From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Wed Mar 01 22:00:00 1995 Path: biosci!rutgers!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!beyond.escape.com!usenet From: Mike Pearson Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio Subject: RE: The Population Bomb Date: 2 Mar 1995 21:54:22 GMT Organization: Escape Internet Access (212-888-8212). Lines: 23 Message-ID: <3j5eqe$m9v@beyond.escape.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: a006m.adsnet.net What happened to Ehrlich's model was that the carrying capacity went up due to science. Can't this go on forever? Excused for his mistake by the early times in which he lived, Friedrich Engels said it could: "the productivity of the land can be infinitely increased by the application of capital, labour and science," he said. For some reason many of the capitalists are now carrying Engels' tune. Garrett Hardin, author of _The Limits of Altruism_, from whence this post is fashioned, said science doesn't think it can go on forever. Reasons include entropy -- change is paid for by loss of useful energy, population density creates the disorder of pollution which takes still more energy to process. The biosphere's system energy is approximable, and present methods are very entropic per person. e5079021@tempest.adsnet.net From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Wed Mar 01 22:00:00 1995 Path: biosci!bcm!cs.utexas.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!uunet!in1.uu.net!newstf01.news.aol.com!newsbf02.news.aol.com!not-for-mail From: mthogerson@aol.com (MTHOGERSON) Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio Subject: Re: significant differences between proportions?? Date: 2 Mar 1995 13:04:17 -0500 Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) Lines: 3 Sender: root@newsbf02.news.aol.com Message-ID: <3j51b1$sbc@newsbf02.news.aol.com> References: <3j39ds$21g@news.duke.edu> Reply-To: mthogerson@aol.com (MTHOGERSON) NNTP-Posting-Host: newsbf02.mail.aol.com Sounds more like a chi-square problem to me. Another thought: since you only have two outcomes, could you cast in in the form of a binomial distribution? From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Wed Mar 01 22:00:00 1995 Path: biosci!rutgers!gatech!news-feed-1.peachnet.edu!news.duke.edu!moore From: moore@PROBLEM_WITH_INEWS_GATEWAY_FILE (Jonathan Moore) Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio Subject: significant differences between proportions?? Date: 2 Mar 1995 02:10:04 GMT Organization: Duke University, Durham, NC, USA Lines: 12 Message-ID: <3j39ds$21g@news.duke.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: abacus.mc.duke.edu X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Dear readers. Here is an easy query for you clever maths types. Suppose someone counts some cells on a slide positive or negative, say 1000 in experiment 1 and 30% are positive, and 850 in experiment 2 and 40% are positive. Now I know how to work out the confidence intervals of the population mean, but I'm not sure what a significant difference would be. Roughly speaking if the 95% CIs dont overlap does this mean that the two samples are statistically significant??? Cheers for your help. E-mail responses please to moore@abacus.mc.duke.edu From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Thu Mar 02 22:00:00 1995 Path: biosci!bcm!cs.utexas.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!uunet!olivea!charnel.ecst.csuchico.edu!psgrain!news.teleport.com!usenet From: Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio Subject: Definitions: species and sub-species Date: Fri, 3 Mar 95 13:45:48 PST Organization: Teleport - Portland's Public Access (503) 220-1016 Lines: 14 Message-ID: <61776.rshepard@teleport.com> Reply-To: NNTP-Posting-Host: ip-pdx1-11.teleport.com X-Minuet-Version: Minuet1.0_Beta_15 X-POPMail-Charset: English I'm seeking a consensus on the definitions of "species" and "sub-species" as they refer to animals. What would be the most acceptable to the scientific community? Many thanks for your contributions. Rich Rich Shepard Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. 2404 SW 22 Street Troutdale, OR 97060-1247 USA + (503) 667-4517 (voice)/+ (503) 667-8863 (fax) Internet: rshepard@teleport.com CIS: 73577,2367 From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Thu Mar 02 22:00:00 1995 Path: biosci!bcm!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!psinntp!rebecca!tethys.ph.albany.edu!TIVOL From: tivol@tethys.ph.albany.edu Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio,bionet.biophysics Subject: Re: Biocidal concomitants of radiation (was: Computers--Next stage in evolution? Hmmmmmm.....) Date: 2 Mar 1995 17:26:07 GMT Organization: SUNYA School of Public Health, Albany, NY Lines: 24 Message-ID: <3j4v3f$kfg@rebecca.albany.edu> References: <3huofl$ogd@mp.cs.niu.edu> ,<3ivgot$fuq@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM> Reply-To: tivol@tethys.ph.albany.edu NNTP-Posting-Host: tethys.ph.albany.edu Xref: biosci bionet.population-bio:1271 bionet.biophysics:735 In article <3ivgot$fuq@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM>, claird@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM (Cameron Laird) writes: [lots of stuff deleted] >Are there radioactive species whose concen- >tration does *not* decline exponentially >(or perhaps as a linear combination of expo- >nentials, when more than one transition is >available)? Is this some use of "exponen- >tial" with which I am not familiar? > . Dear Cameron, Any given radioactive species decays exponentially, that is, as e to the power -lambda*time. I assume this is the use of "exponential" with which you are familiar. There are other considerations for radionuclides which are produced and which decay, so that the concentration at any given time is de- termined by both the rate of production and the rate of decay. "Nuclear and Radiochemistry", by Friedlander, et al., has a chapter on the equations of radioactive decay and growth which goes into this in some detail. If more than one transition can occur, there is still a single exponential which char- acterizes the decay rate. Yours, Bill Tivol From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Fri Mar 03 22:00:00 1995 Path: biosci!daresbury!not-for-mail From: Wolfgang Wuster Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio Subject: Definitions: species and sub-species LONG Date: 4 Mar 1995 14:38:33 -0000 Lines: 103 Sender: lpddist@mserv1.dl.ac.uk Distribution: bionet Message-ID: <3j9u19$kmf@mserv1.dl.ac.uk> X-Sender: bss166@clss1 Original-To: rshepard@teleport.com On Fri, 3 Mar 1995 rshepard@teleport.com wrote: > I'm seeking a consensus on the definitions of "species" and "sub-species" > as they refer to animals. What would be the most acceptable to the > scientific community? *BOOOOM!!!* You've just stepped into one of biology's biggest minefields. Consensus is not a term that readily springs to mind when talking about species and subspecies concepts. At the risk of getting flamed, I'll try to summarize some current ideas. There are two main approaches to the problem of defining species, one population genetic, the other historical. From population genetics originates what is called the biological species concept. This is that species are group of populations which actually or potentially interbreed with one another, and are reproductively isolated from each other. For instance, if you have two distinct forms, and you want to find out whether they are species, then you would look what happens where their distributions meet. If they interbreed and produce fertile hybrids, then you would regard them as conspecific. If they occur side by side (sympatrically), this would be interpreted as evidence of lack of interbreeding. Within the same approach, subspecies are populations or groups of populations which are in some way distinct from other such populations or groups of populations, but are not reproductively isolated. There are a number of sets of problems with the population genetic approach. The first is essentially practical, and relates to the question of how to determine species status for populations which do not meet in nature, such as somewhat different populations on isolated islands - are they interbreeding or not? Captive experiments are usually meaningless (some forms which are reproductively isolated in nature mate happily in captivity), and therefore assigning species or subspecies status to populations which do not meet in nature is entirely arbitrary. The second is more theoretical and relates to the fact that today, classifications are meant to represent the evolutionary history of the organisms concerned. Reproductive isolation is not necessarily a guide to evolutionary history. Take the following phylogeny of three distinct forms. B and C share a A B C more recent evolutionary history than either does \ \ / with A. However, it is possible that, say, B and C \ \/ are reproductively isolated, whereas A & B are not. \ / Consequently, the biological species concept would \/ group A and B as one species, and B and C as separate / species, so that the resulting classification would be entirely unrepresentative of the evolutionary history of the group. This is nowadays regarded as unacceptable. The situation gets a lot worse when we are dealing with the concept of subspecies. In pratice, anybody can describe any population or group of population that appears in some way different as a subspecies. As a result, such subspecies are in pratice often seriously flawed. One reson is that usually very few characters are used to define them (e.g. some conspicuous feature of scalation or color pattern (in reptiles - my field)). I fact, if another character or group of characters had been selected, the resulting subspecies might be quite different. Most subspecies are therefore largely arbitrary (unless they represent full species not recognized as such). As a result, the concept has been abandoned to a very considerable extent by most systematists today. The other approach to species concept is historical. Here, species must consist of populations or groups of populations which are monophyletic (meaning they are all descended from one common ancestor, and include ALL the descendants of that common ancestor), and have shown some evolutionary divergence from other such entities. The precise level of evolutionary divergence necessary to allow a form to be recognized as a species is not really defined. Reproductive isolation is not taken into account, and two forms which meet and hybridize may be recognized as full species. The historical approach is much more recent and has not been used as much as the much older biological species concepts, hence their final impact cannot yet be fully gauged. Problems of various kinds can be perceived with this approach as well. Some extreme proponents of such historical complexes would confer species status on any population or group of populations showing signs of separate evolution (i.e., differentiation) from other such groups of populations. This could obviously lead to a massive increase in the number of recognized species, as small differences between isolated populations are the rule rather than the exception. For instance, among lizards on Mediterranean islands, it is common to find differences among populations living on every tiny rocklet in an archipelago. Recognizing each as a species on the basis of a phylogenetic species concept would create chaos in the nomenclature. The other problem is that a morphological differences which are most commonly used to define species may not correspond to the evolutionary history of the organisms concerned, perhaps because such morphological differences are due to adaptation to the local environment rather than reflecting phylogeny. I hope this little summary helps. The upshot is that there is no real consensus about species and subspecies concepts. The pendulum is swinging towards the historical approach, but many would defend the biological species concept to the death. Consensus? Prepare for a long wait. ---- Wolfgang Wuster Thought for the day: If you see a light at the end of the tunnel, it is probably a train. From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Sun Mar 05 22:00:00 1995 Path: biosci!vt.edu!dchalcra From: dchalcra@vt.edu Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio Subject: limitation vs regulation Date: 5 Mar 1995 19:14:52 -0800 Organization: BIOSCI International Newsgroups for Molecular Biology Lines: 20 Sender: daemon@net.bio.net Distribution: world Message-ID: <199503060314.TAA26349@net.bio.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: net.bio.net Can anybody fully explain to me the difference between population regulation and population limitation? I am unable to differentiate between the two. From what I have read (Krebs 1994 and Sinclair 1987), population limitation are those processes which determine the equilibrium density of a population while population regulation are those processes that brings the population density back to equilibrium. If the equilibrium density is a result of a tradeoff between births and deaths, how does population regulation work? If the birth rate or death rate changes does this not establish a new equilibrium density? Is population limitation a direct result of density independent factors and is population regulation a result of density dependent factors? These may be trivial questions to some but I am thoroughly confused about some processes that I once thought I understood. Dave Chalcraft P.S. You may either write to me directly (dchalcra@mail.vt.edu) or through this newsgroup. From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Sun Mar 05 22:00:00 1995 Path: biosci!ns1.faseb.org!darwin.sura.net!martha.utk.edu!utkvx.utk.edu!boake From: boake@utkvx.utk.edu (Chris Boake) Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio Subject: Re: Definitions: species and sub-species Date: 5 Mar 1995 12:40 EST Organization: University of Tennessee Lines: 18 Distribution: world Message-ID: <5MAR199512403057@utkvx.utk.edu> References: <61776.rshepard@teleport.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: utkvx1.utk.edu News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41 In article <61776.rshepard@teleport.com>, writes... > I'm seeking a consensus on the definitions of "species" and "sub-species" >as they refer to animals. You will not find a consensus. It depends on the group of animals to which you refer. For example, bird taxonomy is beset by splitters, compared to insect taxonomy -- i.e. the kinds of differences which result in birds being named as different species will not usually raise insects to species. The better-studied a group is, the more likely you are to find different varieties being named as species or sub-species. Furthermore, insects are loaded with cryptic species -- species which are morphologically identical, but which cannot breed with each other, or have distinct mtDNA lineages, or show other characteristics that would result in them being genetically independent entities. Good luck! --Chris From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Sun Mar 05 22:00:00 1995 Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio Path: biosci!