Category:Nature

From Eurêka

Contents 1 Nature 2 Biology 3 Bionomics 4 Biological Time

Nature

Nature Material world, especially as surrounding humankind and existing independently of human beings.

Natural science Scientific knowledge of objects or processes observable in nature, such as biology.

Organism Animal, a plant, or anything that lives, such as a human being, tree or bacterium.

Ontogenesis Entire development of an organism from fertilization to completion of life history.

Reductionism Attempt to describe all biological processes by examining them in great detail. Biologists believed that by identifying and studying individual genes, they could learn all there was to know about the human body, including all its diseases, personality quirks and, ultimately, death.

Wholism Whole is greater than the sum of its parts, due to special properties that emerge from the interacting parts that, in turn, affect the whole.

1. Emergent properties Special properties that emerge from the interacting parts.

Biology

Biology Scientific study of living things, the main branches of which are botany and zoology, coined by Lamarck 1802.

1. Cryobiology Science of biology at low temperatures. Research in this field has made possible the freezing and storing of sperm and blood for later use.
2. Cryptogamic biology Study of plants that have no true flowers and seeds and that reproduced through spores such as ferns, mosses, fungi and algae.
3. Cytology Study of cells, a specialized branch of histology.
4. Histology Microscopic study of tissues of living organisms.
5. Teratology Study of biological monstrosities.
   1. Teratologist Scientist who studies teratology.
   2. Insults Artificially created ‘monsters’ which are made by injecting a growing fetus with a harmful substance to produce deliberate malformation.

Life sciences Encompass biology but are much more than just biology. It includes any research discipline that contributes to the understanding of life processes. Life science is in fact an interdisciplinary field requiring applications of basic principles from subjects such as physics, chemistry and mathematics.

Bionomics

Bionomics Study of the relationship of organisms to the environment.

Cryptozoology Study of evidence tending to substantiate the existence of or search for, creatures whose reported existence in unproved.

Abominable snowman Mysterious creature with human or apelike characteristics reported to exist in the high Himalayas, first report 1921.

1. Yeti Tibetan mysterious figure, first reported 1937.

Bigfoot (Sasquatch) Upright biped supposedly living in Northern California and Pacific Northwest, the result of a prank by Ray L. Wallace (1918-2002) in a logging camp, Humboldt Country, CA, using large pair of carved wooden feet to stomp a track, 1958.

Loch Ness monster Mysterious animal supposedly sighted swimming in Loch Ness, first reports in tabloid press 1930s.

Biological Time

• See also ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH

• See also Seasonal Health Rhythms

Biological time Type of time closely associated with attitudes and perceptions and with behavior constrained by the environment.

Human paleobiology Study of what human hormonal, sleep and temperature patterns might have been like in prehistoric times, before the advent of bright lights, urban living, etc.

Period Time that elapses before a rhythm starts to repeat itself.

1. Photoperiodism Length of light in a light/dark cycle.
2. Tau Organism’s period length.
3. Pulsatile Rhythmic regular movement.
4. Ultradian Processes having periods much less than 24 hours.
5. Infradian Processes having periods much greater than 24 hours.

Life cycle Sequence of events or states that occurs during the lifetime of an individual organism.

Generation Period from any given stage in the life cycle to the same life stage in the offspring. Typically from egg to egg.

Alternation of generations Applied to a peculiar mode of reproduction which prevails among many of the lower animals, in which the egg produces a living form quite different from its parent, but from which the parent-form is reproduced by a process of budding, or by the division of the substance of the first product of the egg.

Biological clock Internal timekeeping mechanism of cells or clumps of cells that oscillate every 24 hours sending out signals that capable of driving or coordinating a circadian rhythm, like sleeping, waking, eating, mating or hibernating, that are a feature deeply bedded in living beings.

