, theoretically stopping stupidity in the human race. Take the stabbed man for example. It turns out that he believed his new jacket was knife-proof and had the glowing light bulb idea to test it on himself.

The Darwin Awards were named after acclaimed scientist Charles Darwin, whose 200th birthday is being celebrated around the world today. His theories of evolution and “survival of the fittest” have become the framework for all fields of biological science. Youth Radio interviewed Wendy Northcutt, the founder of the Darwin Awards, about the award's history, her favorite dead winners, and the social and racial controversy surrounding Darwin and the award.