Paul Alsberg (1883-1965) et le transfert adaptatif du biologique au technique : un pr\'ecurseur de la "cultural niche construction" ?

We propose, in this paper, both a presentation and a discussion of Paul Alsberg's thesis on the supposed specificity principle of human evolution. The author maintains a difference of nature between Man and Animal relying on an opposition between "body-adaptation" - that of the Animal - and "extrabodily-adaptation" - that of Man in which the means of adaptation are switched outside of the organisms by tool-using. This difference is not a mere difference of state, but of evolutionary dynamics. Here, Man is not simply "Homo faber", as in Bergson's view, but produced and made possible by technique; a technique which then appears as an hominisation factor. Thus, his "principle of body-liberation" by tool-using is to be retrospectively understood as a part of the logics of the modification of selection pressure logics, which reminds us the seminal contemporary niche construction theory (F. John Odling-Smee). It seems therefore possible to make Paul Alsberg, from his 1922 work, one of the most important precursors of the cultural niche construction theory.Comment: 16 page

The "Brunella" project: preparation and study of a mysticete from the Early Pliocene of Tuscany

• A project is being carried out at Poggio alle Mura that will allow the preparation and study of a balaenopterid whale from the early Pliocene of Tuscany together with its associated biota. • Up to now, the project resulted in the preparation of 18 vertebrae, the skull and an ulna of the whale. • The associated biota includes 18 mollusk species, 2 sea urchin species, 10 shark teeth and thousands of fish remains from the sediment surrounding the skull. • A wealth of educational activities is being carried out at the laboratory of Poggio alle Mura that are directed to schools and citizens

A Study on an Automatic System for Analyzing the Facial Beauty of Young Women

A Study on an Automatic System for Analyzing the Facial Beauty of Young Women Neha Sultan Beauty is one of the foremost ideas that define human personality. However, only recently has the concept of beauty been scientifically analyzed. This has mostly been due to extensive research done in the area of face recognition and image processing on identification and classification of human features as contributing to facial beauty. Current research aims at precisely and conclusively understanding how humans classify a given individual's face as beautiful. Due to the lack of published theoretical standards and ground truths for human facial beauty, this is often an ambiguous process. Current methods of analysis and classification of human facial beauty rely mainly on the geometric aspects of human facial beauty. The classifiers used in current research include the k-nearest neighbor algorithm, ridge regression, and basic principal component analysis. In this research, various approaches related to the comprehension and analysis of human beauty are presented and the use of these theories is outlined. Each set of theories is translated into a feature model that is tested for classification. Selecting the best set of features that result in the most accurate model for the representation of the human face is a key challenge. This research introduces the combined use of three main groups of features for classification of female facial beauty, to be used with classification through support vector machines. The classifier utilized is Support Vector Machine (SVM) and the accuracy obtained through this classifier is 86%. Current research in the field has produced algorithms with percentages of accuracy that are in the range of 75-85%. The approach used is one of analysis of the central tenets of beauty, the successive application of image processing techniques, and finally the usage of relevant machine learning methods to build an effective system for the automatic assessment of facial beauty. The ground truths used for verifying results are derived from ratings extracted from surveys conducted. The proposed methodology involves a novel algorithm for the representation of facial beauty, which combines the use of geometric, textural, and shape based features for the analysis of facial beauty. This algorithm initially develops an overall landmark model of the entire human face. A significant advantage of this methodology is the accurate model of the human face which synthesizes the geometric, textural and shape-related aspects of the face. The landmark model is then used for extracting critical characteristics which are then used in a feature vector for training using machine learning. The features extracted help to represent facial characteristics in three major areas. Geometric features help to represent the symmetrical properties and ratio-based properties of landmarks on the face. Textural features extracted help capture information related to skin texture and composition. Finally, face shape and outline features help to categorize the overall shape of a given face, which helps to represent the given female face shape and outline for further analysis of any deviations from the basic face shapes. These features are then used in a classifier to appropriately categorize each image. The database used for the source of images contains images of female subjects from a variety of backgrounds and levels of attractiveness

Alia: Antropologia di una comunità dell'entroterra siciliano

In the spring of 1995, during works for the rehabilitation of a wall that closed the grotto of the Old Cemetery in the Sicilian village of Alia, the skeletal remains of the victims of the cholera outbreak of 1837 that had been rapidly interred here were brought to light. From that moment on, the Alia project was developed without interruption, analysing the biological evolution of the local population by exploiting study methods characteristic of different anthropological disciplines, such as skeletal biology, population genetics and biodemography. The book renders account of research completed and in progress carried out by academics from the Universities of Florence, Palermo, Parma, Cagliari, Turin and Göttingen