Analysis of the Kenyan Distance-Running Phenomenon

2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 285-291 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ross Tucker ◽  
Vincent O. Onywera ◽  
Jordan Santos-Concejero

Purpose:To investigate the ethnicity of Kenya’s most successful international runners, tracking their evolution over the period of their international emergence and current dominance.Methods:The authors analyzed male track distance events from 800m upwards from all the major global athletics championships from 1964 to 2013, and the annual Top-25 world marathon performances since 1990.Results:The percentage of top-25 marathon performances and medals won by Kenyan and Kalenjin runners have increased over time with Nandi subtribe outperforming the rest of the world outside Africa (r > .70, large effect). However, Europe, North America, Oceania, Asia, and South America decreased over time in top marathon performances and track medals won (r > .70, large effect). The tribe and subtribe distribution was different in the marathon than in the track: Maasais were more likely to feature in medals won in shorter track events than in the top 25 of the world marathon rankings (risk ratio [RR] = 9.67, very large effect). This was also the case for Marakwets (RR = 6.44, very large effect) and Pokots (RR = 4.83, large effect). On the other hand, Keiyos, Kikuyus, Kipsigis, Sabaots, and Tugens were more likely to succeed in the marathon than in shorter track events (RR > 2.0, moderate effect).Conclusion:These data emphasize that the previously documented emergence of African distance runners is primarily a Kenyan phenomenon, driven by the Kalenjin tribe and in particular the Nandi subtribe. This supports the complex interaction between genotype, phenotype, and socioeconomic factors driving the remarkable dominance of Kenyan distance runners.

2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Ahmed Akgunduz

AbstractIslamic Law is one of the broadest and most comprehensive systems of legislation in the world. It was applied, through various schools of thought, from one end of the Muslim world to the other. It also had a great impact on other nations and cultures. We will focus in this article on values and norms in Islamic law. The value system of Islam is immutable and does not tolerate change over time for the simple fact that human nature does not change. The basic values and needs (which can be called maṣlaḥa) are classified hierarchically into three levels: (1) necessities (Ḍarūriyyāt), (2) convenience (Ḥājiyyāt), and (3) refinements (Kamāliyyāt=Taḥsīniyyāt). In Islamic legal theory (Uṣūl al‐fiqh) the general aim of legislation is to realize values through protecting and guaranteeing their necessities (al-Ḍarūriyyāt) as well as stressing their importance (al‐ Ḥājiyyāt) and their refinements (taḥsīniyyāt).In the second part of this article we will draw attention to Islamic norms. Islam has paid great attention to norms that protect basic values. We cannot explain all the Islamic norms that relate to basic values, but we will classify them categorically. We will focus on four kinds of norms: 1) norms (rules) concerned with belief (I’tiqādiyyāt), 2) norms (rules) concerned with law (ʿAmaliyyāt); 3) general legal norms (Qawā‘id al‐ Kulliyya al‐Fiqhiyya); 4) norms (rules) concerned with ethics (Wijdāniyyāt = Aḵlāqiyyāt = Ādāb = social and moral norms).


Author(s):  
Kendra Klages

My research project focuses on folk inspired music of Poland, England, China, and Ireland. In my applied lessons on clarinet, I studied two neoclassical Polish folk pieces, so the question answered in the research is how the two neoclassical Polish pieces compare to folk inspired pieces from other countries. The pieces chosen for this study are mainly pieces that I have heard before. Therefore, I chose the pieces based upon my familiarity with them. Folk music expresses the sounds and rhythms that represent countries all over the world. Over time these sounds and rhythms evolve to reflect the country at that moment. This study will reflect how folk music was implemented into different pieces with a focus on Polish neoclassical folk pieces versus English, Chinese, and Irish folk pieces. There is a detailed analysis focused on two Polish compositions. While the focus of the other global pieces is to allow one to understand how folk music was being used in compositions specific to the country being studied. The purpose of this study is to understand how folk tunes and characteristics can be expressed through larger compositions, and how the different countries and genres approached that. Furthermore, the study compares Polish folk music to the folk music of other countries and where Polish folk composers stand in originality and experimentalism with the composers of England, China, and Ireland.


