scholarly journals Ancient DNA helps trace the peopling of the world

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-22
Author(s):  
Bastien Llamas ◽  
Xavier Roca Rada ◽  
Evelyn Collen
Keyword(s):  
Common Ancestor ◽  
Demographic History ◽  
Genetic Data ◽  
Origin And Evolution ◽  
Human Demographic History ◽  
Human Morphology ◽  
Human Movements ◽  
The World ◽  
Powerful Means ◽  
And Linguistics

Many of us are fascinated by narratives regarding the origin and evolution of our species. Who are we? How did we people the world? Answers to these simple questions remain elusive even though researchers have been quite successful in describing past human morphology and culture using evidence from anthropology, archaeology, history, sociology and linguistics. However, when they address human migrations, archaeologists are somewhat restricted to surviving artifactual evidence and limited to descriptions of culture expansions, which may have occurred by the movement of either ideas or people. The advent of genomics, by which one can sequence whole or part of an individual's DNA, provided a powerful means to dig into past human demographic history. Notably, the coalescent theory posits that individuals in a population share genetic variants that originated from a common ancestor. This powerful theory is the basis for a number of bioanalytical innovations that utilize genetic data to reconstruct human movements around the world.

scholarly journals Brief Population Bottlenecks Are Beyond The Genetic Streetlight

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack Elliot-Higgins ◽  
S. Joshua Swamidass
Keyword(s):  
Population Genetics ◽  
Demographic History ◽  
Genetic Data ◽  
Population Bottleneck ◽  
Population Bottlenecks ◽  
Human Lineage ◽  
Important Goal ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Human Demographic History ◽  
Population Inference

Abstract Inferring human demographic history from extant genomes is an important goal of population genetics. To date, the sensitivity of coalescence-based methods in detecting population bottlenecks has not been well characterized. In this study, we find that brief bottlenecks, of just a few generations, are undetectable by current methods. A new approach to population inference, Lineage Time Inference (LiTI), uses data-derived windows to demarcate the limits of the genetic data. We find that a sharp population bottleneck at the time of the Youngest Toba Eruption, and also at more ancient timepoints in the human lineage, would be outside the genetic streetlight.

Mobile Perception and the Automotive Prosthetic

Transfers ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charissa N. Terranova
Keyword(s):  
Urban Sprawl ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Conceptual Art ◽  
Robert Smithson ◽  
Martha Rosler ◽  
The World ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
And Linguistics

This essay focuses on a body of photoconceptual works from the 1960s and 1970s in which the automobile functions as a prosthetic-like aperture through which to view the world in motion. I argue that the logic of the “automotive prosthetic“ in works by Paul McCarthy, Dennis Hopper, Ed Ruscha, Jeff Wall, John Baldessari, Richard Prince, Martha Rosler, Robert Smithson, Ed Kienholz, Julian Opie, and Cory Arcangel reveals a techno-genetic understanding of conceptual art, functioning in addition and alternatively to semiotics and various philosophies of language usually associated with conceptual art. These artworks show how the automobile, movement on roads and highways, and the automotive landscape of urban sprawl have transformed the human sensorium. I surmise that the car has become a prosthetic of the human body and is a technological force in the maieusis of the posthuman subject. I offer a reading of specific works of photoconceptual art based on experience, perception, and a posthumanist subjectivity in contrast to solely understanding them according to semiotics and linguistics.

scholarly journals Genomic insights advance the fight against black rot of crucifers

2021 ◽  
Vol 87 (3) ◽  
pp. 127-136
Author(s):  
Zoë E. Dubrow ◽  
Adam J. Bogdanove
Keyword(s):  
Virulence Factors ◽  
Xanthomonas Campestris ◽  
Plant Pathogens ◽  
Impact Resistance ◽  
Resistance Breeding ◽  
Genetic Data ◽  
Black Rot ◽  
Inoculum Sources ◽  
New Knowledge ◽  
The World

AbstractXanthomonas campestris pv. campestris, the causal agent of black rot of crucifers, was one of the first bacterial plant pathogens ever identified. Over 130 years later, black rot remains a threat to cabbage, cauliflower, and other Brassica crops around the world. Recent genomic and genetic data are informing our understanding of X. campestris taxonomy, dissemination, inoculum sources, and virulence factors. This new knowledge promises to positively impact resistance breeding of Brassica varieties and management of inoculum sources.

scholarly journals Writing in the World and Linguistics

2010 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter T. Daniels
Keyword(s):  
General Public ◽  
Past Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
And Linguistics

It seems to me that the study of writing is about where the study of language was before the development of linguistics over the past century-and-a-bit. Everyone we know knows how to write, and therefore everyone we know thinks they know about writing. This paper looks at how writing has been presented to the general public, and how it has been treated in linguistics since the first real textbook of 1933.

scholarly journals Poetic Publications Authored with Free Software Managana

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-230
Author(s):  
Álvaro Andrade Garcia ◽  
Lucas Santos Junqueira
Keyword(s):  
Digital Publishing ◽  
Free Software ◽  
Digital Medium ◽  
Digital Publication ◽  
The World ◽  
The Creation ◽  
And Linguistics

