TPO21
The lecturer points out three different shortcomings of genetically modified trees. In the aspects of adaptation, economic lucrativeness, and environmental value, they never have overwhelming advantage over natural trees. That means the points made in the reading are partial and biased.
First, genetic modification doesn’t necessarily make a natural tree more resistant to environmental adversities. Although genetic reconstructing may make a species stronger in a specific condition as the reading indicates, the new strain lakes the genetic diversity of a natural species. Thanks to the marginal differences between individuals, there can always be some survivors among natural species following a large
interruption like climate change or pest invasion. But similar changes may cause the distinction of a genetically modified species for their unification in characteristics.
Second, tree farmers don’t get guaranteed economic benefits if they plant genetically new strains. Companies that develop the new plants always charge farmers higher prices for
artificially improved seeds, and receive money from farmers each time they grow the same plant. Such company policies and
law will deprive farmers of the gaining mentioned in the reading.
Third, genetically modified trees don’t promise to protect wild trees. Actually, since they can grow faster with fewer resources, they are more ecologically invasive. Normally they outcompete natural trees by grasping natural resources like sunshine, water and soil. It’s far from the idealistic situation described in the reading.
TPO22
The lecturer refutes all the seemingly existing shortages of ethanol listed in the reading and holds that ethanol is quite likely a good replacement of gasoline as the future fuel. First, the application of ethanol will not create as much heat as that of gasoline does. Although the burning of ethanol will also generate carbon dioxide, it will not add to the severity of global warming. Since the production of ethanol requires the planting of corns, whose growth in turn requires carbon dioxide as nutrition, the raised amount of the unwanted gas will be offset therewith. This is the situation the reading doesn’t account for.
Second, the production of ethanol doesn’t surely reduce the food supply for farm animals. Because ethanol can be made out of any part of the plant whose cell walls contain cellulose, the cost of the pants’ useful parts can be avoided. This advantage renders the worry of the reading totally unnecessary. Finally, the price of ethanol will be largely reduced if the scale of manufacture increases. According to statistics, if the manufacture scale, following heavier demand of consumers, can be enlarged by three times, its cost will be reduced by forty percents. Under such circumstance, the government subsidies mentioned in the reading shall no longer be needed. TPO23
The lecturer holds that the main reason causing the overall decline in yellow cedar population is not yet decided. The proposed reasons in the reading, though responsible for the poor health of some individual plants, may not account for the decline of the whole species throughout the North American Continent.
First, healthy yellow cedar trees can secret a chemical that is poisonous to insects feeding on its barks. Hence, it is
unlikely that the cedar bark beetle can ever attack a plant before it gets ill or dead. The reading thus finds a misleading causal relationship between the insect and the tree.
Second, bears cannot be blamed for large-scaled dying of yellow cedars across North America, although they might be responsible for the accidental dying for some individual plants. Another condition that can set bears free from this accusation is that yellow cedars growing on bear-free islands are also dying in large numbers. Hereby the reading material fails to spot the primary reason again.
Third, cold climate can neither be blamed for the general failure of cedar population. The proof can be found in the trees’ wider recession in areas of lower elevation, where it’s warmer than on higher elevations. Though cold weather may have made cedars more sensitive, it cannot be the primary killer as the reading indicates.
TPO24
The lecturer extends possible explanations besides the conclusions made on the newly discovered T. Rex fossil and
suggests that the existing evidences can lead to something other than remaining animal tissues as suggested in the reading.
First, the branching channels in that leg bone can quite likely be the colonies of bacteria, since bacteria always take the hollows in a bone structure and develop themselves following the organic material. And the soft substance inside the
channels can also be the residues of these bacteria colonies, rather than once blood vessels suggested by the reading material.
Second, the reading assumes the reddish spheres found in the bone to be red blood cells, finding credence from their color and size. But fossils of primitive organisms in the same area also contain similar reddish spheres. With the knowledge that such primitive organisms could not yet have evolved red blood cells, there is a good reason to doubt that these spots are only reddish minerals instead of blood cells. The reading again makes an imprudent conclusion here.
Third, not a single sample of collagen found to this date is older than ten thousand years in age. The collagen found in the passage, however, is located in a seventy million-year-old
dinosaur fossil. Since this tissue can hardly sustain such a long history, its source may not be in that prehistory animal, but in the skin of researchers working on it. So the final conclusion of the reading should also be seen with doubt. TPO25
The reading material claimed that the vessels involving a copper cylinder surrounding an iron rod was not likely used as electric batteries in ancient times. By contrast, the lecturer argued that the conclusion was not convincing at all.
First of all, the absence of wires could blame on the excavators, those local people.Since they had no recognition of the importance of the other materials,thus ever exsited electricity conductors could have been regarded as uninteresting and thrown away.
In addition, the similarity between the copper cyclinders inside the jars and those discovered in ruins of selucia was not the neccessary reason to defend that the former should hold scrolls as well. One explanation was that the function of copper cyclinders was gradully changed from original use of holding scrolls to generate electricity later.
Plus, electricity batteries were also of use in ancient time. Ancient people could have done electricity to complete magic results and healing purpose.Actually, the lecturer stated that the tingling people felt when they touched the vessles could be thought as invisible power even magic power. On the other hand,modern results had shown that elctricity was able to sitmulate muscle activities and reduce pains.