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!gatech!swrinde!pipex!uunet!psinntp!barilvm!technion!discus.technion.ac.il!vmsa.technion.ac.il!mdspre From: mdspre@vmsa.technion.ac.il Subject: genetics/lineage coding scheme Organization: TECHNION - Israel institute of technology Date: Fri, 3 Mar 1995 16:09:21 GMT Message-ID: <1995Mar3.180921@vmsa.technion.ac.il> Lines: 13 X-Nntp-Posting-Host: vmsa.technion.ac.il Sender: news@discus.technion.ac.il (News system) Hi, We're doing an epidemiological genetics study, and I'm trying to set up the records database. I need some sort of coding scheme for relatives of our patients. Is there a standard scheme? I'm not looking for a graphical (box/circle/line) system (although I'd like to know what software will generatethe graphical lineage plots), or a Roman numeral generation scheme. What I need is an alpha-numeric system, suitable for entry into cells of a spreadsheet (Excel) or database (Access), which will indicate generational relationship, maternal/paternal line, gender, etc., and be capable of indicating multiple relationships in the case of consanguinity (such as cousin marriages). Any help much appreciated! Thanks,Elliot Sprecher, Ph.D.Research CoordinatorNational Childhood Diabetes CenterChildren's Medical Center of IsraelMDSPRE@VMSA.TECHNION.AC.IL From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Sun Mar 05 22:00:00 1995 Path: biosci!agate!library.ucla.edu!csulb.edu!nic-nac.CSU.net!charnel.ecst.csuchico.edu!olivea!uunet!nntp.cac.washington.edu!evolution.genetics.washington.edu!joe From: joe@evolution.genetics.washington.edu (Joe Felsenstein) Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio Subject: Re: genetics/lineage coding scheme Date: 6 Mar 1995 07:13:17 GMT Organization: University of Washington, Seattle Lines: 29 Message-ID: <3jecmd$7aj@news.u.washington.edu> References: <1995Mar3.180921@vmsa.technion.ac.il> NNTP-Posting-Host: evolution.genetics.washington.edu Summary: Put in the mother's and father's ID numbers Keywords: human genetics, pedigrees In article <1995Mar3.180921@vmsa.technion.ac.il> mdspre@vmsa.technion.ac.il writes: >Hi, We're doing an epidemiological genetics study, and I'm trying to set up the >records database. I need some sort of coding scheme for relatives of our >patients. Is there a standard scheme? ... >What I need is an alpha-numeric system, suitable for entry into cells of a >spreadsheet (Excel) or database (Access), which will indicate generational >relationship, maternal/paternal line, gender, etc., and be capable of >indicating multiple relationships in the case of consanguinity (such as cousin >marriages). To preserve the full pedigree, what is essential is to have for each individual an ID number, and also to store for each individual its sex, ID number, its mother's ID number, and its father's ID number. From those the whole pedigree can be reconstructed. Then add to that whatever alpha-numeric coding seems most useful to you for immediate use, as the use of the others to reconstruct relationships may get tedious. Also it does not allow one to get non-genetic social relationships such as "adoptive father". There are other systems such as having "marriage nodes", but that one is the simplest. Without that information you can get into trouble, such as having codings that say that two individuals are both second cousins of a particular affected individual, but then no way to tell whether they are sibs, first cousins, or unrelated to each other. ----- Joe Felsenstein, Dept. of Genetics, Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195 Internet: joe@genetics.washington.edu (IP No. 128.95.12.41) From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Mon Mar 06 22:00:00 1995 Path: biosci!bcm!cs.utexas.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!news.moneng.mei.com!uwm.edu!msunews!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!bunyip.cc.uq.oz.au!dingo.cc.uq.oz.au!agrbeard From: agrbeard@dingo.cc.uq.oz.au (Rodney Beard) Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio Subject: Boseruoians? Date: 7 Mar 1995 12:18:47 GMT Organization: Prentice Centre, University of Queensland Lines: 4 Message-ID: <3jhiv7$9o8@bunyip.cc.uq.oz.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: dingo.cc.uq.oz.au Keywords: Boserup, Population X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.0 #3 (NOV) Question: Do any Boserupians read this channel? The Malthusian malignancy is getting to me. Rodney Beard From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Wed Mar 08 22:00:00 1995 Path: biosci!rutgers!gatech!swrinde!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!psgrain!news.teleport.com!usenet From: "Richard B. Shepard" Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio Subject: Re: genetics/lineage coding scheme Date: Thu, 9 Mar 95 12:17:39 PST Organization: Teleport - Portland's Public Access (503) 220-1016 Lines: 47 Message-ID: <56963.rshepard@teleport.com> Reply-To: NNTP-Posting-Host: ip-pdx1-21.teleport.com X-Minuet-Version: Minuet1.0_Beta_16 X-POPMail-Charset: English On Fri, 3 Mar 1995 16:09:21 GMT, mdspre@vmsa.technion.ac.il wrote: >Hi, We're doing an epidemiological genetics study, and I'm trying to set up the >records database. I need some sort of coding scheme for relatives of our >patients. Is there a standard scheme? I'm not looking for a graphical >(box/circle/line) system (although I'd like to know what software will >generatethe graphical lineage plots), or a Roman numeral generation scheme. >What I need is an alpha-numeric system, suitable for entry into cells of a >spreadsheet (Excel) or database (Access), which will indicate generational >relationship, maternal/paternal line, gender, etc., and be capable of >indicating multiple relationships in the case of consanguinity (such as cousin >marriages). Any help much appreciated! Thanks,Elliot Sprecher, Ph.D.Research >CoordinatorNational Childhood Diabetes CenterChildren's Medical Center of >IsraelMDSPRE@VMSA.TECHNION.AC.IL Elliot, I'm neither an epidemiologist nor a population geneticist. However, as an ecologist, I've designed and developed many scientific data bases. Unless there's an off-the-shelf solution for you, I suggest the following approach: 1) list all factors to be considered (e.g. relationship name, paternal/maternal lineage) 2) for each factor, list the number of different choices available (e.g., father, step-father, grand-father, etc). This approach is open-ended; you can always add more categories later without disturbing existing records. 3) the coding system will have as many digits/characters as you have factors; smaller factors can be alphabetic (i.e., fewer than 26), larger ones can be numeric. 4) there is also a tremendous advantage to making each factor a separate field (column). This allows you to select records which meet all combinations of interest. Rich Richard B Shepard, Ph.D., President Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. 2404 SW 22nd Street Troutdale, OR 97060-1247 USA + (503) 667-4517 (voice)/+ (503) 667-8863 (fax) From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Wed Mar 08 22:00:00 1995 Path: biosci!bcm!cs.utexas.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!uunet!in1.uu.net!munnari.oz.au!newsroom.utas.edu.au!pc160.aqua.utas.edu.au!mhunt From: mhunt@postoffice.newnham.utas.edu.au (Mark A. Hunt) Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio Subject: Re:The Population Bomb Date: Thu, 9 Mar 1995 10:08:04 Organization: Dept. Plant Science, University of Tasmania Lines: 26 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: pc160.aqua.utas.edu.au X-Newsreader: Trumpet for Windows [Version 1.0 Rev A] In article <60.819.4061.0N1D2302@canrem.com> pete.dixon@canrem.com (Pete Dixon) writes: >Subject: The Population Bomb >From: pete.dixon@canrem.com (Pete Dixon) >Date: Sun, 26 Feb 95 15:16:00 -0500 >I have just finished re-reading Paul Ehrlich's THE POPULATION BOMB........ >.......In the intervening years has Dr. Ehrlich published a sequel or some >other continuation to THE POPULATION BOMB? ....... >Pete Dixon >Waterloo, Ont >Canada Pete, Paul and Anne Ehrlich published 'The Population Explosion' in 1990 (Simon and Schuster Inc., New York). It is very good reading and addresses all of the predictions made in the 1971 book. If you can, I recommend that you get hold of audio tapes of Prof. Ehrlich (and anything else that he has done). The man is a God in population geography and common sense. Cheers, Mark From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Thu Mar 09 22:00:00 1995 Path: biosci!adam.cc.sunysb.edu!news.nysernet.net!news.sprintlink.net!pipex!sunic!sunic.sunet.se!umdac!news From: ablazi95@student.umu.se (Abdul Aziz Ali) Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio Subject: Re: pill for 3rd world Date: 10 Mar 1995 21:07:52 GMT Organization: AW Konsult Lines: 2 Message-ID: <3jqf38$4ls@kitten.umu.se> Reply-To: Ablazi. NNTP-Posting-Host: slip10.modem.umu.se X-Newsreader: WinVN 0.92.6+ In response to 'pill for third world', I am not surprised that the writer is from Germany. From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Thu Mar 09 22:00:00 1995 Path: biosci!bcm!cs.utexas.edu!news.tamu.edu!NewsWatcher!user From: aat3230@zeus.tamu.edu (Gus Trautweiler) Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio Subject: Re: IMPORTANT OPPORTUNITY Date: 10 Mar 1995 18:16:43 GMT Organization: Texas A&M University Lines: 15 Distribution: world Message-ID: References: <9502097948.AA794802352@internet.organo.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.194.248.25 In article <9502097948.AA794802352@internet.organo.com>, JMugg@organo.com ("Mugg, Jennifer") wrote: [Chain letter snip] The only important oportunity here is to see if there is some deleterious, mutant allele associated with the individuals who actually play along with this bullshit which belongs in alt.chainletter.sucker..........Shame on you JMugg. Gus Trautweiler ###QRNQURNQ##*. .*#*. .*#*. .*#*. Plant Pathology & Microbiology * | | | * * | | | * | | | * Texas A&M University * * | | | * * | | | * * | | | * College Station, TX 77843-2132 * | | | * | | | * * | | | * AAT3230@ZEUS.TAMU.EDU ###*' `*#*' `*#*' `*#*' From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Thu Mar 09 22:00:00 1995 Path: biosci!bcm!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!pipex!oleane!jussieu.fr!univ-lyon1.fr!swidir.switch.ch!scsing.switch.ch!news.dfn.de!fu-berlin.de!zrz.TU-Berlin.DE!aries.zrz.TU-Berlin.DE!joaccigh From: joaccigh@aries.zrz.TU-Berlin.DE (Joachim Dagg) Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio Subject: the pill for 3rd world Date: 9 Mar 1995 13:43:56 GMT Organization: Technical University Berlin, Germany Lines: 11 Message-ID: <3jn0ms$9qo@brachio.zrz.TU-Berlin.DE> NNTP-Posting-Host: aries.zrz.tu-berlin.de Strange idea, for I normally am a fierce enemy of eugenics: Add the right hormones to the food, industrialized counties are giving to starving people in the 3rd world. They would become sterile, as long as they are dependent on the food and that way get a fair chance to become independent from help. If the hormones were really great, they'd loose their effect not immediatly after stopping to eat them. So there would be a fair chance for the kids to survive. I think that's not even eugenics at all. It's the artificial implementation of an effective density dependent regulation mechanism. I don't see any ethic problems with it. Does anybody else see some? Joachim Dagg From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Fri Mar 10 22:00:00 1995 Path: biosci!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!news2.near.net!das-news2.harvard.edu!oitnews.harvard.edu!hsdndev!purdue!mozo.cc.purdue.edu!macg203d.bio.purdue.edu!user From: shall@bilbo.bio.purdue.edu (Stephen Hall) Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio Subject: Re: IMPORTANT OPPORTUNITY Date: Sat, 11 Mar 1995 15:05:47 -0800 Organization: Purdue University Lines: 19 Distribution: world Message-ID: References: <9502097948.AA794802352@internet.organo.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: macg203d.bio.purdue.edu In article , aat3230@zeus.tamu.edu (Gus Trautweiler) wrote: > In article <9502097948.AA794802352@internet.organo.com>, JMugg@organo.com > ("Mugg, Jennifer") wrote: > > [Chain letter snip] > > The only important oportunity here is to see if there is some deleterious, > mutant allele associated with the individuals who actually play along with > this bullshit which belongs in alt.chainletter.sucker..........Shame on > you JMugg. One responded that this type of chain letter posting is evidence that brothers and sisters shouldn't mate. But people like this have worked at inbreeding for many generations. I mean they should feel a real sense of accomplishment that they have managed to bring the recessive mutation for idiocy into the homozygous state. From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Fri Mar 10 22:00:00 1995 Path: biosci!daresbury!not-for-mail From: Wolfgang Wuster Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio Subject: Re: pill for 3rd world Date: 11 Mar 1995 10:08:11 -0000 Lines: 17 Sender: lpddist@mserv1.dl.ac.uk Distribution: bionet Message-ID: <3jrsqb$pqj@mserv1.dl.ac.uk> X-Sender: bss166@clss1 Original-To: Abdul Aziz Ali On 10 Mar 1995, Abdul Aziz Ali wrote: > In response to 'pill for third world', I am not surprised that the > writer is from Germany. > While what that writer wrote may have been ethically dubious, that does not justify slurs against other people's nationalities. I'm sure plenty of things could be said against yours or anyone else's as well. Try not to fall into the same trap as those you criticise. --- Wolfgang Wuster Thought for the day: If you see a light at the end of the tunnel, it is probably a train. From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Fri Mar 10 22:00:00 1995 Path: biosci!agate!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!ix.netcom.com!netnews From: jwas@ix.netcom.com (jw) Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio Subject: Re: pill for 3rd world Date: 11 Mar 1995 22:31:21 GMT Organization: Netcom Lines: 33 Distribution: world Message-ID: <3jt8bp$5b0@ixnews4.ix.netcom.com> References: <3jrsqb$pqj@mserv1.dl.ac.