Friday, January 24, 2020

The Cambrian Explosion: Proof of ID? Essay -- Biology Biological Essay

The Cambrian Explosion: Proof of ID? In our studies of Intelligent Design (ID) theory and Creation Science, I found little information that seriously challenged the theory of evolution. However, there was one event that appeared to defy the logic of Darwinian gradualism: the Cambrian Explosion. This event was presented by ID theorists as proof of design--something which science is unable to account for. Unfortunately for ID proponents, this is not the case. There are several scientific explanations for the Cambrian Explosion. I will give an account of the Cambrian Explosion, present the ID arguments relating to it, and give some scientific explanations of the event. The so called ‘Cambrian Explosion’ was a period of rapid diversification of animal life on earth. It took place approximately 550 million years ago (it bears mentioning that estimations of geological time this far back are fairly rough). There is some dispute over just how long the ‘explosion’ lasted. Scientists traditionally proposed a duration of about 30 million years (Ward and Brownlee, p. 137). However, some new evidence collected in Russia may indicate a much shorter timescale- 5 to 10 million years (Kerr 1993, p. 1274). The truly unique thing about the Cambrian Explosion was the rapid generation of extremely diverse life forms. Life is generally classified with a system going from broad to specific description. Kingdom, the broadest classification, describes whether a given specimen is plant, animal, fungi, protist, or moneran. The next most specific indicator is phylum. The phyla indicate the body design of a taxonomical specimen. Humans, along with all other species that poses a spinal ... ...ore Explosive. Science, New Series Volume 261, Issue 5126. September 3, 1993. Kerr, Richard A. Crowding Innovation out of Evolution. Science, New Series, Volume 266, Issue 5188. November 18, 1994. Kerr, Richard A. Timing Evolution’s Early Bursts. Science, New Series, Volume 267, Issue 5194. January 6, 1995. McMenamin and McMenamin. The Emergence of Animals: The Cambrian Breakthrough. Columbia University Press, New York. 1990. Ohno, Susumu. The Notion of the Cambrian Pananimalia Genome. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Volume 63, Issue 16. August 6, 1996. Ward and Brownlee. Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe. Copernicus, New York. 2000.

Wednesday, January 15, 2020

Cost of Capital Essay

LEI’s expected net income this year is $34,285.72, its established dividend payout ratio is 30 percents, its federal-plus-state tax rate is 40 percent, and investors expect earnings and dividends to grow at a constant rate of 9 percent in the future. LEI paid a dividend of $3.60 per share last year, and its stock currently sells at a price of $54 per share. LEI can obtain new capital in the following ways: Preferred: New preferred stock with a dividend of $11 can be sold to the public at a price of $95 per share. Debt: Debt can be sold at an interest rate of 12 percent. a. Determine the cost of each capital structure component. b. Calculate the WACC. c. LEI has the following investment opportunities that are typical average-risk projects for the firm: Project Cost at t = 0 Which projects should LEI accept? Why? [2(382)] 2. The Heuser Company’s currently outstanding 10 percent coupon bonds have a yield to maturity of 12 percent. Heuser believes it could issue at par new bonds that would provide a similar yield to maturity. If its marginal tax rate is 35 percent, what is Heuser’s aftert-tax cost of debt? [2(383)] 3. Trivoli Industries plans to issue some $100 par preferred stock with an 11 percent dividend. The stock is selling on the market for $97.00, but Trivoli must pay flotation costs of 5 percent of the market price, so the net price that firm will receive is $92.15 per share. What is Trivoli’s cost of preferred stock with flotation considered? [2(383)] 4. Zwing-Zook Enterprises has a beta of 1.45. The risk-free rate is 6 percent and the expected return on the market portfolio is 10 percent. The company presently pays a dividend of $2 a share and investors expect it to experience a growth in dividends of 7 percent per annum for many years to come. a. What is the stock’s required rate of return according to CAPM? b. What is the stock’s present market price per share, assuming this required return? [1(77)]

Tuesday, January 7, 2020

Visions of The Primitive in Langston Hughes’s The Big Sea...

Visions of â€Å"The Primitive† in Langston Hughes’s The Big Sea Recounting his experiences as a member of a skeleton crew in â€Å"The Haunted Ship† section of his autobiography The Big Sea (1940), Langston Hughes writes This rusty tub was towed up the Hudson to Jonas Point a few days after I boarded her and put at anchor with eighty or more other dead ships of a similar nature, and there we stayed all winter. ...[T]here were no visitors and I almost never went ashore. Those long winter nights with snow swirling down the Hudson, and the old ships rocking and creaking in the wind, and the ice scraping and crunching against their sides, and the steam hissing in the radiators were ideal for reading. I read all the ship’s library. (Hughes,†¦show more content†¦Moreover, The Big Sea provides a trenchant commentary on writers such as Carl Van Vechten, whose novel Nigger Heaven (1926) promoted the associations of Harlem as an atavistic enclave for a disenfranchised black population.1 Indeed, Hugh M. Gloster describes Nigger Heaven as â€Å"a sort of guide book for visitors who went uptown seeking a re-creation of the primitive African jungle in the heart of New York City† (Gloster, pp.113-14). This Manhattan neighbourhood north of Central Park, with its growing population of Southern immigrants, would serve the Nordic author Van Vechten in much the same way that Africa did Conrad or India did Kipling: as an alien territory, forbidden, dangerous yet compelling in its intensity. It is ironic that this very conception of Harlem was one of the key reasons why it was overrun and exploited by sensation-seeking white outsiders. Hughes makes implicit comparisons between the colonial despoliation of African natural resources and the whites’ frivolous engagement with Harlem’s â€Å"exotic† cabaret nightlife in the 1920s. Hughes’s gesture of throwing his own personal collection of books overboard at the start of The Big Sea before embarking for Africa as a merchant seaman on the S. S. Malone offers an immediate and provocative challenge to the