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Porn baron Paul Raymond’s granddaughter to devote herself to charity

March 24, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

London, Mar 24 (ANI): English publisher of pornography Paul Raymond’s granddaughter has revealed that she wants to devote herself to charity. [Cut]

Fawn James, 24, who came to know she would inherit an estimated 650 million pounds after the Soho porn baron died in 2008, has not revealed till now what she intends to do with all the money.

“I want to help people as much as possible, so I am focusing on a lot of charity work now,” the Telegraph quoted her as saying at the Lighthouse Gala Auction for the Terrence Higgins Trust.

Fawn, who graduated in anthropology from Edinburgh University last year, lost her mother Debbie Raymond in 1992 to a drugs overdose.

“I am still interested in anthropology and I am not saying I will never work again, but for now I am so involved in the charity work, which I hope will make more of a difference,” she added. (ANI)

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Museum in Tamil Nadu showcases tribal lifestyle

September 3, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Palada (Tamil Nadu), Sep 3 (ANI): A museum in Tamil Nadu’s Palada district provides an insight into the life of tribal communities living in Nilgiri Hills as it displays traditional tribal weapons, utensils, musical instruments, jewellery and costumes.

The museum, established in 1983, is funded by the State Government to conserve and protect testimonies of tribal life.

“In this museum we have various items used by tribals in ancient time. In the Nilgiris area, there are six tribal communities living here. They include Todas, Kothars, Kurumbars, Irulars, Panayars and Kattu Naickers. We have displayed the various items, weapons and medicines used by these tribes,” said Murugan, Curator, Tribal Museum, Palada.

Tourists and other visitors, including researchers in anthropology have said that the museum has enhanced their knowledge about tribal culture, festivals and allied traditions.

“This museum is very important to us for taking records in the college and schools and I have seen this only in this place. Wherever (else) I went, I have not seen like such instruments. It’s very useful for me also,” said Mohana Nandini, a student of anthropology.

Another visitor Minu Darshini said that the ‘tour’ of the museum was enriching, as she got to know more about the lifestyle of the tribals.

“I had read about tribals and their way of life only in books.

But, here I can see for myself how actually they lived, the kind of equipment and weapons they used for hunting animals. It’s really nice and beautiful,” said Minu. (ANI)

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Scientists propose new mechanism for dune formation on Saturn’s largest moon

August 26, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, August 26 (ANI): A new research paper has proposed a possible new mechanism for the development of very large linear dunes formed on the surface of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon.

The paper, authored by LSU (Louisiana State University) Department of Geography and Anthropology Chair Patrick Hesp and United States Geological Survey scientist David Rubin, is titled – “Multiple origins of linear dunes on Earth and Titan.”

The authors examined the linear – or longitudinal – dunes that stretch across the surface of China’s Qaidam Basin, finding them composed of sand and some salt and silt.

The latter two elements make the dunes cohesive or sticky.

According to the study, this leads to a complete change in dune form from transverse dunes to linear dunes, even though the wind speed and direction does not change.

Typically, transverse dunes are formed by winds from a narrow directional range while longitudinal or linear dunes are formed by winds from two obliquely opposing directions.

These findings offer an alternative interpretation of similar dunes found on Titan.

Hesp and Rubin suggest that if the giant linear dunes found on the surface of Titan are also formed from cohesive sediment, then they too could be formed by single-direction winds.

This is in sharp contrast to earlier studies, which assumed that the sediments were loose and interpreted the dune shape as evidence of winds coming from alternating directions.

The alternative hypothesis that Titan’s linear dunes are formed in cohesive sediment has significant implications for studies on Titan.

If the Hesp and Rubin alternative is correct, new hypotheses regarding the composition, origin, evolution, grain size, stickiness, quantity, global transport patterns and suitability for wind transport of Titan’s sediment; the velocities, directions and seasonal patterns of Titan’s winds; and overall surface wetness will all have to be completely reassessed. (ANI)

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Skilful dentists decorated ancient Americans’ teeth 2,500yrs ago

May 19, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, May 19 (ANI): Skilful dentists existed as far back as 2,500 years ago who helped ancient peoples of southern North America beautify their teeth with otches, grooves, and semiprecious gems.

This finding comes from a recent analysis of thousands of teeth examined from collections in Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History.

The collections belonged to people living throughout the region, called Mesoamerica, before the Spanish conquests of the 1500s.

Jose Concepcion Jimenez, an anthropologist at the institute, has revealed that the research team did not know the origin of most of the teeth in the collections.

