scholarly journals A Morphofunctional Hypothesis for Selection on EDAR V370A and Associated Elements of Sinodonty

2021 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-54
Author(s):  
Robert Dudley
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Wild Rice ◽  
Northern China ◽  
Climatic Conditions ◽  
Upper Paleolithic ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Fitness Benefits ◽  
Adaptive Consequences ◽  
Starchy Foods ◽  
Functional Hypothesis

The phenomenon of sinodonty refers to a suite of dental characters shared between East Asian and Native American populations, and most prominently to the presence of shoveled incisors.  Although this syndrome is a conspicuous aspect of dental differentiation among extant human populations, elements of which have been recent subject of detailed genetic analysis, adaptive consequences of shoveled incisors and related features remains unclear.  Here, I hypothesize that many of the associated differences in dentition (along with reduction in mandibular length and increases in salivary gland branching) arose in parallel with the opportunistic consumption of wild rice and millet in central and northern China, respectively, and with their subsequent domestication in the Upper Paleolithic.  More efficient mastication and digestion of plant grains (and of other starchy foods obtained via broad-spectrum foraging) would potentially have been enabled by these traits, yielding greater rates of nutritional intake as wild crops were progressively domesticated.  This functional hypothesis, although not mutually exclusive relative to other proposed selective factors, matches the estimated timeline in China for both origin and time to fixation of the associated allele (EDAR V370A), and is consistent with chronic energetic gain and fitness benefits independent of any assumptions for concurrent climatic conditions.

Paleolithic Personal Ornaments from Xiaogushan Cave: The Formation of Early Symbolism and Its Regional Features in Northeast China

2022 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 15-23
Author(s):  
A. P. Zabiyako ◽  
Junzheng Wang
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Northeast China ◽  
Lithic Technology ◽  
Northern China ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Transitional Period ◽  
Upper Paleolithic ◽  
Regional Context ◽  
Regional Features ◽  
Important Marker

This article presents the results of a comparative study of personal ornaments from Xiaogushan Cave in the interregional and regional context of the formation of modern behavior. Xiaogushan is a Paleolithic and Neolithic site in Northeast China. In the Upper Paleolithic layers of the site, apart from tools, personal ornaments were found— pendants made from animal teeth, and a decorated bone disc. The date of the site is a matter of debate; ornaments from layers 2 and 3 date to ~30 ka BP. Like other bone artifacts (harpoon, needles, point), and together with types of stone tools and lithic technology, they mirror the local process of Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition. We focus on similarities between the Xiaogushan ornaments and Upper Paleolithic pendants from northern China and Eurasia in general, attesting to modern behavior during the transitional period and being an important marker of the spread of Upper Paleolithic innovations from the centers to the periphery. Xiaogushan is the fi rst Upper Paleolithic industry in Northeast China known to date, and demonstrates skills and symbolic behavior typical of the initial Upper Paleolithic. The Xiaogushan pendants follow the general tendencies, while being specifi c markers of the evolution of symbolic behavior in Eastern Eurasia.

Climate justice without freedom

2015 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 288-307 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tracey Skillington
Keyword(s):  
Global Climate ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Storm Surges ◽  
Climatic Conditions ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Climate Conditions ◽  
Political Status ◽  
Forced Return ◽  
Normative Status

Storm surges, flooding, heatwaves, and prolonged drought, as ever more regular features of life under deteriorating climate conditions, are unmistakably violent. Their effects on the lives of vulnerable human populations and ecosystems across the world are widely known to be devastating. Yet a legal order that denies the victims of such ecological persecution safe haven, no matter how great its use of force (e.g., detention, arrest, forced return) cannot, by definition, be violent. The power of law, used to protect states’ rights to exclude from their jurisdictions growing numbers displaced involuntarily by global climate harms, in being a source of ‘legitimate right’, is never the same as violence. This article challenges the ongoing validity of this assumption. It points to some of the ways in which legal instruments are used today to deny those displaced by climatic conditions sufficient normative status to guarantee their safety. What is needed instead is a new critical normative understanding of the evolving relationship between climate change, violence, justice, and law, one that re-assesses the democratic justificatory grounds for the current positions of non-responsibility for the climate displaced whilst re-affirming such people’s legal and political status as equal co-members of the politically constituted international community of humanity.

scholarly journals A Comparative Lipidomic Analysis of Wild Rice Versus White and Brown Rice

