Anthropology Collection Storage Improvement and Sustainability Planning for the Carnegie Museum of Natural History

The Section of Anthropology at Carnegie Museum of Natural History possesses one of the world's outstanding collections. With more than 1.6 million archaeological and ethnological objects representing most of the continents, this collection deserves the best preventive conservation and storage possible. The Anthropology collections currently suffer from overcrowding and are intermingled with other areas and decentralized. The overcrowding puts existing collections at risk, makes it more cumbersome to use them, and limits acquisition of new objects. In order to implement more efficient space usage and improve collection care, it is imperative to begin planning improvements. CMNH Anthropology is already strongly committed to sustainable practices, but also understands that every organization and department can introduce additional improvements. This planning grant will enable investigation of methods to further increase sustainability at our facility

The origins and spread of domestic horses from the Western Eurasian steppes

Domestication of horses fundamentally transformed long-range mobility and warfare1. However, modern domesticated breeds do not descend from the earliest domestic horse lineage associated with archaeological evidence of bridling, milking and corralling2,3,4 at Botai, Central Asia around 3500 BC3. Other longstanding candidate regions for horse domestication, such as Iberia5 and Anatolia6, have also recently been challenged. Thus, the genetic, geographic and temporal origins of modern domestic horses have remained unknown. Here we pinpoint the Western Eurasian steppes, especially the lower Volga-Don region, as the homeland of modern domestic horses. Furthermore, we map the population changes accompanying domestication from 273 ancient horse genomes. This reveals that modern domestic horses ultimately replaced almost all other local populations as they expanded rapidly across Eurasia from about 2000 BC, synchronously with equestrian material culture, including Sintashta spoke-wheeled chariots. We find that equestrianism involved strong selection for critical locomotor and behavioural adaptations at the GSDMC and ZFPM1 genes. Our results reject the commonly held association7 between horseback riding and the massive expansion of Yamnaya steppe pastoralists into Europe around 3000 BC8,9 driving the spread of Indo-European languages10. This contrasts with the scenario in Asia where Indo-Iranian languages, chariots and horses spread together, following the early second millennium BC Sintashta culture11,12

Insight on the Ancient Arabian Horse from North Arabian Petroglyphs

The origin of the Arabian horse breed has been the topic of much speculation. The earliest clear depictions of horses with Arabian attributes are in Egyptian New Kingdom tomb art, although they were likely first obtained as war booty during Asian battles. Rock art from the 1st millennium BCE to early 1st millennium CE indicates a possible start date for their arrival in the Arabian Peninsula. This study focuses on petroglyphs near Taymāʾ, Ḥāʾil, and al-ʿUlā oases, important caravan way stations along the incense route. Regional artists developed a characteristic style for depicting horses and camels, distinguishing them temporally and spatially. From its initial appearance the breed was closely associated with chariots, but its eventual value to equestrians is equally evident in Arabian rock art. Petroglyphs in this region elucidate physical conformation, military roles, and high status. Practical aspects and cultural indicators such as training, tack, grooming, and henna body painting are revealed in the detailed illustrations

The Development of a Naturalistic Self-Management Inventory

The most common approach to self-management research has been to apply it to a specific target behavior, without attending to the generalizability of changes to other facets of one\u27s life. A procedure for measuring self-management effectiveness under real world conditions was developed which emphasized the successful application of self-change procedures. The Self-Description Form (SDF) was field-tested on a sample of four groups of college students (N=214). Results indicated that normative self-management scores increased as level of education increased. Females had higher self-management scores than males except on the leisure scale. The reliability of the self-description scale was confirmed although validity efforts are still in the preliminary stages of analysis. When fully developed, the form may be useful in evaluating counseling and educational programs and in predicting an individual\u27s future effectiveness in leisure, health, social and work activities. Several tables and figures are provided to illustrate SDF reliability and validity

The hippocampus supports multiple cognitive processes through relational binding and comparison

It has been well established that the hippocampus plays a pivotal role in explicit long-term recognition memory. However, findings from amnesia, lesion and recording studies with non-human animals, eye-movement recording studies, and functional neuroimaging have recently converged upon a similar message: the functional reach of the hippocampus extends far beyond explicit recognition memory. Damage to the hippocampus affects performance on a number of cognitive tasks including recognition memory after short and long delays and visual discrimination. Additionally, with the advent of neuroimaging techniques that have fine spatial and temporal resolution, findings have emerged that show the elicitation of hippocampal responses within the first few 100 ms of stimulus/task onset. These responses occur for novel and previously viewed information during a time when perceptual processing is traditionally thought to occur, and long before overt recognition responses are made. We propose that the hippocampus is obligatorily involved in the binding of disparate elements across both space and time, and in the comparison of such relational memory representations. Furthermore, the hippocampus supports relational binding and comparison with or without conscious awareness for the relational representations that are formed, retrieved and/or compared. It is by virtue of these basic binding and comparison functions that the reach of the hippocampus extends beyond long-term recognition memory and underlies task performance in multiple cognitive domains

Hjerneslag og kommunikasjon

Studentarbeid i sykepleie (bachelorgrad) - Universitetet i Nordland, 201