Village Size and Permanence in Amazonia: Two Archaeological Examples from Brazil

Recent archaeological investigations along the lower Negro and upper Xingu Rivers in the Brazilian Amazon provide important new evidence bearing on long-standing debates about the size and permanence of Amerindian settlements in the region. Preliminary regional surveys and more in-depth study of selected large (30-50 ha) sites, particularly analyses of the associations between structural features, anthropogenically altered soils, and artifact distributions, lead us to conclude that large, permanent settlements, likely associated with fairly dense regional populations, existed prehistorically in both areas. These findings cast doubt on the view that environmental limitations prevented sedentism and demographic growth among Amerindian populations throughout much or all of the region. Specifically, we conclude that fully sedentary and relatively large populations emerged in a variety of Amazonian settings prehistorically, not necessarily correlated with the distribution of one or another narrowly defined ecological variable (e. g., high fertility soils). Thus, a critical evaluation of core concepts in Amazonian anthropology, such as the várzea/terra firme dichotomy or tropical forest culture, is advised.

Download Full-text

Tracing the origins of hybrids through history: monstrous cultivars and Napoléon Bonaparte’s exiled paper daisies (Asteraceae; Gnaphalieae)

Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society ◽

10.1093/botlinnean/boab020 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Timothy L Collins ◽

Jeremy J Bruhl ◽

Alexander N Schmidt-Lebuhn ◽

Ian R H Telford ◽

Rose L Andrew

Keyword(s):

Gene Flow ◽

Phylogenetic Analyses ◽

Strong Support ◽

Napoleon Bonaparte ◽

Snp Data ◽

Cast Doubt ◽

Molecular Phylogenetic ◽

St Helena ◽

New Evidence

Abstract Golden everlasting paper daisies (Xerochrysum, Gnaphalieae, Asteraceae) were some of the earliest Australian native plants to be cultivated in Europe. Reputedly a favourite of Napoléon Bonaparte and Empress Joséphine, X. bracteatum is thought to have been introduced to the island of St Helena in the South Atlantic during Napoléon’s exile there. Colourful cultivars were developed in the 1850s, and there is a widely held view that these were produced by crossing Xerochrysum with African or Asian Helichrysum spp. Recent molecular phylogenetic analyses and subtribal classification of Gnaphalieae cast doubt on this idea. Using single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) data, we looked for evidence of gene flow between modern cultivars, naturalized paper daisies from St Helena and four Xerochrysum spp. recorded in Europe in the 1800s. There was strong support for gene flow between cultivars and X. macranthum. Paper daisies from St Helena were genotypically congruent with X. bracteatum and showed no indications of ancestry from other species or from the cultivars, consistent with the continuous occurrence of naturalized paper daisies introduced by Joséphine and Napoléon. We also present new evidence for the origin of colourful Xerochrysum cultivars and hybridization of congeners in Europe from Australian collections.

Download Full-text

Temperature and histamine receptor function—what is really happening?

Canadian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology ◽

10.1139/y85-124 ◽

1985 ◽

Vol 63 (6) ◽

pp. 751-755 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

D. A. Cook ◽

C. A. Krueger ◽

A. Michalchuk

Keyword(s):

Smooth Muscle ◽

Guinea Pig ◽

Low Temperatures ◽

Histamine Receptor ◽

Receptor Function ◽

Guinea Pig Ileum ◽

Abundant Evidence ◽

Cast Doubt ◽

Histamine Response ◽

New Evidence

Early studies suggested that at low temperatures there was a transition of receptor type from an H1 to an H2 receptor when the temperature was reduced from 37 °C to temperatures below 20 °C. These original observations were based on the development of sensitivity of guinea-pig ileum to the H2 antagonist metiamide as the temperature was reduced. More recently, evidence from a number of laboratories has cast doubt on the existence of a simple H1–H2 receptor transition, but there is abundant evidence that there are major changes in the response of a variety of smooth muscle preparations to histamine at reduced temperatures. The evidence in regard to alterations in histamine response at low temperatures is reviewed, some new evidence presented, and a model which is consistent with most of the observations is suggested.

