Ancestor guardian figures and ancestral baskets among the bakuta

Religion and Custom in a Muslim Society: The Berti of Sudan. Ladislav Holy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. x + 243 pp.

The Bedovin of Cyrenaica: Studies in Personal and Corporate Power. Emrys L. Peters (edited by Jack Goody and Emmanuel Marx). Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. 310 pp.

Kinship, Honour and Solidarity: Cousin Marriage in the Middle East. Ladislav Holy. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1989. 143 pp.

Marriage among Muslims: Preference and Choice in Northern Pakistan. Hastings Donnan. Delhi and Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1988. 231 pp.

Gender in Crisis: Women and the Palestinian Resistance Movement Julie M. Peteet. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991. 245 pp.

Tahitians: Mind and Experience in the Society Islands. Robert I Levy. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1991 /1975/. 547 pp.

Tikopia Songs: Poetic and Musical Art of a Polynesian People of the Solomon Islands. Raymond Firth (with Mervyn McLean). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. xvii + 307 pp.

Migration from Kalimantan to Madagascar. Otto Chr. Dahl. Oslo: Norwegian University Press/ The Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture, 1991. 143 pp.

Land Filled With Flies: A Political Economy of the Kalahari. Edwin N. Wilmsen. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1989. xviii + 402 pp.

The Creative Communion. African Folk Models of Fertility and the Regeneration of Life, edited by Anita Jacobson‐Widdinc and Walter van Beek. Uppsala Studies in Cultural Anthropology, 15. Uppsala, 1990. 351 pp.

When the Grass is Gone: Development Interventions in African Arid Lands, edited by P. T. W. Baxter. Seminar Proceedings No. 25. Uppsala: The Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, 1991. 214 pp.

Women at a Loss: Changes in Maasai Pastoralism and their Effects on Gender Relations. AUD Talle. Stockholm Studies in Social Anthropology, 19. Stockholm: Department of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University, 1988.

The Poison in the Gift Ritual, Prestation and the Dominant Caste in a North Indian Village. Gloria Goodwin Raheja. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. 286 pp.

The Assembly of Listeners. Jains in Society, edited by Michael Carrithers and Caroline Humphrey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. xiii + 328 pp.

Tibetan Buddhist Nuns. History, Cultural Norms and Social Reality. Hanna Havnevik. Oslo: Norwegian University Press. 1991. 251 pp.

The Taste of Blood: Spirit Possession in Brazilian Candomblé. Jim Wafer. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991. 219 pp.

Völkerkunde im Nationalsozialismus: A spekte der An‐passung, Affinität und Behauptung einer wissenschaft‐lichen Disziplin. Hans Fischer. Hamburger Bei‐träge zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Bd. 7. Berlin &; Hamburg: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 1990. 312 pp. List of ethnologists in Germany from 1933 (Austria from 1938) to 1945.

Buskar och fåglar: en socialantropologisk studie av gorale, brrgsfolket i södra Polen. Melcher Ekstro‐mer. Lund Monographs in Social Anthropology 1. Lund: Lund University Press, 1991.

Die Völker Nordsibiriens unter sowjetischer Herrschaft. Adelheid Weiser. Kulturanthropologische Studien Bd. 16. Hohenschäfdarn bei München: Klaus Renner Verlag, 1989. 325 pp.

Anthropology and the Riddle of the Sphinx: Paradoxes of Change in the Life Course, edited by Paul Spencer. ASA Monographs 28. London: Routledge, 1990. xii + 222 pp.     

