http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/23/science/23aquarium.html?ref=science

This article is about the aquarium fishing industry and how there may be a possibility of over harvesting in the Florida Keys. There is a debate going on among scientists as to whether aquariums may be asking too much from the environment. Most of their attractions come from the Keys and, although the fishing is highly regulated, there may be a chance of over fishing. One side of the argument is that the fishing is so regulated that nothing could possibly go wrong. This I think is naive, most of the animals harvested there have very little information known about them, including their reproductive cycles. Even if they are highly regulated if, hypothetically, one species every female reproduces every 3-5 years that would take a lot of time for the species to recover from harvesting. This could very well be the case and no one would know. I think there just needs to be more research on the actual animals being harvested so we know for sure we aren't hurting the environment.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/health/16essa.html?ref=science
This article is about how fat people are being judged harshly by doctors and employers. Many doctors are very frank saying that they would treat fat people a lot different than average sized people, as they don't trust them to do what they need to do. They cause a lot of stress towards fat people, according to the article, causing diabetes and other stress related diseases. Employers are very biased, in that they will not even consider hiring a larger person for a job. One woman described how she had a really good phone conversation with an employer, but when they met in person she was totally turned down. The employer didn't look at her and made a big deal about whether or not to go up the stairs or take the elevator. She didn't even recieve a "not thank you" letter. I think this is a very biased article. The person who wrote it was obese herself, saying that in the first paragraph. She probably made it sound worse than it actually is and is making excuses for herself. Honestly, yes there are people who just don't have the ability to take off weight, but that must be a fairly small percentage. I think most obese people have the choice to work hard, eat right, and stay healthy or continue what they normally do. Employers probably stereo-type many obese people because they think they are too lazy to do anything about their weight. If you have ever seen the Biggest Loser, it proves that even the largest people can get thin, its just a matter of working for it. I think this article is just making excuses for obese people not to do anything about their weight and make them feel better about themselves.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/05/science/05sfsealion.html

This article is about how California sea lions are having a large increase of deaths from cancer, specifically metastatic cancer. It's been found that 18% of all sea lion rescues are caused by cancer, and most die from it. This is really sad because it is most likely due to either prior use of pesticides, such as DDT, that were used 20-30 years ago, or from the mass amount of pollution coming from California cities. It could also be that it is a combination of a lot of different things; researchers can't really find the real reason because it is a non-point source of pollution. This is not only happening to sea lions though. Beluga whales have the same problem with roughly the same amount of cancer killed whales washing up on shore. I think this is a major environmental problem, but one that is extremely hard to fix because it comes from mass amounts of pollution.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/science/02evo.html?ref=science

This article is about how scientists are finding that culture has been influencing human evolution over the past thousands of years. One example was that a lot of northern Europeans had developed a gene that keeps the lactose digesting gene working. Generally the lactose digesting gene is shut down after weaning, but in these cattle based societies more offspring survived if they were able to digest lactose so the gene prevailed. It shows evolution in a very quick manner. This same thing has been found in African pastoral societies, however the mutation is different, but still with the same effect. It also has been found that Asians and Europeans generally have lighter skin color because of the climate they live in. Also scientists have found that the human skeleton has gotten lighter over the past thousands of years, this is probably due to the fairly recent invention of settled society. I think this is really cool because it basically proves evolution. It is also very cool how we have evolved so fast, usually this takes a lot more time, but in a matter of a couple thousand years we have changed. I think this is due to our sedimentary society and constantly changing society.