4. Retracing evolution across space and time

2020 ◽  
pp. 75-90
Author(s):  
Mark V. Lomolino
Keyword(s):  
Life Forms ◽  
Historical Biogeography ◽  
Animal Life ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Evolutionary Origins ◽  
Natural Life ◽  
Over Time

Evolution occurs not only over time, but across space as well. “Retracing evolution across space and time” explores the sub-discipline of historical biogeography, giving an overview of approaches used to reconstruct the geographic and evolutionary origins of the lineages of natural life forms. Contemporary approaches to mapping these lineages confirm Buffon’s Law—that environmentally similar but isolated regions have different plant and animal life. These maps aim to delineate the regions of life and describe their biotic composition.

Review of Article 27.3(b) and the Patenting of Life Forms: Hitting a BRIC Wall in the WTO?

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 289-318
Author(s):  
Jagjit Plahe ◽  
Nitesh Kukreja ◽  
Sunil Ponnamperuma
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Intellectual Property Rights ◽  
World Trade ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Life Forms ◽  
Private Property Rights ◽  
Ethical Concerns ◽  
The World ◽  
Over Time

Abstract Under Article 27.3(b) of the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement of the World Trade Organization (WTO), all members are required to extend private property rights to life forms. Using official WTO documents, this article analyzes the negotiating positions of WTO members on life patents during a review of Article 27.3(b) which commenced in 1999 and is currently ongoing. Initially, developing countries raised serious ethical concerns regarding life patents, creating a clear North-South divide. However, over time the position of Brazil and India moved away from the ethics of life patents to the prevention of bio-piracy, a position supported by China. Russia too is supportive of life patents. A group of small developing countries have, however, continued to question the morality of life patents despite this “BRIC wall,” changing the dynamics of the negotiations from a North-South divide to one which now includes a South-South divide.

scholarly journals Climate and plant community diversity in space and time

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (9) ◽  
pp. 4464-4470 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Harrison ◽  
Marko J. Spasojevic ◽  
Daijiang Li
Keyword(s):  
Plant Community ◽  
Plant Diversity ◽  
Phylogenetic Diversity ◽  
Spatial Scales ◽  
Community Diversity ◽  
Niche Conservatism ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Drying Trend ◽  
Functional And Phylogenetic Diversity ◽  
Over Time

Climate strongly shapes plant diversity over large spatial scales, with relatively warm and wet (benign, productive) regions supporting greater numbers of species. Unresolved aspects of this relationship include what causes it, whether it permeates to community diversity at smaller spatial scales, whether it is accompanied by patterns in functional and phylogenetic diversity as some hypotheses predict, and whether it is paralleled by climate-driven changes in diversity over time. Here, studies of Californian plants are reviewed and new analyses are conducted to synthesize climate–diversity relationships in space and time. Across spatial scales and organizational levels, plant diversity is maximized in more productive (wetter) climates, and these consistent spatial relationships are mirrored in losses of taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic diversity over time during a recent climatic drying trend. These results support the tolerance and climatic niche conservatism hypotheses for climate–diversity relationships, and suggest there is some predictability to future changes in diversity in water-limited climates.

scholarly journals Multiple evolutionary origins of giant viruses

F1000Research ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 1840 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugene V. Koonin ◽  
Natalya Yutin
Keyword(s):  
Life Forms ◽  
Translation System ◽  
Dna Viruses ◽  
Evolutionary Forces ◽  
Evolutionary Origins ◽  
Cellular Life ◽  
Giant Viruses ◽  
Nucleocytoplasmic Large Dna Viruses ◽  
Phylogenomic Analyses ◽  
Definition Of

The nucleocytoplasmic large DNA viruses (NCLDVs) are a monophyletic group of diverse eukaryotic viruses that reproduce primarily in the cytoplasm of the infected cells and include the largest viruses currently known: the giant mimiviruses, pandoraviruses, and pithoviruses. With virions measuring up to 1.5 μm and genomes of up to 2.5 Mb, the giant viruses break the now-outdated definition of a virus and extend deep into the genome size range typical of bacteria and archaea. Additionally, giant viruses encode multiple proteins that are universal among cellular life forms, particularly components of the translation system, the signature cellular molecular machinery. These findings triggered hypotheses on the origin of giant viruses from cells, likely of an extinct fourth domain of cellular life, via reductive evolution. However, phylogenomic analyses reveal a different picture, namely multiple origins of giant viruses from smaller NCLDVs via acquisition of multiple genes from the eukaryotic hosts and bacteria, along with gene duplication. Thus, with regard to their origin, the giant viruses do not appear to qualitatively differ from the rest of the virosphere. However, the evolutionary forces that led to the emergence of virus gigantism remain enigmatic.

