Teaching Bones from my Garden

Abstract Faunal analysis, or zooarchaeology, is an important subfield that provides information on human ecology, economy, culture, and society. Few of my students have much experience with hunting, farming, anatomy, or even eating meat these days, so faunal analysis labs in an Archaeological Field Methods class present some difficulties. Faunal assemblages from archaeological sites are often small, fragile, and too valuable for class use. They require good comparative collections, and it may be difficult for students to relate to unfamiliar animals and cultures. These problems can be overcome by producing a faunal teaching assemblage from home meat consumption. For over 20 years I have composted all organics from my kitchen, and subsequently collected bone from my garden. A useful assemblage can be created in a much shorter time if the bones are prepared by maceration instead of composting. With simple instructional materials, the students can recognize the bones, collect the data, and perform simple quantification like MNI and NISP. The assemblage is then interpretable in terms of most of the issues approached by contemporary faunal analyses, such as preparation techniques, meat preferences, formation processes, and socio-economic status. My classes always find it engaging to analyze their professor’s garbage and use it to interpret his life

Intestinal barrier tightening by a cell-penetrating antibody to Bin1, a candidate target for immunotherapy of ulcerative colitis.

Patients afflicted with ulcerative colitis (UC) are at increased risk of colorectal cancer. While its causes are not fully understood, UC is associated with defects in colonic epithelial barriers that sustain inflammation of the colon mucosa caused by recruitment of lymphocytes and neutrophils into the lamina propria. Based on genetic evidence that attenuation of the bridging integrator 1 (Bin1) gene can limit UC pathogenicity in animals, we have explored Bin1 targeting as a therapeutic option. Early feasibility studies in the dextran sodium sulfate mouse model of experimental colitis showed that administration of a cell-penetrating Bin1 monoclonal antibody (Bin1 mAb 99D) could prevent lesion formation in the colon mucosa in part by preventing rupture of lymphoid follicles. In vivo administration of Bin1 mAb altered tight junction protein expression and cecal barrier function. Strikingly, electrophysiology studies in organ cultures showed that Bin1 mAb could elevate resistance and lowe

The impact of targeting all elderly persons in England and Wales for yearly influenza vaccination: excess mortality due to pneumonia or influenza and time trend study.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the impact on mortality due to pneumonia or influenza of the change from risk-based to age group-based targeting of the elderly for yearly influenza vaccination in England and Wales. DESIGN: Excess mortality estimated using time series of deaths registered to pneumonia or influenza, accounting for seasonality, trend and artefacts. Non-excess mortality plotted as proxy for long-term trend in mortality. SETTING: England and Wales. PARTICIPANTS: Persons aged 65-74 and 75+ years whose deaths were registered to underlying pneumonia or influenza between 1975/1976 and 2004/2005. OUTCOME MEASURES: Multiplicative effect on average excess pneumonia and influenza deaths each winter in the 4-6 winters since age group-based targeting of vaccination was introduced (in persons aged 75+ years from 1998/1999; in persons aged 65+ years from 2000/2001), estimated using multivariable regression adjusted for temperature, antigenic drift and vaccine mismatch, and stratified by dominant circulating influenza subtype. Trend in baseline weekly pneumonia and influenza death rates. RESULTS: There is a suggestion of lower average excess mortality in the six winters after age group-based targeting began compared to before, but the CI for the 65-74 years age group includes no difference. Trend in baseline pneumonia and influenza mortality shows an apparent downward turning point around 2000 for the 65-74 years age group and from the mid-1990s in the 75+ years age group. CONCLUSIONS: There is weakly supportive evidence that the marked increases in vaccine coverage accompanying the switch from risk-based to age group-based targeting of the elderly for yearly influenza vaccination in England and Wales were associated with lower levels of pneumonia and influenza mortality in older people in the first 6 years after age group-based targeting began. The possible impact of these policy changes is observed as weak evidence for lower average excess mortality as well as a turning point in baseline mortality coincident with the changes