Download Full-text

Political Regimes and Suburban Growth, 1980–1990

City and Community ◽

10.1111/1540-6040.00010 ◽

2002 ◽

Vol 1 (1) ◽

pp. 113-135 ◽

Cited By ~ 13

Author(s):

John R. Logan ◽

Kyle D. Crowder

Keyword(s):

Census Data ◽

Local Politics ◽

Local Development ◽

Political Regime ◽

Median Income ◽

Growth Machine ◽

Suburban Communities ◽

Cast Doubt ◽

Growth Coalitions ◽

New Evidence

We provide new evidence on two hypotheses associated with the model of the city as a growth machine. The first posits the pervasive influence of pro‐growth coalitions in local governing regimes. The second asserts that growth regimes make a difference to local development. Census data from 1980 and 1990 and data from a survey of community leaders in nearly 300 incorporated suburban communities are used to assess these hypotheses. In support of the first hypothesis, we find that pro‐growth coalitions represent by far the most common type of political regime, but are less likely to dominate the local politics of higher‐status communities. The type of regime prevailing in a suburb has a significant impact on the growth‐related policies adopted by the community. However, there is no evidence that either growth policy or the type of political regime significantly influences changes in population size, racial composition, or median income of these suburbs. These results cast doubt on the assumed efficacy of local growth policies and raise additional questions regarding the impacts of extra‐local factors in the development of suburban municipalities.

Download Full-text

The Redevelopment of China's Construction Land: Practising Land Property Rights in Cities through Renewals

The China Quarterly ◽

10.1017/s0305741015001228 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 224 ◽

pp. 865-887 ◽

Cited By ~ 49

Author(s):

George C.S. Lin

Keyword(s):

Land Use ◽

Property Rights ◽

Urban Renewal ◽

Critical Evaluation ◽

Land Use Efficiency ◽

Cast Doubt ◽

Research Findings ◽

Definition Of ◽

A Site ◽

Land Property Rights

AbstractExisting literature on China's urbanization focuses primarily on the expansion of cities and towns, with little attention being paid to urban renewals. The wasteful use of urban land has conventionally been attributed to the ambiguous definition and ineffective protection of property rights. This study examines recent practices in urban redevelopment in Guangzhou – a site chosen by the central authorities to pilot urban renewals (sanjiu gaizao). The research identifies a local practice in which institutional changes are made not in the delineation of land property rights but instead in the redistribution of the benefits to be made from land redevelopment. Current users of the land are offered a share of the land conveyance income previously monopolized by the state as an incentive to encourage them to engage in urban renewal. Land-use intensity and efficiency have increased, along with social exclusion and marginalization. Research findings cast doubt over the perceived notion that the uniform and unambiguous definition of property rights is the prerequisite for improved land-use efficiency and call for a critical evaluation of the current urban renewal policies that completely ignore the interests of the migrant population who outnumber local residents by a large margin.

Download Full-text

A Critical Evaluation of the Reflective Functioning Questionnaire

10.31234/osf.io/5rhme ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Sascha Müller ◽

Leon Patrick Wendt ◽

Carsten Spitzer ◽

Oliver Masuhr ◽

Sarah N. Back ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Clinical Sample ◽

Critical Evaluation ◽

Reflective Functioning ◽

Mental States ◽

Self Report ◽

Future Research ◽

Cast Doubt ◽

Psychological Impairment ◽

Latent Dimension ◽

Report Measure

The Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (RFQ-8) is a short self-report measure of reflective functioning (i.e., the ability to understand mental states of the self and others) that is presumed to capture individual differences in hypo- and hypermentalizing. Despite its broad acceptance by the field and its regular use in primary investigations of the construct, we argue that the validity of the measure is still not well established. The current research elaborates on why the proposed scoring procedure may be methodologically problematic, the item content might not sufficiently cover the full breadth of the mentalizing construct, and it is unclear whether the measure captures mentalizing processes in particular or rather general psychological impairment. In a clinical sample (N = 861) and a sample of young adults (N = 566), we explore these critical considerations and demonstrate that the RFQ-8 may assess a single latent dimension related to hypomentalizing, but provides little unique variance above and beyond broad dimensions of personality pathology and is unlikely to capture maladaptive forms of hypermentalizing. The findings cast doubt on the validity of the RFQ-8 as a measure of reflective functioning. Future research should increase validation efforts concerning the RFQ-8 or develop new measures of reflective functioning.

