Ancient genomes provide insights into family structure and the heredity of social status in the early Bronze Age of southeastern Europe

Twenty-four palaeogenomes from Mokrin, a major Early Bronze Age necropolis in southeastern Europe, were sequenced to analyse kinship between individuals and to better understand prehistoric social organization. 15 investigated individuals were involved in genetic relationships of varying degrees. The Mokrin sample resembles a genetically unstructured population, suggesting that the community's social hierarchies were not accompanied by strict marriage barriers. We find evidence for female exogamy but no indications for strict patrilocality. Individual status differences at Mokrin, as indicated by grave goods, support the inference that females could inherit status, but could not transmit status to all their sons. We further show that sons had the possibility to acquire status during their lifetimes, but not necessarily to inherit it. Taken together, these findings suggest that Southeastern Europe in the Early Bronze Age had a significantly different family and social structure than Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age societies of Central Europe

Low Prevalence of Lactase Persistence in Bronze Age Europe Indicates Ongoing Strong Selection over the Last 3,000 Years

Lactase persistence (LP), the continued expression of lactase into adulthood, is the most strongly selected single gene trait over the last 10,000 years in multiple human populations. It has been posited that the primary allele causing LP among Eurasians, rs4988235-A [1], only rose to appreciable frequencies during the Bronze and Iron Ages [2, 3], long after humans started consuming milk from domesticated animals. This rapid rise has been attributed to an influx of people from the Pontic-Caspian steppe that began around 5,000 years ago [4, 5]. We investigate the spatiotemporal spread of LP through an analysis of 14 warriors from the Tollense Bronze Age battlefield in northern Germany (∼3,200 before present, BP), the oldest large-scale conflict site north of the Alps. Genetic data indicate that these individuals represent a single unstructured Central/Northern European population. We complemented these data with genotypes of 18 individuals from the Bronze Age site Mokrin in Serbia (∼4,100 to ∼3,700 BP) and 37 individuals from Eastern Europe and the Pontic-Caspian Steppe region, predating both Bronze Age sites (∼5,980 to ∼3,980 BP). We infer low LP in all three regions, i.e., in northern Germany and South-eastern and Eastern Europe, suggesting that the surge of rs4988235 in Central and Northern Europe was unlikely caused by Steppe expansions. We estimate a selection coefficient of 0.06 and conclude that the selection was ongoing in various parts of Europe over the last 3,000 years

Early farmers from across Europe directly descended from Neolithic Aegeans

Farming and sedentism first appeared in southwestern Asia during the early Holocene and later spread to neighboring regions, including Europe, along multiple dispersal routes. Conspicuous uncertainties remain about the relative roles of migration, cultural diffusion, and admixture with local foragers in the early Neolithization of Europe. Here we present paleogenomic data for five Neolithic individuals from northern Greece and northwestern Turkey spanning the time and region of the earliest spread of farming into Europe. We use a novel approach to recalibrate raw reads and call genotypes from ancient DNA and observe striking genetic similarity both among Aegean early farmers and with those from across Europe. Our study demonstrates a direct genetic link between Mediterranean and Central European early farmers and those of Greece and Anatolia, extending the European Neolithic migratory chain all the way back to southwestern Asia

A robust cylindrical fitting to point cloud data

Environmental, engineering and industrial modelling of natural features (e.g. trees) and man-made features (e.g. pipelines) requires some form of fitting of geometrical objects such as cylinders, which is commonly undertaken using a least-squares method that—in order to get optimal estimation—assumes normal Gaussian distribution. In the presence of outliers, however, this assumption is violated leading to a Gaussian mixture distribution. This study proposes a robust parameter estimation method, which is an improved and extended form of vector algebraic modelling. The proposed method employs expectation maximisation and maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) to find cylindrical parameters in case of Gaussian mixture distribution. MLE computes the model parameters assuming that the distribution of model errors is a Gaussian mixture corresponding to inlier and outlier points. The parameters of the Gaussian mixture distribution and the membership functions of the inliers and outliers are computed using an expectation maximisation algorithm from the histogram of the model error distribution, and the initial guess values for the model parameters are obtained using total least squares. The method, illustrated by a practical example from a terrestrial laser scanning point cloud, is novel in that it is algebraic (i.e. provides a non-iterative solution to the global maximisation problem of the likelihood function), is practically useful for any type of error distribution model and is capable of separating points of interest and outliers

In search of precision in absorptive capacity research: A synthesis of the literature and consolidation of findings

This paper addresses two fundamental problems in the absorptive capacity (AC) literature: conceptual ambiguity on what AC is and a lack of synthesized empirical findings showing how AC matters for firm outcomes. We take a two-pronged approach to address these problems: (1) conceptual distillation of the literature to discern the core AC dimensions, outcomes, and contingent external knowledge conditions and (2) meta-analysis of the empirical literature to synthesize the findings. For conceptual distillation, we identify three dimensions of AC: absorptive effort (i.e., the knowledge-building investments made by a firm), absorptive knowledge base (i.e., the current knowledge stock of a firm), and absorptive process (i.e., a firm’s internal procedures and practices related to knowledge diffusion). We develop these dimensions by explicating their theoretical roots, functions, mechanisms, and corresponding measures. Leveraging the conceptual distillation, we conduct meta-analyses of the empirical literature and synthesize key findings. We find that AC has a significant positive effect on firm outcomes and that the most commonly used dimension, absorptive effort, has the lowest mean effect size. We also find that knowledge acquisition and innovation generation fully mediate the effect of absorptive knowledge base but partially mediate the effects of absorptive effort and absorptive process on firm performance. Furthermore, AC’s effects on firm outcomes vary across external knowledge contingencies. Overall, this paper provides a strong theoretical and empirical basis to advance a dimensional approach in AC research and thereby facilitates a more rigorous research necessary for cumulative knowledge development on this important topic

The Lower Saxony research network design of environments for ageing: Towards interdisciplinary research on information and communication technologies in ageing societies

Worldwide, ageing societies are bringing challenges for independent living and healthcare. Health-enabling technologies for pervasive healthcare and sensor-enhanced health information systems offer new opportunities for care. In order to identify, implement and assess such new information and communication technologies ICT the 'Lower Saxony Research Network Design of Environments for Ageing' GAL has been launched in 2008 as interdisciplinary research project. In this publication, we inform about the goals and structure of GAL, including first outcomes, as well as to discuss the potentials and possible barriers of such highly interdisciplinary research projects in the field of health-enabling technologies for pervasive healthcare. Although GAL's high interdisciplinarity at the beginning slowed down the speed of research progress, we can now work on problems, which can hardly be solved by one or few disciplines alone. Interdisciplinary research projects on ICT in ageing s ocieties are needed and recommended