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: ix-bos5-04.ix.netcom.com In <3jrsqb$pqj@mserv1.dl.ac.uk> Wolfgang Wuster writes: > >On 10 Mar 1995, Abdul Aziz Ali wrote: > >> In response to 'pill for third world', I am not surprised that the >> writer is from Germany. >> > >While what that writer wrote may have been ethically dubious, that does >not justify slurs against other people's nationalities. I agree with this. On the other hand, "ethically dubious" is a *weak* term. The idea is Nazi-like - which is, I take it, what Abdul Aziz Ali meant. When Nazi-like ideas come from Germany, some people feel especially alarmed. This Nazi-like idea, however, was first proposed by Paul Ehrlich (an American) in the first edition of his _Population Bomb_. Since then, he tried hard and successfully to live it down. Paul Ehrlich has a gift of being always wrong on everything - logically, factually and morally - and getting away with it. His theories are total hogwash; he makes many predictions, and all of them come out wrong; but he is such a good salesman that he continues to rake in fame and money. From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Fri Mar 10 22:00:00 1995 Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio From: John@longevb.demon.co.uk (John de Rivaz) Path: biosci!agate!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!gatech!swrinde!pipex!peernews.demon.co.uk!longevb.demon.co.uk!John Subject: lineage: alternative surnaming scheme References: <1995Mar3.180921@vmsa.technion.ac.il> Organization: Myorganisation Reply-To: John@longevb.demon.co.uk X-Newsreader: Newswin Alpha 0.7 Lines: 17 X-Posting-Host: longevb.demon.co.uk Date: Sat, 11 Mar 1995 22:04:59 +0000 Message-ID: <251693505wnr@longevb.demon.co.uk> Sender: usenet@demon.co.uk The system of surnames passing from the male followed by most civilisations loses information. Anyone any thoughts in this idea: female children take the mother's maiden surname, male children the father's. -- Sincerely, **************************************** * Publisher of Longevity Report * John de Rivaz * Fractal Report * * details on request * **************************************** **** What is the point of life if it ends in death? **** From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Fri Mar 10 22:00:00 1995 Path: biosci!agate!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!torn!ccshst05.cs.uoguelph.ca!ccshst01.cs.uoguelph.ca!aischult From: aischult@uoguelph.ca (Albrecht I Schulte-Hostedde) Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio Subject: Re: pill for 3rd world Date: 11 Mar 1995 21:34:12 GMT Organization: University of Guelph Lines: 11 Message-ID: <3jt50k$2ck@ccshst05.cs.uoguelph.ca> References: <3jqf38$4ls@kitten.umu.se> NNTP-Posting-Host: ccshst01.cs.uoguelph.ca X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Abdul Aziz Ali (ablazi95@student.umu.se) wrote: : In response to 'pill for third world', I am not surprised that the : writer is from Germany. This is the same type of crap the writer is pulling. Don't be an idiot or as bigoted as he is. Obviously, there are moral problems with a third world pill. Why should Western industrialized nations impose their will upon less wealthy nations? _________________________________________________________________________ Albrecht Schulte-Hostedde, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ont., N1G 2W1 519-824-4120 ext 8360 aischult@uoguelph.ca From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Sun Mar 12 22:00:00 1995 Path: biosci!adam.cc.sunysb.edu!news.nysernet.net!news.sprintlink.net!beyond.escape.com!usenet From: Mike Pearson Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio Subject: Re:The Population Bomb Date: 11 Mar 1995 17:06:02 GMT Organization: Escape Internet Access (212-888-8780). Lines: 16 Message-ID: <3jsl9q$cls@beyond.escape.com> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: a004m.adsnet.net ,> I recommend that you get hold > of audio tapes of Prof. Ehrlich (and anything else that he has done). The man > is a God in population geography and common sense. > Common sense seems to be more connected to vast numbers of people than to a few well informed ones. Prof. Ehrlich and Garrett Hardin are both great writers. However, much of the writing omits explanation what biological principles explain the correlation of traits and population numbers. We can't just assume a character flaw as a biological principle. If not genetic trait, then it is not common sense but vigorous, truthful thinking we need. From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Mon Mar 13 22:00:00 1995 Path: biosci!daresbury!bioftp.unibas.ch!citi2.fr!jussieu.fr!univ-lyon1.fr!swidir.switch.ch!scsing.switch.ch!news.dfn.de!fu-berlin.de!zrz.TU-Berlin.DE!w353zrz!joaccigh From: joaccigh@w353zrz.zrz.tu-berlin.de (Joachim Dagg) Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio Subject: Re: pill for 3rd world Date: 13 Mar 1995 16:54:29 GMT Organization: Technical University Berlin, Germany Lines: 19 Message-ID: <3k1tc5$j2m@brachio.zrz.TU-Berlin.DE> References: <3jrsqb$pqj@mserv1.dl.ac.uk> <3jt8bp$5b0@ixnews4.ix.netcom.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: w353zrz.zrz.tu-berlin.de So I generalize the idea a bit more and say, it would be good if everybody, who cannot feed her/his children wouldn't reproduce. This is not discriminating any race or genetical based variation. So it's not Nazi like or fascist. It's best malthusian philosophy. Actualy I - as a student - would have to be sterile. But I do not reproduce out of comprehension as long as I can't afford! Now I was putting the idea on the net, because I wanted to hear some ethical problems about it. I wanted it to be discussed. I know that I have strange ideas sometimes and these ideas are much depending on what I'm reading at the moment. Instead I've been called a Nazi, which is actually a rediculous thing to do. As a german I have reflected much more about the 3rd Reich than any of the posters to this thread. And I'm not one of them, who wants to forget that time or says he has nothing to do with it. I'm taking the historical responsibility all germans have. Do you take yourn? Joachim ---- Open minded for objections on the idea (first post or first sentence of this post). From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Mon Mar 13 22:00:00 1995 Path: biosci!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!gatech!swrinde!howland.reston.ans.net!spool.mu.edu!uwm.edu!caen!msunews!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!aggedor.rmit.EDU.AU!minyos.xx.rmit.EDU.AU!s924769 From: s924769@minyos.xx.rmit.EDU.AU (Eric Pascal Seuret) Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio Subject: Info on population problem in Japan? Date: 14 Mar 1995 11:20:59 GMT Organization: Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne, Australia. Lines: 10 Message-ID: <3k3u6r$b2c@aggedor.rmit.EDU.AU> NNTP-Posting-Host: minyos.xx.rmit.edu.au NNTP-Posting-User: s924769 X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.0 #4 (NOV) Hi folks, I'm trying to locate some details about Japans population and what sort of population policies they have. So if you've got any info on how Japan is coping with its large population and what they intend to do in the future, I would really appreciate any information you can offer. Thanks in advance, Eric From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Mon Mar 13 22:00:00 1995 Path: biosci!SERVIDOR.DGSCA.UNAM.MX!poggio From: poggio@SERVIDOR.DGSCA.UNAM.MX (sebastian poggio) Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio Subject: Re:pill Date: 14 Mar 1995 09:41:12 -0800 Organization: BIOSCI International Newsgroups for Molecular Biology Lines: 3 Sender: daemon@net.bio.net Distribution: world Message-ID: <9503141743.AA14211@servidor.dgsca.unam.mx> NNTP-Posting-Host: net.bio.net Definitely the continuous growth of the world population is a problem to take seriusly but any metod that force people to dont have children is a violation of their rights. The fact that in the 1st world (especialy in some countries) the poulation is decresing insted of growing is a phenomenon that begin a long time ago (and not precisly because of a pild). We cant now if this is because of their culture or because of their rate of life ( I mean the amount of money that they earn) or bout, if is because of the first then the job will be titanic and I am talking of education promoted and suported by the first world and if it is because of the second the solution is an economic plan ( and not a lend of money but a kind of indemnisation) after all they are what they are because of the 3rd world (and if you dont believe me just look at the history). The problem with this is the soberany of those countries that has to be respected, may be the solution is the world as a nation. The important thing is that if we are in a race to save the human race we have to stay human From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Tue Mar 14 22:00:00 1995 Path: biosci!daresbury!bioftp.unibas.ch!citi2.fr!jussieu.fr!fdn.fr!uunet!EU.net!dkuug!eunet.no!nuug!nac.no!nntp-oslo.uninett.no!ibf-jsp.nlh.no!jsp From: jsp@nlh.no (Jan Wesenberg) Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio Subject: Re: pill for 3rd world Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 14:42:10 GMT Organization: UniNett Lines: 76 Message-ID: References: <3jrsqb$pqj@mserv1.dl.ac.uk> <3jt8bp$5b0@ixnews4.ix.netcom.com> <3k1tc5$j2m@brachio.zrz.TU-Berlin.DE> NNTP-Posting-Host: ibf-jsp.nlh.no In article <3k1tc5$j2m@brachio.zrz.TU-Berlin.DE> joaccigh@w353zrz.zrz.tu-berlin.de (Joachim Dagg) writes: >From: joaccigh@w353zrz.zrz.tu-berlin.de (Joachim Dagg) >Subject: Re: pill for 3rd world >Date: 13 Mar 1995 16:54:29 GMT >So I generalize the idea a bit more and say, it would be good if >everybody, who cannot feed her/his children wouldn't reproduce. etc. etc. Well, perhaps this new escape-nazi-label-version of your idea is not racist, but it sure is not very far from fascist. It means not treating your fellow human beings as conscious subjects, but as wild cats and trying to influence them not through political and economic interactions, but by forced chemical treatment. It's typical that such ideas come from privileged people who think they have a solution to the world's problems and that if only everybody else would do as they do, the world would be better. Well, very few prophets have seen the world change according to their brilliant idea. Reality is far more difficult to change than your own state of mind, illuminated by some arbitrary "eureka". And then it's typical that when they experience that disappointment, they try to get revenge on the world by prescribing a forced implementation of their idea. When Islamic fundamentalists try to force their ideas upon us, we call it terrorism; when Christian fundamentalists threaten the lives of doctors and evolutionary biology teachers in USA, we call it crime; what should the rest of the world call our attempts to rule the physiology of their own bodies by bypassing their minds? When you argue that you yourself don't have children out of a high level of consciousness about the problems of the world, one is tempted to call it bullshit, or at least what psychologists call rationalization. I myself think that Western students postpone to get children out of other reasons: not so much because they can't afford it (for most people in the West economy may be tough, but still has a substantial element of priorities), but more because they haven't time for it, it would mean a limitation to their intellectual carreer or to their feeling of freedom, it would shorten the time accessible to sexual experimentation (with contraceptives available), restrict their hobbies, and so on. That doesn't mean these reasons aren't respectable: it only means that being a student in the West is something very different from being a victim of poverty in the 3rd world. By the way, such ideas of course are not new. At least here in Norway, it is publically known that a group who we know as "tatere" (wandering people, the people calling themselves romani but not being ethnically gypsies - don't know what they are called in English or German) were forcedly sterilized in our country far up in this century. That is felt by Norwegian public opinion as quite a shame. It would surprize me if not similar things are known from other Western countries. And those of you who know more than me about the initial steps of Western European industrialization, with the severe poverty which broad strata of the European societies experienced at that time, - such measures must have at least been discussed in those days, if not implemented? It is not surprising that such ideas show up today, on the background of the ongoing destruction of the Western welfare states. Every time the privileged layer of the society can manage to keep their privilegies by demanding the rest to pay for themselves, this is explained as "justice". In this context the vision of managing to keep our Western living standard and our share of the global resources by controlling the reproduction of the world's poor population, is only an extreme variation on the same theme. I think, when you stop dealing with other people (whether that is the 3rd world or more generally unprivileged people, as in your last version) as with conscious co-subjects and start viewing them as something like another species which you have to bring under control, nothing prevents them to start viewing *you* as another species, too. And they are far more numerous than we are, my dear fellow inhabitant of the little peninsula (known as Western Europe) on the far western corner of the Eurasian continent! Perhaps we could crush them by using our military power, but in that case it is * your* idea which would have lead to the holocaust! So I think instead you have to start thinking about what we - the whole of humanity - can do to get rid of poverty by political and economical means. Jan Wesenberg Agricultural University of Norway Department of Biology and Nature Conservation From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Tue Mar 14 22:00:00 1995 Path: biosci!bcm!cs.utexas.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!EU.net!Germany.EU.net!zib-berlin.de!zrz.TU-Berlin.DE!hercules!joaccigh From: joaccigh@hercules.zrz.tu-berlin.de (Joachim Dagg) Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio Subject: Re: pill for 3rd world Date: 14 Mar 1995 12:08:55 GMT Organization: Technical University Berlin, Germany Lines: 34 Message-ID: <3k410o$1rh@brachio.zrz.TU-Berlin.DE> References: <3jrsqb$pqj@mserv1.dl.ac.uk> <3jt8bp$5b0@ixnews4.ix.netcom.com> <3k1tc5$j2m@brachio.zrz.TU-Berlin.DE> NNTP-Posting-Host: hercules.zrz.tu-berlin.de I'm already convinced, -that it's practically impossible; -that it would require a prejudice free society, with fair chances for everybody and therefore is utopic - as some posters to this thread have shown; -and that it has nothing to do with malthusian philosophy, because Malthus preached sexual abstinence for the poor and thought poorness was inherited. I preached the opposit and wanted to give the poor food and a fair chance to get out of poorness. But a way to rduce population explosion has to be found, I think, because the carrying capacity cannot grow as fast as the human population does. And the portion of people living below the minimum level is growing with population explosion. --------------------------------------------------------------------- A: JA, HE'S A NAZI! B: His grandfather was killed by the Nazis. A: BUT HE'S A NAZI - HE'S A GERMAN! B: He's a jew. A: but...but...but --------------------------------------------------------------------- Too many make the same mistake as A. He thought that `jew' is a race and not a religion. He thought that `german' and `jew' are excluding categories. That's Nazi-truth and some here seem to have the same truth, only with opposit polarization. `Israel' is the nation, and it is of course a melting pot of different people and not a race. Jewdom is a religion, and it of course has no national boundaries. You want to be in company with Hitler, with your flawed categories? Even germans think about population explosion. From my free thinking about the problen you can only deduce, that I have no religious or ideological taboo about the problem. Go to hell or to talk.origin with yourn! Joachim ---- Life is a state of mind. From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Wed Mar 15 22:00:00 1995 Path: biosci!bcm!