The whole universe is my cathedral: a contemporary Navajo spiritual synthesis

This article discusses the three major spiritual healing ways used by Navajo Indians today: Traditional healing practices that have been used for generations and still have a dynamic existence relevant to everyday Navajo life; Christian healing traditions, ranging from Catholic Charismatic to Protestant Pentecostal; and practices of the Native American Church (NAC). The complex relationship among these healing traditions on the Navajo reservation is examined through a case study of a Navajo woman whose personal spirituality includes all three. Faced with serious medical problems, this devout Catholic turned to Navajo Traditional and Native American Church spiritual diagnosis and treatment. This analysis is the occasion for a reflection on the contemporary relevance of the kind of spiritual synthesis characterized in this woman's experience.     

Maxillary molar occlusal polygons in five human samples

Angular and linear measurements of maxillary first molar occlusal polygons are given for young San (Bushmen), Sotho, Asiatic Indians, Whites, and Papago Indians. Angular and linear measurements are inseparably related. Much greater variation occurs in widths than in lengths. Maximum variation occurs between San and Papago. Papago maxillary first molars are separable from Old World molar samples in two of four angles and eight of 13 indices.     

Epidemiology of fetal alcohol syndrome among American Indians of the southwest

Abstract

The epidemiological features of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) were examined among American Indians in the southwestern United States. All FAS suspects were screened in specific populations of Navajo, Pueblo, and Plains culture tribes. A total of 115 alcohol‐affected children were identified. The incidence of FAS was found to be highly variable from one cultural group to the next, ranging from 1.3 per 1,000 births (1/749) for the Navajo to 10.3 (1/97) for the Plains. The pattern of age‐specific prevalence indicates an increase over the past fifteen years. The overall rate of mothers who have produced fetal alcohol children was 6.1 per 1,000 women of childbearing age with a range of 4 to 33 per 1,000. These maternal prevalence rates were important for the accurate prediction of public health risk because 25 per cent of all mothers who had produced one affected child had also produced others. The average per mother was 1.3 alcohol‐affected children. Other findings indicate that the mothers of these children led highly disruptive and chaotic lives and were frequently isolated from mainstream social activities. In general, the gross social and cultural patterns of the tribes studied can readily explain the variation in incidence of FAS.     

The prevalence of hypertension among elderly Navajos: A test of the acculturative stress hypothesis

This is a study of the prevalence of hypertension among a sample of Navajo Indians 65 years of age and above. It is not clear whether prevalence has increased over the past generation in this age group. When men and women are compared, conventional measures of "acculturation" are related to hypertension among women but not among men. The differences between men and women seem most probably related to differences in the situation of men and women within both Navajo and Anglo-American society. Several alternative explanations are discussed as well.     

Ceph-X: development and evaluation of 2D cephalometric system

Background

Cephalometric analysis and measurements of skull parameters using X-Ray images plays an important role in predicating and monitoring orthodontic treatment. Manual analysis and measurements of cephalometric is considered tedious, time consuming, and subjected to human errors. Several cephalometric systems have been developed to automate the cephalometric procedure; however, no clear insights have been reported about reliability, performance, and usability of those systems. This study utilizes some techniques to evaluate reliability, performance, and usability metric using SUS methods of the developed cephalometric system which has not been reported in previous studies.

Methods

In this study a novel system named Ceph-X is developed to computerize the manual tasks of orthodontics during cephalometric measurements. Ceph-X is developed by using image processing techniques with three main models: enhancements X-ray image model, locating landmark model, and computation model. Ceph-X was then evaluated by using X-ray images of 30 subjects (male and female) obtained from University of Malaya hospital. Three orthodontics specialists were involved in the evaluation of accuracy to avoid intra examiner error, and performance for Ceph-X, and 20 orthodontics specialists were involved in the evaluation of the usability, and user satisfaction for Ceph-X by using the SUS approach.

Results

Statistical analysis for the comparison between the manual and automatic cephalometric approaches showed that Ceph-X achieved a great accuracy approximately 96.6%, with an acceptable errors variation approximately less than 0.5 mm, and 1°. Results showed that Ceph-X increased the specialist performance, and minimized the processing time to obtain cephalometric measurements of human skull. Furthermore, SUS analysis approach showed that Ceph-X has an excellent usability user’s feedback.

Conclusions

The Ceph-X has proved its reliability, performance, and usability to be used by orthodontists for the analysis, diagnosis, and treatment of cephalometric.