Phytotaxa ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 373 (1) ◽  
pp. 95
Author(s):  
TIM BÖHNERT ◽  
FEDERICO LUEBERT ◽  
MAXIMILIAN WEIGEND

The genus Atriplex Linnaeus (1753: 1052) (Chenopodiaceae Vent.; placed in Amaranthaceae Juss. s. l. in APG IV 2016) comprises about 300 species distributed mainly in subtropical, temperate, and subarctic regions of the world and is mostly adapted to dry conditions on often saline soils (Sukhorukov & Danin 2009, Kadereit et al. 2010, Iamonico 2013, APG IV 2016). The genus is highly diverse in Eurasia, Australia and North America. South America is another centre of diversity with ca. 55 species, 45 of which are considered as native (Brignone et al. 2016). A recent and exhaustive taxonomical synopsis of Atriplex for South America was published by Brignone et al. (2016), but there are also regional taxonomic revisions, e.g., for Chile by Rosas (1989), or Argentina by Múlgura de Romero (1981, 1982 & 1984).


2016 ◽  
pp. 151-156
Author(s):  
Mária Szabó ◽  
Szilvia Kusza ◽  
István Csízi ◽  
István Monori

Merino and Merino-derived sheep breeds have been widely known and distributed across the world, both as purebred and admixed populations. They represent a diverse genetic resource which over time has been used as the basis for the development of new breeds. In spite of this, their gene-pool potential is still unexplored. The Merino sheep represent the most important sheep resource of the Hungarian husbandry. It has the largest amount of individuals between both of the stock and commercial flocks. But in Europe the Merino stocks went through a drastic reduction in number. Thus these breeds became endangered in several countries as well as in Hungary. In this study we would like to present the recent status of different Merino breeds of the world to ground our further phylogenetic research with the Hungarian Merino breed.


2020 ◽  
pp. 75-96
Author(s):  
Ronald W. Schatz

The Labor Board vets insisted that they were always realistic and had no ideological convictions of any kind. This chapter argues that such a characterization is not accurate. Clark Kerr, John Dunlop, and the other veterans of the board’s staff were in truth utopians—not utopians as that term is usually imagined, but liberal reformers who believed that they could transform the world over time, one step at a time. The famous German sociologist Karl Mannheim termed that mindset “liberal-humanitarian utopian.” The chapter looks back to their youth to explain how they came to that worldview and how unarticulated utopian beliefs pervaded their teaching, writing, and other work. The chapter concludes with the prediction advanced by Clark Kerr, John Dunlop, Charles Myers, and Frederick Harbison that the U.S. and Soviet systems would converge in the future--a conviction that appeared realistic in the latter 1980s and the early 1990s.


Author(s):  
Tom Conley

Michel de Certeau, a French philosopher trained in history and ethnography, was a peripatetic teacher in Europe, South America and North America. His thought has inflected four areas of philosophy. He studied how mysticism informs late-medieval epistemology and social practice. With the advent of the Scientific Revolution, the affinities the mystic shares with nature and the cosmos become, like religion itself, repressed or concealed. An adjunct discipline, heterology, thus constitutes an anthropology of alterity, studying the ‘other’ and the destiny of religion since the sixteenth century. De Certeau opens the hidden agendas that make representations of the past a function of social pressures, so that sometime histories are rearticulated in mirrored or subversive forms. This subversion makes accessible a general philosophy of invention that works within and against the strategic policies of official institutions. De Certeau’s writings also belong to activism, the history of ideological structures, psychoanalysis, and post-1968 theories of writing (écriture) as defined by Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault and Lyotard.


Zootaxa ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 4816 (3) ◽  
pp. 392-396
Author(s):  
DAIZY BHARTI ◽  
FRANCISCO BRUSA ◽  
SANTOSH KUMAR ◽  
KAILASH CHANDRA

Catenulida are mostly inhabitants of freshwater ecosystems, like ponds, streams, though the marine species are few (Larsson and Willems, 2010). About 110 species of catenulids are known worldwide, with most of the studies conducted in South America (Marcus, 1945a, 1945b; Noreña et al., 2005), North America (Kepner and Carter 1931; Nuttycombe and Waters, 1938) and Scandinavian Peninsula (Luther, 1960, Larsson and Willems, 2010; Larsson et al., 2008). The diversity of catenulids from India has not been studied intensively; however some reports on other turbellaria exists for the country (Annandale, 1912; Whitehouse, 1913; Kapadia, 1947; Basil and Fernando, 1975; Apte and Pitale, 2011; Kalita and Goswami, 2012; Venkataraman et al., 2015). The genus Stenostomum, however, has been studied extensively around the world with identification of over 60 species (Tyler et al., 2006-2016). This is first report of the genus from India. The present study was part of the project to catalogue the diversity of free living protozoan ciliates from the Hooghly stretch of the Ganga River during which the flatworms were found. The worms were studied based on the live observations, with recognition of characters which led to its identification. This study serves to fill knowledge gap in the freshwater flatworms from India. 