A <Emphasis Type="Italic">Construction Morphology</Emphasis> account of derivation in Mandarin Chinese

In the Chinese language, morphologically complex words have been attested since the remote past of the language, including both stem-modifying processes and agglutination of morphemes, mostly lexical and free in the classical language. However, in Chinese, grammaticalization typically entails no phonological alteration (Bisang, Studies in Language 20:519–597, 1996) and it is still a matter of debate whether compounding and derivation are two distinct phenomena in Modern Mandarin Chinese (see, among others, Pan et al, The research on word formation in Chinese, 2004). In this paper we shall tackle this issue in the framework of Construction Morphology (Booij, In: Dressler et al (eds) Morphology in demarcations, 2005; In: Montermini et al (eds) Selected proceedings of the 5th Décembrettes: morphology in Toulouse, 2007), also taking into account the diachronic perspective. Our proposal is that it is possible to analyse as instances of grammaticalized derivational formants the right-hand elements in word formation schemas such as [[X] _x 性] _n [[X] _x xìng] _n ‘the quality of X/connected with X’ (抽象性 chōuxiàngxìng “abstractness”), which undergo processes of semantic shift analogous to those of e.g. English -hood.     

Essay review: Museums: Revisiting sites in the history of the natural sciences

Mary P. Winsor,Reading the shape of Nature: Comparative zoology at the Agassiz Museum (Chacago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Ronald Rainger,An Agenda for Antiquty: Henry Fairfield Osborn and Vertedrate Paleontology at the American Meseum of Natural History, 1890–1935 (Tuscaloosa: University of Aladama Press, 1991).     

Journal of Cellular Physiology: Volume 227, Number 8, June 2012

Cover: Ca²⁺/calmodulin‐dependent serine kinase (CASK) (green) present in the sperm plasma membrane of the proximal principal piece of the flagellum is over‐expressed and mis‐localized in Junctional Adhesion molecule‐A (Jam‐A) null mice. Sperm heads (blue) are counterstained with DAPI. See article by Aravindan et al., pages 3138–3150, this issue.     

Transient expression and stable transformation of soybean using the jellyfish green fluorescent protein

 Embryogenic soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merrill.] suspension cultures were bombarded with five different gene constructions encoding the jellyfish (Aequorea victoria) green fluorescent protein (GFP). These constructions had altered codon usage compared to the native GFP gene and mutations that increased the solubility of the protein and/or altered the native chromophore. All of the constructions produced green fluorescence in soybean cultures upon blue light excitation, although a soluble modified red-shifted GFP (smRS-GFP) was the easiest to detect based on the brightness and number of foci produced. Expression of smRS-GFP was visible as early as 1.5 h after bombardment, with peak expression at approximately 6.5 h. Large numbers of smRS-GFP-expressing areas were visible for 48 h postbombardment and declined rapidly thereafter. Stably transformed cultures and plants exhibited variation in the intensity and location of GFP expression. PCR and Southern hybridization analyses confirmed the presence of introduced GFP genes in stably transformed cultures. Received: 23 September 1998 / Revision received: 4 January 1999 / Accepted: 15 January 1999     

Verbal morphology in Murrinh-Patha: evidence for templates

If questions concerning affix ordering are among the central ones in morphological theory, then languages with templatic morphology appear to provide the least interesting answer, since in these languages affix order must be simply stipulated in the form of arbitrary position classes. For this reason, much recent research into templatic morphology has attempted to show that affix order in such languages is in fact governed by underlying semantic or syntactic principles. The most fully articulated position in this respect is that of Rice (Morpheme order and semantic scope, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000), who provides a comprehensive analysis of morpheme order across the Athapaskan languages and argues that it is largely determined by universal principles of semantic (and syntactic) scope. If these principles of word formation are truly universal, we should expect to find evidence for them in all similarly ‘templatic’ systems, including the head-marking languages of Australia. In this context, I discuss the order of verbal affixes in Murrinh-Patha and show that these data cannot be adequately accounted for by syntactic or semantic accounts of affix ordering, but rather provide strong support for the existence of templatic organization in morphological systems.     