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!howland.reston.ans.net!news.moneng.mei.com!uwm.edu!caen!zip.eecs.umich.edu!panix!cmcl2!yale.edu!news.ycc.yale.edu!remote1-line15.cis.yale.edu!rannala From: rannala@minerva.cis.yale.edu (Bruce Rannala) Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio Subject: Re: bitter pill Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 21:13:10 +1000 Organization: Department of Biology, Yale University Lines: 16 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: remote1-line15.cis.yale.edu X-Newsreader: Trumpet for Windows [Version 1.0 Rev B] Some persons seem to be confusing "eugenics" with "genocide." The former involves voluntary, or involuntary (in the case of mentally-handicapped persons) sterilization, and the latter murder (i.e., references to Nazi's etc). The "eugenicists" (i.e., R.A. Fisher, Galton and others) were mostly British (as if it matters...) and were principally concerned with the differential rates of reproduction between the upper and lower classes in Edwardian England. An involuntary pill for persons in third world countries would certainly be a form of eugenics since it would act to lower the rate of reproduction among the poorer classes and leave the wealthy classes unaffected. A more egalitarian approach would, of course, be to feed the pill to rich and poor. As an aside, some of the most important early work in population genetics and biometrics was published in the journal "Annals of Eugenics" which has since become the "Annals of Human Genetics." Bruce Rannala, Department of Biology, Yale University rannala@minerva.cis.yale.edu From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Wed Mar 15 22:00:00 1995 Path: biosci!daresbury!trane.uninett.no!nntp.uio.no!nntp-oslo.uninett.no!ibf-jsp.nlh.no!jsp From: jsp@nlh.no (Jan Wesenberg) Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio Subject: Re: pill for 3rd world Date: Thu, 16 Mar 1995 10:45:32 GMT Organization: UniNett Lines: 73 Message-ID: References: <3jrsqb$pqj@mserv1.dl.ac.uk> <3jt8bp$5b0@ixnews4.ix.netcom.com> <3k1tc5$j2m@brachio.zrz.TU-Berlin.DE> <3k410o$1rh@brachio.zrz.TU-Berlin.DE> NNTP-Posting-Host: ibf-jsp.nlh.no I think everybody should agree that calling Joachim Dagg a nazi is unfair. I think there is nothing to be said against the distinction he makes between sitizenship, nationality, religion, culture etc in the last part of the last message. Except perhaps that many people who are very involved emotionally in these matters may feel that these distinctions are some sort of uninteresting intellectual exercises. Such themes become emotionally infected because of the effects of experimenting with the practical implementation of such ideas in the past. But it doesn't mean that this reasoning is inherently and nessessarily racist, as some very devoted fighters of e.g. antisemitism tend to argue. I would say that if all the people of the world were more conscious about that sitizenship, nationality, ethnic identity, religion and so on not should be viewed as nessessarily coupled, then we would not have experienced the nazi horror, the tragedies in Yugoslavia, in Rwanda and so on. But, this is only a new example of that it is easy living a relativily wll-fed life in a relatively stable society to administer recipes for the rest of the world of how to act. And that whether we preach this or not, tragedies *are* happening. And whether we preach family planning or not, population is increasing. The solution is to do something substantial, something on the economical and political level. The problem of abstract ideas like Dagg's, is that they are utopies. Some utopies may be beautiful (like those which christians tend to claim are the inner essence of christianity, or like the original communist ideals of equal rights and power to the people), some less beautiful (like all the different nationalist ideas). On the level of abstract utopies it is difficult to draw a sharp line between sincere concern about ones own culture and chauvinistic nationalism. I think that before 1933 it was even possible to be a German nationalist in Germany and still be some sort of a decent person. But ideas evolve, just like biological evolution. Less successful variants are abandoned by history and more successfull variants take their place (Dawkin's meme concept is quite explaining, I think!). So after 1933-45 there is no place for "moderate" or "decent" nationalism, neither in Germany nor in any other country. And after the forced collectivization around 1930 and the Moscow trials of 1936-38 the communist experiment, although resting on an utopy not far from the christian one, was similarly compromized - the failure of the eurocommunists to manage to reestablish the utopy in the 1960-70ies proves this. So utopies may or may not be beautiful, but they are abstract. It is the efforts to make them come true, which often tend to become despotic. The more the utopy differs from the real world, the more potential has the implementation of the utopy for becoming a despothy. And of course, chauvinistic utopies *always* become despotic. The idea of selectively controlling people's fertility (based on the criterion of their wallet size) may possibly still be discussed on a kind of abstract, neutral, decent level - though i doubt it. And I doubt it because it is all too obvious that the implementation of that idea *between countries in the world* would require a lot of racism, or at least imperialism, and the implementation of it *within a country* (thus avoiding the racist label, at least in ethnically homogenous countries) would require a fascist state, a despothy. It is strange that proponents of such ideas don' t realize that and continue to discuss on the abstract level, as if a fairy might make it come true without pain to anyone. By the way, it seems that the industrial development (or should we say Gaia?) is actually on the way of solving this problem in a far more fair way than Dagg's version. The pollution by estrogen-like substances seems to have reduced male fertility significantly all over the world during this century - irrespective of nationality or economic status. So what I think we should discuss instead is how to maintain or increase those levels of pollution ;). The minus about this is that it affects other species as well, and that the privileged might buy themselves free from the effect by buying ecologically produced food. Sorry, this is becoming a political debate and not one about population biology; but then the seed Dagg sowed was a political one. Jan Wesenberg Agricultural University of Norway Department of Biology and Nature Conservation From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Wed Mar 15 22:00:00 1995 Path: biosci!ns1.faseb.org!darwin.sura.net!martha.utk.edu!utkux1!brmcf From: Bruce McFarling Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio Subject: Re: lineage: alternative surnaming scheme Date: Thu, 16 Mar 1995 09:07:41 -0500 Organization: University of Tennessee, Knoxville Lines: 31 Message-ID: References: <1995Mar3.180921@vmsa.technion.ac.il> <251693505wnr@longevb.demon.co.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: utkux1.utk.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII In-Reply-To: <251693505wnr@longevb.demon.co.uk> On Sat, 11 Mar 1995, John de Rivaz wrote: > The system of surnames passing from the male followed by most > civilisations loses information. > > Anyone any thoughts in this idea: > > female children take the mother's maiden surname, male children the > father's. > The Spanish convention is that the children take a surname forom the father's side and a surname from the mother's side; however, this is just the same problem one step removed, since it is the ptarnal surname taken from each parent:i.e., the paternal surname of the two grandfathers To avoid the confusion of brothers and sisters with the same parents but different names (think of the havoc this will cause in school databases) form the family name from the paternal surname of the father and the maternal surname of the mother. If a married couple did this to form their married name, then the man could use his paternal surname and the woman her maternal surname as professional names, and not have to worry about the name changes the result from serial polygamy. We've got plenty of time to get this worked out, since it won't possibly happen until the next wave of active feminism, which on historical evidence might be thirty years away. Virtually, Bruce McFarling, Knoxville brmcf@utkux1.utk.edu From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Thu Mar 16 22:00:00 1995 Path: biosci!rutgers!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!beyond.escape.com!usenet From: Mike Pearson Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio Subject: RE: population discussions as sociobiology Date: 17 Mar 1995 15:35:48 GMT Organization: Escape Internet Access (212-888-8780). Lines: 76 Message-ID: <3kca8k$9mr@beyond.escape.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: a002m.adsnet.net Mr. Wesenberg wrote in the bionet.population-biology (and more): > I myself >think that Western students postpone to get children out of other reasons: >not so much because they can't afford it (for most people in the West >economy may be tough, but still has a substantial element of priorities), >but more because they haven't time for it, it would mean a limitation to >their intellectual carreer or to their feeling of freedom, it would shorten >the time accessible to sexual experimentation (with contraceptives >available), restrict their hobbies, and so on. As long as you are applying sociology, why not make it sociobiology? Please pardon generalities, but as a biologist, perhaps you have not yet become an expert on the character flaws and misplaced? priorities of other Westerners. Perhaps a pulp fiction writer should be consulted. *** *** However, since you are intelligent and well informed in biology, your biological observations (ie. sociobiology) might be considerably helpful if you consider humans as social primates etc. Most of what you said makes good sense, but sometimes good sense doesn't work in the real world. Many of the people you are "defending" are not in a frame of mind to return the favor. They are caught up in a different mindset. We all have this problem of interpreting the world in our own idiosyncratic way. As Paul Ehrlich said, "We don't perceive the world as it is, because our nervous system evolved to select only a small extract of reality and to ignore the rest." A scientist is one who goes beyond that. As Baruch Spinoza said," I have labored carefully not to mock, lament, or execrate human actions, but to understand them; and to this end I have looked upon passions such as love, hatred, anger, envy, ambition, pity and other perturbations of the mind, not in the light of _vices_ of human nature, but as _properties_ just as pertinent to it as the heat, cold, storm, thunder, and the like to the natue of the atmopshere." Spinoza also said,"The endeavor for self-preservation is the primary and only foundation for virtue." Regards Mike e5079021@tempest.adsnet.net "A waterproof hypothesis is a hypothesis so worded that no observation can refute it. The trick is in the protective wording. Science does not admit invincible and altruistic assertions into its sanctuary. Are the egoistic and altruistic positions no more than waterproof hypotheses?" -- Garrett Hardin, in _The Limits of Altruism . . . An Ecologist's View of Survival_ From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Thu Mar 16 22:00:00 1995 Path: biosci!adam.cc.sunysb.edu!news.nysernet.net!news.sprintlink.net!beyond.escape.com!usenet From: Mike Pearson Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio Subject: Re: pill for 3rd world Date: 17 Mar 1995 19:10:01 GMT Organization: Escape Internet Access (212-888-8780). Lines: 26 Message-ID: <3kcmq9$ece@beyond.escape.com> References: <3jrsqb$pqj@mserv1.dl.ac.uk> <3jt8bp$5b0@ixnews4.ix.netcom.com> <3k1tc5$j2m@brachio.zrz.TU-Berlin.DE> <3k410o$1rh@brachio.zrz.TU-Berlin.DE> NNTP-Posting-Host: a001m.adsnet.net > > > >Sorry, this is becoming a political debate and not one about population > >biology; but then the seed Dagg sowed was a political one. > > Population regulation is a fairly simple equation. You either increase the > rate at which members of the population die or you decrease the rate at > which they reproduce. When applied to humans, which solution has any > potential to be anything other than political? > > Biologists can provide insight which other disciplines might overlook. Acting both as citizens and as biologists, all this commentary is relevant. Sociobiology observes that "politics" is a phenomenon with parallels in other social primates. "Territorial politics" also has those parallels. Yes, biology must study social phenomena to study population biology. And we have to be careful about the perceived implications of what the biology tells us. _That's_ political science._ Mike e5079021@tempest.adsnet.net From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Thu Mar 16 22:00:00 1995 Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio Path: biosci!adam.cc.sunysb.edu!news.nysernet.net!news.sprintlink.net!howland.reston.ans.net!spool.mu.edu!torn!nott!emr1!hilda.pnfi.forestry.ca!lmarshall From: lmarshall@pnfi.forestry.ca (Larry Marshall) Subject: Re: pill for 3rd world X-Nntp-Posting-Host: hilda.pnfi.forestry.ca Message-ID: Lines: 15 Sender: news@emr1.emr.ca Organization: Natural Resources Canada X-Newsreader: Trumpet for Windows [Version 1.0 Rev A] References: <3jrsqb$pqj@mserv1.dl.ac.uk> <3jt8bp$5b0@ixnews4.ix.netcom.com> <3k1tc5$j2m@brachio.zrz.TU-Berlin.DE> <3k410o$1rh@brachio.zrz.TU-Berlin.DE> Date: Fri, 17 Mar 1995 16:57:20 GMT >Sorry, this is becoming a political debate and not one about population >biology; but then the seed Dagg sowed was a political one. Population regulation is a fairly simple equation. You either increase the rate at which members of the population die or you decrease the rate at which they reproduce. When applied to humans, which solution has any potential to be anything other than political? ---------- Larry Marshall lmarshall@pnfi.forestry.ca Canadian Forest Service Voice:(613) 589-2880 Petawawa National Forestry Institute FAX:(613) 589-2275 From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Thu Mar 16 22:00:00 1995 Path: biosci!