Download Full-text

Analysis and critical evaluation of structural features in four Cymbellaceae taxa from New Caledonia

Fottea ◽

10.5507/fot.2019.017 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 20 (1) ◽

pp. 75-85

Author(s):

Rene Le Cohu ◽

Horst Lange-Bertalot ◽

Bart Van de Viver ◽

Loic Tudesque

Keyword(s):

New Caledonia ◽

Critical Evaluation ◽

Structural Features

Download Full-text

Using the Ship-Gram Model for Japanese Keyword Extraction Based on News Reports

Complexity ◽

10.1155/2021/9965843 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 2021 ◽

pp. 1-9

Author(s):

Miao Teng

Keyword(s):

Experimental Studies ◽

Main Idea ◽

Graph Model ◽

Structural Features ◽

Keyword Extraction ◽

Semantic Features ◽

News Reports ◽

Semantic Coherence ◽

Depth Study ◽

Cosine Distance

In this paper, we conduct an in-depth study of Japanese keyword extraction from news reports, train external computer document word sets from text preprocessing into word vectors using the Ship-gram model in the deep learning tool Word2Vec, and calculate the cosine distance between word vectors. In this paper, the sliding window in TextRank is designed to connect internal document information to improve the in-text semantic coherence. The main idea is to use not only the statistical and structural features of words but also the semantic features of words extracted through word-embedding techniques, i.e., multifeature fusion, to obtain the importance weights of words themselves and the attraction weights between words and then iteratively calculate the final weight of each word through the graph model algorithm to determine the extracted keywords. To verify the performance of the algorithm, extensive simulation experimental studies were conducted on three different types of datasets. The experimental results show that the proposed keyword extraction algorithm can improve the performance by a maximum of 6.45% and 20.36% compared with the existing word frequency statistics and graph model methods, respectively; MF-Rank can achieve a maximum performance improvement of 1.76% compared with PW-TF.

Download Full-text

Estetrol Combined to Progestogen for Menopause or Contraception Indication Is Neutral on Breast Cancer

Cancers ◽

10.3390/cancers13102486 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (10) ◽

pp. 2486

Author(s):

Anne Gallez ◽

Silvia Blacher ◽

Erik Maquoi ◽

Erika Konradowski ◽

Marc Joiret ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Breast Cancer ◽

Breast Cancer Risk ◽

Cancer Risk ◽

Cancer Growth ◽

Preclinical Research ◽

Large Populations ◽

Breast Cancer Growth ◽

Preclinical And Clinical Studies ◽

New Evidence

Given the unequivocal benefits of menopause hormone therapies (MHT) and combined oral contraceptives (COC), there is a clinical need for new formulations devoid of any risk of breast cancer promotion. Accumulating data from preclinical and clinical studies support that estetrol (E4) is a promising natural estrogen for MHT and COC. Nevertheless, we report here that E4 remains active on the endometrium, even under a dose that is neutral on breast cancer growth and lung metastasis dissemination. This implies that a progestogen should be combined with E4 to protect the endometrium of non-hysterectomized women from hyperplasia and cancer. Through in vivo observations and transcriptomic analyses, our work provides evidence that combining a progestogen to E4 is neutral on breast cancer growth and dissemination, with very limited transcriptional impact. The assessment of breast cancer risk in patients during the development of new MHT or COC is not possible given the requirement of long-term studies in large populations. This translational preclinical research provides new evidence that a therapeutic dose of E4 for MHT or COC, combined with progesterone or drospirenone, may provide a better benefit/risk profile towards breast cancer risk compared to hormonal treatments currently available for patients.