In the Ciclope atelier, what moves us is the creation of new languages for the digital medium. In this text I present a synthesis of our research and experimentation work: a free digital publishing software called Managana; the first poetry eBook authored with it, Grão [Grain], launched along with the software in 2012; and our latest release, Poemas de Brinquedo [Toy Poems], launched in 2016. Grain and Toy Poems are good examples of publications that use Managana. Resulting from prolonged research in dictionaries and linguistics’ texts, etymology and mythology, Grain proposes to recreate the world through the word. Its poems experiment the evolution of James Joyce’s verbivocovisual to the possible interanimaverbivocovisual in a digital publication. The application-book-performanceToy Poems is a publication that addresses the possibilities and difficulties of today’s transmedia poiesis.

scholarly journals Genomic Feature Analysis of Betacoronavirus Provides Insights Into SARS and COVID-19 Pandemics

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xin Li ◽  
Jia Chang ◽  
Shunmei Chen ◽  
Liangge Wang ◽  
Tung On Yau ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Feature Analysis ◽  
Genomic Feature ◽  
Cleavage Sites ◽  
Furin Cleavage ◽  
Genomic Features ◽  
Future Studies ◽  
Origin And Evolution ◽  
The World ◽  
Main Factors ◽  
Similar Risk

In December 2019, the world awoke to a new betacoronavirus strain named severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2). Betacoronavirus consists of A, B, C and D subgroups. Both SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 belong to betacoronavirus subgroup B. In the present study, we divided betacoronavirus subgroup B into the SARS1 and SARS2 classes by six key insertions and deletions (InDels) in betacoronavirus genomes, and identified a recently detected betacoronavirus strains RmYN02 as a recombinant strain across the SARS1 and SARS2 classes, which has potential to generate a new strain with similar risk as SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2. By analyzing genomic features of betacoronavirus, we concluded: (1) the jumping transcription and recombination of CoVs share the same molecular mechanism, which inevitably causes CoV outbreaks; (2) recombination, receptor binding abilities, junction furin cleavage sites (FCSs), first hairpins and ORF8s are main factors contributing to extraordinary transmission, virulence and host adaptability of betacoronavirus; and (3) the strong recombination ability of CoVs integrated other main factors to generate multiple recombinant strains, two of which evolved into SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2, resulting in the SARS and COVID-19 pandemics. As the most important genomic features of SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2, an enhanced ORF8 and a novel junction FCS, respectively, are indispensable clues for future studies of their origin and evolution. The WIV1 strain without the enhanced ORF8 and the RaTG13 strain without the junction FCS “RRAR” may contribute to, but are not the immediate ancestors of SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2, respectively.

DeepaMehta

2011 ◽  
pp. 154-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jörg Richter ◽  
Jurij Poelchau
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Birthday Party ◽  
Underlying Principle ◽  
New Findings ◽  
New Knowledge ◽  
The World ◽  
And Linguistics ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Common Sense Knowledge

A crucial experience during my time at university— computer science (with focus on AI) and linguistics—was the documentary “Maschinenträume” (1988) by Peter Krieg. It features the long-term AI project “Cyc,” in which Doug Lenat and his team try to represent common sense knowledge in a computer. When Cyc started, in 1984, it was already known that many AI projects failed due to the machine’s lack of common sense knowledge. Common sense knowledge includes, for example, that two things cannot be in the same place at the same time, or that people die, or what happens at a children’s birthday party. During the night, while the researchers are sleeping, Cyc tries to create new knowledge from its programmed facts and rules. One morning the researchers were surprised by one of Cyc’s new findings: “Most people are famous.” Well, this was simply a result of the researchers having entered, besides themselves, only celebrities like, for example, Einstein, Gandhi, and the U.S. presidents. The machine-dreaming researchers, however, were in no way despondent about this obviously wrong finding, because they figured they would only have to enter the rest of the population, too. The underlying principle behind this thought is that it is possible to model the whole world in the form of ontologies. The meaning of the world can be captured in its entirety in the computer. From that moment the computer can know everything that humans know and can produce unlimited new insights. At the end of the film Peter Krieg nevertheless asks: “If one day the knowledge of the whole world is represented in a machine, what can humans do with it, the machine having never seen the world.”

Maya cartographies: Two maps of Punta Laguna, Yucatan, Mexico

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Kurnick ◽  
David Rogoff
Keyword(s):  
Social Theories ◽  
The World ◽  
Powerful Means ◽  
A Site ◽  
Spatial Imagination

It is common to view maps as simple reflections of the world. Maps, however, are more complex and dynamic. They are a potent form of spatial imagination and a powerful means of producing space. This article encourages archaeologists to experiment with, and to produce a multiplicity of, maps and other spatial images. As an example, this article juxtaposes two previously unpublished maps of Punta Laguna, Yucatan, Mexico: a site map created using traditional archaeological conventions and a visual cartographic history created using Indigenous Maya spatial ontologies. Because they depict space relationally, Indigenous Maya maps are arguably more congruous with contemporary social theories about space than are traditional Western maps. Further, the juxtaposition of two radically different maps of the same place highlights those mapping conventions that scholars often take for granted; demonstrates how specifically maps are selective and subjective; and emphasizes that Western worldviews are neither natural nor ubiquitous.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document