48 research outputs found
The Garden of Eden or Vavilov's El Dorado? A review of recent thoughts on the origins of agriculture in East Asia
A review of Corbett, West, and Lefevre (eds.), 2010, "People at the End of the World: the Wester Aleutians Project and the Archaeology of Shemya Island
The archaeology of archaic and early modern humans in northwest China: a report on the 2007 Paleolithic Survey Project in eastern Longxi Basin, Gansu
The Earliest Farmers of Northwest China Exploited Grain-fed Pheasants not Chickens
Though chickens (Gallus gallus domesticus) are globally ubiquitous today, the timing, location, and manner of their domestication is contentious. Until recently, archaeologists placed the origin of the domestic chicken in northern China, perhaps as early as 8,000 years ago. Such evidence however complicates our understanding of how the chicken was domesticated because its wild progenitor – the red jungle fowl (Gallus gallus) – lives in tropical ecosystems and does not exist in northern China today or in the recent past. Increasingly, multiple lines of evidence suggest that many of the archaeological bird remains underlying this northern origins hypothesis have been misidentified. Here we analyze the mitochondrial DNA of some of the earliest purported chickens from the Dadiwan site in northern China and conclude that they are pheasants (Phasianus colchicus). Curiously, stable isotope values from the same birds reveal that their diet was heavy in agricultural products (namely millet), meaning that they lived adjacent to or among some of the earliest farming communities in East Asia. We suggest that the exploitation of these baited birds was an important adaptation for early farmers in China’s arid north, and that management practices like these likely played a role in the domestication of animals – including the chicken – in similar contexts throughout the region.The original isotopic analyses of these remains were conducted in collaboration with Seth Newsome (then at the Carnegie Institution of Washington) and Chen Fahu (Lanzhou University), with funding from the Wenner-Gren Foundation (awarded to L.B.). The University of Oklahoma provided funding for all molecular analyses (through B.M.K.). Open Access fees paid for in whole or in part by the University of Oklahoma LibrariesYe
Huan bei taipingyang di qu dai zhi bei zhong tan san tan si zhi wu xian dui feng du yu qi hou tiao jian guan xi yan jiu
Regulation of Coronary Blood Flow
The heart is uniquely responsible for providing its own blood supply through the coronary circulation. Regulation of coronary blood flow is quite complex and, after over 100 years of dedicated research, is understood to be dictated through multiple mechanisms that include extravascular compressive forces (tissue pressure), coronary perfusion pressure, myogenic, local metabolic, endothelial as well as neural and hormonal influences. While each of these determinants can have profound influence over myocardial perfusion, largely through effects on end-effector ion channels, these mechanisms collectively modulate coronary vascular resistance and act to ensure that the myocardial requirements for oxygen and substrates are adequately provided by the coronary circulation. The purpose of this series of Comprehensive Physiology is to highlight current knowledge regarding the physiologic regulation of coronary blood flow, with emphasis on functional anatomy and the interplay between the physical and biological determinants of myocardial oxygen delivery. © 2017 American Physiological Society. Compr Physiol 7:321-382, 2017