The Altyerre Story—‘Suffering Badly by Translation’

In culture‐contact situations, it is commonplace for words to be borrowed from other unrelated vernaculars, for their pronunciations to be changed, and their meanings modified to fit new contexts. The Arandic word altyerre is a rather extreme example of this, and at the end of the nineteenth century, the ‘translation’ of the related word Alcheringa as ‘dream‐times’ sparked a debate that, in some forms, continues to this day. In this article, I discuss some of the reasons why this particular word struck such a controversial chord. I give an updated semantic perspective on the word altyerre , drawing on evidence from Arandic languages and from other languages in Central Australia. Then I examine some of the consequences of both religious and secular interpretations of altyerre and show how the popularisation of this word and its translations has impacted on its meanings in current usage.     

Semantic Processing Persists despite Anomalous Syntactic Category: ERP Evidence from Chinese Passive Sentences

The syntax-first model and the parallel/interactive models make different predictions regarding whether syntactic category processing has a temporal and functional primacy over semantic processing. To further resolve this issue, an event-related potential experiment was conducted on 24 Chinese speakers reading Chinese passive sentences with the passive marker BEI (NP₁ + BEI + NP₂ + Verb). This construction was selected because it is the most-commonly used Chinese passive and very much resembles German passives, upon which the syntax-first hypothesis was primarily based. We manipulated semantic consistency (consistent vs. inconsistent) and syntactic category (noun vs. verb) of the critical verb, yielding four conditions: CORRECT (correct sentences), SEMANTIC (semantic anomaly), SYNTACTIC (syntactic category anomaly), and COMBINED (combined anomalies). Results showed both N400 and P600 effects for sentences with semantic anomaly, with syntactic category anomaly, or with combined anomalies. Converging with recent findings of Chinese ERP studies on various constructions, our study provides further evidence that syntactic category processing does not precede semantic processing in reading Chinese.     

Effects of mammal and insect herbivory on population dynamics of a native Californian thistle, Cirsium occidentale

We explored consequences of spatial and temporal heterogeneity in herbivory on the survival, growth, and reproduction of the Californian native dune thistle, Cirsium occidentale, in coastal and inland sites, for 2 years. We assessed the relative impacts of insect and mammalian herbivores and compared the relative importance of herbivory in coastal and inland habitats and among locations with different microclimates across a coastal dune. Effects of insect and mammalian herbivores were tested with a combination of insecticidal spray and cage exclusion treatments in a factorial experiment at the coastal site. Mammalian herbivores strongly affected the population dynamics of C. occidentale in both years, and their effects were augmented by fungal infection (1991), herbivory by stem-borers (1990) and, to a lesser extent, by insect seed predators in both years. Mammals caused most plant deaths, but the mammal species responsible differed among sites. Rabbit herbivory altered the vegetative growth of coastal thistles and significantly modified other key aspects of Cirsium demography, including growth rate and timing of reproduction. Small, uncaged plants grazed by rabbits took at least 1 year longer to mature than did caged plants. Larvae of Pyrausta subsequalis were the only insects that killed established plants. In 1990 and 1991, the numbers of insects damaging seed heads before dispersal were low, but were sufficient to cause receptacle and seed damage. The number of mature, undamaged seeds (and percent successful seed production) was reduced significantly only for heads infested by fungi near the ocean in 1991: the fungus occurred in 37% of heads and caused a 77% reduction in mature seeds. Received: 21 October 1996 / Accepted: 27 March 1997     

Identification of plastid genotypes in Oenothera subsect. Munzia by restriction fragment length polymorphisms (RFLPs)

 Five discrete plastid genotypes (plastomes), designated I–V and typified by Oenothera Hookeri, biennis, Lamarckiana, parviflora and argillicola respectively, have been previously characterized within the European subsect. Euoenothera. The evolutionarily more-derived plastome types (I, II and V) are generally less tolerant of new hybridization events than the ancestral types (III and IV), and were first identified based on their incompatibility reactions with standard hybrid nuclei. Restriction maps for all five plastomes are available for the enzymes PvuII, SalI, KpnI and PstI (Gordon et al. 1982). The present study employs PvuII and KpnI restriction digests to compare 28 of the 45 species of subsect. Munzia with Euoenothera plastomes I–V. The results of plastome RFLP fingerprinting show uniform divergence of the South American taxa from their European congeners; all share the previously documented 45-kb inversion in the large single-copy region reported by Hachtel et al. (1991). However, at least six new plastome types have evolved within subsect. Munzia, giving rise to small-fragment size differences of 0.1–0.7 kb. In two of these cases (Oe. featherstonei and Oe. longiflora) unique fragments occurred. For Oe. featherstonei the unique KpnI fragment resulted from a novel 2.2 kb insertion, whereas in Oe. longiflora an additional PvuII restriction site has been created. Received: 2 June 1998 / Accepted: 14 July 1998     

