population pressure
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This survey course introduces students to the important and basic material on human fertility, population growth, the demographic transition and population policy. Topics include: the human and environmental dimensions of population pressure, demographic history, economic and cultural causes of demographic change, environmental carrying capacity and sustainability. Political, religious and ethical issues surrounding fertility are also addr...more
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Early Modern England: Politics, Religion, and Society under the Tudors and Stuarts (HIST 251)Professor Wrightson begins by assessing the state of education in the late medieval period and then discusses the two cultural forces (Renaissance humanism and the Reformation) which lay behind the educational expansion of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. While there were distinct hierarchies of learning in the period (with women and the lo...more
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In many regions, the central cultural idea is that of a lineage, a family and its line of male ancestors and descendants. The prime duty in these cultures is to keep the lineage going. Religion is small scale with the ancestors performing many of the functions of gods. Denser populations and larger political entities lead to large-scale religion where conformity is stressed and cultural rules are codified in a book and not subject to discu...more
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Early Modern England: Politics, Religion, and Society under the Tudors and Stuarts (HIST 251)Professor Wrightson discusses the remarkable growth of the British economy in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. He examines the changed context of stable population and prices; regional agricultural specialization; urbanization; the expansion of overseas trade both with traditional European trading partners and with the Americas ...more
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Early Modern England: Politics, Religion, and Society under the Tudors and Stuarts (HIST 251)Professor Wrightson discusses the Elizabethan settlement of religion and the manner in which it was defended from both 'Papist' and 'Puritan' opponents. The settlement of religion achieved in 1559 (and enforced through the Act of Uniformity) restored the royal supremacy, but was in some respects deliberately ambiguous, combining moderately Protesta...more
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Environmental Politics and Law (EVST 255) The final lecture reviews topics discussed in previous lectures by imagining an ideal society. Professor Wargo talks about success stories in land management in the Adirondacks and pesticide regulation, and notes ongoing challenges in food safety, drinking water quality, personal consumption, population control, and the creation of parks and protected areas. He lectures about the fractured nat...more
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Hunter-gatherer populations were much less dense than later agriculturalists. The variety of their food supply protected them from crop failures and their sparseness reduced the spread of infectious diseases. Hunter-gatherers were healthier and worked less than early agriculturalists. Why didn't their numbers increase up to the same level of Malthusian misery? Their numbers may have been limited by violence between groups. Agriculture is m...more
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Prior to the Demographic Transition, fertility in northwestern Europe was controlled by limiting marriage. Marriage was regulated by landowners and the churches, and was not allowed unless a man had accumulated the resources necessary to support a family. Long periods of being landless, a servant, or an apprentice, precluded marriage. Once married, there was no control of fertility. But, only about half of adults were married at any given ...more
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Environmental Politics and Law (EVST 255) To illustrate the linkages among national security, secrecy, and environmental quality, Professor Wargo describes the Atomic Energy Commission's nuclear tests in the 1950s. The Atomic Energy Commission collected data on the spread of radionuclides from the nuclear tests, and discovered that the radionuclides were circulating around the world. This process of discovery raised issues regarding way...more
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In addition to cultural controls acting to maximize fertility, there are important, and often competing, interests of individual families to limit fertility. Unwanted births are dealt with by infanticide in many cultures. Additionally, fertility is regularly controlled by limiting marriage within a culture. Another very important factor in population growth, especially in the tropics, is food availability. Heavy rains in the tropics wash n...more
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Professor Diamond continues her discussion of the nervous system with an introduction of the cerebral hemisphere and it is divided into lobes with specific functions. She uses Brodmann's numbering system as she draws the location of lobes and areas of the brain, including the precentral, postcentral, and premotor gyri, the central sulcus, motor cortex, frontal eye fields, and prefrontal lobe. She details the functions of the prefrontal lob...more
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In this lecture, bound and unbound orbits are discussed. Professor Lewin begins with a description of escape velocity, or the minimum speed required to escape the gravitational pull. Various sources of energy, energy storage, energy conversion, and the world's energy consumption are discussed. Power, or the rate at which a force does work on an object, is central to the conversation. Professor Lewin concludes with a few words on global ...more