However, Jimenez added, it was clear that people-mostly men-from nearly all walks of life opted for the look.

The researcher also revealed that the early dentists used a drill-like device with a hard stone such as obsidian, which is capable of puncturing bone.

“It’s possible some type of [herb based] anesthetic was applied prior to drilling to blunt any pain,” National Geographic News quoted Jimenez as saying.

Jimenez said that the ornamental stones-including jade-were attached with an adhesive made out of natural resins, such as plant sap, which was mixed with other chemicals and crushed bones.

He also said that the dentists likely had a sophisticated knowledge of tooth anatomy. For example, they knew how to drill into teeth without hitting the pulp inside, he added.

“They didn’t want to generate an infection or provoke the loss of a tooth or break a tooth,” Jimenez said. (ANI)

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Why macho guys don’t always get the girl

May 12, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, May 12 (ANI): In a study on men from South American groups, called Waoranis- known for their aggressive, vengeful behaviour to obtain more wives and children- scientists have found that the macho guy do not always get the girl.

An international team of anthropologists working in Ecuador conducted the study.

“In 1988, Napoleon Chagnon published evidence that among the famously warlike Yanomamo of Venezuela, men who had participated in a homicide had significantly more wives and children than their less warlike brethren. Our research among the Waorani indicates that more aggressive warriors have lower indices of reproductive success than less warlike men,” said Stephen Beckerman, associate professor of anthropology, Penn State.

The Waorani are rainforest manioc horticulturalists and foragers, known for warfare and murder. They practiced their violence on each other as well as on outsiders. Eventually, over a period of 14 years, the missionaries pacified all the sections of the Waorani population, bringing an end to the aggressive warfare and raiding.

“In light of the documented abundance of wild resources, resource limitation cannot be considered the cause of warfare among the Waorani,” said Beckerman.

The Waorani Life History Project looked at how a man’s participation in raiding correlates with his survivorship and that of his wives, the number of his wives and the number of children he produced and their survivorship.

For the study, the researchers interviewed men in 23 settlements, focussing mainly on any man old enough to have experienced warfare before the pacification that could be found and who agreed to the interview.

They collected Waorani men’s genealogies, reproductive history, narrative personal life history and warfare history. The raiding database contained 95 men.

“Our sample of warriors includes both living and dead men. We ranked aggression by the number of raids they participated in. Our analysis is free of the problem caused by the inherent correlation of the warrior’s age with both participation in raids and reproductive success,” said Beckerman.

The researchers found that more aggressive men do not acquire more wives than milder men and they do not have more children as well as their wives and children do not survive longer.

In fact, warlike men have fewer children who survive to reproductive age.

The findings have been published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. (ANI)

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Forensic artist re-constructs face of first European

May 4, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, May 4 (ANI): A forensic artist has reconstructed the face of the first anatomically-modern human to live in Europe, who inhabited the ancient forests of the Carpathian Mountains in what is now Romania about 35,000 years ago.

According to a report in The Independent, the reconstruction by forensic artist Richard Neave, of a face that could be male or female, is based on the partial skull and jawbone found in a cave where bears were known to hibernate.

The facial features indicate the close affinity of these early Europeans to their immediate African ancestors, although it was still not possible to determine the person’s sex.

Neave based his assessment on a careful measurement of the bone fragments and his long experience of how the soft tissues of the face are built around the bones of the skull.

The reconstruction was made for the forthcoming BBC 2 series “The Incredible Human Journey”, which documents human origins and evolution, from our birthplace in Africa to the long migratory routes that led us to populate the most distant parts of the globe.

It is impossible from the bones to determine the skin colour of the individual, although scientists speculate it was probably darker than modern-day Europeans, reflecting a more recent African origin.

Neave’s clay head of the “first modern European” now sits on the desk of Alice Roberts, the Bristol University anthropologist who will introduce the BBC series.

“It’s really quite bizarre. I’m a scientist and objective, but I look at that face and think ‘Gosh, I’m actually looking at the face of somebody from 40,000 years ago’, and there’s something weirdly moving about that,” said Dr Roberts.

“Richard creates skulls of much more recent humans and he’s used to looking at differences between populations. He said the skull doesn’t actually look European, or Asian, or African. It looks like a mixture of all of them. And you think, well, that’s probably what you’d expect of someone who was among the earliest populations to come to Europe.” she added.