scholarly journals Skilled we-intentionality: Situating joint action in the living environment

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 54
Author(s):  
Julian Kiverstein ◽  
Erik Rietveld
Keyword(s):  
Joint Action ◽  
Living Environment ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Ways Of Thinking ◽  
Over Time

There is a difference between the activities of two or more individuals that are performed jointly such as playing music in a band or dancing as a couple, and performing these same activities alone. This difference is sometimes captured by appealing to shared or joint intentions that allow individuals to coordinate what they do over space and time. In what follows we will use the terminology of we-intentionality to refer to what individuals do when they engage in group ways of thinking, feeling and acting. Our aim in this paper is to argue that we-intentionality is best understood in relation to a shared living environment in which acting individuals are situated. By the “living environment” we mean to refer to places and everyday situations in which humans act. These places and situations are simultaneously social, cultural, material and natural. We will use the term “affordance” to refer to the possibilities for action the living environment furnishes. Affordances form and are maintained over time through the activities people repeatedly engage in the living environment. We will show how we-intentionality is best understood in relation to the affordances of the living environmentand by taking into account the skills people have to engage with these affordances. For this reason we coin the term ‘skilled we-intentionality’ to characterize the intentionality characteristic of group ways of acting, feeling and thinking.

scholarly journals Dynamics and variability in the pleiotropic effects of adaptation in laboratory budding yeast populations

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher W Bakerlee ◽  
Angela M Phillips ◽  
Alex N Nguyen Ba ◽  
Michael M Desai
Keyword(s):  
Budding Yeast ◽  
Pleiotropic Effects ◽  
Evolutionary Adaptation ◽  
Complex Environments ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Constant Environment ◽  
Fluctuating Environments ◽  
Evolutionary Trajectories ◽  
Multiple Environments ◽  
Over Time

Evolutionary adaptation to a constant environment is driven by the accumulation of mutations which can have a range of unrealized pleiotropic effects in other environments. These pleiotropic consequences of adaptation can influence the emergence of specialists or generalists, and are critical for evolution in temporally or spatially fluctuating environments. While many experiments have examined the pleiotropic effects of adaptation at a snapshot in time, very few have observed the dynamics by which these effects emerge and evolve. Here, we propagated hundreds of diploid and haploid laboratory budding yeast populations in each of three environments, and then assayed their fitness in multiple environments over 1000 generations of evolution. We find that replicate populations evolved in the same condition share common patterns of pleiotropic effects across other environments, which emerge within the first several hundred generations of evolution. However, we also find dynamic and environment-specific variability within these trends: variability in pleiotropic effects tends to increase over time, with the extent of variability depending on the evolution environment. These results suggest shifting and overlapping contributions of chance and contingency to the pleiotropic effects of adaptation, which could influence evolutionary trajectories in complex environments that fluctuate across space and time.

Aligning Adaptation Studies with Translation Studies

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence Raw
Keyword(s):  
Translation Studies ◽  
Ecological Models ◽  
Adaptation Studies ◽  
Cultural Policies ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Creative Workers ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Over Time ◽  
The Way

The relationship between translation and adaptation has remained problematic despite the appearance of two books on the subject. The difficulty lies in understanding how both terms are culturally constructed and change over space and time. Chapter 28 suggests that there is no absolute distinction between the two; to look at the relationship between translation and adaptation requires us to study cultural policies and the way creative workers respond to them, and to understand how readers over time have reinterpreted the two terms. The essay considers the lessons ecological models of learning in collaborative micro-cultures have to offer adaptation scholars and translation scholars alike.

The Bar-Cross-Ellipse Illusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gideon P. Caplovitz ◽  
Alex Boswell ◽  
Kyle Killebrew
Keyword(s):  
Visual Processing ◽  
Motion Information ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Ground Segmentation ◽  
Uniform Background ◽  
Different Sources ◽  
Over Time

This chapter describes a multistable stimulus that reveals the complexity of visual processing that underlies the determination of an object’s form and motion. The stimulus is constructed by placing an ellipse on a uniform background and then partially occluding it with four squares, each with the same color as the background. When the ellipse is made to rotate, it can be perceived in any of four distinct ways, and, over time, the percept will switch between them. Each percept corresponds to a distinct figure-ground segmentation that is determined on the basis of contour ownership and how different sources of motion information are assigned to contours and integrated over space and time.