Download Full-text

KSR: a MAPK scaffold of the Ras pathway?

Journal of Cell Science ◽

10.1242/jcs.114.9.1609 ◽

2001 ◽

Vol 114 (9) ◽

pp. 1609-1612 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

D.K. Morrison

Keyword(s):

Signal Transduction ◽

Map Kinase ◽

Structural Features ◽

Scaffolding Protein ◽

Ras Pathway ◽

Map Kinase Cascade ◽

Kinase Suppressor Of Ras ◽

Cast Doubt ◽

Kinase Cascade

Kinase Suppressor of Ras (KSR) is an intriguing component of the Ras pathway that was first identified by genetic studies performed in Drosophila melanogaster and Caenorhabditis elegans. In both organisms, inactivating mutations in KSR suppress the phenotypic effects induced by activated Ras. These findings together with the fact that KSR contains many structural features characteristic of a protein kinase led to early speculation that KSR is a kinase functioning upstream of the Ras pathway component Raf-1 or in a parallel Ras-dependent pathway. However, in the six years since its discovery, KSR has been found to lack several key properties of known protein kinases, which has cast doubt on whether KSR is indeed a functional enzyme. A major breakthrough in our understanding of the role of KSR in signal transduction has come from recent findings that KSR interacts with several components of the MAP kinase cascade, including Raf-1, MEK1/2 and ERK1/2. The model now emerging is that KSR acts as a scaffolding protein that coordinates the assembly of a membrane-localized, multiprotein MAP kinase complex, a vital step in Ras-mediated signal transduction. Thus, while Kinase Suppressor of Ras may be its name, phosphorylation may not be its game.

Download Full-text

Future Mortality in High Mortality Countries

World Population & Human Capital in the Twenty-First Century ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198813422.003.0010 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Alessandra Garbero ◽

Elsie Pamuk

Keyword(s):

Mortality Rate ◽

Life Expectancy ◽

United Nations ◽

High Mortality ◽

Adult Mortality ◽

Childhood Mortality ◽

High Fertility ◽

Large Populations ◽

Sub Saharan ◽

Definition Of

The theory and empirical basis of the demographic transition includes the important role played by mortality declines in generating a societal shift from high mortality and high fertility to low mortality and low fertility. In particular, it is the improved survival of children into adulthood that initially produces increasingly large populations with a very young age structure. Because the level of childhood mortality is strongly linked to fertility levels (Angeles, 2010; Becker and Barro, 1988) and adult mortality rates, the definition of a high mortality country used in the IIASA–Oxford survey reported in this book is in terms of the level of childhood mortality, that is, the probability of death before the age of five (5q0 in the life table designation). In accordance with recent practice at the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF in monitoring progress toward the Millennium Development Goals, we use a cutoff point of 40 deaths before age 5 per thousand live births to designate a country as having high mortality (Hill et al., 2012). In 2010, the under-5 mortality rate exceeded 40 in one-third of the 193 member countries of United Nations (UN), and in only one of these countries did life expectancy at birth exceed 70 years (Azerbaijan, e0 = 70.1) (United Nations, 2011a). Despite its relatively low under-five mortality rate (estimated at 0.025 in 2011), Botswana is also considered here as a country with high mortality because its life expectancy is estimated at 53 years (United Nations, 2011a). The geographic distribution of these countries is shown in Figure 6.1, while Table 6.1 lists all 65 high mortality countries, along with current estimates of life expectancy, child mortality, and the change in life expectancy between the periods 1995–2005 and 2005–2010. As shown, high mortality countries include all of sub-Saharan Africa except the island nations of Cape Verde, Mauritius, Mayotte, and Réunion. Most of South Asia meets the criterion of high mortality, including the populous countries of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Many demographers have, over the last 50 years, predicted a general convergence worldwide toward low mortality and fertility resulting in higher levels of life expectancy.

Download Full-text