Producing Brazilianess for Global Audiences: The case of Sex and the City

This paper examines how the HBO series Sex and the City (SATC) portrayed “Brazilianess” during its six-season run. Although the program was recognized for its positive portrayal of female friendship and was usually praised for its association with female empowerment through story line, sexually explicit dialogue, and their successful careers we demonstrate how when it comes to Brazilianess and Brazilians, the program relied on stereotypical non-empowering and somewhat unrealistic portrayals. As Brazilian scholars and feminists we hope to question and explore the ways that Brazilianess, is portrayed in United States media more broadly and television specifically. We are focusing on Brazilianess in an attempt to move away from character specific analysis to question how Brazil as a nation and a culture, but also as a space where practices are performed, is produced in U.S. television shows such as SATC. Although research on the representation of Brazilians on Brazilian media is ample the same is not true when it comes to U.S. media. This essay seeks to begin to fill this gap

Density separation of petrous bone powders for optimized ancient DNA yields

Density separation is a process routinely used to segregate minerals, organic matter, and even microplastics, from soils and sediments. Here we apply density separation to archaeological bone powders before DNA extraction to increase endoge-nous DNA recovery relative to a standard control extraction of the same powders. Using nontoxic heavy liquid solutions, we separated powders from the petrous bones of 10 individuals of similar archaeological preservation into eight density inter-vals (2.15 to 2.45 g/cm3 , in 0.05 increments). We found that the 2.30 to 2.35 g/cm 3 and 2.35 to 2.40 g/cm3 intervals yield-ed up to 5.28-fold more endogenous unique DNA than the corresponding standard extraction (and up to 8.53-fold before duplicate read removal), while maintaining signals of ancient DNA authenticity and not reducing library complexity. Although small 0.05 g/cm 3 intervals may maximally optimize yields, a single separation to remove materials with a density above 2.40 g/cm3 yielded up to 2.57-fold more endogenous DNA on average, which enables the simultaneous separation of samples that vary in preservation or in the type of material analyzed. While requiring no new ancient DNA laboratory equipment and fewer than 30 min of extra laboratory work, the implementation of density separation before DNA extraction can substantially boost endogenous DNA yields without decreasing library complexity. Although subsequent studies are required, we present theoretical and practical foundations that may prove useful when applied to other ancient DNA substrates such as teeth, other bones, and sediments

Ethnography as an approach to investigating media practices – from Macambira to Texas

In this interview, La Pastina speaks of themes like ethnography in Communication, field research, telenovelas and his scholarly career in the United States. He also comments on the difficult entry of Brazilian studies in the United States, highlighting as a barrier,other than language, the lacking distribution of Brazilian periodicals in other countries,which he sees as a current challenge to the area.Nesta entrevista, La Pastina fala de temas como etnografia na Comunicação, pesquisa de campo, telenovela e de sua trajetória acadêmica nos Estados Unidos. Também comenta sobre a difícil entrada de estudos brasileiros no país norte-americano, destacando como barreira, além da língua, a falta de circulação de periódicos brasileiros em outros países, o que considera um desafio atual para a área