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (Supplement_2) ◽  
pp. 598-598
Author(s):  
Wes Mosher ◽  
Chi Chen
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Wild Rice ◽  
Brown Rice ◽  
University Of Minnesota ◽  
Lipidomic Analysis ◽  
Funding Sources ◽  
Rice Samples ◽  
The University ◽  
Analysis Models ◽  
Triacylglycerol Species

Abstract Objectives As a staple food in the Native American diet, wild rice (Zizania spp.) is an edible grass native to the Great Lakes region. Wild rice contains about one % of lipids. Previous studies have determined its fatty acid composition, but the composition of its lipidome was not examined in detail. This study sought to examine the lipidome of wild rice and provide a comparison to the lipidomes of white and brown rices. Methods In this study, lipid fractions of six commercially available wild rice samples (Zizania spp.), one traditionally-harvested wild rice sample (Zizania spp.), three white rice samples (Oryza spp.), and three brown rice samples (Oryza spp.) were extracted by hexane and ethyl acetate, dried in nitrogen gas, and then reconstituted in n-butanol for liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS)-based lipidomic analysis. Multivariate data analysis was performed using principal components analysis and orthogonal partial least squares-discriminant analysis. Models visualized the distinguishing features of each rice and provided information for a database search of selected markers and subsequent comparison to authentic standards. Results The multivariate model constructed by the LC-MS data of these samples showed clear separation of wild rice samples from white and brown rice samples, suggesting different lipid profiles of wild versus white and brown rice. Wild rice contained higher abundances of linolenic acid-containing triacylglycerol species, but less palmitic acid- and stearic acid-containing triacylglycerol species. Subtle differences between wild rice harvested in Minnesota versus wild rice harvested outside of Minnesota were also observed through lipidomic comparison. Interestingly, 10-demethylsqualene emerged as a prominent feature separating wild rice from white and brown rice through specific analysis of the phytosterol content of wild rice. Conclusions LC-MS-based lipidomic analysis of in-tact triacylglycerol species as well as a comprehensive profiling of the wild rice lipidome in comparison to that of white and brown rice was performed. These insights provide a compelling rationale for increasing consumer awareness of the benefits of wild rice consumption. Funding Sources W. Mosher was supported by the University of Minnesota CFANS Diversity Scholars Fellowship.

scholarly journals “The Recovery of the People Is Tied to the Recovery of Food”: Food Sovereignty and Winona LaDuke’s Last Standing Woman

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-139
Author(s):  
Cristina Stanciu
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Wild Rice ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
Native Communities ◽  
Political Work ◽  
The People ◽  
The One ◽  
Native American Writing ◽  
White Earth

Abstract This essay turns to LaDuke’s literature and activism to explore ways in which contemporary Native American writers center their work around issues of food sovereignty, environmental protection, and economic self-determination as essential platforms for community regeneration, renewal, and survival. I argue that Last Standing Woman (1997), Anishinaabe writer Winona LaDuke’s first novel, dramatizes many of these concerns at the heart of her activist and political work. Central to the novel Last Standing Woman is the significance of wild rice for the White Earth Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) people of Minnesota. In Last Standing Woman, wild rice is not only a traditional and sustainable crop but also one that can ensure the livelihood of the community. At the heart of a feminist and activist novel like Last Standing Woman – as well as Winona LaDuke’s activist work, more broadly – is a twofold challenge, which resonates across much Native American writing: on the one hand, the challenge to preserve (existing resources, cultural practices, etc.); on the other, to recover the losses Native communities have suffered historically through colonization and its many consequences, such as the enormous loss of land suffered by the White Earth community. The turn to literature provides Winona LaDuke with a powerful site of political engagement, where she foregrounds issues of gender, tribal politics, and the environment at the same time as she tells a powerful story about Anishinaabe continued resilience.

scholarly journals Wild rice protectors: An Ojibwe odyssey

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-42
Author(s):  
Aurelien Bouayad
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Wild Rice ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Environmental Risks ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Legal Strategies ◽  
The Many

