The upside of slackers

The article I read this week is about an experiment done by researchers that looks at yeast populations and whether or not so-called slackers benefit the rest. Classic theory holds that cheating comes at the expense of society as a whole, making populations composed entirely of co-operators the most fit. I thought this was pretty interesting, as we've already discussed group dynamics and what type of people exist in groups, and this article strives to solve the biological basis of group work. In yeast, co-operators are ones that secrete an enzyme called invertase that converts sucrose into glucose. The cheats, or slackers, are strains of yeast that do not secrete invertase, thus enjoying the benefits of glucose without incurring the costs of production.
Researchers found that under certain conditions, slackers actually benefited the population, and that a mix of co-operators and slackers was the combination the yielded the most production.
So-called co-operators and cheats are common in societies from microorganisms to people, and game theory is used to inform economic and social policy. But people are far more complex than yeast and even this microorganism may be too complex to be neatly divided into co-operators and cheats. We all have different strengths and a slacker in one context may be a contributing member of society in another.

Science Blog

My major is biological sciences, so I decided to look at articles from the journal PLoS Biology. Biology is a pretty broad subject with lots of more specific disciplines within it, and this journal has articles from pretty much anything you're interested in. Hopefully this way I will be able to look a wide range of research instead of being restricted to just ecology or cell biology, for example. Also, by looking at this particular journal rather than a more specified one, I have a greater chance of finding articles that are not super difficult to summarize for people that are not in the same subject, or even for me because sometimes they can be pretty hard to grasp. Over the past semesters I've taken a wide array of biology courses, so I like that when I look at the different articles from this journal that I can recognize things I've learned in class before. I'm constantly changing my mind about which area I want to focus on in the future, and maybe by reading all the different articles I can from a better idea about which area I like the most and what type of research I would like to be involved in.

Genre

So I know our assignment for Tuesday was to read the article about genre, and has been basically reassigned for Thursday, but I still find it hard to read. I skimmed it once, then reread, and have looked at it again but some of the language just makes no sense to me. It's hard for me to grasp things like this, because I see it as so abstract. I feel like because it's not concrete at all that I can't apply it to situations that make sense to me. It's all well and good to discuss what genre or rhetoric is, but if I can't repeat it in my own words where others can understand me, then I don't think I've really learned anything. I'm going to look at it again, and hopefully with the discussion tomorrow some of my questions will be answered.