- Industry: Biology
- Number of terms: 15386
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Terrapsychology is a word coined by Craig Chalquist to describe deep, systematic, trans-empirical approaches to encountering the presence, soul, or "voice" of places and things: what the ancients knew as their resident genius loci or indwelling spirit. This perspective emerged from sustained ...
Hydrocarbon liquid commonly drilled from sedimentary layers packed with marine matter left over from the Carboniferous days. Its dark, spellbinding, "oildorado" properties include convincing large groups of people to vote against cheap public transportation and elevating pirates and robber barons into heads of nation-states. See Peak Oil.
Industry:Biology
The evolution of a new species. This usually happens through either geographical separation over long periods of time, or through reinforcement, in which subtle differences in characteristics like calls or wing markings are more favored in mates. When Agrodiaetus butterflies live together, for example, the males tend to develop markings that distinguish them by species. Females of the same species prefer them. This provides the kind of breeding barrier an ocean or mountain range might.
Industry:Biology
For food and resources. Types: interference (by direct attack), exploitation (forced to share a resource), scramble (everyone gets something), contest (one competitor gets it all), and restrictive (preventing someone else from getting it); also, inter- and intraspecific modes (between or within species). Competition tends to characterize less mature ecosystems. Note: there is some debate about how much of the "competition" and "dominance" we see in the natural world is projected there by observers who take such behaviors in overmanaged human societies for granted.
Industry:Biology
Cycling of nitrogen from the air and soil to plants, animals, and then back to the environment. Bacteria, legumes, and algae convert atmospheric nitrogen into nitrates that enter plant roots before turning into protoplasm that decomposers eventually break down again.
Industry:Biology
Force required to hold a moving object in a circular path against its tendency to fly outward. Spinning storms like hurricanes and dust devils exhibit it. The force is proportional to the square of the velocity, which means that doubling the object's speed increases the centripetal force four times.
Industry:Biology
The use of scientific-sounding arguments to “prove” an unquestioned belief that a God created the world, usually in a short period of time. Creationism is a "working against nature" rather than a "working with nature" enterprise in its insistence that the divine stands apart from the natural in a relationship of domination (supernaturalism). Few scientists take Creationist claims of worldwide Biblical floods and inexplicable gaps in the fossil record seriously. In 1961 Henry M. Morris (1918-) and John C. Whitcomb, Jr. Published a poorly researched book called The Genesis Flood that added nothing scientific to the argument but did inspire the formation of a Creation Research Society in 1963. See Evolution.
Industry:Biology
Term introduced (“ecofeminisme”) by Francois d’Eaubonne in the 1974 text Le Feminisme ou la Mort. Dissatisfied with ecological analyses that leave patriarchy out of account, ecofeminists out parallels between how men in the West mistreat women and how they mistreat the Earth: in both cases a relationship of power, control, a will to dominate, and a pervasive fear of of the fact of interdependency. A twist on this is the patriarchal habit of objectifying women while feminizing the environment; women are then seen as less mature or human because "closer to nature. " Not all ecofeminists agree on women's relationship to the natural world: Salleh thinks that feminine bodily experiences situate women more closely to nature, whereas Roach critiques this for reinforcing of the old nature-culture dichotomy. Many ecofeminists have criticized deep ecology's emphasis on unity (seen as a deemphasis on diversity and particularity) and on the need for elaborate philosophizing; for Plumwood, who sees the Western exaltation of rationality as a suicidal expression of ecological contempt, "identifying" with nature is an extended egotism that replaces relationship with psychological fusion. For Ynestra King, the tie with nature, though socially colored, should be celebrated rather than repudiated as "determinist" or "essentialist. "
Industry:Biology
A colorless atmospheric waste-product gas (one carbon atom joined to two carbon atoms) produced by combustion, fermentation, and respiration. Fossil fuel consumption and deforestation have almost doubled the quantity of it in the atmosphere. See Greenhouse Effect and Photosynthesis.
Industry:Biology
A long, threadlike structure that carries the bearer's genetic code (DNA), among other things. Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes, 46 in all: 44 autosomes and two sex chromosomes, the X (female) and less complex Y (male). Offspring acquire half their chromosomes from the biological mother and half from the biological father. Each chromosome is shaped like an X, with a dot in the center (the centromere) and arms reaching out to the ends (the irreplaceable telomeres that keep chromosomes from sticking together accidentally; their gradual shortening from replication after replication during cell division sets the biological limit to a life). See Gene, DNA.
Industry:Biology
Characteristic of roughly 10% of any population. Recent evidence suggests a genetic component. Those who argue that homosexuality is "unnatural" are apparently unaware of the behavior in birds, sheep, beetles, bats, penguins, dolphins, orcas, macaques, bonobos (some 75% of whom are thought to be bisexual), black swans, orangutans, and roughly 1,500 species.
Industry:Biology