A genetic history of the pre-contact Caribbean

Humans settled the Caribbean about 6,000 years ago, and ceramic use and intensified agriculture mark a shift from the Archaic to the Ceramic Age at around 2,500 years ago1,2,3. Here we report genome-wide data from 174 ancient individuals from The Bahamas, Haiti and the Dominican Republic (collectively, Hispaniola), Puerto Rico, Curaçao and Venezuela, which we co-analysed with 89 previously published ancient individuals. Stone-tool-using Caribbean people, who first entered the Caribbean during the Archaic Age, derive from a deeply divergent population that is closest to Central and northern South American individuals; contrary to previous work4, we find no support for ancestry contributed by a population related to North American individuals. Archaic-related lineages were >98% replaced by a genetically homogeneous ceramic-using population related to speakers of languages in the Arawak family from northeast South America; these people moved through the Lesser Antilles and into the Greater Antilles at least 1,700 years ago, introducing ancestry that is still present. Ancient Caribbean people avoided close kin unions despite limited mate pools that reflect small effective population sizes, which we estimate to be a minimum of 500–1,500 and a maximum of 1,530–8,150 individuals on the combined islands of Puerto Rico and Hispaniola in the dozens of generations before the individuals who we analysed lived. Census sizes are unlikely to be more than tenfold larger than effective population sizes, so previous pan-Caribbean estimates of hundreds of thousands of people are too large5,6. Confirming a small and interconnected Ceramic Age population7, we detect 19 pairs of cross-island cousins, close relatives buried around 75 km apart in Hispaniola and low genetic differentiation across islands. Genetic continuity across transitions in pottery styles reveals that cultural changes during the Ceramic Age were not driven by migration of genetically differentiated groups from the mainland, but instead reflected interactions within an interconnected Caribbean world1,8.This work was supported by a grant from the National Geographic Society to M. Pateman to facilitate analysis of skeletal material from The Bahamas and by a grant from the Italian ‘Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation’ (Italian archaeological, anthropological and ethnological missions abroad, DGPSP Ufficio VI). D.R. was funded by NSF HOMINID grant BCS-1032255, NIH (NIGMS) grant GM100233, the Paul Allen Foundation, the John Templeton Foundation grant 61220 and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.Peer reviewe

Stable population structure in Europe since the Iron Age, despite high mobility

Ancient DNA research in the past decade has revealed that European population structure changed dramatically in the prehistoric period (14,000–3000 years before present, YBP), reflecting the widespread introduction of Neolithic farmer and Bronze Age Steppe ancestries. However, little is known about how population structure changed from the historical period onward (3000 YBP - present). To address this, we collected whole genomes from 204 individuals from Europe and the Mediterranean, many of which are the first historical period genomes from their region (e.g. Armenia and France). We found that most regions show remarkable inter-individual heterogeneity. At least 7% of historical individuals carry ancestry uncommon in the region where they were sampled, some indicating cross-Mediterranean contacts. Despite this high level of mobility, overall population structure across western Eurasia is relatively stable through the historical period up to the present, mirroring geography. We show that, under standard population genetics models with local panmixia, the observed level of dispersal would lead to a collapse of population structure. Persistent population structure thus suggests a lower effective migration rate than indicated by the observed dispersal. We hypothesize that this phenomenon can be explained by extensive transient dispersal arising from drastically improved transportation networks and the Roman Empire’s mobilization of people for trade, labor, and military. This work highlights the utility of ancient DNA in elucidating finer scale human population dynamics in recent history

Stable population structure in Europe since the Iron Age, despite high mobility

Ancient DNA research in the past decade has revealed that European population structure changed dramatically in the prehistoric period (14,000–3000 years before present, YBP), reflecting the widespread introduction of Neolithic farmer and Bronze Age Steppe ancestries. However, little is known about how population structure changed from the historical period onward (3000 YBP - present). To address this, we collected whole genomes from 204 individuals from Europe and the Mediterranean, many of which are the first historical period genomes from their region (e.g. Armenia and France). We found that most regions show remarkable inter-individual heterogeneity. At least 7% of historical individuals carry ancestry uncommon in the region where they were sampled, some indicating cross-Mediterranean contacts. Despite this high level of mobility, overall population structure across western Eurasia is relatively stable through the historical period up to the present, mirroring geography. We show that, under standard population genetics models with local panmixia, the observed level of dispersal would lead to a collapse of population structure. Persistent population structure thus suggests a lower effective migration rate than indicated by the observed dispersal. We hypothesize that this phenomenon can be explained by extensive transient dispersal arising from drastically improved transportation networks and the Roman Empire’s mobilization of people for trade, labor, and military. This work highlights the utility of ancient DNA in elucidating finer scale human population dynamics in recent history

Prelimanary CFD study of a two-stroke RCCI engine

Validazione della mesh del motore RCCI mediante confronto curva di pressione sperimentale motored; primo studi sul processo di combustione mediante miscela omogenea premiscelata. Validazione spray dell'iniettore E-TEC mediante confronto foto sperimental