An Insight into the global ‘spreading’ of a disease amid an epidemic with ‘mutation’ and ‘prevention’ parameters

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deep Bhattacharjee
Keyword(s):  
Numerical Calculation ◽  
Exponential Growth ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Physical Contact ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Probability Functions ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Over Time

We are all connected globally. Communication, transportation and convenience have made the notion of distance very small irrespective of large barriers through space and time. However, the time has come for the humans to realize the ‘pitfall’ of this global connectedness as this opens a doorway paving the humans vulnerable to a lot of deadly diseases some of which can be triggered into a new human by just a tiny touch or physical contact. Humans should be aware of this connectedness as because it is this connectedness which can ensure the spreading of deadly diseases unbounded. Irrespective of checking every means of physical communications, it has been found that its quite difficult to control the spreading of diseases globally and this results in an epidemic with uncontrolled deaths and sickness. In this paper what exactly I have been trying to show is that, a simple numerical calculation yields the spread and flow of diseases as well as a means of control of the same if can be implemented correctly. However, I’m saying that this is not totally accurate but accurate to some extent which is within the boundary of implementation of human beings. Therefore, the main objective of this paper lies in a mere mathematical extent of the physical world of the spreading of diseases showing how a ‘non-exponential growth’ can lead to ‘exponential growth’ which again subsides to ‘non-exponential growths’ in a particular duration of time. The prevention parameters have also been computed mathematically at the end. Amid an outbreak, it has been the ability of a virus to mutate over time by resisting against the known medicines and immunities. Therefore, the virus can jump from ‘one level’ to a ‘higher level’, if the epidemic lasts for long. Therefore, in case of mutation, there are probabilities or ‘more probabilities’ of the virus getting stronger in time, however we can’t ignore the idea of 2 similar probabilities that the virus can ‘either remain in a same state or level, or may become weaker’ in time. This needs to be addressed while writing a paper about ‘an outbreak amid an epidemic and its parameters for precautions’ and this will be reflected in this paper as a probability functions.

A Proper Death

2018 ◽  
pp. 159-174
Author(s):  
Nicole Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
Right To Life ◽  
Animal Life ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Animal Trials ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Right ◽  
Natural Life

In The Death Penalty I, Derrida elucidates Kant’s support of the death penalty as that which “marks the access to what is proper to man and to the dignity of reason or of human logos and nomos.” “Man” is distinguished from animals/the beast, precisely because “man … is a subject of the law who raises himself above natural life.” This law is based on rationality, reason, ethics, right to life, and thus to forgiveness and the right to burial. In modern times the animal is not subject to the same law, and therefore the death penalty not only marks what is “proper to man,” but also frames human and animal life in particular ways. This essay examines the medieval practice of animal trials in order to push back against anthropocentric conceptions of the death penalty and to explore its implications for both human and animal lives.

scholarly journals Can a quantum state over time resemble a quantum state at a single time?

2017 ◽  
Vol 473 (2205) ◽  
pp. 20170395 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominic Horsman ◽  
Chris Heunen ◽  
Matthew F. Pusey ◽  
Jonathan Barrett ◽  
Robert W. Spekkens
Keyword(s):  
Tensor Product ◽  
Quantum State ◽  
Hilbert Spaces ◽  
Composite System ◽  
Hermitian Operator ◽  
Multiple Time ◽  
Single Time ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Joint State

The standard formalism of quantum theory treats space and time in fundamentally different ways. In particular, a composite system at a given time is represented by a joint state, but the formalism does not prescribe a joint state for a composite of systems at different times. If there were a way of defining such a joint state, this would potentially permit a more even-handed treatment of space and time, and would strengthen the existing analogy between quantum states and classical probability distributions. Under the assumption that the joint state over time is an operator on the tensor product of single-time Hilbert spaces, we analyse various proposals for such a joint state, including one due to Leifer and Spekkens, one due to Fitzsimons, Jones and Vedral, and another based on discrete Wigner functions. Finding various problems with each, we identify five criteria for a quantum joint state over time to satisfy if it is to play a role similar to the standard joint state for a composite system: that it is a Hermitian operator on the tensor product of the single-time Hilbert spaces; that it represents probabilistic mixing appropriately; that it has the appropriate classical limit; that it has the appropriate single-time marginals; that composing over multiple time steps is associative. We show that no construction satisfies all these requirements. If Hermiticity is dropped, then there is an essentially unique construction that satisfies the remaining four criteria.

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