According to Erik Trinkaus, professor of anthropology at Washington University in Missouri, and one of the first specialists to study the bones in detail, the jaw was the oldest, directly-dated modern human fossil.

“Taken together, the material is the first that securely documents what modern humans looked like when they spread into Europe,” he said. (ANI)

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The way to a lady’s heart is through her stomach – if you’re a chimp

April 21, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Hamburg – The way to a lady’s heart is through her stomach – if you’re a male chimpanzee seeking a mate. But you have to be patient and feed her lots of meat over a long period of time, according to new findings by German scientists.

Wild female chimpanzees copulate more frequently with males who share meat with them over long periods of time, according to a study led by German researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Munich.

In field studies at Tai National Park, in the Ivory Coast, German scientists Cristina M Gomes and Christophe Boesch found that female chimpanzees copulate more frequently with males, who share meat with them on at least one occasion, compared with males who never share meat with them.

The findings indicated that sharing meat with females improves a male’s mating success, according to the study published in the journal PLoS ONE.

“Our results strongly suggest that wild chimpanzees exchange meat for sex, doing so on a long-term basis. Males who shared meat with females doubled their mating success, whereas females, who had difficulty obtaining meat on their own, increased their caloric intake, without suffering the energetic costs and potential risk of injury related to hunting,” Gomes wrote.

“Previous studies might not have found a relationship between mating success and meat sharing because they focused on short-term exchanges; or perhaps because in those groups access to females was driven by male coercion so females rarely chose their mating partners,” Gomes added.

The findings go a long way toward answering the question of how females choose their mating partners and why males hunt and share meat with them.

Evidence from studies on human hunter-gatherer societies suggest that men, who are more successful hunters, have more wives and a larger number of offspring.

Studies of wild chimpanzees, humans’ closest living relative, have shown that male hunters frequently share meat with females who did not participate in the hunt.

One of the hypotheses proposed to explain these findings is the meat-for-sex hypothesis, whereby males and females exchange meat for mating access. However, there had been little evidence in both humans and chimpanzees to support it – until now.

“Our findings add to the ever-growing evidence suggesting that chimpanzees can think in the past and the future and that this influences their present behaviour,” Boesch concluded.

“These findings are bound to have an impact on our current knowledge about relationships between men and women; and similar studies will determine if the direct nutritional benefits that women receive from hunters in human hunter-gatherer societies could also be driving the relationship between reproductive success and good hunting skills,” Gomes concluded. (dpa)

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Being a career woman could affect fertility

April 16, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Melbourne, Apr 16 (ANI): The modern women with successful careers and high stress levels to match may be damaging their chances of having children, a study has found.

According to the research, which involved international comparison of women in 37 different populations and cultures, career women are more likely to have androgynous figures which indicate higher levels of androgens, as opposed to oestrogen, which is vital for conceiving successfully.

While women with more shapely figures have higher levels of oestrogen, reports The Daily Telegraph.

The study, which has been published in the recent issue of the journal Current Anthropology, reached its conclusion by examining the shape of women around the world by comparing their waist-to-hip ratio.

This ratio is calculated by dividing a woman’s waist circumference by the circumference of her hips.

University of Utah anthropologist Professor Elizabeth Cashdan says there is evidence the hormonal profile linked to a slim-waisted, non-curvy shape favours women in “resource competition, particularly under stressful and difficult circumstances”.

The findings claim that females who are driven to succeed suffer a hormonal shift with their oestrogen levels affected by increases of androgens, hormones linked to competitiveness and strength.

For a comparison, the study looked at the measurements of 240 Playboy centrefolds and found they had an average waist-to-hip ratio of 0.68.

The average female waist-to-hip ratio is 0.82. (ANI)

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Egypt’s oldest wines were spiked with meds

April 14, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Apr 14 (ANI): Ancient Egyptians mixed herbs into wines to create medicinal remedies, researchers have found.

Deep inside the tomb of Scorpion I, archaeochemist Patrick McGovern and colleagues found that 5,000-year-old wines were spiked with natural medicines-centuries before the practice was thought to exist in Egypt.

The experts found chemical residues of herbs, tree resins, and other natural substances inside wine jars from the tomb.

While the additives may have been flavorful, they were picked for their medical benefits, said McGovern, of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

The early Egyptians “were living in a world without modern synthetic medicines, and they were very aware of the benefits that natural additives can have-especially if dissolved into an alcoholic medium, like wine or beer,” which breaks down plant alkaloids.

