Style, Function and Cultural Transmission

Recent evolutionary approaches to the understanding of lithic variability take us back to long-standing issues in lithic studies to do with the claimed contrast between style and function and the Binford-Bordes debate of the 1960s concerning the factors that affect inter-assemblage variation. In fact, the style and function contrast is an unhelpful one, not least when considering the question of convergence. Taking the definition of style as ‘a way of doing’, all functions are carried out in locally specific ways that have a transmission history, although the extent to which the history of the attributes relevant to the function have been subject to random drift and innovation patterns, as opposed to selection, will vary. Moreover, in a subtractive technology like lithics the extent to which a transmission signal will be visible in an attribute like the angle of a cutting edge is unclear. The contrasting view is that, in the case of lithics, functional requirements will always call into existence the technical innovations to satisfy them, which in any case are not that difficult to find. The paper addresses these and related issues with reference to previous work by Shennan and colleagues on the use of material culture to identify within and between group variation, the extent to which isolation-by-distance in space and time can account for the similarities and differences between assemblages, and the role of phylogenetic methods

Breaking Bread: the Functions of Social Eating

Communal eating, whether in feasts or everyday meals with family or friends, is a human universal, yet it has attracted surprisingly little evolutionary attention. I use data from a UK national stratified survey to test the hypothesis that eating with others provides both social and individual benefits. I show that those who eat socially more often feel happier and are more satisfied with life, are more trusting of others, are more engaged with their local communities, and have more friends they can depend on for support. Evening meals that result in respondents feeling closer to those with whom they eat involve more people, more laughter and reminiscing, as well as alcohol. A path analysis suggests that the causal direction runs from eating together to bondedness rather than the other way around. I suggest that social eating may have evolved as a mechanism for facilitating social bonding

Oxalate-induced activation of PKC-α and -δ regulates NADPH oxidase-mediated oxidative injury in renal tubular epithelial cells

Oxalate-induced oxidative stress contributes to cell injury and promotes renal deposition of calcium oxalate crystals. However, we do not know how oxalate stimulates reactive oxygen species (ROS) in renal tubular epithelial cells. We investigated the signaling mechanism of oxalate-induced ROS formation in these cells and found that oxalate significantly increased membrane-associated protein kinase C (PKC) activity while at the same time lowering cytosolic PKC activity. Oxalate markedly translocated PKC-α and -δ from the cytosol to the cell membrane. Pretreatment of LLC-PK1 cells with specific inhibitors of PKC-α or -δ significantly blocked oxalate-induced generation of superoxide and hydrogen peroxide along with NADPH oxidase activity, LDH release, lipid hydroperoxide formation, and apoptosis. The PKC activator PMA mimicked oxalate's effect on oxidative stress in LLC-PK1 cells as well as cytosol-to-membrane translocation of PKC-α and -δ. Silencing of PKC-α expression by PKC-α-specific small interfering RNA significantly attenuated oxalate-induced cell injury by decreasing hydrogen peroxide generation and LDH release. We believe this is the first demonstration that PKC-α- and -δ-dependent activation of NADPH oxidase is one of the mechanisms responsible for oxalate-induced oxidative injury in renal tubular epithelial cells. The study suggests that the therapeutic approach might be considered toward attenuating oxalate-induced PKC signaling-mediated oxidative injury in recurrent stone formers