     

The cephalometric analysis of Cercopithecus aethiops

A Steiner-based cephalometric study of 46 adult Vervet monkeys was undertaken using craniometric points as closely correlated to those in the human as possible. On tracings of each cephalogram 13 measurements were recorded. The results were statistically analysed. Whilst the monkey face does vary individually this variation is apparently much less than is that of the human face. It is possible that the positions of the monkey incisor crowns bear a relatively constant relationship to the soft tissue profile. The establishment of some cephalometric norms for the Vervet monkey may be useful for future growth studies.     

Book reviews

Images from the Region of the Pueblo Indians Aby Warburg. Images from the Region of the Pueblo Indians of North America. Trans. and introduced by Michael P. Steinberg. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995. 114 pp., illus., biblio.

Through Navajo Eyes (again) Through Navajo Eyes: An Exploration in Film Communication and Anthropology. Sol Worth and John Adair, with a new foreword, introduction, afterword, and illustrations by Richard Chalfen. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997. 406 pages, 85 halftones, $24.95 (paperbound).

Cartographic Encounters Lewis, G. Malcolm (ed.). Cartographic Encounters: Perspectives on Native American Mapmaking and Map Use. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998:338 pp., index, 58 illus. $60.00 (hdbd.).

Photojournalism and Foreign Policy Perlmutter, David D., Photojournalism and Foreign Policy: Icons of Outrage in International Crises. Westport, Ct.: Praeger, 1998. xvii + 162 pp., plates, illus., biblio., index. US $55.00 (hdbd.).

Sensuous Scholarship Stoller, Paul. Sensuous Scholarship. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997: xviii+166 pp., illus., filmography, index. US $36.50 (hdbd.), $16.50 (paper).     

Behavior and Physiology of the Redside Dace, Clinostomus elongatus, a Threatened Species in Michigan

The threatened status of redside dace, Clinostomus elongatus, in Michigan inhibits study and management of remnant populations of the species. We present a phenotypic approach to evaluate the use of redside dace from New York as behavioral and physiological models for Michigan populations. We evaluated behavioral similarity by comparing patterns of microhabitat use and physiological similarity by comparing resting routine metabolic rates measured in the field. Variation between sites in available microhabitat made direct comparisons difficult; however, redside dace in Michigan and New York showed a common preference for mid-water positions in the deepest parts of pools under overhanging structure. Field measurements at 10°C showed that Michigan fish had higher metabolic rates than rates predicted for New York fish at the same temperature, though biological significance of this difference is questionable. In laboratory experiments, we measured metabolic rate and upper thermal tolerance in relation to acclimation temperatures of 6–20°C using redside dace collected from four streams in New York. Redside dace showed a significant increase in metabolic rate as acclimation temperature increased (Q₁₀=2.3). Critical thermal maxima (CTM) of New York redside dace also increased with acclimation temperature. Obstacles related to the transferability of habitat use data and variation in physiology due to uncontrolled and unmeasured environmental factors in the field lead us to urge caution when extrapolating behavioral and physiological characteristics between widely-separated populations of a species. Despite these obstacles, we described useful patterns of microhabitat use and provided estimates of physiological tolerances that will assist resource managers in the recovery of Michigan redside dace.     

Aldehyde dehydrogenase polymorphism in North American, South American, and Mexican Indian populations.

While about 40% of the South American Indian populations (Atacameños, Mapuche, Shuara) were found to be deficient in aldehyde dehydrogenase isozyme I (ALDH2 or E2), preliminary investigations showed very low incidence of isozyme deficiency among North American natives (Sioux, Navajo) and Mexican Indians (mestizo). Possible implications of such trait differences on cross-cultural behavioral response to alcohol drinking are discussed.     

Some variables of the craniofacial complex in a Venezuelan population of negroid ancestry

A total of 226 individuals (101 males and 125 females), from La Sabana, a Venezuelan Negroid isolate, with ages between 8 and 60 years, were studied in order to characterize the population for its craniofacial variables and to study the behavior of these variables in relation to age and sex. The variables studied were grouped in three categories: direct cephalometric variables, which included 6 measurements taken directly on the individuals; indirect cephalometric variables, which included 18 measurements (9 angular and 9 linear), taken on lateral head films; and dental variables, which included 9 measurements taken from dental models. In general the direct variables showed the lowest coefficients of variation (CV), suggesting homogeneity within this sample. They were followed by the dental and the indirect variables, which had the highest CV values. In order to detect age and sex effects on the variables, sex and age group comparisons were performed with Student t tests. A greater proportion of significant differences were found among the direct variables, indicating that age and sex have more influence on this group of variables than upon the other two. Comparisons of our sample from La Sabana, with samples from African Negroid, Caucasoid, and Amerindian population show that La Sabana individuals have a craniofacial pattern basically Negroid, as we expected, although some contribution from Caucasoides and especially Amerindians is also suggested in our data.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article:
NORTH AND SOUTH AMERICA: The Agricultural and Hunting Methods of the Navaho Indians . W. W. H ill .
NORTH AND SOUTH AMERICA: A Brief History of Navajo Silver smithing . A rthur W oodward .
NORTH AND SOUTH AMERICA: Navaho Life of Yesterday and Today . K atharine L uomala .     

