Impact of Carnivory on Human Development and Evolution Revealed by a New Unifying Model of Weaning in Mammals

Our large brain, long life span and high fertility are key elements of human evolutionary success and are often thought to have evolved in interplay with tool use, carnivory and hunting. However, the specific impact of carnivory on human evolution, life history and development remains controversial. Here we show in quantitative terms that dietary profile is a key factor influencing time to weaning across a wide taxonomic range of mammals, including humans. In a model encompassing a total of 67 species and genera from 12 mammalian orders, adult brain mass and two dichotomous variables reflecting species differences regarding limb biomechanics and dietary profile, accounted for 75.5%, 10.3% and 3.4% of variance in time to weaning, respectively, together capturing 89.2% of total variance. Crucially, carnivory predicted the time point of early weaning in humans with remarkable precision, yielding a prediction error of less than 5% with a sample of forty-six human natural fertility societies as reference. Hence, carnivory appears to provide both a necessary and sufficient explanation as to why humans wean so much earlier than the great apes. While early weaning is regarded as essentially differentiating the genus Homo from the great apes, its timing seems to be determined by the same limited set of factors in humans as in mammals in general, despite some 90 million years of evolution. Our analysis emphasizes the high degree of similarity of relative time scales in mammalian development and life history across 67 genera from 12 mammalian orders and shows that the impact of carnivory on time to weaning in humans is quantifiable, and critical. Since early weaning yields shorter interbirth intervals and higher rates of reproduction, with profound effects on population dynamics, our findings highlight the emergence of carnivory as a process fundamentally determining human evolution

Providing Measurement, Evaluation, Accountability, and Leadership Support (MEALS) for Non-communicable Diseases Prevention in Ghana: Project Protocol

Background:&nbsp;This study describes the rationale, adaptation, and final protocol of a project developed to address the increase in obesity and nutrition-related non-communicable diseases (NR-NCDs) in Ghana. Code-named the Measurement, Evaluation, Accountability, and Leadership Support for NCDs (MEALS4NCDs) project, it aims to measure and support public sector actions that create healthy food marketing, retail, and provisioning environments for Ghanaian children using adapted methods from the International Network for Food and Obesity/NCDs Research Monitoring and Action Support (INFORMAS).&nbsp;Methods:&nbsp;The protocol for this observational study draws substantially from the INFORMAS’ Food Promotion and Food Provision Modules. However, to appraise the readiness of local communities to implement interventions with strong potential to improve food environments of Ghanaian children, the MEALS4NCDs protocol has innovatively integrated a local community participatory approach based on the community readiness model (CRM) into the INFORMAS approaches. The setting is Ghana, and the participants include health and nutrition policy-makers, nutrition and food service providers, consumers, school authorities, and pupils of Ghanaian basic schools.&nbsp;Results:&nbsp;The study establishes a standardized approach to providing implementation science evidence for the prevention of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in Ghana. It demonstrates feasibility and the innovative application of the INFORMAS expanded food promotion and food provision modules, together with the integration of the CRM in a lower-middle income setting.&nbsp;Conclusion:&nbsp;The research will facilitate the understanding of the processes through which the INFORMAS approach is contextualized to a lower-middle income African context. The protocol could be adapted for similar country settings to monitor relevant aspects of food environments of&nbsp;children.</p

UbiKit: Learning to Prototype for Tangible and Ubiquitous Computing

As more and more ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) technologies pervade our daily lives, it is becoming increasingly important to train interaction design students to create these technologies. However, teaching students to design ubicomp technologies can be challenging, because creating a prototype, which people can use and students can learn from, usually requires a long setup and development phase. While there are some prototyping kits available, such as Arduino or the Raspberry Pi, they often require relatively steep learning curves before anything sophisticated can be prototyped. For this reason, we created UbiKit, a quick-to-setup, reusable, and affordable toolkit for the rapid design of ubicomp technologies that enable people to co-explore different scenarios and focus on the users. We piloted UbiKit in a Master-level course on ubicomp related topics and reflect on its potential to help streamline the prototyping and overall learning process for students being trained in our research area