Oldest Australian vespertilionid (Microchiroptera) from the early Miocene of Riversleigh,Queensland

An upper molar of a small bat, here described from an early Miocene freshwater lime-stone deposit at Riversleigh, northwestern Queensland, is the oldest record in Australia of the microchiropteran family Vespertilionidae. The new taxon is referred to the cosmopolitan genus Leuconoe, but it does not appear to be closely related to the two extant Australian species of this genus.     

Crossing the Great Divides: Hans Aarsleff's Lessons for Nineteenth-Century Intellectual Historians

SUMMARY

This essay discusses Hans Aarsleff's long battle to demonstrate the importance of the French and British thinkers of the mid-eighteenth century to the development of modern linguistic thought. Contesting claims that German scholars were the first to develop historicised theories of language, Aarsleff, along with his Princeton colleagues Lionel Gossman and Anthony Grafton, helped pioneer longue durée studies of the history of philology and of historiography that cross national boundaries as well as the so-called Sattelzeit (stretching from about 1780 until 1820). Although the importance of his work was, for a long time, little appreciated by modern intellectual historians, this essay argues that it is time that we fully learned Aarsleff's lessons.     

Spatial variation in cervical cancer screening participation and outcomes among Indigenous and non‐Indigenous Australians in Queensland

Indigenous women continue to experience a disproportionately higher burden of cervical cancer than non‐Indigenous women in Australia. The National Indigenous Cervical Screening Project used probabilistic record linkage to combine population‐based administrative databases and identify Indigenous women on Pap Smear Registers. This study aimed to quantify the spatial variation by local government areas (LGAs) for Indigenous and non‐Indigenous women in Queensland in cervical screening participation rates and related outcomes. Empirical Bayes local geostatistical smoothing was performed to reduce the likelihood of spurious variation between small areas. The cohort included 1,091,260 women (2 per cent Indigenous) aged 20 to 69 with 2,393,708 Pap smears between 2006 and 2011. Indigenous women had smoothed LGA‐specific 5‐year participation rates (interquartile range (IQR) 38.9–53.3 per 100 eligible women) consistently lower than non‐Indigenous women (IQR 80.7–85.3). The non‐overlapping confidence intervals of these rates suggest that the Indigenous differential was significant. Compared with Indigenous women, non‐Indigenous women had consistently lower and more stable prevalence rates of histologically confirmed high grade abnormalities (IQR 8.0–10.1 versus 15.0–21.3 per 1,000 screened women). Although the LGA‐specific rates also suggest that a higher proportion of non‐Indigenous women were followed‐up within two months of an abnormal screening result, the wide confidence intervals for these estimates limit our ability to draw definitive conclusions about spatial patterns for this outcome. These findings highlight the importance of continued monitoring and ongoing efforts to identify drivers of these patterns and develop effective strategies to improve participation and potentially reduce the cervical cancer burden among Indigenous women.     

Viewing obesogenic advertising in children's neighbourhoods using Google Street View

The advertising of unhealthy food and beverages forms an important component of obesogenic environments. Such marketing to children is a key health determinant because of its impact on dietary preference and food purchasing behaviour. The location of outdoor advertising is important in exploring obesogenic environments and children's neighbourhoods. The aim of this study is to explore issues involved in the use of Google Street View to examine outdoor food and beverage advertising. The implications for using Google Street View in the context of neighbourhood built environment research and grass‐roots advocacy are discussed. The study was conducted within walkable distances from 19 primary and intermediate schools in Auckland, New Zealand, where “walkable” was defined as limited by 800 m road network boundaries, which are equivalent to school buffer boundaries. Google Street View allows for centrality of data collection, coding, and storage. However, challenges exist with the method because 727 (29.4%) of a total of 2,474 outdoor advertisements that were identified were not able to be categorised because images were unclear, not in English, blocked, or at angles where detail cannot be deciphered. Specific to outdoor advertising for food and beverages, the results presented here show that children are exposed to a significantly greater number of unhealthy advertising than other advertising, P=0.001, eta‐squared statistic (0.45) indicates a large effect size. Overall, the results show promise for the use of Google Street View in the study of obesogenic environments.     