Papyrus records from as long ago as 1850 B.C. detail how such medicinal tipples were made to treat a range of ailments.

“Now this chemical evidence pushes that date back another 1,500 years,” National Geographic News quoted McGovern, as saying.

Now, collaborating with researchers at Penn Medicine’s Abramson Cancer Center, McGovern’s team is using biomolecular analysis to uncover the ancient wine-medicine recipes and hopefully put them to the test.

“We’re trying to rediscover why ancient people thought these particular herbs were medically useful,” he said, “and seeing if they are effective for the treatment of cancer or other modern diseases.”

The study is to be published in journal PNAS. (ANI)

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Chimps trade sex for meat

April 8, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Apr 8 (ANI): Even in forests, sex sells. A new study has found that male chimpanzees that share meat with females double their chances of having sex with them.

The study led by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany has been published in the open-access, peer-reviewed journal PLoS ONE April 8.

In the study conducted in the Taï National Park, Côte d’Ivoire, Cristina M. Gomes and Christophe Boesch have shown that females copulate more frequently with males who share meat with them on at least one occasion, compared with males who never share meat with them, indicating that sharing meat with females improves a males’ mating success.

Although males were more likely to share meat with females who had sexual swellings (i.e., estrous females), excluding all sharing episodes with estrous females from the analysis, did not alter the results.

This indicates that short term exchanges alone (i.e., within the estrous phase of the female) cannot account for the relationship between sharing meat and mating success.

According to Gomes, “Our results strongly suggest that wild chimpanzees exchange meat for sex, and do so on a long-term basis. Males who shared meat with females doubled their mating success, whereas females, who had difficulty obtaining meat on their own, increased their caloric intake, without suffering the energetic costs and potential risk of injury related to hunting.”

She adds, “Previous studies might not have found a relationship between mating success and meat sharing because they focused on short-term exchanges; or perhaps because in those groups access to females was driven by male coercion so females rarely chose their mating partners.”

Boesch concluded, “Our findings add to the ever-growing evidence suggesting that chimpanzees can think in the past and the future and that this influences their present behavior.”

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Evidence indicates maize was domesticated 8,700 years ago in Mexico

March 24, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, March 24 (ANI): An international team of researchers has found the earliest physical evidence for domesticated maize in Mexico, dating back to at least 8,700 calendar years ago, which is 1,500 years earlier than previously documented.

According to the researchers, the maize was probably domesticated by indigenous peoples in the lowland areas of southwestern Mexico, not the highland areas.

They place maize domestication in Mexico about 1,500 years earlier than previously documented there and 1,200 years earlier than the next earliest dated evidence for maize in Panama.

“Our primary goal was to document the early history of maize domestication in the homeland of its wild ancestor,” said Anthony Ranere, Department of Anthropology at Temple University, Philadelphia.

He acknowledged that the timelines make a good deal of sense because the wild ancestor of maize is native to the regions of southwestern Mexico where the team worked, and these regions had not been previously explored by archaeologists.

Researchers focused on the Xihuatoxtla Shelter in an area of the Balsas Valley that is home to a large, wild grass called Balsas teosinte that molecular biologists recently identified as the ancestor of maize.

The shelter contained early maize and squash remains as well as ancient stone tools used to grind and mill the plants.

“We found the remains of maize and squash in many contexts from the earliest occupation levels,” said Dolores Piperno, senior scientist and curator of archaeobotany and South American archaeology for the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.

“This indicates these two crops were being routinely consumed nearly 9,000 years ago,” he added.

The findings suggest domestication of maize in Mexico’s lowland areas as opposed to highland areas as has long been thought. (ANI)

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13,000 yr old Clovis-era tool cache shows evidence of camel, horse butchering

February 26, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Feb 26 (ANI): A biochemical analysis of a rare Clovis-era stone tool cache recently unearthed in the city limits of Boulder, Colorado, in US, indicates some of the implements were used to butcher ice-age camels and horses that roamed North America until their extinction about 13,000 years ago.

The study, conducted by University of Colorado researchers, is the first to identify protein residue from extinct camels on North American stone tools and only the second to identify horse protein residue on a Clovis-age tool.

According to CU-Boulder Anthropology Professor Douglas Bamforth, who led the study, the cache is one of only a handful of Clovis-age artifact caches that have been unearthed in North America.

“The Clovis culture is believed by many archaeologists to coincide with the time the first Americans arrived on the continent from Asia via the Bering Land Bridge about 13,000 to 13,500 years ago,” he said.