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!beyond.escape.com!usenet From: Mike Pearson Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio Subject: Biological discussions of population Date: 17 Mar 1995 15:44:00 GMT Organization: Escape Internet Access (212-888-8780). Lines: 61 Message-ID: <3kcao0$9rr@beyond.escape.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: a002m.adsnet.net Mr. Wesenberg wrote in the bionet.population-biology (and more): > I myself >think that Western students postpone to get children out of other reasons: >not so much because they can't afford it (for most people in the West >economy may be tough, but still has a substantial element of priorities), >but more because they haven't time for it, it would mean a limitation to >their intellectual carreer or to their feeling of freedom, it would shorten >the time accessible to sexual experimentation (with contraceptives >available), restrict their hobbies, and so on. An expert on the character flaws of Westerners might be a fiction writer or sociologist. Sociobiology would relate to the population problem. Consider man as a social primate when not performing more intelligently. Most of what you said makes good sense, but somehow good sense too often doesn't work in the real world. As Paul Ehrlich said, "We don't perceive the world as it is, because our nervous system evolved to select only a small extract of reality and to ignore the rest." A scientist is our hope to go beyond that. As Baruch Spinoza said," I have labored carefully not to mock, lament, or execrate human actions, but to understand them; and to this end I have looked upon passions such as love, hatred, anger, envy, ambition, pity and other perturbations of the mind, not in the light of _vices_ of human nature, but as _properties."_ Spinoza also said,"The endeavor for self-preservation is the primary and only foundation for virtue." Mike e5079021@tempest.adsnet.net "A waterproof hypothesis is a hypothesis so worded that no observation can refute it. The trick is in the protective wording. Science does not admit invincible and altruistic assertions into its sanctuary. Are the egoistic and altruistic positions no more than waterproof hypotheses?" -- Garrett Hardin, in _The Limits of Altruism . . . An Ecologist's View of Survival_ From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Thu Mar 16 22:00:00 1995 Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio Path: biosci!bcm!cs.utexas.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!spool.mu.edu!umn.edu!news From: jan@dryad.labmed.umn.edu (Jan Marie Lundgren) Subject: SIMEX 3.0 release (FREE modeling software) Message-ID: Sender: news@news.cis.umn.edu (Usenet News Administration) Nntp-Posting-Host: dryad.labmed.umn.edu Organization: University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Date: Fri, 17 Mar 1995 19:52:34 GMT Lines: 83 This is to announce the release of SIMEX version 3.0. The most important changes from the beta version are: Added Tcl hook to simulation loop Redesigned SX_BaseEvent Added ability to delete event from within itself Added Tutorial Added Queueing examples Documented Tcl interface Read simulation.tcl from . or $(SIMEXROOT)/simulation.tcl SIMEX is a set of C++ classes, along with a few Bourne shell and Tcl/Tk scripts. The goal of SIMEX is to provide a framework for building discrete event simulation models, with an emphasis on models of large biological populations. SIMEX is the current incarnation of a project that began two decades ago with a model of influenza epidemiology. Since then versions of the software have been used to model coronary heart disease, HIV spread through social networks, and family pedigrees with genetic diseases. SIMEX is based on a process- oriented world view and is therefore akin to ModSim and Sim_Plus_Plus. SIMEX is known to run on a SparcStation with g++ 2.6.0. When configured without the optional support for light weight threads and Tcl/Tk, it contains only platform independent C++ code and should work on any system with a C++ compiler with good support for templates. The shell scripts are useful for creating program stubs, but could be ignored for use on non-Unix platforms. SIMEX was developed at the National Micropopulation Simulation Resource and is freely available and supported. However, our funding depends on knowing our user base so please contact us if you find the software useful and acknowledge our grant number in any publications arising from the use of the software. This project was funded by NIH grant P41-RR01632 from the National Center for Research Resources. More information can be obtained from http://www.nmsr.labmed.umn.edu The software itself can be obtained from ftp://ftp.nmsr.labmed.umn.edu You may also wish to contact the following staff Jan Marie Lundgren (User Contact) jan@simvax.labmed.umn.edu Michael Altmann (Development Director) michael@simvax.labmed.umn.edu SIMEX provides classes for the following aspects of modeling: Event scheduling and process modeling At the core of SIMEX is an event scheduler that uses a bucket scheme (a.k.a. the calendar algorithm) for fast event management. On top of this are built a number of types of events. The most useful of these is a state transition diagram, for which a user specifies the durations in states and the transitions among states. Each state is implemented by the user as a C++ method. There are also classes for light weight processes, repeatedly performing a function, and for synchronization. Simulation structure Since most simulation programs have a similar flow of control, a base class is provided from which a user derives and specializes a class for a particular model. Monitoring statistics The hardest part about micropopulation models is assembling macropopulation information. A suite of classes lets you easily find the number of individuals that have a certain set of attributes. Generic data structures Because we wanted SIMEX to be able to stand alone, we have reinvented the wheel for a few of the standard data structures. User interface A class is provided that lets you easily add a user interface to your model. The interface is fairly simple, but it does let you specify which parameters should be modifiable at run time. If Tcl/Tk is installed, a graphical interface can also be generated. Random numbers The random number generators are based on Marsaglia, Ananthanarayanan & Paul, 1973. In addition to the usual distributions, classes are provided for general discrete distributions. From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Fri Mar 17 22:00:00 1995 Path: biosci!adam.cc.sunysb.edu!news.nysernet.net!news.sprintlink.net!howland.reston.ans.net!spool.mu.edu!uwm.edu!caen!night.primate.wisc.edu!news.doit.wisc.edu!decwrl!enews.sgi.com!news.igc.apc.org!cdp!foodfirst From: Inst. for Food and Development Policy Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio Subject: Hunger & Pop: Myths & Root Causes Message-ID: Date: Fri, 17 Mar 1995 15:24:53 -0800 (PST) X-Gateway: notes@igc.apc.org Lines: 861 /* Written 3:14 PM Mar 17, 1995 by foodfirst in igc:dev.foodfirst */ /* ---------- "Hunger & Pop: Myths & Root Causes" ---------- */ ******************************************************** Food First Backgrounder Institute for Food & Development Policy Please read informational material on the Institute at the end of this piece. ******************************************************** Winter 1994 Myths and Root Causes: Hunger, Population, and Development by Peter Rosset, John Gershman, Shea Cunningham & Marilyn Borchardt* *The authors are all staff members of Food First. Twenty years ago at the World Food Conference in Rome, Frances Moore Lappe and Joseph Collins met, and a year later founded Food First. Today, two decades after the Rome Conference, it's time to assess where we stand. During the past twenty years, the United States and other First World countries have sent massive amounts of food aid to Africa and other parts of the Third World, and spent untold millions on development assistance. Yet over 20% of the Third World's population is still chronically hungry. In addition to hunger and poverty, many are caught in civil war, forced to migrate, or eke out an existence on marginal land. Is it hopeless? Are the problems just too great to tackle? Or do practical alternatives exist? We at Food First believe that real and practical alternatives do exist. All too often government policies fail to resolve the problems they are directed at, and in many cases actually make them worse, because of a lack of understanding of root causes. In development policy, as in health care, treatments have been directed at symptoms, not at the underlying diseases. For example we send contraceptives and food aid to people who have been displaced into arid areas unsuitable for farming, when what they need is the redistribution of quality farmland. Or we insist that a Third World country open its economy to imports, when it is precisely those imports that drive local producers out of business, creating hunger and unemployment. The true root causes of hunger, and the policies that promote it, must be tackled if we are to reduce hunger and poverty. Yet these root causes and exacerbating policies are often obscured by myths that make it difficult for us to see clearly. MYTH: There is simply not enough food to go around FACT: Growing more food will not end hunger: people go hungry even in a world of plenty Food First's research over the past twenty years has consistently shown that hunger is not caused by an absolute scarcity of food.(1) World production of wheat, corn, rice and other grains is sufficient to give every person on the planet 3,500 calories per dayPmore than enough to keep healthy, without even counting other kinds of foods. Recent World Bank projections show that this is unlikely to change in the next twenty years.(2) Yet a food crisis undeniably exists. 800 million people currently do not eat enough to live a productive life. If enough food is already produced, why is there hunger? Simply growing more food does not eliminate hunger. Today Brazil is the third largest agricultural exporter in the world. Yet government figures indicate that nearly 32 million people are destitute. In 1990, the richest one percent of Brazilians had a greater percentage of national income than the poorest fifty percent combined. The share earned by the bottom half has declined over the last decade. Land ownershipQa measure of access to land by poor farmersQis highly concentrated, with less than 1% owning 43.7% of the agricultural, and in most cases, most fertile land.(3) In the U.S., the world's largest agricultural exporter, an estimated 30 million people go hungry.(4) The hungry are mostly unemployed, or earn wages too low to feed themselves and their families. People go hungry when they lack the opportunities necessary to obtain adequate foodQsuch as land, jobs that pay a living wage, or social programs that insure people have access to food. MYTH: There's not enough food because there are too many people FACT: The root causes of poverty and hunger are the uprooting of peoples from their land and livelihoods There clearly are severe imbalances in some areas of the world between human population density and the capacity of local economies and environments to provide people with decent livelihoods. However, this does not mean that there are too many people overall. For example, population densities on the poor soils of the Chiapas Highlands in Mexico are too high for the local farming economy. But the origin of these population densities goes back to when Mexico was a Spanish colony, and indigenous people were forcibly moved to the Highland area.(5) This forced relocation of such a large number of people onto a small area of marginal land is the root cause of their impoverishment. Today this is one of the poorest regions of Mexico, with rampant malnutrition and diseases of poverty like infant diarrhea, cholera and tuberculosis. Yet nearby parts of Chiapas with very fertile soilsQthe Grijalva Valley, the Soconusco Mountains, and the coastal plains of the PacificQhave extremely low population densities. These fertile lands are farmed by wealthy and in many cases, absentee landlords, who grow cotton, beef and sugar for export to the U.S., and corn for Mexico City, while the nearby indigenous people continue to go hungry.(6) This pattern of too many people in fragile areas and too few on nearby fertile soils is repeated worldwide. It is useful to remind ourselves that the great pre- colonial civilizations in Africa, Asia and the Americas were all based on food production. In every case staple foods were grown on the best lands: generally those with deep, fertile soils, relatively flat, with good access to water for irrigation or with regular rainfall. Areas that were marginal for agriculture, like rainforests in Latin America or desert edges in Africa, were less populated and not farmed intensively. In Africa, desert margins were inhabited by small groups of nomadic pastoralists, whose patterns of long- distance migration were in tune with natural variations in rainfall and vegetation growth. They lived for millennia in a sustainable, harmonious fashion, despite the marginality of their habitat. Central and South American rainforests typically were populated by small numbers of indigenous people, who lived sustainably through a combination of hunting and gathering and active tending of rainforest plant species underneath the forest canopy. In no case did pre- colonial civilizations attempt to grow monocultures of annual crops in marginal habitats. All that changed with colonialism. Food producers were displaced from the best lands onto ever more marginal ones, especially desert edges, steep slopes and rain forests. Despite the achievement of independence, this process has been accelerated in the post-colonial era. Today the wealthy use the best lands in Africa and the Americas to produce cotton, coffee, peanuts, tobacco, bananas, sugar cane, cattle, and fruits and vegetables for exportQprimarily to North America, Europe, and Japan. Meanwhile fragile regions are overcrowded, as the expansion of export farming forced the poor into ever smaller areas. Famines occur in Africa not because droughts are more common today, but rather because food is now being grown in areas where droughts were always common, the areas of irregular rainfall that were traditionally used by nomadic pastoralists.