Safety factors as a ‘design’ principle of animal form and function: an historical perspective

ABSTRACT For well over 150 years, factors of safety (also known as safety factors) have been a fundamental engineering concept that expresses how much stronger a system is compared with the intended load. The pioneering work of Robert McNeill Alexander in the early 1980s applied this engineering concept to biomechanics. Over the next decade, evidence from comparative biomechanics supported the idea that safety factors are a fundamental principle of animal form and function. In terms of physiology, Jared Diamond related the maximal capacity of a physiological process to normal functional demands and incorporated evolutionary thinking into the concept of safety factors. It was proposed that evolutionary reasoning is required to understand the magnitudes of biological reserve capacities, an idea called ‘quantitative evolutionary design’. However, the general idea of safety factors as related to organismal form and function is much older. In 1906, Samuel James Meltzer, a physiologist and physician, presented the 5th Harvey Lecture to the New York Academy of Medicine; a lecture entitled ‘The Factors of Safety in Animal Structure and Animal Economy’, which was later published in Science in 1907. The 1907 paper is rarely cited and has never been cited within comparative biomechanics or comparative physiology. The purpose of this Commentary is to highlight Meltzer's historical contribution to the concept of safety factors as a general principle of organismal ‘design’.

Cattle, Sheep/Goats and Pigs from Northern and Central Hampshire: Iron Age, Roman and Early Saxon Faunal Remains from Excavation Assemblages

This paper is a survey of overall species counts from northern and central Hampshire sites, of Iron Age, Roman and early Saxon date, and their implications for chronological changes in animal husbandry and diet. Three zones, around Basingstoke, Andover, and central Hampshire, are compared with each other, and also with the Roman urban centres of Silchester and Winchester. The Andover region shows the greatest degree of continuity from Iron Age to Roman times and later, while the Basingstoke region has a pattern of change from sheep/goat dominated assemblages to ones with higher cattle numbers. This may be due to agricultural intensification, and an orientation of the animal economy in northern Hampshire more towards the Thames Valley and supply to Silchester, than an earlier 'Wessex pattern' more focussed on sheep and wool production.

A CORPUS-BASED APPROACH TO THE CONCEPTUALISATION OF THE ECONOMY IN BUSINESS ENGLISH PRESS[1]

The paper attempts to explore different conceptualisations of ECONOMY in British business English press. Our approach is based on corpus, we incorporated a corpus encompassing business articles retrieved from British quality press ranging from 2013 to 2016. In our investigation, we rely on previous research on the figurative aspects pertaining to business discourse. The conceptual metaphors were identified with the help of concordancing programs, headwords from different source and target domains were inserted in the concordancing program and the findings were manually processed. In certain cases, linguistic metaphors processed with the help of concordancing programs do not necessarily embody conceptual metaphors, these are mainly revealed through manual processing. The findings draw on the fact that figurative uses and conceptual metaphors easily percolate business English discourse. We are aware of the limitations of this research as the study cannot encompass all the categories conceptualising the economy. To this end categories such as ECONOMY IS WAR, ECONOMY IS AN ANIMAL, ECONOMY IS A CONTAINER, ECONOMY IS A LIQUID will be the subject of future research.

Mammals in the economy of ancient Porphyreon (Lebanon)

An archaeozoological analysis of mammal remains recovered from the dwelling units and streets of ancient Porphyreon excavated in 2009, 2010 and 2012, gives insight into the importance of mammals for the residents of this quarter in succeeding periods: from the Iron Age through the Persian and Hellenistic periods to Byzantine times. Husbandry lay at the base of the animal economy and was supplemented with hunting various species of gazelle. Cattle, sheep and goat were the most numerous livestock species represented in the archaeological record. The high percentage of cattle observed in Iron Age deposits could have resulted from the agricultural lifestyle of the population. Starting from the Persian period, sheep and goat played the most prominent role in the animal economy, implying a pastoral model of husbandry. Raising goats for meat was more significant initially; from the Hellenistic period onwards, the number of sheep reared for milk and wool increased. Pigs constituted a minor percentage of the livestock. The presence of equid remains, including horse and donkey, was confirmed for the Persian period, when these animals were used for transportation.

The Evolution of Cattle Husbandry Practices in the Roman Period in Gallia Belgica and Western Germania Inferior

This article examines and compares the evolution of animal husbandry practices in severalcivitatesof Gallia Belgica and western Germania Inferior, as documented by archaeozoological data. It focuses on two neighbouringcivitates, those of the Nervii and the Tungri, its aim being to explore the factors that influenced diversity in husbandry practices. In general, it appears that cattle played an important role in the Early Roman animal economy of thesecivitates. There is evidence that large cattle were primarily bred for use as draught animals. At the same time, the intensive processing of cattle on professional butchery sites, and indications of cattle-related craft activities in urban environments, demonstrate that within the market economy animal exploitation was focused on cattle. Nevertheless, several aspects of animal husbandry practices exhibit geographical differences. Evidence of surplus production of pigs in the countryside of Gallia Belgica suggests that different kinds of agricultural specialization existed within the loess belt. There are also differences in the adoption of Roman agricultural innovations in terms of morphological changes in cattle.

Animal Husbandry in Roman Switzerland: State of Research and New Perspectives

Archaeozoological research of Roman animal bones has a long tradition in Switzerland. In the 1950s, Elisabeth Schmid started analysing bones from the Roman city of Augusta Raurica. On the basis of these analyses she published her Atlas of Animal Bones (1972) which is still in use all over the world today. To date, more than 300,000 bone fragments from different Swiss sites have been analysed. In 2002 a synthesis of Swiss data was published by Jörg Schibler et al.; in that publication, the authors focused on social aspects. They assumed that the Roman animal economy was more or less standardized in the region, and that differences existed mainly between settlement types and within sites. In the last few years, not only have more data been recorded, but also other research questions about functional and regional difference—especially between western and eastern Switzerland (Germania Superior and Raetia)—are becoming more important. These differences show the variability and adaptability of the Roman economy.