Reduced dosage of the modifiers of epigenetic reprogramming Dnmt1, Dnmt3L,SmcHD1 and Foxo3a has no detectable effect on mouse telomere length in vivo

Studies carried out in cultured cells have implicated modifiers of epigenetic reprogramming in the regulation of telomere length, reporting elongation in cells that were null for DNA methyltransferase DNA methyltransferase 1 (Dnmt1), both de novo DNA methyltransferases, Dnmt3a and Dnmt3b or various histone methyltransferases. To investigate this further, we assayed telomere length in whole embryos or adult tissue from mice carrying mutations in four different modifiers of epigenetic reprogramming: Dnmt1, DNA methyltransferase 3-like, structural maintenance of chromosomes hinge domain containing 1, and forkhead box O3a. Terminal restriction fragment analysis was used to compare telomere length in homozygous mutants, heterozygous mutants and wild-type littermates. Contrary to expectation, we did not detect overall lengthening in the mutants, raising questions about the role of epigenetic processes in telomere length in vivo.     

The Preface to Darwin’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Origin of Species</Emphasis>: The Curious History of the “Historical Sketch” *

Almost any modern reader’s first encounter with Darwin’s writing is likely to be the “Historical Sketch,” inserted by Darwin as a preface to an early edition of the Origin of Species, and having since then appeared as the preface to every edition after the second English edition. The Sketch was intended by him to serve as a short “history of opinion” on the species question before he presented his own theory in the Origin proper. But the provenance of the “Historical Sketch” is somewhat obscure. Some things are known about its production, such as when it first appeared and what changes were made to it between its first appearance in 1860 and its final form, for the fourth English edition, in 1866. But how it evolved in Darwin’s mind, why he wrote it at all, and what he thought he was accomplishing by prefacing it to the Origin remain questions that have not been carefully addressed in the scholarly literature on Darwin. I attempt to show that Darwin’s various statements about the “Historical Sketch,” made primarily to several of his correspondents between 1856 and 1860, are somewhat in conflict with one another, thus making problematic a satisfactory interpretation of how, when, and why the Sketch came to be. I also suggest some probable resolutions to the several difficulties. How Darwin came to settle on the title “Historical Sketch” for the Preface to the Origin is not certain, but a guess may be ventured. When he first submitted the text to Asa Gray in February 1860 he called it simply “Preface Contributed by the Author to this American Edition” (Burkhardt et al., eds., vol. 8, 1993, p. 572; the collected correspondence is hereafter cited as CCD). In fact he had thought of it as being properly called a Preface much earlier, perhaps as early as 1856, as will be seen in what follows. It came to be called “An Historical Sketch of the Recent Progress of Opinion on the Origin of Species” only in the third English edition, April 1861. This is the title it retained thereafter, with the exception of an addition to the title in the sixth English edition, “Previously to the Publication of the First Edition of this Work” (Peckham, 1959, pp. 20, 59). The word “sketch,” on the other hand was one of two words Darwin commonly used in private correspondence to refer to the book that would later become the Origin, the other word being “Abstract,” and both signifying that Darwin thought of the work as being a resume rather than a full-fledged study (e.g., letter to J.D. Hooker, May 9 1856, CCD vol. 6 p. 106; letter to Baden Powell January 18 1860, CCD vol. 8 p. 41; letter to Lyell 25 June 1858, CCD v. 7, 1991, pp. 117–8; letter to Lyell May 1856, CCD, v. 6 p. 100). The most likely source of the title “Historical Sketch” for Darwin’s Preface is Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology in which, beginning with the third edition (1834), Lyell added titles to his chapters, calling chapters 2–4 “Historical Sketch of the Progress of Geology” (Secord, in Lyell [1997], p. xlvii; for other uses by Lyell of this expression, cf. Porter, 1976, p. 95; idem 1982, p. 38; and Lyell, 1830 [1990], p. 30). Further parallels between Lyell’s Introduction and Darwin’s “Historical Sketch” in terms of content and strategy are suggested below.     