(7) Occasionally global market forces have led to Ttoo few people' on marginal land as well. In the Las Lagunas area of Mexico, the policy-driven collapse of corn prices in recent decades has made it necessary for many members of every family to migrate and seek employment elsewhere. The traditional agricultural system, which had been ecologically sustainable for centuries was based on communal labor. When the number of able-bodied workers dropped, the communal system collapsed, leaving increased hunger and ecological devastation in its wake.(8) MYTH: Population control is the answer to hunger and poverty FACT: Only raising the living standards of the poor and increasing the social and economic status of women will end hunger and lower fertility rates The world population has grown by 1.9% per year since 1950, yet grain production has grown by 2.7% per year over the same period.(9) Scarcity of food is not the problem. Declining birth rates mean that the world human population will eventually stabilize itself. However, many remain concerned that growth rates are not dropping fast enough. In our 1977 classic, "Food First: Beyond the Myth of Scarcity", Frances Moore Lappe and Joseph Collins showed that poverty is the root cause of population growth, and numerous studies since have reaffirmed the basic premise that population growth accelerates with economic destitution, as poor people need more children to get by.(10) This is true in both rural and urban areas. The only resource a poor farmer has to increase his or her food production is family labor. Without sufficient income it is out of the question to buy fertilizer and machinery, obtain more land, or hire outside labor. The only option left to increase income is to put one's children to work on the family plotQthus children have value as family labor. Shanty towns that encircle major Third World cities are filled with people driven out of the countryside by the expansion of export agriculture. Urban slums have few employment opportunities for adults. Children and young adults are often the main breadwinnersQshining shoes, selling newspapers, and prostituting themselves. At the same time, the inadequacy of old age social security programs encourages parents to have more children to care for them in their old age. Numerous studies have shown that improving living standards and employment opportunities for women inevitably eases hunger and brings down fertility rates much more effectively than birth control programs.(11) As people move up in social class, children are no longer an economic help, and, in fact, cost more money. For the middle class, a child means medical bills, clothes, a larger house, child care, books and tuition. And as women are better educated and have more job opportunities, children mean more time at home, leading to foregone income. Despite this scientific evidence we are experiencing a resurgence of Malthusian demands that birth control programs be greatly expanded. Proponents of this viewpoint make two claims: socioeconomic changes necessary to bring birth rates down will be too slow and too late, and that there is a large unmet demand for birth control among Third World women.(12) They conclude that it would be much simpler to meet the demand that already exists for smaller families by promoting birth control, rather than attempt the "impossible", namely social change. The claim that birth rates can be reduced solely by increasing access to contraceptives is based on faulty analyses, which incorrectly deduces a desire for fewer children from an expressed desire for better contraceptive methods. Recent studies confirm that people are able to plan their families with or without modern contraceptive methods, as they have done for thousands of years.(13) Family size remains far more influenced by economic factors and the status of women. Food First supports quality reproductive health services as a basic human right, just as we support access to all kinds of quality health care and other ingredients for a decent life. But it is a false hope to think that contraception will reduce population growth significantly. MYTH: Overpopulation in Third World countries is degrading the environment and provoking massive migration FACT: Expansion of export agriculture is the root cause of much environmental destruction and migration in the Third World Overpopulation in Third World countries is commonly thought to be responsible for substantial destruction of the environment, including deforestation and destruction of the rainforest, desertification, and soil erosion. While it is indeed true that the poor in the Third World are forced to destroy their environment in a desperate battle for survival, the root cause is not over- population. Rather, once the growth of export agriculture forces the poor to farm fragile lands, environmental problems are the inevitable result. On the desert edges in Africa, plowing the soil each season degrades these fragile areas and expands deserts. Thus peasants are blamed for desertification, when in fact they have been forced into a position where they have no choice. Throughout Central America many small farmers have been driven from fertile Pacific lowlands up steep mountain slopes, like El Salvador, where they try to farm thin, rocky soils that rapidly erode away. Others are driven into rainforests, like the Atlantic Coasts of Costa Rica and Nicaragua, where soils lose all fertility within two or three seasons after the trees are cut. Thus peasants are blamed for soil degradation and rainforest destruction, even as they become poorer and more desperate by the day. (14) Meanwhile wealthy local elites and foreign companies who export from the best land, and displaced the poor in the first place, are rapidly destroying their own land. Abuse of pesticides, fertilizers, heavy machinery and large scale monocultures has led to massive pesticide poisoning, ruined fisheries, dust storms, and lost soil fertility. As yields drop and the debt crisis forces poor countries to export ever larger quantities to meet debt repayment obligations, export farming expands out from the best soils and pushes peasants off somewhat marginal lands onto ever more infertile ones.(15) These same forces also lead to mass migration and provoke conflict. When people cannot make a decent living, enough to feed themselves and their families, they have no choice but to leave, moving to the slums of burgeoning cities like Mexico City, Lagos, or Bangkok. Those who go to the city rarely find a job that pays a living wage, as industry is seldom able to absorb more than a fraction of the labor displaced from the countryside. Many people go into the informal economy or a life of crime, while others migrate to other countries, often in the North. This has become an enormous global political issue, with both rich and poor nations alike now hosting large numbers of economic refugees from neighboring countries. This has caused a backlash and in some cases violence, against new arrivals. MYTH: The key to development for the Third World lies in a renewed emphasis on exports and free-trade FACT: Free-trade policies and export agriculture have increased poverty throughout the Third World Policies that integrate agriculture into the world economy without concern for the social, economic, and political effects on the poor, have been the driving force behind hunger, poverty, population growth, and much environmental destruction. Two current policies stand out for their negative impacts, both forced upon Third World countries by the United States and other First World countries, with the complicity of local governing elites. These are the opening of economies to imports from the North, and the promotion of export- led growth. Both are old policies that received new impetus from the export of Reaganomics in the 1980s, or what is called structural adjustment in the Third World.(16) Structural adjustment policies mandated by the World Bank, the IMF, and U.S. AID, have required lowering or elimination of tariff barriers, import quotas and production subsidies, all in the name of free-trade. That has meant an influx of imported grains and other foodstuffs at low prices. This, combined with food donations, has undercut the ability of local farmers to compete and survive throughout the Third World. For example, in Burkina Faso imported wheat goes for $60 per ton because of subsidies by exporting countries, about a third lower than the cost to produce local grains, millet and sorghum.(17) In Costa Rica, corn prices fell dramatically in the 1980s due to U.S. food aid and structural adjustment mandated cuts in support prices. The number of Costa Rican peasants who grow corn has dropped by as much as 60%, accompanied by unprecedented social strife.(18) This pattern has been repeated in country after country. In short, a poor farmer on the worst soils in his or her country, must try to compete with grains produced on the best farm land in the world, the U.S. corn belt, and not only that, but face U.S. subsidies that make the cost of this food cheaper than it costs to produce it. Export promotion in Third World countries has had similar effects. For example, during the 80s U.S. AID money was withdrawn from programs promoting basic needs and redirected toward new export crops in 33 countries. These "non-traditional" exportsQmostly fresh fruits and vegetablesQrequired large scale production, transport, and marketing, virtually excluding the poor from any benefits. In Central America this amounted to a massive transfer of resources from programs favoring small farmers to ones favoring large exporters and foreign companies.(19) Between the effects of free trade and export promotion, the rural poor in the Third World suffered setbacks in the 80s that generally returned their standard of living to pre-1970 and in some cases pre-1960 levels. Together with the end of the Cold War, this has led to a predictable increase in conflicts and migration to Northern countries. Mexico is a good case in point, having implemented a multitude of IMF and World Bank structural adjustment programs. Just six years ago the minimum wage would buy a family 94% of the basic necessities. Today it buys only 20%.(20) Between 1980 and 1992 the support price that Mexican farmers received for their corn dropped by 20%, while the amount of credit available for growing corn fell by 77%.(21) Massive unrest in Mexico and migration to the United States are a result of this deepening poverty. After independence in 1980, Zimbabwe introduced price supports for corn and invested heavily in extension, marketing, credit services for small farmers, and access to seeds and other supplies. Within five years Zimbabwe was producing an exportable surplus, while the percent of peasants selling corn rose from 10% to 60%. Nonetheless, the forced opening of its market to imports proved to be costly for Zimbabwe, according to Oxfam UK: By the mid-1980s, the country had increased self- sufficiency to the point where it had built up a stockpile of maize from which it was able to export to food-deficit neighbors. As the U.S.-European Tfarm war' intensified, however, maize imports flooded into local markets at around half the levels paid to Zimbabwean producers. By driving down prices, these imports left Zimbabwe's Grain Marketing Board with a huge financial deficit and a maize stockpile which, under World Bank advice, was sold at a loss. The result: Zimbabwe was left without a strategic food reserve when the 1992 drought struck, forcing the government to turn to costly commercial imports food to avert a food security crisis. There is little doubt that, if freed from competition from subsidized maize imports, Zimbabwe could again become a major regional exporter... However, Zimbabwe will not fulfill its agricultural potential in the face of continued dumping by Europe and the USA."(22) While increasing globalization of the world economy in the past half century has left mostly casualties in its wake, there have been exceptions. The post-World War II economic successes of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan offer important insights. At the end of World War II, each was as destitute as any Third World country is today. The key policies that they needed to recover, centered around making the peasantry the engine of economic development, through "expensive food" policies that allowed farmers to receive high prices for their produce. This was achieved by trade barriers against cheap subsidized imports of agricultural products, combined with agrarian reform under which nobody could possess more than three hectares of farmland. Together these measures created a peasantry with the purchasing power to live well,and as consumers, to sup port the fledgling domestic industries that later became international powerhouses.(23) Though we might not wish to repeat other aspects of this TAsian Model,'(24) we can take from it the lesson that investment in the peasantry can lead to Tbubble-up' economics to benefit the entire society, rather than the failed Western concept of trickle-down economics. Just as important, East Asia shows the merits of first focusing on developing a strong domestic economy before opening to the world economy. MYTH: Food should be obtained wherever it's cheapest, even if that means subsidized imports FACT: Third World governments must protect local food production and prioritize the creation of jobs in rural areas The issue of protection for farm prices in developing countries must be reexamined. Even if it is cheaper, both for a country and its consumers, to allow subsidized North America and European wheat and corn to flow into an area, do such savings outweigh the costs to society of the millions of people displaced from agriculture by such Tdumping' practices?(25) The lesson of East Asian agricultural protectionism could be applied to today's Third World countries as a way to move them out of poverty. Tariff barriers cost a government nothing, yet maintain fair prices for local farmers. We also need to recognize that the penetration of capitalist business relations into all but the remotest areas of the world means that the rural poor now make as much income, or more, on off farm labor than they do on farming. Typically a peasant's plot is inadequate to support a family, making it necessary to sells one's labor as a part-time plantation worker, often at well below minimum wage. Development policies need to be geared toward creating more and better rural employment opportunities. Processed farm products, for example, obtain much higher prices than do raw agricultural commodities. Even rudimentary communally-owned processing facilities can greatly increase farmers' profits, as well as provide needed off-farm employment.(26) MYTH: Agrarian reform is passe; where it's been tried it hasn't worked FACT: Real agrarian reform is a necessary, but not sufficient, step toward eliminating rural poverty and hunger We have to reopen the issue of agrarian reform, which was in vogue for much of the post-World War II period, but became taboo in the 80s. We cannot continue to accept land tenure systems that allocate the vast majority of good land to a few wealthy owners and relegate the vast majority of the rural population to miserably small parcels of the worst possible farmland. Not only is this an issue of social justice, but redistribution can lead to increases in food production at lower cost, as labor-intensive peasant multiple cropping systems produce higher yields with fewer inputs than conventional systems on the same land.