Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies

Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies
Title Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies PDF eBook
Author National Research Council
Publisher National Academies Press
Pages 176
Release 2006-02-23
Genre Social Science
ISBN 0309165075

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Given current demographic trends, nearly one in five U.S. residents will be of Hispanic origin by 2025. This major demographic shift and its implications for both the United States and the growing Hispanic population make Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies a most timely book. This report from the National Research Council describes how Hispanics are transforming the country as they disperse geographically. It considers their roles in schools, in the labor market, in the health care system, and in U.S. politics. The book looks carefully at the diverse populations encompassed by the term "Hispanic," representing immigrants and their children and grandchildren from nearly two dozen Spanish-speaking countries. It describes the trajectory of the younger generations and established residents, and it projects long-term trends in population aging, social disparities, and social mobility that have shaped and will shape the Hispanic experience.

Multiple Origins of Sex Differences in Brain

Multiple Origins of Sex Differences in Brain
Title Multiple Origins of Sex Differences in Brain PDF eBook
Author Donald W Pfaff
Publisher Springer Science & Business Media
Pages 187
Release 2013-01-26
Genre Medical
ISBN 364233721X

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In theoretical terms, sex differences in brains and behaviors of laboratory animals offer the possibility of fascinating scientific studies on a range of molecular phenomena such as genomic imprinting, DNA methylation, chromatin protein modification, non-coding DNA, potentially resulting in important neuroanatomical and neurochemical sex differences in the brain. Such sex differences could arise consequent to exposures to testosterone early in development, or to other effects deriving from the Y chromosome. However, this general subject has been treated with much hyperbole. Historically, sex differences were assumed to be present where they did not really exist, e.g. with respect to mathematics, executive leadership, etc. etc. Under what circumstances do we really care about sex differences in brain and behavior? These circumstances concern human maladies whose diagnoses are much different between boys and girls, or between women and men. Prominent examples discussed in this volume include autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorders and congenital adrenal hyperplasia. In fact, infant boys are more susceptible than infant girls to a variety of disorders that arise early in development. This volume then ends with a consideration of effects of estrogenic hormones on the injured brain, and their roles as protective agents.

The Origins And Spread Of Agriculture And Pastoralism In Eurasia

The Origins And Spread Of Agriculture And Pastoralism In Eurasia
Title The Origins And Spread Of Agriculture And Pastoralism In Eurasia PDF eBook
Author David R. Harris
Publisher Taylor & Francis
Pages 617
Release 2024-11-01
Genre Social Science
ISBN 1040283462

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As the first book to examine the origins and spread of agriculture and pastoralism in Europe and Asia as a whole, this major contribution should be essential reading for archaeologists, anthropologists, biologists and geographers. Adopting a novel approach to the subject, the authors examine it first in terms of seven different disciplinary perspectives: social, ecological, genetic, linguistic, biomolecular, epidemiological and geogrpahical. Then, 20 case studies are presented, which are based primarily on archaeological and biological evidence and which relate to three major regions: Southwest Asia, Europe and Central Asia to the Pacific. The book concludes with an overview of Eurasia as a whole.; The transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture had revolutionary consequences for human society. It led to the emergence of urban civilizations and ultimately to humanity's almost complete dependence on relatively few domesticated animals and plants. The subject has been much studied, but the results have tended to be interpreted largely in terms of local cultural sequences, with insufficient comparison made with evidence from other areas. In contrast, this book provides a continental- scale framework, with its scope extended to pastoralism because in Eurasia both the raising of livestock and the cultivation of crops were integral components of the agricultural "revolution" from its inception some 10,000 years ago.; Comprehensive and authoritative, "The Origins and Spread of Agriculture and Pastoralism in Eurasia" should appeal strongly to the wide readership of students and specialists concerned with the prehistoric antecedents of modern civilization.

Multiple Muscle Systems

Multiple Muscle Systems
Title Multiple Muscle Systems PDF eBook
Author Jack M. Winters
Publisher Springer Science & Business Media
Pages 818
Release 2012-12-06
Genre Science
ISBN 1461390303

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The picture on the front cover of this book depicts a young man pulling a fishnet, a task of practical relevance for many centuries. It is a complex task, involving load transmission throughout the body, intricate balance, and eye head-hand coordination. The quest toward understanding how we perform such tasks with skill and grace, often in the presence of unpredictable pertur bations, has a long history. However, despite a history of magnificent sculptures and drawings of the human body which vividly depict muscle ac tivity and interaction, until more recent times our state of knowledge of human movement was rather primitive. During the past century this has changed; we now have developed a considerable database regarding the com position and basic properties of muscle and nerve tissue and the basic causal relations between neural function and biomechanical movement. Over the last few decades we have also seen an increased appreciation of the impor tance of musculoskeletal biomechanics: the neuromotor system must control movement within a world governed by mechanical laws. We have now col lected quantitative data for a wealth of human movements. Our capacity to understand the data we collect has been enhanced by our continually evolving modeling capabilities and by the availability of computational power. What have we learned? This book is designed to help synthesize our current knowledge regarding the role of muscles in human movement. The study of human movement is not a mature discipline.