Strains of JC virus in Amerind-speakers of North America (Salish) and South America (Guaraní), Na-Dene-speakers of New Mexico (Navajo), and modern Japanese suggest links through an ancestral Asian population

Previously we showed that strains of human polyoma virus JC among the Navajo in New Mexico, speakers of an Athapaskan language in the Na-Dene language phylum, and among the Salish people in Montana, speakers of a language of the Salishan group in the Amerind family, were mainly of a northeast Asian genotype found in Japan (type 2A). We now report partial VP1-gene, regulatory region, and complete genome sequences of JC virus (JCV) from the Guaraní Indians of Argentina. The Tupí-Guaraní language represents the Equatorial branch of the Amerind language family proposed by Greenberg ([1987] Language in the Americas, Stanford: Stanford University Press). The partial VP1 gene sequences of the Guaraní revealed several variants of strains found in northeast Asia (Japan), as did the Salish. In contrast, the strains in the Navajo largely conformed to the prototype type 2A sequence (MY). Phylogenetic reconstruction with both the neighbor-joining and maximum parsimony methods utilized three complete Guaraní JCV genome sequences, three genomes from the Salish people, and 27 other complete JCV genomes, including three from the Navajo and three from Japan. Both trees showed that all type 2A JCV strains from the North and South Americans are closely related phylogenetically to strains in present-day Japan. However, variant sites in the coding regions, the T-antigen intron, and the regulatory region link the type 2A strains in Amerind groups (Guaraní and Salish), but differentiate them from those in a Na-Dene-speaking (Navajo) population. The data suggest separation from a population ancestral to modern Japanese, followed by a second division within the ancestral group that led to Amerind- and Na-Dene-speaking groups. The data cannot, however, localize the latter split to the Asian mainland (two migrations) or to North America (one migration).     

Multivariate analysis of craniofacial measurements in twin and family data

Thirty-three cephalometric variables and height have been measured on each of 630 individuals (316 male and 314 female) from 157 families. After age and sex differences were adjusted for each measurement, a rotated factor analysis was undertaken to account for the variation by a limited number of linear combinations of the adjusted measurements. It was found that most of the variation could be explained by nine independent factors. Finally, correlation coefficients were computed on twins, siblings and parent-offspring data for factor scores. The results suggest that each factor which is measured by a linear combination of a set of variables could result from the interaction of independent sets of genes with the environment.     

Analysis of genetic and environmental sources of variation in serum cholesterol in Tecumseh, Michigan. I. Analysis of the frequency distribution for evidence of a genetic polymorphism.

Analyses of serum cholesterol measurements on 4,619 males and 4,730 females residing in the community of Tecumseh, Michigan, were conducted to estimate the contribution of sex, age, temporal variation, and bimodality to determining the normal variation among individuals sampled without regard to their health status. Female values had a higher mean (2.8 mg/100 ml greater) but smaller variance than males when adjusted by polynomial regression to a common age. Positive skew in the frequency distribution for both sexes was removed by natural logarithm (ln) transformation. Age variation accounted for 28.5% and 29.4% of the variance in a ln cholesterol measurement of males and females, respectively. Between 7% and 10% of the variance in a ln cholesterol value was estimated to be attributable to differences between age-adjusted replicate measurements of the same individual. The reduction in individual variability by adjustment for these contributions to variance will allow a more precise evaluation of the relative contribution of alternate genetic hypotheses as explanations for normal variation in cholesterol. Assuming bimodality, approximately one in 1,000 males and one in 1,000 females belong to a second mode of hypercholesterolemic individuals. The locus determining familial hypercholesterolemia is not a major source of normal phenotypic variation in the Tecumseh population.     

