Read the following article and answer these questions: 1. a. b. c. d. What is the main point of the article? A:evolution is an important and useful theory B:evolution is a theory that has not been proven C:we should improve crops to feed more people D:we should not tamper with nature 2. Why must farmers be careful about the pesticides they use? a. they could poison the land and harm other organisms b. they crops may die c. insects may become resistant d. so that they can produce better crops Why Does Evolution Matter?Grains, such as wheat and corn provide 75% of the food the worldeats. Today, a corn plant produces twice the grain it did 30 yearsago, and probably 10 times what it could a century ago. Why?Because we know -- we have found out -- that living things arechangeable. Over many generations we can change them intothings that serve us better. Nowadays we do it very systematically and on purpose. We'vedone it more haphazardly for thousands of years. Somewhere in our dim past wediscovered that if we mate our best plants and animals, or save the best seeds, anddestroy or eat the less perfect ones, each generation will get slightly better -- more fit, byour standards. But corn, for instance, is still being improved, and still has enemies. Oneway we could improve it is to find its wild ancestor, the native grass that our ancestorsstarted cultivating. The problem is that we have changed con so much that it now looksvery different from any wild grasses. But understanding that corn has evolved has allowedagricultural researchers to find its wild cousin. Now, using the science of genetics, we can"borrow" genes from that relative to improve corn. We are making it more resistant todisease and insects, and more tolerant of salt and drought.That's one thing we can do with a knowledge of evolution andgenetics: feed a hungry world. Research into improving animals -livestock - is just as dependent on modern evolutionary biology.How could we even conceive of using ancestral genes to improvebreeds if we thought all plants and animals were just created, intheir present forms?If you want to see evolution in action, all you have to do is look forthings with very short times between generations: insects, for instance. A major problemwith bugs (from our point of view) is that their generations are so short that they canevolve fast. So what? So every farmer must be painfully aware that he has to be verycareful about how he uses pesticides. If he uses too much, too often, he may force bugsto evolve rapidly and become resistant, so that the poison no longer kills them. This isn't"just a theory" -- it happens.There are many pesticides that are now useless, because the bugs they were used onhave evolved into something that is no longer bothered by those poisons. They may notbe new species yet, but they are no longer the same insects, either. The U.S. Departmentof Agriculture and the multi-national, multi-billion-dollar agribusinesses take evolution veryseriously.Consider those other "bugs": germs. Modern hospitals have learned the hard way just howfast bacteria can evolve. They have accidentally "created," by using too many antibiotics,new breeds of super-germs that have evolved resistance to antibiotics. It's now a race: can we find new antibiotics fast enough to keep up with the mutation-and-natural-selectionrates of killers like resistant staphylococcus? And if we do find something that kills it, dowe run the risk of forcing it to just evolve again into an even more unstoppable form?Our first step in understanding AIDS was to figure out what ithad evolved from -- it didn't just appear magically. We have alsodiscovered that it will be very difficult to make an AIDS vaccine,because the HIV virus has developed the trick of evolving so fast,that something that prevents it this year, probably won't next year.Another of its tricks is to mutate (evolve) into many different strains within each victim'sbody, so that the immune system can never find and eliminate all the viruses. Ifresearchers didn't know that life has always changed, and continues to change -- if theydidn't believe in evolution -- how could they deal with the turbo-charged evolutionaryrates of these tiniest and deadliest life forms?Finally, a (true) horror story. A few years ago there was a little girl,known to the concerned public as "Baby Fae," who needed a hearttransplant. Human donors are hard to find, especially for infants, so adaring surgeon convinced the parents to let him implant a baboon'sheart. A hopeful world held its breath, while skeptical biologistsscratched their heads (a baboon's heart?), but everyone hoped for thebest. Sadly, Baby Fae died after a few weeks. Among the contributingfactors may have been that her immune system had recognized theheart as something foreign, and attacked it. After the sensational newsstories had died down, it was reported that a biologist asked thesurgeon why he had chosen a baboon donor, which is a much moredistant relative of ours (in evolutionary terms) than a chimpanzee, which is our closestrelative. Wouldn't there have been less danger of rejection with a heart from a closerrelative? The surgeon's answer: he hadn't even taken that into consideration, because hedidn't believe in evolution! To him, no creatures were related to each other, since they hadall been created at once, in their present forms. Maybe a chimpanzee's heart would nothave saved Baby Fae either, but the chances might have been better. One would thinkthat a doctor or scientist would want to use the best available knowledge, such as what weunderstand about evolutionary biology and the relationships of organisms.Questions:1. What is the main point of the article?a. evolution is an important and useful theoryb. evolution is a theory that has not been provenc. we should improve crops to feed more peopled. we should not tamper with nature

Evolution helps us to understand how organism developed and changing constantly at its pace.

Answered: Read the following article and answer…

11th Edition

ISBN:9780134580999

Author:Elaine N. Marieb, Katja N. Hoehn

Publisher:Elaine N. Marieb, Katja N. Hoehn

Chapter1: The Human Body: An Orientation

Section: Chapter Questions

Problem 1RQ: The correct sequence of levels forming the structural hierarchy is A. (a) organ, organ system,...