On the eve of New Year 2019, the White Earth Band of Ojibwe in Minnesota adopted a Tribal law recognising the intrinsic rights of wild rice. The article intends to explore the many struggles that this Native American community had to endure in the defence of their way of life and of the resources and territories on which they rely. The three `fights' that punctuated this complex ecological controversy will consequently be analysed, looking firstly at Ojibwe’s crusade for access to wild rice based on court cases over off-reservation usufructuary rights from the early 1970s to 1999, before exploring the Tribe’s effort to challenge appropriation of wild rice in the first decade of the 21st century, in the context of scientific and private attempts at patenting and genetically modifying the plant. The final section discusses the innovative legal strategies recently deployed by Ojibwe to retain control over wild rice against the backdrop of Enbridge Line 3 pipeline and the considerable environmental risks that such project represents. Eventually, this investigation provides an eloquent illustration of the role that legal creativity can play in the defence of indigenous communities’ threatened ecologies.

scholarly journals Subsistence strategy changes during the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition reveals specific adaptations of Human Populations to their environment

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
William Rendu ◽  
Sylvain Renou ◽  
Marie-Cécile Soulier ◽  
Solange Rigaud ◽  
Morgan Roussel ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Major Change ◽  
Upper Paleolithic ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Common Humanity ◽  
Subsistence Strategy ◽  
Good Opportunity ◽  
Structuring Element ◽  
Taphonomic Analysis ◽  
Climatic Cooling ◽  
Strategy Changes

Abstract The transition from Middle to Upper Paleolithic is a major biological and cultural threshold in the construction of our common humanity. Technological and behavioral changes happened simultaneously to a major climatic cooling, which reached its acme with the Heinrich 4 event, forcing the human populations to develop new strategies for the exploitation of their environment. The recent fieldwork at Les Cottés (France) transitional site offers a good opportunity to document subsistence strategies for this period and to provide for the first time high-resolution insights on its evolution. We present the results of the complete zooarchaeological and taphonomic analysis of the transitional sequence, associated with a large regional synthesis of the subsistence strategy evolution during the Middle to Upper Paleolithic. We conclude that, while there is no major change in the hunting strategies, the butchery activities evolved in strict correlation with the development of range weapons. In addition, the demise of carnivore seems to be a consequence of the human pressure on the environment. Our study demonstrates how the faunal component of the environment became a structuring element of the human social organization, being at the base of future cultural evolutions.

Stoichiometric characteristics of different agroecosystems under the same climatic conditions in the agropastoral ecotone of northern China

Soil Research ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 57 (8) ◽  
pp. 875
Author(s):  
Xiajie Zhai ◽  
Kesi Liu ◽  
Deborah M. Finch ◽  
Ding Huang ◽  
Shiming Tang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Organic Carbon ◽  
Soil Organic Carbon ◽  
Soil Layer ◽  
Soil Nutrient ◽  
Northern China ◽  
Climatic Conditions ◽  
N:P Ratios ◽  
C:P Ratio ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Natural Grassland

Ecological stoichiometry affects the processes and functions of ecosystems, but the similarities and differences of stoichiometric characteristics among diverse agropastoral ecosystems under the same climatic conditions remain unclear. In this study, plant and soil stoichiometric characteristics of different agroecosystems, namely natural grassland (free-grazing and mowed grassland), artificial grassland (oat, Chinese leymus and corn silage), field crops (naked oats, flax and wheat) and commercial crops (cabbage and potatoes), were investigated in Guyuan County, China. Results showed total nitrogen (TN), total phosphorus (TP) and N:P ratios in plant tissue varied significantly among ecosystem types (P < 0.05). In general, the mean soil organic carbon, TN and TP content in the 0–0.3 m soil layer in potatoes (8.01, 1.05 and 0.33 g kg–1 respectively) were significantly lower than in other agroecosystems (P < 0.05). The mean C:N ratios of the 0–0.3 m soil layer did not differ significantly among the agroecosystems (P > 0.05). However, the C:P ratio was lower in potato than cabbage sites (24.64 vs 33.17), and was lower at both these sites than in other agroecosystems (P < 0.05). With regard to N:P ratios, only the potato ecosystem had lower values than in other ecosystems (P < 0.05), which did not differ significantly (P > 0.05). Above all, N is more likely to be limiting than P for biomass production in local agroecosystems. Soil C:P and N:P ratios decreased significantly with an increase in the utilisation intensity (from natural grassland to commercial crop). The findings of this study suggest that restoring, preserving and increasing soil organic carbon (especially for cabbage and potatoes), scientifically adjusting the application of N and P fertiliser and enhancing subsidies for low-loss soil nutrient systems, such as grassland, rather than commercial crops will help improve and sustain agroecosystems.