Effects of age on the acquisition of agreement inflection

Grammaticality judgement tasks show that second language learners who started during childhood are significantly more accurate on judging inflection than learners who started after puberty [Johnson, J., & Newport, E. (1989). Cognitive Psychology, 21, 60–99; Johnson, J., & Newport, E. (1991). Cognition, 39, 215–258; McDonald, J. (2000). Applied Psycholinguistics, 21, 395–423. Production data confirmthat inflection is a bottleneck in adult language acquisition, and that they differ from child learners in this respect [Lardiere, D. (1998). Second Language Research, 14, 359–375; Prévost, P. (2003). Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 25, 65–97; Pre vost, P., & White, L. (2000). Second Language Research, 16(2), 103–133]. Although the observations suggest that the acquisition of inflection is influenced by age, there is no study that focuses on this particular issue nor is there an articulated explanation available for the observed age-related difference. In this contribution, we compare child L2 learners of Dutch to child L1 and adult L2 learners of Dutch in order to investigate effects of age on the acquisition of verbal and adjectival inflection. We hypothesize that adult agreement paradigms differ from child agreement paradigms, the reason being that adult learners cannot rely on syntactic cues, whereas children make reliable use of syntax in building paradigms. By effect, adult learners end up with non-targetlike small paradigms that contain underspecified suffixes. We focus on the types of errors in the three learner groups (child L1, child L2 and adult L2). Our empirical basis consists of results obtained in a series of production experiments. An erratum to this article can be found at     

Abstraction and natural language semantics

According to the traditional view, a word prototypically denotes a class of objects sharing similar features, i.e. it results from an abstraction based on the detection of common properties in perceived entities. I explore here another idea: words result from abstraction of common premises in the rules governing our actions. I first argue that taking 'inference', instead of 'reference', as the basic issue in semantics does matter. I then discuss two phenomena that are, in my opinion, particularly difficult to analyse within the scope of traditional semantic theories: systematic polysemy and plurals. I conclude by a discussion of my approach, and by a summary of its main features.     

Evidence of Invasive Felis silvestris Predation on Propithecus verreauxi at Beza Mahafaly Special Reserve, Madagascar

Increasing evidence supports the idea that endemic avian and mammalian predators have profoundly impacted primate populations in Madagascar (Goodman, S. M. Predation on lemurs. In S. M. Goodman, & J. P. Benstead (Eds.), The natural history of Madagascar (pp. 1221–1228). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, (2003).). The role in regulating lemur populations of the 3 introduced mammalian carnivorans —small Indian civets (Viverricula indica, Desmarest 1804), domestic dogs (Canis lupus familiaris, Linnaeus 1758), and invasive wildcats (Felis silvestris, Schreber 1775)— is less clear, but recent evidence suggests that the latter 2 are becoming important predators of diurnal lemurs. We report evidence for invasive wildcat predation on sifaka (Propithecus verreauxi verreauxi) in Parcel 1 at Beza Mahafaly Special Reserve, Madagascar, including skeletal remains of apparent Propithecus sifaka victims, observations of wildcat predatory behavior, and behavioral responses of the lemurs in the presence of wildcats.     

