Ancient preserved molecules offer the opportunity of gaining a deeper knowledge on their biological past. However, the development of a proteomic workflow remains a challenge. The analysis of fossils must involve a low quantity of material to avoid damaging the samples. In this study an enhanced proteomic protocol was applied to 5-milligram samples of about 130,000-year-old mammalian bones ranging from the end of the Middle Pleistocene up to the earlier Upper Pleistocene, excavated from Scladina Cave (Sclayn, Belgium). Using sequence homology with modern sequences, a biological classification was successfully achieved and the associated taxonomic ranks to each bone were identified consistently with the information gained from osteomorphological studies and palaeoenvironmental and palaeodietary data. Amino acid substitutions on collagens were identified, thus providing new information on extinct species sequences and helping in taxonomy-based clustering. Considering samples with no osteomorphological information, such as two fragments of bone retouchers, proteomics successfully identified the families providing paleontologists new information on these objects. Combining osteomorphology studies and amino acid variations identified by proteomics, one of the retouchers was potentially identified as belonging to the Ursus spelaeus species. 相似文献
This paper advances geographies of absence by considering the multiscalar, overlapping, ambiguous and reciprocal absences inherent in incarceration, and the compound nature of the experiential and embodied absences characteristic of prison visiting. It progresses extant literatures by considering as absent a group which differs from those previously thus conceptualised, and by postulating absence even when whereabouts are known and co-presence is possible. Drawing on a major RCUK-funded study of the socio-spatial context of prison visitation in the U.K., it brings carceral geographies and geographies of absence into productive dialogue, demonstrating that attention to the felt presence of absence in the context of prison visiting is highly revealing of the poignant and bittersweet nature of family contact during incarceration. 相似文献
Zone pricing consists in determining simultaneously several delivered prices together with the zones where these prices apply. A model and algorithm are proposed to determine optimal facility locations, prices, tariff-zones, and market areas in order to maximize the firm's profit under zone pricing. The resulting nonlinear mixed-integer program is tackled by projecting the objective function on the price space, solving repeatedly uncapacitated facility location problems for fixed values of the prices. The implicit profit function so defined is optimized by branch-and-bound. Computational results are reported. 相似文献
Imprints of domesticated pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R. Br.) spikelets, observed as temper in ceramics dating to the third millennium BC, provide the earliest evidence for the cultivation and domestication process of this crop in northern Mali. Additional sherds from the same region dating to the fifth and fourth millennium BC were examined and found to have pearl millet chaff with wild morphologies. In addition to studying sherds by stereomicroscopy and subjecting surface casts to scanning electron microscopy (SEM), we also deployed X-ray microcomputed tomography (microCT) on eleven sherds. This significantly augmented the total dataset of archaeological pearl millet chaff remains from which to document the use of the wild pearl millet as ceramic temper and the evolution of its morphology over time. Grain sizes were also estimated from spikelets preserved in the ceramics. Altogether, we are now able to chart the evolution of domesticated pearl millet in western Africa using three characteristics: the evolution of nonshattering stalked involucres; the appearance of multiple spikelet involucres, usually paired spikelets; and the increase in grain size. By the fourth millennium BC, average grain breadth had increased by 28%, although spikelet features otherwise resemble the wild type. In the third millennium BC, the average width of seeds is 38% greater than that of wild seeds, while other qualitative features of domestication are indicated by the presence of paired spikelets and the appearance of nondehiscent, stalked involucres. Nonshattering spikelets had probably become fixed by around 2000 BC, while increases in average grain size continued into the second millennium BC. These data now provide a robust sequence for the morphological evolution of domesticated pearl millet, the first indigenous crop domesticated in western Africa.
Carceral geography, whilst in dialogue with many aspects of theory-building in contemporary human geography, including notions of affect, mobility and embodiment, has yet to meaningfully engage with animal geographies to consider the nonhuman dimension of carceral experience. Likewise, criminological scholarship of human-animal carceral co-presence has yet to progress far beyond the consideration of animals as mere ‘signifiers’ of human endeavour and meaning. Further, the study of prison animals has thus far considered only those nonhumans intentionally present in carceral space, such as therapeutic animals, eliding completely those considered ‘vermin’. This paper broadens the scope of extant scholarship, considering the parallels between the discourses of the ‘rehabilitation’ both of prisoners and prison animals during incarceration, and of both the prisoner and the prison animal as abject. 相似文献