Flattening and Unpacking Human Genetic Variation in Mexico, Postwar to Present

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Víctor Hugo Anaya-Muñoz ◽  
Vivette García-Deister ◽  
Edna Suárez-Díaz
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Variation ◽  
Native American ◽  
Human Genetics ◽  
Genomic Diversity ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Research Strategies ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Multidisciplinary Analysis ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Social Demographic

ArgumentThis paper analyzes the research strategies of three different cases in the study of human genetics in Mexico – the work of Rubén Lisker in the 1960s, INMEGEN's mapping of Mexican genomic diversity between 2004 and 2009, and the analysis of Native American variation by Andrés Moreno and his colleagues in contemporary research. We make a distinction between an approach that incorporates multiple disciplinary resources into sampling design and interpretation (unpacking), from one that privileges pragmatic considerations over more robust multidisciplinary analysis (flattening). These choices have consequences for social, demographic, and biomedical practices, and also for accounts of genetic variation in human populations. While the former strategyunpacksfine-grained genetic variation – favoring precision and realism, the latter tends toflattenindividual differences and historical depth in lieu of generalization.

The distribution, formation and engineering properties of Quaternary regional Sediments in China

1991 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 491-501
Author(s):  
G. Guorui
Keyword(s):  
Yellow River ◽  
Southern China ◽  
Expansive Soils ◽  
Northern China ◽  
Climatic Conditions ◽  
Engineering Properties ◽  
Geographical Environment ◽  
Development Processes ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractIn China, there exist various regional sediments of the Quaternary such as loess soils of the Yellow River in northern China, lateritic soils in southern China and expansive soils in the broad plains of the Yangtze River. In the past, these Quaternary Sediments were often treated as special soils and their engineering properties tended to be studied accordingly. However, not much attention was given to relationships that may exist between these regional soils and, so far, the distribution and formation of regional Sediments have not been systematically studied. Only when it was found that regional classifications of soils (their names and their engineering properties) were in disagreement with each other for adjacent areas was the subject of relationship considered.Recently, the author has tested and studied a number of samples of various Quaternary regional Sediments. The relationship of their composition and microstructural features to their engineering properties has first been analysed on the basis of their basic properties. The distribution of regional sediments has then been studied in detail according to geographical environment and climatic conditions. Finally, formation and development processes for the various regional Sediments of the Quaternary in China have been postulated.

scholarly journals Optimal Ridge–Furrow Ratio for Maximum Drought Resilience of Sunflower in Semi-Arid Region of China

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (15) ◽  
pp. 4047
Author(s):  
Yuying Pan ◽  
Xuebiao Pan ◽  
Tan Zi ◽  
Qi Hu ◽  
Jing Wang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Rainwater Harvesting ◽  
Northern China ◽  
Climatic Conditions ◽  
Drought Risk ◽  
Drought Resilience ◽  
Film Mulching ◽  
Effects Of Drought ◽  
Semi Arid Region ◽  
Semi Arid ◽  
Sunflower Production

Ridge–furrow planting is often applied in semi-arid regions to reduce the drought risk on crop yield under rain-fed conditions. Sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.) is widely planted in northern China and how to reduce the drought risk on sunflower production remains a significant issue. A three-year field experiment with seven treatments (a flat plot without mulching, three plastic film-mulching treatments and three non-film-mulching treatments with different ridge–furrow ratios (1.0 m:1.0 m, 1.0 m:0.5 m and 0.5 m:1.0 m)) was conducted to study the effects of the ridge–furrow rainwater harvesting system on the rain-fed sunflower. The results showed that the sunflowers in the film-mulched treatment with the larger ridge–furrow ratio (1.0 m:0.5 m) (M1R2) had greater growth advantage under drought conditions. In the dry year, M1R2 improved the yield and water use efficiency by 11.9%–107.5% and 13.8%–120.6%, respectively, and reduced the blight grain rate by 21.5%–32.5% with less evapotranspiration (ET) compared to other treatments. Based on the historical climatological data, the guarantee rate of sunflower water requirement for M1R2 was about 75%, while the guarantee rates for the other two film-mulched treatments were only about 40% and 50%. Based on the effects of drought resilience and the characteristics of precipitation, M1R2 is recommended to be the relatively optimal treatment for sunflower production in regions with similar climatic conditions to Wuchuan County in northern China.

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