Globalization

Globalization-Something New?

• It’s been a long time coming, but now it is

happening furiously fast—and that is part of

the problem.

• So, to “what is it?” and “why is it

happening?” we have to add: “is the pace of

globalization accelerating—and the answer

is a definite “yes”

Early Globalization

Key Elements: THEN

Key Elements--NOW

What are the Components? 1.

• Broad Category: Technology

• Instant, cheap Worldwide Communications—cell phone, www(availability at the individual level)

• International (instant)financial and capital transfers

• Increased scale and frequency of air transport

• Container ships

Component 2

• Broad Category: Information

• Instant dispersal of news by satellite TV,

www, fax (but what news and whose?)

• Competition is worldwide, not local or

national

• Very hard to keep a secret

Components 3

• Broad Category: Culture

• Increasingly a “global village,” but a Western one watching the same TV, music videos, news, soaps.

• Rise of a “global language.” Why?

• Smaller cultures may feel threatened

Component 4

• Broad Category: Environment and

Health

• Global environmental problems (Ozone,

global “warming,” sea-level change

• AIDS, Ebola, ??

• Global plunder of common pool

resources—ocean, forests…..

Component 5

• Broad Category: Crime and Terrorism

• “International” crime, Russian Mafia

• Terrorists in caves in Afghanistan threaten

lower Manhattan

• International crime does not play by the

rules of “states,” and may be better

organized than some, and “own” others.

Component 6

• A global population?

• The rich countries remain rich, and a

declining proportion of world population

• The poor countries remain poor, and a

rapidly expanding part of the worlds

population (95% of the growth)

• Hence the pressure to move to the rich

countries, legally or illegally

The Information Revolution

• The Internet

• The WWW

• Instant Dispersal of News & Information

• The Rise of a Global Media Village?

• The Personalization of communications: the

cell/mobile phone system, and its increasing

capacity.

Information: Downside?

• But, what information is becoming global?

But whose news is becoming global?

• What is this doing to cultures and

communities?

• Does Globalization = Westernization

=Americanization? Does it matter?

• Are we evolving a global language? What

are the consequences of this?

Is This Globalization?

Who Manages Globalization?

• There is no world government, so who

regulates and controls the process? Mostly

UN agencies, but they require the

compliance of all member states, and the

UN does not make law.

• Do states ever put the global priority ahead

of their own? Plus, we have rich, strong

states, and poor weak ones.

The “Real” World and the

“Political” World

This

Or

This-----------

The big difference is, of course, that the one on the left will still be going in 2 billion years; the one on the right, well, don’t put money

on it.

Globalization—The Really Scary Part

Part 1—the Good Old Days

Plague Famine

Globalization—The Really Scary Part

Part 2—Today AIDS

SARS

EBOLA

?

Melting Ice Sheets, Flooded Coasts, Global Warming?

Terrorism

Scarier Still

• We have global crime—financial, drug-

related etc., perhaps the largest single

element in international trade

• A Man in a cave in Afghanistan can kill

3000 people in lower Manhattan

• International crime does not play by the

rules of states—or anyone else—and may

be better-equipped.

To Recap: Globalization

• Is Driven by Technology

• Is seen as threatening cultures because it is equated with Westernization

• Increases the pace at which everything happens: capital transfers, spread of disease, change of culture…

• May be changing our global environment, but can states manage the globe?

• Who runs the world????

Early Earth and the Origin of Life

Some

major

episodes in

the history

of life.

Clock

analogy for

some key

events in

evolutionary

history

1. The earth was formed ~4.5 billion years ago

2. It took ~500 million years for the crust to solidify.

3. The oldest fossils of microorganisms

• 3.5 billion years old,

• embedded in rocks in western Australia

3a. Prokaryotes dominated from 3.5 to 2 billion years ago.

- During this time, the first divergence occurred:

Bacteria and Archae

Early and modern prokaryotes

Fossilized evidence of bacteria

Stromatolites are fossilized bacterial mats. Many fossils of

prokaryotes are found in layers that make up the prokaryotic

mats.

Bacterial mats and

stromatolites

4. Oxygen began accumulating in the atmosphere about 2.7

billion years ago.

a. Cyanobacteria are photosynthetic prokaryotes that are

still present today produced oxygen.

Oxigen need

Banded iron formations are evidence of the age of oxygenic

photosynthesis – approximately 2 BYA in photo

5. The oldest eukaryotic fossils are ~2 billion years old.

a. Symbiotic community of prokaryotes living within

larger prokaryotes.

Mitochondria and chloroplasts

6. The oldest fossils of multicellular organisms are ~1.2

billion years old.

Endosymbiosis theory (Lynn Margulis, 1970’s)

Eukaryotic Origins

• A. Invagination of plasma membrane

• B. Endosymbiosis

– Symbiosis : An ecological relationship between

organisms of 2 different species that live

together in direct contact.

– How did this get started?

• prey or parasite

Evidence

• modern-day endosymbiotic relationships

– common among protists

• similarity between eubacteria & the

chloroplasts & mitochondria of eukaryotes

– size

– inner membrane systems, enzymes, electron transport

systems

– reproduction resembles binary fission

– circular DNA

Note the presence of

two types of cells

(photosynthetic and

hold fast) – evidence

of specialization of

cells functions, that

are important for

development of

multicellular

organisms

7. The oldest animal fossils are ~700 million years old.

a. Animal diversity exploded ~540 million years ago.

Fossilized animal embryos from Chinese sediments

570 million years ago.

