Obesity among young adults in developing countries : a systematic overview

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Case study: embedding 'A vision of Britain through time' as a resource for academic research and learning

As part of the 'JISC e-Content and Digitisation Programmes: Impact and Embedding of Digitised Resources,' this case study explores the impacts of the A Vision of Britain Through Time website (http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/) on academic research and learning. It is complemented by 'Impact Report on ‘A Vision of Britain through Time’ 2004-10: Investigating the current use and impact of a popular digital resource for local history research.

Effects of paedomorphosis on signaling behaviors in dyadic encounters of the domestic dog

This article was published in the Spring 2013 issue of the Journal of Undergraduate ResearchDomestic dogs, Canis lupus (variety familiaris), show extremes of morphological variation in comparison to their ancestor, the wolf (Canis lupus), with some breeds being much smaller than a typical wolf (males 40-60 kg, females 30- 45kg), while other breeds are much larger. A major trend observed to be a result of the process of domestication is paedomorphosis, or retention of juvenile traits into adulthood. Dogs express paedomorphic traits to different degrees, ranging from phenotypes that resemble wolves to extreme forms such as toy dogs, with short muzzles and legs. These traits can be both morphological to behavioral in nature. Such traits must interact because morphology is used to express behavior. One key example of this is the use of both ear and tail orientation to signal status in interactions among dogs. By observing dyadic encounters, I measured the extent of paedomorphic reduction of the ability to use signaling behaviors, specifically those involving the ears and tails. I did not find a correlation between overall paedomorphosis and frequency of signaling, but did find significant interactions between signal frequency and the degree of dissimilarity of the tail of individual breeds from a wolf tail. Despite this interaction, I found that signaling was consistent across breed types and sizes. This indicates that signaling is highly conserved and evolutionarily important, even across a large range of phenotypes. When tail signaling is reduced, it is often associated with a highly variant tail, especially those artificially shortened by human action

PastPlace: the historical gazetteer service from the people who brought you A Vision of Britain through Time

The PastPlace API offers a simple web service, responding to a variety of queries by returning information from the same database as underlies the Vision of Britain web site, in a range of structured formats. These queries can be typed into a web browser as URLs, and the response viewed in the browser. However, the queries would more usually be sent by another server on the web, and the response processed by that server. That server might itself be creating web pages for use by the general public, but it might also be a cataloguing or records management system, using our API as a name authority. This poster is the first public description of the servic