PHYLOGEOGRAPHY AND WITHIN-STREAM GENETIC VARIATION OF BATRACHOSPERMUM HELMENTOSUM (RHODOPHYTA) USING INTER-SIMPLE SEQUENCE REPEATS

A relatively new molecular marker technique, inter-simple sequence repeats (ISSR), was used to assess the within-stream reach genetic variation and phylogeography of the freshwater red alga, Batrachospermum helmentosum. The within-stream reach study was undertaken in Southeastern Ohio, where 58 individuals were collected from an approximately 200 m stream length. Individuals appeared to be congregated into three distinct areas, with no plants between areas. Using three primers, 100 polymorphic bands were scored. Although it was hypothesized that genetic variation would reflect physical distance, the results showed six distinct genetic groupings, some of which consisted of physically distant individuals. Overall, genetic diversity was greater among individuals than between geographic and genetic groups. To investigate phylogeography, 11 stream reaches (3 from Ohio and one each from Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, North Carolina, Tennessee, Indiana, Michigan and Louisiana) were sampled throughout the alga's known distribution in North America. Approximately 15 individuals were collected per stream for ISSR analysis. Five primers, yielding 243 polymorphic bands, were used to examine variation among all individuals. Neighbor-joining trees generated from the Dice, Jaccard and Excoffier coefficients showed that individuals from the same stream formed a clade. Among streams there was no distinct correlation between geographic distance and genetic similarity. Genetic groupings varied slightly among distance coefficients employed. Michigan and Tennessee, Connecticut and Rhode Island, and Indiana and Massachusetts streams consistently showed the same relationship, but the relationships among the three Ohio streams and Louisiana stream were variably related to each other.     

Cancer incidence in the Zuni Indians of New Mexico

The total age-adjusted incidence of cancer in the Zuni Indians of New Mexico was significantly lower than that of the New Mexico Anglo population during the period 1969-1982. Specific sites at which the Zunis had a significantly lower number of cases than expected, based on the rates for Anglos, are: colon, rectum and anus, lung, breast, endometrium, melanoma of the skin, pancreas, and the leukemias. Sites at which the Zunis had a higher number of cases than expected are stomach and gallbladder. The Zunis have a pattern of occurrence of cancer that is similar to other American Indians of New Mexico (Navajo, Apache, and Pueblo); however, rates of lung, colonic, and pancreatic cancer among the Zunis are significantly lower. The occurrence and anatomic distribution of cancer among the Zunis may be the result of cultural and environmental conditions or genetic influences. Further studies may clarify the risk factors which contribute to this pattern of disease.     

Genetic variability in two Brazilian ethnic groups: A comparison of mitochondrial and protein data

Sequence data from the first hypervariable segment of the mitochondrial DNA control region of 124 subjects belonging to three African-Brazilian and three Brazilian Indian populations were compared with information related to 12 protein genetic loci from 601 persons living in the same localities. There is high diversity among the mtDNA sites, and the most variable in one ethnic group are not the most variable in the other. No differences in gene diversity between populations within ethnic groups were observed, but the Indians showed a reduced variability. Much more interpopulation variation was observed in the mtDNA data than in the protein set. The relationships obtained for the six populations, however, are the same regardless whether mtDNA or protein loci are considered. African-Brazilians from Porto Alegre and Salvador, situated 3,000 km apart, are more similar to each other than both are to Paredão, despite the geographical proximity between Porto Alegre and Paredão, which are just 50 km apart. The tree topology in relation to the three Indians groups, on the other hand, is that expected when languages, culture, and geography are considered. Am J Phys Anthropol 103:147–156, 1997. © 1997 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Hypoplastic area method for analyzing dental enamel hypoplasia

Most analyses of dental enamel hypoplasia compare frequencies of disturbed tooth types, which do not account for variability in the area of affected enamel. An alternate methodology, hypoplastic area, is presented here that accounts for this variability by combining acute and continuous enamel hypoplasia into an interval-level variable. The method compares samples based on individuals, by multiple tooth type variables, or by a single value rather than by tooth types. Use of the hypoplastic area method is illustrated by analyzing human skeletal dentitions in three archaeological samples: Meroitic Nubians from Semna South, Sudan; Anasazi from Navajo Reservoir, New Mexico; and Mogollon from Grasshopper Pueblo, Arizona. Both univariate and multivariate statistical tests are employed to assess variation in defects between individuals and samples. By incorporating measurements of continuous defects, the hypoplastic area method provides information beyond that of frequency data in comparing levels of stress. Flexibility of the method is also discussed. © 1995 Wiley-Liss, Inc.