“Named the Mahaffy Cache after Boulder resident and landowner Patrick Mahaffy, the collection is one of only two Clovis caches that have been analyzed for protein residue from ice-age mammals,” he added.

In addition to the camel and horse residue on the artifacts, a third item from the Mahaffy Cache is the first Clovis tool ever to test positive for sheep, and a fourth tested positive for bear.

The Mahaffy Cache consists of 83 stone implements ranging from salad plate-sized, elegantly crafted bifacial knives and a unique tool resembling a double-bitted axe to small blades and flint scraps.

Discovered in May 2008 by Brant Turney, head of a landscaping crew working on the Mahaffy property, the cache was unearthed with a shovel under about 18 inches of soil and was packed tightly into a hole about the size of a large shoebox.

“It appeared to have been untouched for thousands of years,” Bamforth said.

Although the surface of the house lot had been lowered by construction work over the years, an analysis of photos from the Mahaffy Cache excavation site by CU-Boulder geological sciences Emeritus Professor Peter Birkeland confirmed the approximate age of sediment layer containing the Clovis implements.

The site appears to be on the edge of an ancient drainage that ran northeast from Boulder’s foothills, according to Bamforth.

“The idea that these Clovis-age tools essentially fell out of someone’s yard in Boulder is astonishing,” he said.

“But, the evidence I’ve seen gives me no reason to believe the cache has been disturbed since the items were placed there for storage about 13,000 years ago,” he added. (ANI)

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Social support during breast-feeding helps humans reproduce more

February 15, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Feb 15 (ANI): A new study has suggested that the fact that human mothers have support from family while they’re breast-feeding may be a key strategy that enables humans to reproduce more rapidly than other primates.

According to the study, social support helps mothers conserve energy in a way that allows their bodies to prepare for their next pregnancy.

“Humans out-produce other primates. So we are examining to what degree this is related to our cultural flexibility,” said Barbara Piperata, assistant professor of anthropology at Ohio State University and principal investigator of the research.

Breast milk production places huge energy demands on women’s bodies – an estimated 30 percent increase.

But humans have multiple ways to offset those demands that involve more than just eating more or doing less.

Some studies have suggested the human body becomes more metabolically efficient during lactation, requiring less energy or less oxygen to complete physical tasks.

And new human mothers also tend to have other humans around to share the work burden.

However, nonhuman primates that have similar energy demands while breast-feeding single, slow-growing offspring, don’t have that same flexibility.

As a result, their reproductive rates are relatively low, averaging a new birth every four to seven years.

“We know that negative energy balance on the body lowers a female’s ability to get pregnant. If humans mediate that, have social support, and are able to maintain or even achieve a positive energy balance, they can get pregnant faster. From an evolutionary perspective and fitness, that’s important,” Piperata said.

The study was described during the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago. (ANI)

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Small male chimps use politics, not aggression, to lead the pack

February 3, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Feb 3 (ANI): Politics, not aggression, is what small male chimpanzees use to secure the top position in their group, a new study has revealed.

In majority of mammals, the biggest and most aggressive male claims the alpha male role and gets his choice of food and females.

But the new study from the University of Minnesota suggests that at least among chimpanzees, smaller, more mild-mannered males can also use political behaviour to secure the top position.

The researchers came to the conclusion after 10 years of observing dominant male chimpanzees in Gombe National Park, Tanzania, looking at behaviours they used to compete for alpha male status relative to their size.

Analysis showed that larger males relied more on physical attacks to dominate while smaller, gentler males groomed other chimpanzees, both male and female, to gain broad support.

For the study the researchers focused on three alpha males who reigned between 1989 and 2003.

Although it’s known that grooming plays an important role in chimpanzee social interaction, this study is the first to show that it can be a strategy for achieving dominance.

Mark Foster, who was an undergraduate pursuing a bachelor of arts degree in anthropology and a B.F.A. in acting when the research was conducted, was the study’s lead author of the study.

“Mark showed extraordinary creativity and tenacity in pulling together this study while still an undergraduate and then seeing it through to publication,” said Anne Pusey, who was senior author.

The findings are reported in the February issue of the American Journal of Primatology. (ANI)

Filed Under: Science News Tagged With: 10 years, aggression, alpha males, anthropology, bachelor of arts, bachelor of arts degree, broad support, chimpanzee, chimpanzees, chimps, creativity, dominance, females, male chimps, mammals, political behaviour, pusey, social interaction, tenacity, university of minnesota