Adapting a New Way of Life

Even small gestures in our everyday life can help make this world a better place. Even though nowadays ecofriendly cars that need less energy and resources are produced on a large scale it's still even better to walk or take public transportation for short distances. This not only helps reduce the global CO2 emission but it also often helps save time and money. Resources have become scarce ever since the industrialization has taken its course. People who want to contribute to saving resources and explore new ways of producing power can opt for sun cells that produce electricity by the help of sunlight. Resources are not only important for the human race but also for every other creature that lives on this planet. The list of endangered species has grown exponentially due to climate changes and resource problems.

Preserving Mother Earth for the Next Generation

Saving the planet is not only an issue of importance for us but also for every following generation. It is therefore vital to teach our children who to treat nature and every creature with respect and to show them that we are responsible for the planet we live on. Mistakes that have been made in the past decades might not be repeated if we draw a lesson from them.

• - make friends all over the world
• - get to know another culture first-hand
• - acquire a second language rather quickly
• - expand one's worldview
• - increase one's employment opportunities
• - develop skills you wouldn't aquire in classroom surroundings

Getting a place to stay

Of course, before actually going abroad there are dozens of things to do and to plan, so the departure itself will most usually take place at least half a year after all the necessary paperwork has been done. There are many things to do and to remember in the meantime; for an overview just ask the responsible departure at your university for a leaflet. Usually universities work together to help their respective students in getting a room or a flat and most people are happy to get a place in a hall of residence. If you want, however, you can also take the effort and organize a place to stay by yourself. Due to websites like wimdu.com this is not as difficult as it might seem at first. Renting a room this way gives you the advantage of having contact with locals right away and getting a glimpse at people's everyday life detatched from campus and university.

The study of anthropology is the science of human beings in all its aspects, both physical (evolutionary, anatomical, , physiological, morphological, etc.) and cultural (geographical, psychological, socio-religious, etc.). Anthropology defines humanity through a combination of several various human and natural sciences. The term anthropology comes from two Greek words, anthropos meaning man (in the generic sense) and logos meaning "specialty" study (or science). Studying anthropology takes three to four years.

This discipline is particularly anthropological facts, being specific to humans. It is based on the combined studies of different recent and ancient societies, data obtained from ethnology and researches that analyzes how unique human spirit is between different cultures.

Early anthropologists relied on second-hand documents obtained from third parties. The work is divided between different workers, a category assigned with collecting information and another group that interprets them. This was practiced in several areas of Europe until 1914. The figure of the "anthropologist Room" (armchair anthropologist) including James George Frazer figure is a dominant archetype.

Ethnography is the branch of the discipline that deals with the systematic collection of field data. It can use drawings, photography, music notation and the collection of objects.

The primacy of physical anthropology

Polysemy of the word "anthropology" makes it difficult for a strict definition varying largely through time space. Contemporary anthropology is dependent on numerous and varied sources and the definition of a genealogy is itself a particular challenge in the discipline.

In the eighteenth century, assigns a relative convergence of anthropology the study of Man in its various aspects through methods of natural science. It directly or indirectly questions human nature, makes him lose the privileged position it occupied in the creation in Christian theology.

The study of geology, is the science which deals with the composition, structure, history and the evolution of the inner and outer layers of the earth, and the different processes that shape it. Geology is an important discipline among the sciences of the Earth. Associated with radiometric dating methods and studies of meteorites, it helped determine the age of the Earth, which is currently estimated at 4.55 billion years. It operates in conjunction with applied geophysics in the exploration and / or exploitation of natural resources including oil, coal, minerals, gemstones and semi-precious stones and water. Studies in geology last from three to four university years.

History of Geology

This science of the Earth has its beginnings set in 1660 in the North with the early work of Danish geologist Niels Stensen, known in France under the name of Nicolas Steno, soon followed by England and the UK regions, and then later in France in 1700. In 1750, it is an established science in Western Europe. In its current meaning, the term geology is also used for the first time in French by Diderot in 1751, from the Italian word created in 1603 by Aldrovandi. In the early nineteenth century geological science takes off and is in its foundations, time scale and maps, field observations and petrological analysis.

Some of the most prominent geological interest of humanity for a long time, are earthquakes, volcanoes and erosion. The first trace of such an interest is a mural showing a volcanic eruption in the Neolithic at Çatalhöyük (Turkey) dating from the sixth millennium BC. AD. The concept of layer appears explicitly only briefly during the classical Arabic and more driven in China, but these contributions do not influence either the birth of modern geology.