1. Endogenous Self-sustained rhythm generated within an organism.
2. Exogenous Rhythm generated within or by an organism because of rhythmic environmental cues that are external to the organism.
3. Entraining agent Environmental time cue such as light that has the ability to reset a biological clock.
4. Diurnal Performed in or belonging to the daytime; opposite of nocturnal.
5. Zeitgeber (Ger, = time givers) Environmental time cue such as sunlight, food, noise, or social interaction that usually helps reset the biological clock to a 24-hour day.
6. Free running Natural self-sustained rhythm that exists in the absence of all environmental cues. When a human is free running, his/her cycle appears to be slightly longer than 24 hours.

Biological rhythm Self-sustained cyclic change in a physiological process or behavioral function of an organism that repeats at regular intervals.

1. Seasonal rhythms Changes in behavior that are due to changing seasons.
2. Breeding patterns Patterns of breeding that reflect the seaons. Humans, regarded as year-round breeder, have semi-seasonal peaks of fertility during spring and autumn.

Circadian rhythm Self-sustained biological rhythm which in an organism’s natural environment normally has a period of approximately 24 hours.

1. Circadian Being, having, characterized by, or occurring in approximately 24 hour periods or cycles; in relation to sleep cycles.

Seasonal rhythm Biological rhythm that accords with a season.

1. Oecological time Time which is related to the environment, its vagaries and its seasonalities.

Circannual Biological rhythm with a period of about one year.

Lifetime rhythm Biological rhythm that accords with an organ’s lifetime.

Circadian clock Internal clock in humans that operates on roughly a 24-hour basis that tells a person when to sleep, eat and be out and about.

1. Circadian hormone Hormone, such as melatonin, which is secreted in the female brain at night, e.g. in summer the amount falls off in females but not in males.
2. Circadian gene Gene in plants that controls such circadian-based rhythms as the morning unfurling of leaves and the timing of photosynthesis.
3. Period gene Gene found in fruit flies which assures the newly matured flies will emerge from their pupal cases in the morning, when the sun can quickly dry their wings.
4. Clock Gene found in both mouse and human chromosomes that when mutated, causes the body’s clock to think the world works on a 25-hour day.
5. Circadian rhythm measurements Methods of making standard measure of the circadian rhythm.
   1. Body core temperature Body temperature rises throughout the day, beginning to fall off at 7 or 8 pm. It falls to its lowest point about 5 or 5.30 am, then slowly begins to go up again.
   2. Melatonin change Hormone melatonin begins to increase around 10 pm and makes people feel sleepy then falls off during the day.

Light sensitive cells Some creatures have light sensitive cells on their bodies that helps to regulate the master clock. Horseshoe crabs have clock sensors on their tails, swallows have them inside their skulls, and fruit flies have time-keeping genes in their legs, wings and hair bristles, suggesting the entire body helps keep track of time. Because the amount of daylight changes through the seasons, each animal has to reset its clock every day.

Jet lag Upsetting the circadian rhythm by jet travel, rapidly passing through longitudinal time zones.

Photoperiodicity Impact of day length on hormonal fluxes, sleep patterns and behavior.

1. Photoperiod Conventional day length of 16 hours.

Psychological time Subjective time, which depends on how long people think an activity will take or took. Psychological time is useful in the explanation of observed behavior at the activity-system and attitude-perception levels.

Socio-ecological time Time dimension by which the activities of people and their coordination are measured. It is measured indirectly through the activities and events themselves and is the basis of the temporal organization of society in which the clock and the calendar function as control devices. It defines the norms that society expects in roles such as work and education.

Structural time Time related to the social system and to the passage of people through that system. It therefore involves longer cycles than ecological time and socio-ecological time.

1. Time geography (Time-space geography) Approach to geographical study which seeks to add a temporal dimension to the spatial analysis of activities and to demonstrate the temporal structuring of space.
   1. Lund School of Geography School of geography led by T. Hagerstrand which focused on the role of space and time that were regarded as resources that constrain human activity, 1960s.