The Norse waterways of West Mainland Orkney, Scotland

This study was funded by BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grants 2017-18 Round.Norse place-names for farms, individual landscape features and general landscape areas are ubiquitous throughout the Orkney Islands. These have an origin during the mediaeval period AD790–1350 when Orkney was ruled by Scandinavian earls. The oldest referenced maps for the parish of Harray (West Mainland, Orkney) suggests that in the past significant waterways crossed wetlands extending between the Loch of Harray and Houseby in an area associated with the earldom power base at Birsay. Subsequent drainage projects, changes in climate and sea level have since resulted in the loss of the waterways. An investigation of the wetlands using geophysical and geological analysis provided a reconstruction of the palaeo-environments. Comparison with place-names of significance allowed interpretation of possible routeways along navigable waters by shallow-draught Viking-Age vessels. The results allow for re-drawing the map of Norse Orkney and postulation of produce transfer corridors from estates in the south to the power centre at Birsay.PostprintPeer reviewe

Variance components linkage analysis for adjusted systolic blood pressure in the Framingham Heart Study

We performed variance components linkage analysis in nuclear families from the Framingham Heart Study on nine phenotypes derived from systolic blood pressure (SBP). The phenotypes were the maximum and mean SBP, and SBP at age 40, each analyzed either uncorrected, or corrected using two subsets of epidemiological/clinical factors. Evidence for linkage to chromosome 8p was detected with all phenotypes except the uncorrected maximum SBP, suggesting this region harbors a gene contributing to variation in SBP

The identity of the non-marine ostracod Cypris subglobosa Sowerby from the intertrappean deposits of Peninsular India

During an investigation of type collections in The Natural History Museum, London, made in India during the nineteenth century, the syntypes of Cypris subglobosa Sowerby have been re-discovered. This species is shown to belong to the genus Paracypretta and to be confined to the Upper Cretaceous, and possibly Palaeocene, non-marine intertrappean deposits of the Indian Deccan Volcanic Province. The numerous and widespread Recent and Quaternary records of this taxon are of a separate species that belongs to the genus Cypris. The examination of comparative material from a number of localities in India reveals the presence of two other contemporary species of ParacyprettaP. jonesi Bhatia and Rana and P. elizabethae sp. nov., which is formally described herein

On spherical averages of radial basis functions

A radial basis function (RBF) has the general form $$s(x)=\sum_{k=1}^{n}a_{k}\phi(x-b_{k}),\quad x\in\mathbb{R}^{d},$$ where the coefficients a 1,…,a n are real numbers, the points, or centres, b 1,…,b n lie in ℝ d , and φ:ℝ d →ℝ is a radially symmetric function. Such approximants are highly useful and enjoy rich theoretical properties; see, for instance (Buhmann, Radial Basis Functions: Theory and Implementations, [2003]; Fasshauer, Meshfree Approximation Methods with Matlab, [2007]; Light and Cheney, A Course in Approximation Theory, [2000]; or Wendland, Scattered Data Approximation, [2004]). The important special case of polyharmonic splines results when φ is the fundamental solution of the iterated Laplacian operator, and this class includes the Euclidean norm φ(x)=‖x‖ when d is an odd positive integer, the thin plate spline φ(x)=‖x‖2log  ‖x‖ when d is an even positive integer, and univariate splines. Now B-splines generate a compactly supported basis for univariate spline spaces, but an analyticity argument implies that a nontrivial polyharmonic spline generated by (1.1) cannot be compactly supported when d>1. However, a pioneering paper of Jackson (Constr. Approx. 4:243–264, [1988]) established that the spherical average of a radial basis function generated by the Euclidean norm can be compactly supported when the centres and coefficients satisfy certain moment conditions; Jackson then used this compactly supported spherical average to construct approximate identities, with which he was then able to derive some of the earliest uniform convergence results for a class of radial basis functions. Our work extends this earlier analysis, but our technique is entirely novel, and applies to all polyharmonic splines. Furthermore, we observe that the technique provides yet another way to generate compactly supported, radially symmetric, positive definite functions. Specifically, we find that the spherical averaging operator commutes with the Fourier transform operator, and we are then able to identify Fourier transforms of compactly supported functions using the Paley–Wiener theorem. Furthermore, the use of Haar measure on compact Lie groups would not have occurred without frequent exposure to Iserles’s study of geometric integration