The history of the human environment or environmental history is a subdiscipline of history, close to historical biogeography. In scientific circles we talk about ecology as retrospective. The environmental history studies the history of relations between human societies, nature and the biophysical environment. Specifically, these studies focus on ideas developed, to the knowledge of nature and understanding of interdependencies and interactions between human societies and habitat. This field theory emerges in the early 1970s in conjunction with the rise of environmental movements and the new concerns of the human environment.

About the journal

The Environmental History scholarly journal was and still is the leading and most popular journal among practitioners, scientists and scholars all over the world. Tackling subjects like the past interactions between the environment and the ancient human cultures, it is a highly rated interdisciplinary quarterly publication, as the articles the journal publishes includes information on every single part of the world, covering all the aspects of the history of the human environment as well as any related disciplines, even though it is based in North America. The Environmental History scholarly journal is co-published by the American Society for Environmental History and the Forest History Society. Other than the regular research articles, reviews of prominent books, research reports as well the interviews of practitioners having a great impact on the field are also published by the journal regularly.

Subdiciplines’ journals

A large number of journals, other than the Environmental History scholarly journal, arose recently and mostly tackle the environmental history’s subsdiciplines. Some are even periodical publications are also devoted to specific areas of the science of Environmental History, such as marine history or forest history.

In biology and ecology, the term applies to any endangered species that could disappear. Species are declared endangered if they meet specific criteria (habitat loss, significant decline in its population, genetic erosion, over fishing or hunting etc..). These criteria are generally established or validated by the IUCN, and help to refine the risk of extinction (current, short and medium term) and assign a conservation status and sometimes protection (protected species).

The endangered status attracts the attention of everyone on the vulnerability and the risk of extinction of a species. The inclusion in this list at global, national or regional level may lead to measures to protect the species and therefore their habitat. In France, for example, 18 restoration plans involve bats, the common hamster, brown bear, the European mink, Bonelli's eagle, the goshawk in Corsica, the Lesser Kestrel, Herring Audouin, the bearded vulture, the Kite, the Little Bustard, Corncrake, the Corsican nuthatch, black vulture, Egyptian vulture, and reptiles (turtles French West Indies, and Orsini's viper).

Protected species

A species is protected for reasons of scientific interest or necessity of biological conservation. This usually includes threatened species and harbors laws against poaching, transportation, handling, and sometimes approach or photograph are at least temporarily prohibited (unless authorized by special derogation) by various agencies on all or part of the area distribution of the species in question. These are mainly wild animals and plants, but invertebrates, insects and fungi may also be involved.

In general, transport and trade of these species are prohibited in all their forms (individuals dead or alive, eggs, larvae, by-products, meat, etc..). The sale of stuffed animals or stuffed (even older) of these species is generally prohibited but may be offered to museums. An extinct species may also be protected.

Dinosaurs (Greek deinos, sauros terrible lizard) form a highly diverse variety of diapsids vertebrates, currently represented by birds. They are oviparous archosaurs with a common upright posture and sharing a number of physical similarities such as the absence of a postfrontal in the skull and the presence of at least three sacral vertebrae. Present from the Carnian (Upper Triassic lower part, 230 million years ago), they disappeared almost entirely during the Cretaceous-Tertiary crisis 65 million years ago. However the most interesting dinosaurs remain the Mesozoic era dinosaurs, that ranged from really small to gigantic creatures that went extinct long ago.

Dinosaurs and Prehistory

It's a misnomer to say that dinosaurs are prehistoric animals. Indeed, prehistory refers to the period between the onset of Humanity and the first appearance of written documents. Depending on the precise definitions adopted, it begins as soon as there are 5 million years. Non-avian dinosaurs became extinct there 65 million years, they have not lived in prehistoric times. They are animals of the Mesozoic era, but not "prehistoric".

Size of dinosaurs

Based on fossils, it is certain that the dinosaurs were a group of large animals, although their average size has varied during the periods of Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous. According to paleontologist Bill Erickson, the median weight was between 9 kg and 5 tons, a recent study of 63 kinds of dinosaurs giving an average weight of 850 kg (comparable to that of a grizzly bear) and a median weight of nearly 2 tons, as much as a giraffe. In comparison, the average weight of 863 grams of mammals is that of a large rodent. The smallest dinosaur was bigger than two-thirds of modern mammals. The majority of the dinosaurs were bigger than 98% of existing mammals.

The evolutionary history of mankind is that of the human line and retraces the steps of their evolution over geologic time. It does not limit itself to the study of the genus Homo, but more generally includes all members of the family of hominids (i.e. including the australopithecines that are not, strictly speaking, our ancestors). Its study comes primarily to describe the history of the human lineage. This scientific work is what is called paleoanthropology.