Gardens and gardening in early medieval Spain and Portugal

This is an overview of the range of gardens, garden plants and garden work in early medieval Spain and Portugal, and of the kinds of relevant source material available. There were different kinds of garden, from the architectural gardens of Andalusī rulers and officials to peasant plots in the countryside. Fine gardens were closely associated with an elite and were southern rather than northern. Productive gardens could be found all over the peninsula; vegetables were clearly grown in them, with the emphasis on pulses, but they constituted a small proportion of produce. Fruits were exceptionally important as a source of vitamins, sugar and mineral salts.     

Start-up factories,transnational entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial ecosystems: unpacking the lure of start-up accelerator programmes

This paper examines the role of accelerator programmes in promoting transnational entrepreneurship. Designed to assist the growth of start-ups by providing seed finance and structured entrepreneurship support, these programmes are now a prominent feature in many entrepreneurial ecosystems around the world. Drawing on in-depth qualitative evidence focused on one particular programme, the paper shows accelerators play an important intermediary or ‘brokerage mechanism’ providing start-ups with enhanced relational connections and networks. Transnational entrepreneurs attracted to these programmes are highly focused on exploiting these networks whilst maintaining multiple levels of embeddedness in various contexts to maximize the opportunities afforded by accelerators. While many governments are attempting to replicate accelerators programmes within the public sector, the paper concludes that such attempts may prove problematic within weaker entrepreneurial ecosystems.     

Making a significant place: excavations at the Late Mesolithic site of Langley’s Lane,Midsomer Norton,Bath and North-East Somerset

Excavations at the site of Langley’s Lane, Bath and North-East Somerset, have revealed an important sequence of Late Mesolithic activity focused around an active tufa spring. The sequence of activity starts off as an aurochs kill and primary butchery site. Culturally appropriate depositional practices occur through the placement of a selection of bone in the wetland of the spring and the digging of pits around the spring margins. The spring at Langley’s Lane continued to be visited and more animal bone and lithic material was placed in the wetland. Finally, visits to the site involved yet more formalized activity in the form of pit digging and the creation of a stone surface. Activities such as these are difficult to locate in the archaeological record and Mesolithic ritual activity rare, making this a site of some significance to studies of Mesolithic NW Europe.     

The Movement and Exchange of Dogs in the Prehistoric Caribbean: An Isotopic Investigation

This study explores the feasibility of using strontium isotope (⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr) analyses of enamel from domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) to investigate networks of exchange in the prehistoric Circum‐Caribbean. Dog teeth were obtained from burial and domestic contexts from two prehistoric sites (Anse à la Gourde and Morel) on Grande‐Terre, Guadeloupe (Lesser Antilles). Strontium isotope results were compared with local biosphere ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr data at the scale of the site, island and archipelago. The isotope results indicate both local and nonlocal origins with three dogs (30%) identified as nonlocal (one from Anse à la Gourde and two from Morel). The variance in ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr ratios of the nonlocal dog teeth is consistent with diverse multiple origins external to the island of Grande‐Terre but consistent with origins from other islands of the Lesser Antilles. The diverse origins of the nonlocal dog samples indicate that the prehistoric circulation of dogs occurred at multiple scales from regional to long distance. Significantly, the ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr ratios of some of the dog teeth are comparable with values of nonlocal humans at Anse à la Gourde determined in previous studies. It is possible that these comparable ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr ratios result from similar natal origins, for example if individuals were migrating to Guadeloupe with dogs. The results of this study contribute to an ongoing regional investigation of the economic, social and political roles of animals and animal remains and the multiscalar networks of prehistoric mobility and exchange in the Circum‐Caribbean region. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.