Polymorphic genotypes of the HRES-1 human endogenous retrovirus locus correlate with systemic lupus erythematosus and autoreactivity

 Antinuclear autoantibodies are a hallmark of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Autoantibodies to HRES-1/p28, a 28 000 M _r nuclear protein, commonly occur in patients with SLE. HRES-1 is a single-copy endogenous retroviral element mapped to human Chromosome 1 at q42. A polymorphic Hin dIII site defines two different allelic forms of the genomic locus. The HRES-1/1 probe [5.5 kilobases (kb)] anneals to three polymorphic fragments and three genotypes can be differentiated: I, 5.5 kb fragment only; II, 3.7 kb and 1.8 kb fragments only; and III, all three polymorphic fragments. By cloning of the HRES-1 locus from homozygous type I and type II human DNA samples, the polymorphic Hin dIII site was identified as a G to C transition at position 653 of the long terminal repeat region. Family studies showed that Hin dIII genotypes of the HRES-1 locus are inherited in a Mendelian pattern. The relative frequency of genotype I with respect to genotype III was 3.1-fold lower in patients with SLE (14 : 40=0.35) in comparison to 100 ethnically matched control donors (47 : 43=1.09;P=0.0084). Frequency of genotype I vs genotype II alleles was lower in SLE (68/52) than in normal donors (137/63;P=0.033), suggesting that a genotype I allele of the HRES-1 locus may be protective against SLE. Western blot seroreactivity with recombinant HRES-1/p28 was noted in 4/14 (29%) of genotype I patients and 13/19 (68%) of genotype III patients (P<0.025). These data raise the possibility that the HRES-1 element or a gene in linkage disequilibrium with this genomic locus may influence autoimmunity in SLE. Received: 20 February 1999 / Revised: 15 April 1999     

In vitro biosynthesis of 1,4-β-galactan attached to rhamnogalacturonan I

 The biosynthesis of galactan was investigated using microsomal membranes isolated from suspension-cultured cells of potato (Solanum tuberosum L. var. AZY). Incubation of the microsomal membranes in the presence of UDP-[¹⁴C]galactose resulted in a radioactive product insoluble in 70% methanol. The product released only [¹⁴C]galactose upon acid hydrolysis. Treatment of the product with Aspergillus niger endo-1,4-β-galactanase released 65–70% of the radioactivity to a 70%-methanol-soluble fraction. To a minor extent, [¹⁴C]galactose was also incorporated into proteins, however these galactoproteins were not a substrate for Aspergillus niger endo-1,4-β-galactanase. Thus, the majority of the ¹⁴C-labelled product was 1,4-β-galactan. Compounds released by the endo-1,4-β-galactanase treatment were mainly [¹⁴C]galactose and [¹⁴C]galactobiose, indicating that the synthesized 1,4-β-galactan was longer than a trimer. In vitro synthesis of 1,4-β-galactan was most active with 6-d-old cells, which are in the middle of the linear growth phase. The optimal synthesis occurred at pH 6.0 in the presence of 7.5 mM Mn²⁺. Aspergillus aculeatus rhamnogalacturonase A digested at least 50% of the labelled product to smaller fragments of approx. 14 kDa, suggesting that the synthesized [¹⁴C]galactan was attached to the endogenous rhamnogalacturonan I. When rhamnogalacturonase A digests of the labelled product were subsequently treated with endo-1,4-β-galactanase, radioactivity was not only found as [¹⁴C]galactose or [¹⁴C]galactobiose but also as larger fragments. The larger fragments were likely the [¹⁴C]galactose or [¹⁴C]galactobiose still attached to the rhamnogalacturonan backbone since treatment with β-galactosidase together with endo-1,4-β-galactanase digested all radioactivity to the fraction eluting as [¹⁴C]galactose. The data indicate that the majority of the [¹⁴C]galactan was attached directly to the rhamnose residues in rhamnogalacturonan I. Thus, isolated microsomal membranes contain enzyme activities to both initiate and elongate 1,4-β-galactan sidechains in the endogenous pectic rhamnogalacturonan I. Received: 24 June 1999 / Accepted: 30 August 1999