Global Warming Effects on Population Literature review

Global Warming Effects on Population - Literature review Example DeWeerdt gives a interesting international, almost post-colonial study of the effects of global warming. She divides her analysis into three distinct categories of areas that will impact human life the most signifincantly that are also the most vulnerable to climate change: Food, Disease and changes in sea level. It is somewhat superficially obvious that all of these things will be impacted by climate; sea levels will obviously rise as polar ice melts (DeWeerdt 2012), food production, which is obviously very climate dependent will have to shift, and disease will obviously increase with any serious shifts in population, as these often lead to unsanitary conditions.Her analysis is novel, however, in indicating the degree to which these changes will impact different parts of the world. DeWeerdt argues that development, which is usually meant in economic ways, can actually be considered a society’s degree of ability to adapt to climate changes (DeWeerdt, 2012). Places that have hi gh degrees of infrastructure, for instance, will be more able to cope with any of these changes. Firstly, they can establish things that directly mitigate the effects of climate: things like greenhouses to cope with cold weather or irrigation to cope with dryness. Secondly, they can use transportation infrastructure to cope with secondary effects of climate change as well, easily developing newly productive areas while abandoning areas that have become unproductive due to climate change. Undeveloped countries, however, will suffer more greatly: people cannot flee a newly formed desert, cannot build seawalls to hold back a rising tide, and so forth. Conceptualizing development as a society’s degree of ability to cope with climate allows one to see very clearly that the effects of climate change will disproportionately affect developing societies.Using DeWeerdt’s analysis indicates that one can actually conceptualize as climate change (including both its causes and effec ts) as a particular damaging form of pseudocolonial resource extraction. If one imagines a favorable climate as a resource, in that it provides a whole sleuth of production but can be depleted if not properly managed, then developed countries, which achieve their development largely through the highest use of fossil fuels (DeWeerdt 2012) are actually taking a valuable resource from developing countries every time they use fossil fuels. This is an especially damaging form of resource consumption because the people who get the resource depleted do not gain from the depletion, unlike mining, for instance, in which minerals can be sold. Climate can more be imagined as a river dammed outside of a country’s borders: they lose, and do not gain, while the other country gains but does not loose.

Gene cloning (Clone human gene from cDNA libraries...) Essay

Gene cloning (Clone human gene from cDNA libraries...) - Essay Example First, cloning is the separation or isolation of genetically homogenous strain of an organism (Lassen et al., 2005). Organisms at the same genetic level are identical within a clone. In most cases, bacteria, phages and even higher plants are cloned by the isolation of a single cell from the organism of interest and allowing the isolated cell to form a colony or an entire plant. In more specific terms, cDNA cloning entails the isolation of single but self-replicating organism followed by an amplification of its cell (Kfoury, 2007). However, there are certain conditions that should be met for such a technique to be treated as cDNA cloning. That is, such an organism’s DNA must contain the target cDNA. In cases where the interest of a researcher is in any cDNA produced by a given organism, it would not matter the type of cDNA produced. That is, any cDNA would work. The key and most difficult issue in many cloning studies on CDNA is never the isolation of CDNA but the selection of the CDNA of interest among many cDNAs. A DNA library on the other hand refers to a collection of various sequences of DNA combined into one vector (Kfoury, 2007). Thus, a CDNA library has sequences that are complementary to messenger RNAs. A vector refers to an organism that is designed for experimental purposes and self-replicates. In many experiments, vectors are made from bacteriophages, plasmids, retroviruses and animal viruses (Lassen et al., 2005). Vectors must have a system by which they reproduce, which is the essence genetic science. Before delving deep into the techniques used to clone from CDNA libraries, it is importance to overview a few cloning strategies. Cloning Strategies and Methods First among the recommended cloning strategies is the necessity of acquiring a library that contains the required sequence. Second, the clones of interest should be isolated. Third, formal tests to help ensure that the correct clones of interest have been isolated need to be developed. One method of creating human genes from CDNA is referred to as the Rapid Amplification of cDNA ends (RACE) (McLaren, 2000). The known strengths of RACE are that it is inexpensive and a powerful tool for acquiring full-range CDNA, even for partially known sequences. In this technique, which begins with a mixture of mRNAs, non-specification anchors and gene-specific primers generated from the known regions of the gene, it is possible to identify substitute transcripts of a gene for partial as well as complete sequence of only one known transcript (McLaren, 2000). This technique is used to obtain a full-range sequence of a cell’s RNA transcript. In the first step of the RACE process, reverse transcription in which an unknown end section of a transcript is copied by use of a known sequence from the middle of the transcript results in a CDNA copy of the RNA transcript. The copied region is bounded by the known sequence and either the 5' or 3' end. Screening of cDNA Libraries and D NA Synthesis of CDNA Inserts The other techniques by which human genes may be obtained from CDNA are screening of CDNA libraries and DNA synthesis of CDNA inserts. Screening of cDNA libraries, by transcript-specific RT-PCR cloning is particularly appropriate in situations where a labeled CDNA probe is not available. In this technique, it is the knowledge about a CDNA’