The emergence of life

3.5 billion years ago, life appeared on Earth. Following simple forms, probably pretty close to some bacteria of the present day. Then life took some more complex forms, all aquatics, whose expressions were similar to the most complex bony fishes today. It is from this branch (bony fish) that the first terrestrial vertebrates come from, plants and arthropods were already installed out of the water.

The first four-legged animals known were the amphibian tetrapods such Ichthyostega. The radiation of species from this strain was important, "reptiles" of the traditional classification is a variant. A relatively primitive reptile lineage, mammalian reptiles, is the origin of mammals.

The separation of the lineage of the chimpanzee and human lineage

Different separations between the lines leading to different species of apes and the genus Homo, occurred in succession. The separation between the most recent human lineage and that of another species of monkeys was what occurred with the Panini (chimpanzee lineage). According to David Reich of Harvard Medical School in Boston, who compared the human X chromosome DNA and chimpanzee, this separation has made fewer than 6.3 million years.

However, these studies also indicate that this separation was gradual, as the sequence comparison of the X chromosomes of Homo sapiens and chimpanzees shows similarities which seem to reflect a period of "re-hybridization" between hominins and paninis. A significant hybridization between at least one species of chimpanzee one hand, species of Australopithecus species and probably other men, leading to gene exchange between the two tribes have existed for perhaps four million years according to the authors of this work.

Protecting the environment is about taking steps to minimize or eliminate the negative impact of human activities on the environment. This action is both scientific because it needs to expand our currently limited knowledge in this field, citizenship, since the decisions have a cost to current generations, and an impact for future generations; because the decisions are necessarily collective and sometimes global, good policies are necessary.

Knowledge of the overall functioning of the planet is very recent, it was not until the late nineteenth century that theories were formed. It took almost another century to discover that human activities had not only a significant impact on the environment, but also that it might be permanent. In 1972, the simultaneous creation of the United Nations Environment Programme and the relevant government authorities in developed countries marks the starting point of the will to act on a collective level.

Origins of the concept

The protection of nature and species needed to man has been a concern of Neolithic societies, however, the phrase "We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children", which was attributed to Saint-Exupery, appears to be a Lakota phrase, which shows that green concerns have preceded the Neolithic Revolution. In the late nineteenth century, environmental science is very new, it did not even have a name yet. However, it has enormous capabilities developed in other areas to move very quickly so it feeds the development of sciences in general to move, making progress difficult to perceive, the ice core is typically a polar axis near the fundamental research, which provided practical outcomes of importance, both high and unexpected.

The environment as a planetary system

The planet has since long been regarded as a mere juxtaposition of natural systems with little connection between them, if not a creation of an ex nihilo, made available to the human species, and it was only in the nineteenth century, almost simultaneously, that several science challenged that vision.

Climate change is a lasting change (of the decade in a million years) of the statistical parameters (mean parameters, variability) of the global climate of the Earth or its various regional climates. These changes may be due to processes intrinsic to the Earth, external influences or, more recently, human activities. Anthropogenic climate change is caused by emissions of greenhouse gases caused by human activities, changing the composition of the atmosphere of the planet. To this are added the evolution of natural variations in climate.

Drought and desertification

The phenomena of drought, salinization and desertification may be aggravated by climate changes, particularly in the Sahel and the Gobi desert that stretch. Desertification can itself contribute to local and global changes of climate, such as promoting fire savanna or steppe, being an important source of dust (aerosols that can affect the rainfall) and albedo (greater that a medium-vegetated).

The causes of climate change

This theory proposed by Milutin Milanković between 1911 and 1941, confirmed by the study of O18, and largely approved by the scientific community says climate cycles glacial/interglacial variations in eccentricity, obliquity and precession of the Earth. According to this theory, without anthropogenic forcing, the planet would enter a new era of cooling, or enter an unusually long and stable interglacial stage (even 50.000 years).

Another theory that is compatible with others, developed by the German Heinrich Schwabe in 1840, followed by American George Hale in 1906, is solar cycles. It explains the weak climatological variations that occur every 11 years, corresponding to the cycle of sunspots, which have a periodicity of 11 years when the number of sunspots is important, the Sun emits more energy (the Earth receives longer) and therefore a change in temperature occurs. This radiation affects the clouds in a complex way (see physical principle of the cloud chamber) and therefore both the planetary albedo and the greenhouse effect due to clouds and water vapor.