External ballistics of Pleistocene hand-thrown spears: experimental performance data and implications for human evolution

The appearance of weaponry - technology designed to kill - is a critical but poorly established threshold in human evolution. It is an important behavioural marker representing evolutionary changes in ecology, cognition, language and social behaviours. While the earliest weapons are often considered to be hand-held and consequently short-ranged, the subsequent appearance of distance weapons is a crucial development. Projectiles are seen as an improvement over contact weapons, and are considered by some to have originated only with our own species in the Middle Stone Age and Upper Palaeolithic. Despite the importance of distance weapons in the emergence of full behavioral modernity, systematic experimentation using trained throwers to evaluate the ballistics of thrown spears during fight and at impact is lacking. This paper addresses this by presenting results from a trial of trained javelin athletes, providing new estimates for key performance parameters. Overlaps in distances and impact energies between hand-thrown spears and spearthrowers are evidenced, and skill emerges as a signifcant factor in successful use. The results show that distance hunting was likely within the repertoire of hunting strategies of Neanderthals, and the resulting behavioural flexibility closely mirrors that of our own specie

Bloom fitoplanctonici e presenza stagionale di squalo balena (rhincodon typus) lungo la costa di gibuti – golfo di Aden

During a 5 days research expedition performed in January, some observations on a whale shark population were performed. Just 7 specimens have been observed and identified. This number of sharks is lower than that observed in previous reports in the same period for similar research efforts. Recent remote sensing studies showed summer phytoplanktonic bloom higher than in autumn, but no sharks have been recorded suggesting that the quantity of phytoplankton could be not linked with the presence of the whale sharks

Influence of L-galactonic acid gamma-lactone on ascorbate production in some yeasts

L-galactonic acid gamma-lactone appear to influence ascorbic acid production in strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Clavispora lusitaniae, Cryptococcus terreus, Pichia fermentans in which this is undetected whenever glucose represents the sole carbon source. Cryptococcus terreus (strains DBVP 6012 and 6242) does not show ascorbic acid production either in presence or in the absence of L-galactonic acid gamma-lactone. This feature is probably connected to the insensibility of the strain to the lycorine, an alkaloid which commonly inhibits cell division probably by blocking L-galactonic acid gamma-lactone convertion into ascorbate