population pressure
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While Nazi Germany's crimes were unprecedented, Adolf Hitler himself was in many respects a typical figure. An idle youth, of seemingly mediocre talents, his political career and passionate hatreds were formed by the experience of World War I. The rise of fascism in Germany, as elsewhere, must be understood in the context of a postwar climate of resentment and instability. Germany's economic crisis, in particular, led the middle classes to...more
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If there was any single belief that characterized the Victorian era it was Christian belief. Religion pervaded social and political life to an extent almost unimaginable today. Yet this was also an age of major scientific progress and discovery. Ranging from Darwin's Origin of Species to Strauss's Life of Jesus, new techniques and approaches undermined faith in the literal truth of the Bible. This lecture looks at the relationship betwe...more
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In this lecture, Professor Diamond continues a review of the nervous system and covers the eye and the ear. She begins by diagramming the eye, and she differentiates between the eye itself and its accessory structures, including the bony orbit, the eyebrow and eyelids, and the conjunctiva. She describes how tarsal glands in the eyes function. Then, Professor Diamond moves on to the subject of the ear. She touches on the three divisions...more
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August 9, 2007 presentation by Russ Altman for the Stanford University Office of Science Outreach's Summer Science Lecture Series. There are a number of causes for variation in drug response across the population, but differences in genetics are an important factor. Russ Altman, Professor & Chair of Bioengineering and Professor of Genetics and Medicine, discusses how variations in genetics can alter the "typical" response as well as touch...more
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Media and the Fertility Transition in Developing Countries (Guest Lecture by William Ryerson)
Yale / Biology
Guest lecturer William Ryerson is President of the Population Media Center which produces radio and TV serial dramas in developing countries that aim to effect behavior change on women's status, family planning and AIDS. Working with governments and in-country media professionals, these melodramas run for hundreds of episodes and are watched by millions. Careful research shows major changes in audience knowledge, attitudes and practices.
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The transparent tissues of the eye allow light to reach the retina. This highly metabolic tissue requires oxygen delivered by the blood vessels, which are damaged by disease. Diabetic retinopathy is the commonest cause of blindness in the working-age population and in later life hypertension adds to this toll. The eyes maybe the mirror of the soul, but they certainly are a window into our general health. This lecture traces the story f...more
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We apply the idea of evolutionary stability to consider the evolution of social conventions. Then we consider games that involve aggressive (Hawk) and passive (Dove) strategies, finding that sometimes, evolutionary populations are mixed. We discuss how such games can help us to predict how behavior might vary across settings. Finally, we consider a game in which there is no evolutionary stable population and discuss an example from nature.
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In this lecture, we use the overlapping generations model from the previous class to see, mathematically, how demographic changes can influence interest rates and asset prices. We evaluate Tobin's statement that a perpetually growing population could solve the Social Security problem, and resolve, in a surprising way, a classical argument about the link between birth rates and the level of the stock market. Lastly, we finish by laying some...more
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Geography is very important in ecology. Two major systems have been designed to model this, island biogeography and metapopulations. The idea of metapopulations is more recent, and has emerged as the dominant theory. Metapopulations are populations in multiple neighboring areas. The population of a species in any individual area may go extinct, but the metapopulation still survives. The theory of metapopulations has gained momentum in rece...more
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In East and South Asia there are many more boys than girls. Previously, this resulted from female infanticide, now it is sex-selective abortion. In those cultures, girls generally marry out of the family as teenagers and thus provide no benefit for the family that raised them. Bangla Desh is agriculturally very rich, but its population is so dense that per capita income is one of the lowest in Asia. Despite the poverty, an excellent family...more
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The economic concept of game theory can be readily applied to evolution and behavior. By analyzing encounters between organisms as a mathematical "game," important information such as fitness payoffs and the proportions of "strategies" played by each group within a population can be inferred. While oftentimes these games are too simplified to apply directly to actual examples in nature, they are still useful models that help convey importa...more
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In the second of his two lectures in honor of Arthur Okun, Professor Summers points out that real interest rates have been very low in the current subprime crisis. This indicates that the shock to the economy was more a financial breakdown shock than a disinflation shock. But financial breakdown shocks are not necessarily very harmful to the economy, so long as financial intermediation capital is not destroyed. In a financial crisis like t...more