DNA Replication Origins in Microbial Genomes

DNA Replication Origins in Microbial Genomes
Title DNA Replication Origins in Microbial Genomes PDF eBook
Author Feng Gao
Publisher Frontiers Media SA
Pages 117
Release 2016-03-11
Genre Microbiology
ISBN 2889197794

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DNA replication, a central event for cell proliferation, is the basis of biological inheritance. Complete and accurate DNA replication is integral to the maintenance of the genetic integrity of organisms. In all three domains of life, DNA replication begins at replication origins. In bacteria, replication typically initiates from a single replication origin (oriC), which contains several DnaA boxes and the AT-rich DNA unwinding element (DUE). In eukaryotic genomes, replication initiates from significantly more replication origins, activated simultaneously at a specific time. For eukaryotic organisms, replication origins are best characterized in the unicellular eukaryote budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe. The budding yeast origins contain an essential sequence element called the ARS (autonomously replicating sequence), while the fission yeast origins consist of AT-rich sequences. Within the archaeal domain, the multiple replication origins have been identified by a predict-and-verify approach in the hyperthermophilic archaeon Sulfolobus. The basic structure of replication origins is conserved among archaea, typically including an AT-rich unwinding region flanked by several short repetitive DNA sequences, known as origin recognition boxes (ORBs). It appears that archaea have a simplified version of the eukaryotic replication apparatus, which has led to considerable interest in the archaeal machinery as a model of that in eukaryotes. The research on replication origins is important not only in providing insights into the structure and function of the replication origins but also in understanding the regulatory mechanisms of the initiation step in DNA replication. Therefore, intensive studies have been carried out in the last two decades. The pioneer work to identify bacterial oriCs in silico is the GC-skew analysis. Later, a method of cumulative GC skew without sliding windows was proposed to give better resolution. Meanwhile, an oligomer-skew method was also proposed to predict oriC regions in bacterial genomes. As a unique representation of a DNA sequence, the Z-curve method has been proved to be an accurate and effective approach to predict bacterial and archaeal replication origins. Budding yeast origins have been predicted by Oriscan using similarity to the characterized ones, while the fission yeast origins have been identified initially from AT content calculation. In comparison with the in silico analysis, the experimental methods are time-consuming and labor-intensive, but convincing and reliable. To identify microbial replication origins in vivo or in vitro, a number of experimental methods have been used including construction of replicative oriC plasmids, microarray-based or high-throughput sequencing-based marker frequency analysis, two-dimensional gel electrophoresis analysis and replication initiation point mapping (RIP mapping). The recent genome-wide approaches to identify and characterize replication origin locations have boosted the number of mapped yeast replication origins. In addition, the availability of increasing complete microbial genomes and emerging approaches has created challenges and opportunities for identification of their replication origins in silico, as well as in vivo and in vitro. The Frontiers in Microbiology Research Topic on DNA replication origins in microbial genomes is devoted to address the issues mentioned above, and aims to provide a comprehensive overview of current research in this field.

Manifest Destinies

Manifest Destinies
Title Manifest Destinies PDF eBook
Author Laura E. Gómez
Publisher NYU Press
Pages 256
Release 2007-10-11
Genre History
ISBN 0814731740

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An essential resource for understanding the complex history of Mexican Americans and racial classification in the United States Manifest Destinies tells the story of the original Mexican Americans—the people living in northern Mexico in 1846 during the onset of the Mexican American War. The war abruptly came to an end two years later, and 115,000 Mexicans became American citizens overnight. Yet their status as full-fledged Americans was tenuous at best. Due to a variety of legal and political maneuvers, Mexican Americans were largely confined to a second class status. How did this categorization occur, and what are the implications for modern Mexican Americans? Manifest Destinies fills a gap in American racial history by linking westward expansion to slavery and the Civil War. In so doing, Laura E Gómez demonstrates how white supremacy structured a racial hierarchy in which Mexican Americans were situated relative to Native Americans and African Americans alike. Steeped in conversations and debates surrounding the social construction of race, this book reveals how certain groups become racialized, and how racial categories can not only change instantly, but also the ways in which they change over time. This new edition is updated to reflect the most recent evidence regarding the ways in which Mexican Americans and other Latinos were racialized in both the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The book ultimately concludes that it is problematic to continue to speak in terms Hispanic “ethnicity” rather than consider Latinos qua Latinos alongside the United States’ other major racial groupings. A must read for anyone concerned with racial injustice and classification today.

Origins And Past Of Modern Humans, The: Towards Reconciliation

Origins And Past Of Modern Humans, The: Towards Reconciliation
Title Origins And Past Of Modern Humans, The: Towards Reconciliation PDF eBook
Author Keiichi Omoto
Publisher World Scientific
Pages 282
Release 1998-03-26
Genre Social Science
ISBN 9814545856

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In this volume, because the differences in methodological approaches are so great, the focus is switched to the major issues in the hope of achieving a 'reconciliation', if not a perfect agreement, among the scholars of different disciplines. The keyword for the meeting was 'balance' — a balanced view over the results from different disciplines.