(27) For peasants farming desert edges in Africa and facing drought-induced famines, birth control programs will not improve the situation. They will still face famine because of uneven rainfall patterns. By the same token food aid can only help temporarily, and in fact, it can even drive people off the land as donated food drives local prices below the cost of production for local farmers. Only agrarian reform that gives the poor access to land with regular rainfall or irrigation can make a difference. That is the bottom line for Africa, and for everywhere else where the poor have been forced onto impossibly marginal lands. Even in Zimbabwe, success must be balanced against the failure to proceed with redistribution. Oxfam UK reports that: One million smallholder communal farms are [still] restricted to half of the total area suitable for agricultural production. The other half is occupied by 4,500 commercial farmers, most of whom are white. Moreover, the commercial farms are almost all located in areas with prime land and assured rainfall, while communal farms operate mainly in drought-prone areas with poor soils. The grossly unequal distribution of land explains why, despite impressive gains in food production since the early 1980s, almost half a million rural families remain vulnerable to malnutrition."(28) We must learn from the mistakes of the past. The much heralded Latin American agrarian reforms of the post- World War II period, which moved peasants to remote areas to farm small plots of infertile land, cut them off from markets and supportservices. It was inevitable that such efforts would fail to reduce poverty. True agrarian reform must redistribute quality land. But land alone does not make a successful farmer. Global market participation is now unavoidable in most of the Third World. To succeed, peasants must have credit, education, extension services, and new marketing channels that give them a fair chance to compete.(29) Sustainable Rural Livelihoods The benefit of an analysis that focuses on root causes is that we see how the causes ofQand therefore the solutions toQpoverty, hunger, rapid population growth, migration, and environmental destruction are inter- related. It has been collapse of rural livelihoods over centuries, accentuated in the 1980s and 90s, that produced this nexus of problems. Thus the key task at hand is to create real and sustainable livelihoods in rural areas. Three elements are necessary for a viable alternative policy. These are: * managed integration into the world economy on terms that give the poor a fair chance * agrarian reform * policies that promote fair prices and decent employment Change is Possible China has only half as much cropped land as India, yet Indians suffer widespread and severe hunger while the Chinese do not. Sri Lanka has only half the farmland per person of Bangladesh, yet when effective government policies kept food affordable, Sri Lankans were considerably better fed than Bangladeshis. Costa Rica, with less than half of Honduras' cropped acres per person, boasts a life expectancyQone indicator of nutritionQfourteen years longer... And Cuba, which led the Third World in life expectancy, low infant mortality rates, and good nutrition [until the recent collapse of relations with the ex-socialist bloc], has a population density similar to Mexico's, where hunger is rampant.(30) What all of these cases have in common is that the better-off countries have instituted land reform and other policies aimed at improving rural livelihoods. Zimbabwe also supported this thrust, as progressive government policies made it possible to dramatically increase food production. Nevertheless, steps still remain to be taken toward greater agrarian reform and protection for Zimbabwean maize producers. The state of Kerala in India offers one final lesson. Average incomes make it historically one of the poorest states in India, yet in 1991 literacy was 39% higher, life expectancy nine years longer, and infant mortality and birth rates were 80% and 33% lower, respectively, than the rest of India. Land reform, education for women and health care for all contributed to this success. Grassroots organizations including strong peasants', workers' and women's movements helped to keep the progressive governments that implemented these policies in power.(31) Because the basis of hunger is powerlessness, real change can only be achieved by supporting grassroots movements for self-determination, rather than continuing to prop up local elites and subsidize transnational corporations. Thus our conclusion at Food First: it is not a scarcity of food, but rather a scarcity of real democracy, that keeps people hungry. The kind of changes we propose can only be implemented following a redistribution of decision-making power. The poor majority must have a say in determining how productive resources are used. There must be a redistribution of the economic, social, and political resources which make the exercise of such power possible. This is the essence of democracyQparticipation in the decisions which affect our lives. The corollary is that strong grassroots movements can make a difference, when they, instead of ruling elites, receive our support. NOTES 1. Frances Moore Lappe and Joseph Collins (1977), Food First: Beyond the Myth of Scarcity, Ballantine Books, 619 pp.; Frances Moore Lappe and Joseph Collins (1986), World Hunger: Twelve Myths, Grove Press, 208 pp. 2. International Economics Department. 1993. The World Food Outlook. Washington, D.C.: The World Bank, 256 pp. 3. John Gershman, "Brazil: Looking Beyond Soccer," Food First News & Views 16(54):1,3, Summer/ Fall 1994. 4. John Gershman, "The Faces of Hunger in America," Food First News & Views 16(53):13, Spring 1994. 5. George Collier with Elizabeth Quaratiello (1994), Basta! Land & the Zapatista Rebellion in Chiapas, Food First Books, 165 pp. 6. ibid.; Peter Rosset with Shea Cunningham, "Understanding Chiapas," Food First Action Alert, Spring 1994, 6 pp. 7. Eric Wolf (1982), Europe and the People Without History, University of California Press. 8. Ral Garca Barrios and Luis Garca Barrios, "The remnants of community: migration, corn supply and social transformation in the Mixteca Alta of Oaxaca," Transformation of Rural Mexico, No. 2:99-118, 1994. 9. International Economic Department, op. cit. 10. William Murdoch (1980), The Poverty of Nations: the Political Economy of Hunger and Population, Johns Hopkins, 382 pp; Frances Moore Lapp and Rachel Schurman (1990), Taking Population Seriously, Food First Books, 87 pp; Frederick Buttel and Laura Raynolds "Population Growth, Agrarian Structure, Food Production, and Food Distribution in the Third World" pp 325-361 in, David Pimentel and Carl Hall (eds), Food and Natural Resources, Academic Press, 1989. 11. ibid. 12. Bryant Robey, Shea Rutstein and Leo Morris, "The Fertility Decline in Developing Countries," Scientific American 269(6):60-66, December 1993. 13. Lant H. Pritchett, "Desired Fertility and the Impact of Population Policies," Population and Development Review 20(1):1-55, 1994. 14. John Vandermeer and Ivette Perfecto (forthcoming in 1995), Breakfast of Biodiversity: the Truth About Rain Forest Destruction, Food First Books; Piers Blaikie (1985), The Political Economy of Soil Erosion in Developing Countries, Longman, 188 pp. 15. Lappe and Collins, World Hunger, op. cit.; Peter Goering, Helena Norberg-Hodge and John Page (1993), From the Ground Up: Rethinking Industrial Agriculture, Zed Books, 120 pp. 16. Walden Bello et al. (1994), Dark Victory: the United States, Structural Adjustment and Global Poverty, Food First Books, 144 pp. 17. Oxfam UK (1993), Africa: Make or Break, Oxfam UK, 38 pp. 18. Alicia Korten, "A Bitter Pill: Structural Adjustment in Costa Rica," Food First Development Report No. 7, January 1995. 19. ibid., Peter Rosset, "Sustainability, Economies of Scale and Social Instability: Achilles Heel of Non- traditional Export Agriculture?" Agriculture & Human Values 8(4):30-37, 1991; Michael Conroy, Douglas Murray and Peter Rosset (forthcoming), The Fruits of Crisis: Gambling on Nontraditional Export Agriculture in Central America, Food First Books. 20. IPS. "Mxico: Suba de precios triplico la de salarios en ultimo sexenio." InterPress Service wire report, November 6, 1994. 21. Cynthia Hewitt de Alcantara (ed), "Corn and the Crisis of the 1980s: Economic Restructuring and Rural Subsistence in Mexico." Special Issue, Transformation of Rural Mexico, No. 2, 172 pp, 1994. 22. Oxfam UK, op. cit. 23. Jeffrey Sachs, "Trade and Exchange Rate Policies in Growth-oriented Adjustment Programs," pp 291-325 in Vittorio Corbo et al. (1987), Growth-Oriented Adjustment Programs, Proceedings of a Symposium held in Washington, DC, IMF and World Bank. 24. Walden Bello and Stephanie Rosenfeld (1992), Dragons in Distress: Asia's Miracle Economies in Crisis, Food First Books, 428 pp. 25. Collier and Quaratiello, op. cit. 26. Alain de Janvry and Elisabeth Sadoulet, "Investment Strategies to Combat Rural Poverty: a Proposal for Latin America," World Development 17(8):1203-1221, 1989. 27. Miguel Altieri and Susanna Hecht (1990), Agroecology and Small Farm Development, CRC Press, 262 pp. 28. Oxfam UK, op. cit. 29. Alain de Janvry (1981), The Agrarian Question and Reformism in Latin America, Johns Hopkins, 311 pp; Rehman Sobhan (1993), Agrarian Reform and Social Transformation: Preconditions for Development, Zed Press, 146 pp. 30. Lappe and Schurman, op. cit. 31. Richard W. Franke and Barbara H. Chasin (1994), Kerala: Radical Reform as Development in an Indian State, 2nd Edition, Food First Books. ******************************************************** Copyright 1994 Food First. All rights reserved. Please obtain permission from Food First to photocopy. The Institute for Food & Development Policy -- Food First -- is a member supported "people's think tank" that provides the activist community, policy makers, the media, universities and the general public with alternative viewpoints and analyses of the issues of food, hunger and development. If you read this piece and found it useful we would like you to consider becoming a member of Food First. Only with the support of people like yourself can we continue to provide our brand of independent analysis -- independent of the government and of major foundations to the extent that individuals like yourself give us your support. Please print out and mail us the following coupon at: -------------------------------------------------------- The Subterranean Company (distributor) Box 160 265 South 5th Street Monroe, Oregon 97456 USA -------------------------------------------------------- or, fax with credit information to: 1-503-847-6018, or call, 1-800-274-7826, or e-mail with credit card info to: foodfirst@igc.apc.org -------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------- I'd like to become a member of Food First Here's my tax deductible donation of $30 $50 $100 $___ All members receive Backgrounders and Food First News & Views (by mail, laid out and with photos) and a 20% discount on books. $40 or more gives you New Member Plus (includes a one year subscription to The New Internationalist) Please send me the following books: Basta! Land and the Zapatista Rebellion in Chiapas, by George Collier with Elizabeth Lowery Quaratiello _____$12.95 The Greening of the Revolution: Cuba's Experiment with Organic Agriculture, by Peter Rosset and Medea Benjamin _____$11.95 Dark Victory: The US, Structural Adjustment and Global Poverty, by Walden Bello with Shea Cunningham and Bill Rau _____$12.95 Alternatives to the Peace Corps, edited by Annette Olson _____$6.95 World Hunger: Twelve Myths, by Frances Moore Lappe & Joseph Collins. _____$9.95 Food First: Beyond the Myth of Scarcity, by Frances Moore Lappe & Joseph Collins. _____$5.95 Aid as Obstacle, by Frances Moore Lappe, Joseph Collins & David Kinley. _____$5.95 Please send me the following Policy Briefs: $4.00 each _____$4.00 Chiapas and the Crisis in Mexican Agriculture, by Burbach & Rosset Please send me the following Backgrounders: 5/$2,50/$11.50 __ Myths and Root Causes: Hunger, Population, and Development __ Hunger in the Horn of Africa. __ Myths of African Hunger. $_______ shipping $_______ (domestic: $4.00 for the first book, $1.00 for each additional book; foreign, $4.00 for the first book, $2.50 for each additional book.) $_______Total enclosed Charge my : Visa ___ MC___ card #_________________________Expires____________ Name_________________________Phone#_______________ Address___________________________________________ City/State/Zip____________________________________ -------------------------------------------------------- From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Fri Mar 17 22:00:00 1995 Path: biosci!adam.cc.sunysb.edu!news.nysernet.net!news.sprintlink.net!EU.net!Germany.EU.net!zib-berlin.de!zrz.TU-Berlin.DE!hydra!joaccigh From: joaccigh@hydra.zrz.tu-berlin.de (Joachim Dagg) Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio Subject: Re: bitter pill Date: 17 Mar 1995 11:19:27 GMT Organization: Technical University Berlin, Germany Lines: 36 Message-ID: <3kbr7v$m6r@brachio.zrz.TU-Berlin.DE> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: hydra.zrz.tu-berlin.de I wanted to know, where to put the idea and now I know. When one has a problem, one needs to think about the problem. A taboo, saying that germans mustn't think about population explosion, because of their history, is sh... If one thinks about a problem, one will be able to realisticaly judge the plump and simple solutions. But one will still have other ideas and questions, that need to be discussed and answers to be found. "Shut up you german Nazi" is no appropriat discussion or answere. I don't understand, why everydody around the world thinks, if one has an idea, one is convinced about it and has a missionary task. I thought about people, taking my utopic pill free willing and that was utopic of course. And later I included all people all around the world (even myself) into a gigantic food distribution system. That was even more utopic, requireing a fair world society, with no classes, nations and so on. But that's exactly what I wanted to find out! Nothing else. But I found out more. Namly, that too many people do not diffrentiate finely. They think Jews are a genealogic unit instead of Hebrews. You can read it in the Bible, as well as in the Thora. The people, moses led out of egypt, was Israel. And the nation belonging to this people is Israel. The genealogic unit (I doubt genealogic units still exist within the species of H. sapiens, but they are good scapegoats for wars) is the Hebrews, being the descendants of Abraham. That Palestinians are the same genealogic unit (or race, if you will) as the hebrewan Israelis, will never fit into some narrow brains. As well it will never fit into these brains, that *german* Nazis killed *german* Jews (and Jews of other nationalities). Reducing the holocaust to a racial conflict is inappropriat, as it hides one aspect of its real perversion. It's been brothers and sisters killing brothers and sisters, even in racial senses. Another differentiation, that has not been done is between anti baby pill hormones and surgical sterilization. Well, I put the idea where it belongs long ago. Now I drop the defending. Joachim ---- Don't you ever have strange ideas, and you don't know where to put 'em? From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Sat Mar 18 22:00:00 1995 Path: biosci!