2013 ◽  
Vol 87 (2) ◽  
pp. 254-268 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pavel Gol'din ◽  
Evgenij Zvonok

A new basal basilosaurid cetacean, Basilotritus uheni n. gen. n. sp., comes from the late middle Eocene (Bartonian) of Ukraine. It is the earliest dated record of a cetacean from Eastern Europe. The tympanic bulla of Basilotritus uheni shares basilosaurid synapomorphies but possesses unusual traits inherited from protocetids. Cetaceans related to Basilotritus uheni and referred to as Eocetus or “Eocetus” have been recorded from Africa, Europe, North America and South America. “Eocetus” wardii from North America is recombined as Basilotritus wardii. Platyosphys paulsonii and Platyosphys einori from Ukraine are considered as nomina dubia; specimens prior referred to as Platyosphys sp. are similar or related to Basilotritus. Other records of the Eocene cetaceans from Ukraine and south Russia are identified as Basilotritus or related genera. Early basilosaurids are demonstrated to be a paraphyletic, morphologically and geographically diverse group of the genera that colonized the world ocean as late as in Bartonian age and were probably the ancestors of Neoceti, as well as of more derived basilosaurids.


2020 ◽  
Vol 148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Najmul Haider ◽  
Alexei Yavlinsky ◽  
David Simons ◽  
Abdinasir Yusuf Osman ◽  
Francine Ntoumi ◽  
...  

Abstract Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV [SARS-COV-2]) was detected in humans during the last week of December 2019 at Wuhan city in China, and caused 24 554 cases in 27 countries and territories as of 5 February 2020. The objective of this study was to estimate the risk of transmission of 2019-nCoV through human passenger air flight from four major cities of China (Wuhan, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou) to the passengers' destination countries. We extracted the weekly simulated passengers' end destination data for the period of 1–31 January 2020 from FLIRT, an online air travel dataset that uses information from 800 airlines to show the direct flight and passengers' end destination. We estimated a risk index of 2019-nCoV transmission based on the number of travellers to destination countries, weighted by the number of confirmed cases of the departed city reported by the World Health Organization (WHO). We ranked each country based on the risk index in four quantiles (4th quantile being the highest risk and 1st quantile being the lowest risk). During the period, 388 287 passengers were destined for 1297 airports in 168 countries or territories across the world. The risk index of 2019-nCoV among the countries had a very high correlation with the WHO-reported confirmed cases (0.97). According to our risk score classification, of the countries that reported at least one Coronavirus-infected pneumonia (COVID-19) case as of 5 February 2020, 24 countries were in the 4th quantile of the risk index, two in the 3rd quantile, one in the 2nd quantile and none in the 1st quantile. Outside China, countries with a higher risk of 2019-nCoV transmission are Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Canada and the USA, all of which reported at least one case. In pan-Europe, UK, France, Russia, Germany and Italy; in North America, USA and Canada; in Oceania, Australia had high risk, all of them reported at least one case. In Africa and South America, the risk of transmission is very low with Ethiopia, South Africa, Egypt, Mauritius and Brazil showing a similar risk of transmission compared to the risk of any of the countries where at least one case is detected. The risk of transmission on 31 January 2020 was very high in neighbouring Asian countries, followed by Europe (UK, France, Russia and Germany), Oceania (Australia) and North America (USA and Canada). Increased public health response including early case recognition, isolation of identified case, contract tracing and targeted airport screening, public awareness and vigilance of health workers will help mitigate the force of further spread to naïve countries.


2020 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. e44957
Author(s):  
Branimir Jaksic ◽  
Dragisa Miljkovic ◽  
Vladimir Maksimovic ◽  
Mile Petrovic ◽  
Branko Gvozdic

This paper considers the characteristics of satellite television transmission in the world. An overview of the development of satellite television is given through the following characteristics: broadcasting systems - analog and digital (SDTV, HDTV, UHDTV), frequency band (C, Ku, Ka), broadcasting standards (DVB-S, DVB-S2, DigiCipher, DSS), as well as the availability of TV services Free-To-Air TV (FTA) and PAY TV. All of these characteristics were considered both at the global and at the regional level: North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Russia, Asia, and Australia. The gathered data are presented in tabular form and presented graphically for the period from 1996 to 2018. Based on the presented results, an analysis of the development of satellite television transmission was carried out in accordance with the characteristics of the broadcast.


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