The Ursinus Weekly, October 24, 1974

Profs to lecture on Pa. Dutch arts • Dr. Lodge joins U.C. Psych Dept. • Campus Chest plans for funds and fun • Forum features flute and guitar • Is there a ghost in U.C.\u27s haunted hall? • Letters to the editor: Students demand a good education • The origin of The Lantern • Alumni corner • An autumn walk • Mr. Richter goes to school • What\u27s playing at the movies? • Spectrum blues: Joe Cocker • Spanish Club plans outing • Campus Gold activities • Introducing campus leaders • Money given away • Ursinus Homecoming 1974: Fraternity candidates to wear the queen\u27s crown • Homecoming from Ursinus past • Union ripped-off • A football commentary • X-country: three in a rowhttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/weekly/1023/thumbnail.jp

Extending Halogen-based Medicinal Chemistry to Proteins: IODO-INSULIN AS A CASE STUDY

Insulin, a protein critical for metabolic homeostasis, provides a classical model for protein design with application to human health. Recent efforts to improve its pharmaceutical formulation demonstrated that iodination of a conserved tyrosine (Tyr(B26)) enhances key properties of a rapid-acting clinical analog. Moreover, the broad utility of halogens in medicinal chemistry has motivated the use of hybrid quantum- and molecular-mechanical methods to study proteins. Here, we (i) undertook quantitative atomistic simulations of 3-[iodo-Tyr(B26)]insulin to predict its structural features, and (ii) tested these predictions by X-ray crystallography. Using an electrostatic model of the modified aromatic ring based on quantum chemistry, the calculations suggested that the analog, as a dimer and hexamer, exhibits subtle differences in aromatic-aromatic interactions at the dimer interface. Aromatic rings (Tyr(B16), Phe(B24), Phe(B25), 3-I-Tyr(B26), and their symmetry-related mates) at this interface adjust to enable packing of the hydrophobic iodine atoms within the core of each monomer. Strikingly, these features were observed in the crystal structure of a 3-[iodo-Tyr(B26)]insulin analog (determined as an R6 zinc hexamer). Given that residues B24-B30 detach from the core on receptor binding, the environment of 3-I-Tyr(B26) in a receptor complex must differ from that in the free hormone. Based on the recent structure of a "micro-receptor" complex, we predict that 3-I-Tyr(B26) engages the receptor via directional halogen bonding and halogen-directed hydrogen bonding as follows: favorable electrostatic interactions exploiting, respectively, the halogen's electron-deficient σ-hole and electronegative equatorial band. Inspired by quantum chemistry and molecular dynamics, such "halogen engineering" promises to extend principles of medicinal chemistry to proteins

Watermelon configurations with wall interaction: exact and asymptotic results

We perform an exact and asymptotic analysis of the model of $n$ vicious walkers interacting with a wall via contact potentials, a model introduced by Brak, Essam and Owczarek. More specifically, we study the partition function of watermelon configurations which start on the wall, but may end at arbitrary height, and their mean number of contacts with the wall. We improve and extend the earlier (partially non-rigorous) results by Brak, Essam and Owczarek, providing new exact results, and more precise and more general asymptotic results, in particular full asymptotic expansions for the partition function and the mean number of contacts. Furthermore, we relate this circle of problems to earlier results in the combinatorial and statistical literature.Comment: AmS-TeX, 41 page