8. Plants, fungi, and animals began colonizing land ~500

million years ago.

a. First plants transformed the landscape…

b. Then animals were able to take advantage of new niches

Mammals evolved 50 to 60 million years ago.

The

Cambrian

radiation

of animals

B. The origin of life

1. First cells may have originated by chemical evolution

involving 4 steps:

a. Abiotic (Non-biological) synthesis of small organic

molecules (monomers) C + H = organic molecule

b. Monomers joined together to form polymers (proteins,

nucleic acids)

c. Origin of self-replicating molecules (inheritance of traits)

proteins and polynucleic acids

d. Packaging of these organic molecules into protobionts.

Aggregates of abiotically produced molecules that maintain

an internal chemical environment and exhibit some of the

properties associated with life (i.e. metabolism, excitability).

2. Evidence that supports the four-stage hypothesis for the

origin of life

a. Oparin and Haldane in the 1920s Abiotic synthesis of

organic molecules is testable in the laboratory

Hypothesis: Conditions on primitive earth favored chemical

reactions that synthesized organic compounds from inorganic

precursors. These conditions were different from what is now

present and include:

- Reducing environment (no oxygen, but instead H2O, CH4,

NH4, and H2) = lots of free electrons that could be used to

reduce carbon and produce organic molecules.

- Energy from lots of lightning, UV radiation (no O2 to block

UV rays from the sun) and volcanic activity (heat).

b. Miller and Urey in 1953

i. Tested the Oparin-Haldane hypothesis by creating

conditions in which there was an

- Atmosphere above warmed sea water that contained H2O,

H2, CH4, and NH3 and

- Electrodes that simulated lightning.

- From this setup, they obtained organic compounds such as

amino acids that were collected in cooled water.

The Miller-

Urey

experiment

The experiment - organic molecules could be created out of

inorganic molecules.

So…….why don’t we see this happening in today’s world?

Any organic molecules that are now formed would be

used up by living organisms.

If microorganisms were created from these organic molecules

in the early earth’s water bodies, this would have been an

example of spontaneous creation!

For much of history, man believed that living organisms could

be created spontaneously from non-living material (e.g. flies

from dead meat, geese from barnacles, etc.)

This idea was refuted by Louis Pasteur in the 1860’s.

3. RNA was probably the first hereditary material

a. Today, genetic information is usually stored as DNA, but

some organisms such as viruses use RNA to store info.

• Short polymers of ribonucleotides can be

synthesized abiotically in the laboratory.

– If these polymers are added to a solution of ribonucleotide monomers, sequences up to 10 based long are copied from the template according to the base-pairing rules.

– If zinc is added, the copied sequences may reach 40 nucleotides with less than 1% error.

Copyright © 2002 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Benjamin Cummings Fig. 26.11

• Laboratory experiments have demonstrated that RNA

sequences can evolve in abiotic conditions.

• RNA molecules have both a genotype (nucleotide

sequence) and a phenotype (three dimensional shape)

that interacts with surrounding molecules.

• Under particular conditions, some RNA sequences

are more stable and replicate faster and with fewer

errors than other sequences.

– Occasional copying errors create mutations and selection

screens these mutations for the most stable or best at self-

replication.

• RNA-directed protein synthesis may have

begun as weak binding of specific amino acids

to bases along RNA molecules, which

functioned as simple templates holding a few

amino acids together long enough for them to

be linked.

– This is one function of rRNA today in ribosomes.

• If RNA synthesized a short polypeptide that

behaved as an enzyme helping RNA

replication, then early chemical dynamics

would include molecular cooperation as well

as competition. Copyright © 2002 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Benjamin Cummings

4. The precursors of early life are known as Protobionts.

a. Protobionts form spontaneously in lab experiments from mixtures of

organic molecules.

b. They contain RNA that codes for metabolic proteins. These

protobionts absorb food and the proteins catalyze it to make energy

which can be used for growth and division to daughter cells.

c. Natural selection would favor protobionts that grow and replicate.

When the organic molecules in the earth’s water bodies were gone, the

protobionts would “evolve” to either obtain energy by photosynthesis or

predation.

It would only take the creation and evolution of one (1) protobiont to

give rise to the all the different organisms we see today.

• Once primitive RNA genes and their polypeptide products were packaged within a membrane, the protobionts could have evolved as units.

• Molecular cooperation could be refined because favorable components were concentrated together, rather than spread throughout the surroundings.

6. Natural section could refine protobionts

containing hereditary information

Copyright © 2002 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Benjamin Cummings Fig. 26.13

This 4.5 billion-year-old rock, labeled meteorite ALH84001, is believed to have once been

a part of Mars and to contain fossil evidence that primitive life may have existed on Mars

more than 3.6 billion years ago. The rock is a portion of a meteorite that was dislodged

from Mars by a huge impact about 16 million years ago and that fell to Earth in Antarctica

13,000 years ago. The meteorite was found in Allan Hills ice field, Antarctica, by an annual

expedition of the National Science Foundation's Antarctic Meteorite Program in 1984. It is

preserved at the Johnson Space Center's Meteorite Processing Laboratory in Houston.

c. Louis Pasteur in the 1860s

i. Tested whether microorganisms emerge by spontaneous

generation or by reproduction of existing microorganisms.

- Microorganisms grew in open containers of sterilized broth.

C. Major lineages of life

1. At first, two kingdoms were recognized Plants and

Animals.

2. In 1969, Robert Whittaker developed a five-kingdom

system Plants, Fungi, Animals, Protists, and Prokaryotes

(Monera).

Whittaker’s

five-

kingdom

system

Our changing view of biological diversity