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!cs.utexas.edu!news.sprintlink.net!beyond.escape.com!usenet From: Mike Pearson Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio Subject: Re: bitter pill Date: 19 Mar 1995 17:14:05 GMT Organization: Escape Internet Access (212-888-8780). Lines: 30 Message-ID: <3khoot$i60@beyond.escape.com> References: <3kbr7v$m6r@brachio.zrz.TU-Berlin.DE> NNTP-Posting-Host: a001m.adsnet.net > I wanted to know, where to put the idea and now I know. When one has a > problem, one needs to think about the problem. A taboo . . . Yes, your idea was worth asking about. Some people do not believe in discussing birth control pills etc. Even if your idea was fully developed -- -- such as a safe pill ready for free distribution, and you had permission from governments to offer it -- -- you would still hear plenty of strong opposing views. It was not _your_ idea they were objecting to, but _their own__ idea of what your idea meant. Your comments on history run the same risk, but I think you seem to be a moderate truthful writer. DNA does .not. cause much of our strife or most of our political problems, we seem to agree. Except overpopulation. But we had big wars when far fewer people lived on the planet. I hope we don't have more wars. Mike Pearson e5079021@tempest.adsnet.net From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Sun Mar 19 22:00:00 1995 Path: biosci!daresbury!trane.uninett.no!nac.no!nntp-oslo.uninett.no!ibf-jsp.nlh.no!jsp From: jsp@nlh.no (Jan Wesenberg) Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio Subject: Re: pill for 3rd world Date: Mon, 20 Mar 1995 10:46:26 GMT Organization: UniNett Lines: 61 Message-ID: References: <3jrsqb$pqj@mserv1.dl.ac.uk> <3jt8bp$5b0@ixnews4.ix.netcom.com> <3k1tc5$j2m@brachio.zrz.TU-Berlin.DE> <3k410o$1rh@brachio.zrz.TU-Berlin.DE> <3kcmq9$ece@beyond.escape.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: ibf-jsp.nlh.no In article <3kcmq9$ece@beyond.escape.com> Mike Pearson writes: >From: Mike Pearson >Subject: Re: pill for 3rd world >Date: 17 Mar 1995 19:10:01 GMT > >Sociobiology observes that "politics" is a phenomenon with parallels >in other social primates. "Territorial politics" also has those >parallels. Yes, biology must study social phenomena to study >population biology. > >And we have to be careful about the perceived implications of >what the biology tells us. _That's_ political science._ > >Mike >e5079021@tempest.adsnet.net You got me! I forgot my bias. I agree that population biology has to come pretty close to the domain of political science when dealing with higher vertebrates, especially primates. My own day-to-day concept of population biology consists of things like clonal growth, pollination, dispersal, seed bank and certainly very little social interactions. Perhaps botanists have a higher tendency to view the field of social interactions as an arena for humaniora and not biology, than zoologists do? Of course, animals and humans represent a legitimate study field for population biology, not only plants! ;) My point was that whenever science turns from explanatory to normative, it turns into politics (not political science, but politics). And that politics has to be based upon various insights from several scientific disciplines (and also upon some ladder of values provided by ideology or politics itself) in order to be good politics. Attempts to base politics only upon biological insights, neglecting more humanistic insights and the issue of values, have not been very appealing. I experience a similar inevitable shift from a purely biological approach to a more political approach very often when working with conservation issues. When concerned about some threat to a certain locality, it seems crucial to provide as much evidence about the biological diversity of the locality as possible. But then, when one is confronted with the question: "Why should the society bother? Why should it run the expences by not developing this spot?" - then biology has nothing to answer, and one finds oneself arguing about the rights of the next generations to experience the same delightful nature as we did in our childhood, about the right of every species to live, about the number of populations of some species left in the country, about the percentage of the original coverage of som vegetation type left, or whatever argument one feels oneself more comfortable with. But that is not biology: it is trying to get the opponent caught in a moral net, it is The Great Battle Between Human Values, it is politics. There is nothing wrong with that: we should argue scientifically when appropriate and politically when appropriate, and not try to reduce politics to science and answer political questions with scientific answers, omitting the issue of values. Jan Wesenberg Agricultural University of Norway Department of Biology and Nature Conservation From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Mon Mar 20 22:00:00 1995 Path: biosci!rutgers!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!usc!nic-nac.CSU.net!csulb.edu!paris.ics.uci.edu!news.service.uci.edu!usenet From: Robin Bush Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio Subject: Recent Carbo Addicts Threads Date: 21 Mar 1995 04:00:07 GMT Organization: University of California, Irvine Lines: 33 Message-ID: <3klj07$58f@news.service.uci.edu> Reply-To: robin@fisher.bio.uci.edu NNTP-Posting-Host: ficus.bio.uci.edu I would love to help anyone who is using the CA Diet with the practical aspects. Please e-mail me at rmbush@uci.edu because I can't read the newsgroups regularly anymore. It may be a couple of days until I e-mail back. If you want to know more about the CA diet and have not read either the CA Diet or "Healthy for Life", please don't e-mail and ask me what is in them - go read them yourself. The authors are Rachael and Richard Heller. I haven't been able to keep up with all this. Someone asked about breakfast. I eat a small piece of lean round steak and about 1/4 head of steamed shredded cabbage with celery seed on it. I have in the past eaten tuna salads (no mayo) with oil and vinegar, roasted red bell peppers and cilantro and capers. Or big bowls of a Vietnamese soup called pho with cabbage instead of noodles. Spinach salad with chopped up chicken, cucumber, mushrooms and peppers. Someone asked about amounts. I don't know why they say 2 cups unless it is to make sure you are eating AT LEAST 2 cups. I eat tons of food at my low carbs meals - the cabbage at breakfast is probably 4 cups shredded. If you are still hungry afterward your low carb meal you are either not eating enough or are not hyperinsulinemic. I am never hungry. I eat so much waitresses inquire... I'm not kidding. People stare. Someone asked about the caloric intake vs that of a high carb diet. I hadn't ever thought about it because I never counted calories before, but I typed what I thought sounded like a "healthy" high carb day's meals into my computer diet program. Had a lot more calories than what I eat on the CAD and I have Haagen Das chocolate ice cream every night. -------------------------------------------------- Robin From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Tue Mar 21 22:00:00 1995 Path: biosci!bcm!cs.utexas.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!swrinde!sgiblab!uhog.mit.edu!news.mtholyoke.edu!news.umass.edu!nic.umass.edu!phobos.oit.umass.edu!SREE From: SREE@phobos.oit.umass.edu (Sreekumar Govinda Pillai Pilla) Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio Subject: GENETIC ANALYSIS Date: 22 Mar 1995 03:33:46 GMT Organization: University of Massachusetts, Amherst Lines: 9 Message-ID: <3ko5qq$im7@nic.umass.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: phobos.oit.umass.edu X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2v [VAX/VMS]] Hi, I have four chicken lines A,B,C and D and were mated as follows. A X B, A X D, B X A, B X C, C X B and D X A. Could anyone suggest a model(Partial diallel) for estimating the SCA,GCA, Sexlinked effects and maternal effects. Thanks Sree@Vasci.umass.edu From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Wed Mar 22 22:00:00 1995 Path: biosci!bcm!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!in1.uu.net!fdn.fr!jussieu.fr!univ-lyon1.fr!swidir.switch.ch!scsing.switch.ch!news.dfn.de!gina.zfn.uni-bremen.de!informatik.uni-bremen.de!cs.tu-berlin.de!zrz.TU-Berlin.DE!hercules!joaccigh From: joaccigh@hercules.zrz.tu-berlin.de (Joachim Dagg) Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio Subject: Re: Hunger & Pop: Myths & Root Causes Date: 23 Mar 1995 10:55:39 GMT Organization: Technical University Berlin, Germany Lines: 1 Message-ID: <3krk3b$5j8@brachio.zrz.TU-Berlin.DE> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: hercules.zrz.tu-berlin.de Thanks for the enlightenment! Joachim From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Wed Mar 22 22:00:00 1995 Path: biosci!internet!biosci!not-for-mail From: biohelp (BIOSCI Administrator) Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio Subject: UNSUBSCRIBING, BIOSCI ARCHIVES, ADDRESS DATABASE & BIOSCI FAQ Date: 23 Mar 1995 02:00:24 -0800 Organization: BIOSCI International Newsgroups for Molecular Biology Lines: 338 Sender: daemon@net.bio.net Distribution: world Message-ID: <199503231000.CAA09390@net.bio.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: net.bio.net Four important items follow: How to cancel e-mail subscriptions to BIOSCI newsgroups, BIOSCI archive searching, the BIOSCI FAQ, and the BIOSCI User Address Directory form. If you have not yet listed yourself in our BIOSCI user directory, please take a few minutes to complete and return the form below. If your personal information has changed since you listed yourself, please send us a complete new updated form. We can not make manual revisions to existing entries. 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This allows one to retrieve via WAIS or waismail the list of participants in a particular group. For example: comment: ARABIDOPSIS PLANT-BIOLOGY BIONEWS On the comment: lines use these names below ---- NOT the USENET names below MAILING LIST NAME USENET Newsgroup Name ----------------- --------------------- ACEDB-SOFT bionet.software.acedb AGEING bionet.molbio.ageing AGROFORESTRY bionet.agroforestry ARABIDOPSIS bionet.genome.arabidopsis ASCB bionet.prof-society.ascb BIOCAN bionet.prof-society.cfbs BIOFORUM bionet.general BIO-INFORMATION-THEORY bionet.info-theory BIONAUTS bionet.users.addresses BIONEWS bionet.announce BIO-JOURNALS bionet.journals.contents BIO-MATRIX bionet.molbio.bio-matrix BIOPHYSICAL-SOCIETY bionet.prof-society.biophysics BIOPHYSICS bionet.biophysics BIO-SOFTWARE bionet.software BIOTHERMOKINETICS bionet.metabolic-reg BIO-WWW bionet.software.www CARDIOVASCULAR-RESEARCH bionet.biology.cardiovascular CELEGANS bionet.celegans CELL-BIOLOGY bionet.cellbiol CHLAMYDOMONAS bionet.chlamydomonas CHROMOSOMES bionet.genome.chromosomes COMPUTATIONAL-BIOLOGY bionet.biology.computational CSM bionet.prof-society.csm CYTONET bionet.cellbiol.cytonet DROSOPHILA bionet.drosophila EMBL-DATABANK bionet.molbio.embldatabank EMF-BIO bionet.emf-bio EMPLOYMENT bionet.jobs EMPLOYMENT-WANTED bionet.jobs.wanted FASEB bionet.prof-society.faseb GDB bionet.molbio.gdb GENBANK-BB bionet.molbio.genbank GENETIC-LINKAGE bionet.molbio.gene-linkage GRASSES-SCIENCE bionet.biology.grasses HIV-MOLECULAR-BIOLOGY bionet.molbio.hiv HUMAN-GENOME-PROGRAM bionet.molbio.genome-program IMMUNOLOGY bionet.immunology INFO-GCG bionet.software.gcg JOURNAL-NOTES bionet.journals.note METHODS-AND-REAGENTS bionet.molbio.methds-reagnts MICROBIOLOGY bionet.microbiology MOLECULAR-EVOLUTION bionet.molbio.evolution MOLECULAR-MODELLING bionet.molec-model MOLLUSC-MOLECULAR-NEWS bionet.molbio.molluscs MYCOLOGY bionet.mycology NEUROSCIENCE bionet.neuroscience N2-FIXATION bionet.biology.n2-fixation PARASITOLOGY bionet.parasitology PHOTOSYNTHESIS bionet.photosynthesis PLANT-BIOLOGY bionet.plants POPULATION-BIOLOGY bionet.population-bio PROTEIN-ANALYSIS bionet.molbio.proteins PROTEIN-CRYSTALLOGRAPHY bionet.xtallography PROTISTA bionet.protista RAPD bionet.molbio.rapd SCIENCE-RESOURCES bionet.sci-resources STADEN bionet.software.staden STRUCTURAL-NMR bionet.structural-nmr TROPICAL-BIOLOGY bionet.biology.tropical URODELES bionet.organisms.urodeles VIROLOGY bionet.virology WOMEN-IN-BIOLOGY bionet.women-in-bio YEAST bionet.molbio.yeast ZBRAFISH bionet.organisms.zebrafish Listing newsgroups on the comment: line is optional, of course. Thanks again for your cooperation! --------------- please cut here and return portion below --------------- New information or Update to old record (enter N or U): date (DD-MM-YY): first name: middle initial: family name: job title: e-mail address: e-mail network: phone number: FAX number: institution: address1: address2: address3: city: state/province: country: postal code: research interest: research interest: comment: comment: comment: comment: comment: From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Wed Mar 22 22:00:00 1995 Path: biosci!rutgers!gatech!swrinde!pipex!sunic!sunic.sunet.se!umdac!news From: ablazi95@student.umu.se (Abdul Aziz Ali) Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio Subject: Re: pill for 3rd world. Date: 22 Mar 1995 23:22:11 GMT Organization: Eco-Konsult. Lines: 13 Message-ID: <3kqbf3$1m7@kitten.umdc.umu.se> NNTP-Posting-Host: slip2.modem.umu.se X-Newsreader: WinVN 0.92.6+ Let us see, China and India don't depend on food aid from industrialised countries. Who does? Sub-saharan Africa. Lets now make a small comparison: Population: Area: ----------- ------ Sub-sahara Africa...< 500 million. >12.5 million sq.km.(arable land) Germany.............79.1 million. 357000 sq.km Sub saharan Africa has political problems and not population problems, and that writer knows this. He was definately not looking for any constructive debate but to insult others. I'll tell him what's good for the third world - Joakim, keep your food and your pill. Abdul Aziz Ali. From owner-population-bio@net.bio.net Thu Mar 23 22:00:00 1995 Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio Path: biosci!bcm!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!pipex!uknet!strath-cs!info!IDixon From: IDixon@exeter.ac.uk (I.M.Dixon) Subject