Skype session with author Alexandra Styron illuminates father’s work
A literature class at the University of Delaware’s Osher Lifelong Learning program in Lewes recently participated in an unexpected one-on-one conversation with Alexandra Styron about the life and work of her father, celebrated author William Styron, famous for novels like The Confessions of Nat Turner and Sophie’s Choice.
A novelist in her own right, Alexandra Styron recounts her experiences growing up in a household often full of drama and turmoil in her memoir Reading My Father. (more…)
A research team led by UA anthropologist David Raichlen has found that the Hadza tribe’s movements while foraging can be described by a mathematical pattern called a Lévy walk – a pattern that also is found in the movements of many other animals.
A mathematical pattern of movement called a Lévy walk describes the foraging behavior of animals from sharks to honey bees, and now for the first time has been shown to describe human hunter-gatherer movement as well. The study, led by University of Arizona anthropologist David Raichlen, was published on December 23, 2013 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The Lévy walk pattern appears to be ubiquitous in animals, similar to the golden ratio, phi, a mathematical ratio that has been found to describe proportions in plants and animals throughout nature. (more…)
The ancestor of all modern African monkeys was alive 3 million years earlier than previously thought and coexisted with members of a now-extinct branch of the monkey family tree, according to new evidence from anthropologists.
“We pushed back the origin of modern monkeys by a huge chunk of time,” said anthropologist Andrew Hill of Yale University, the senior researcher on the project. “This means there are all sorts of things we can think about. You can start to look at animal interactions that might have taken place.” (more…)
Taking in too many calories far outweighs getting too little exercise as a cause of obesity, according to a study of a hunter-gatherer society co- authored by Yale anthropologist Brian Wood and recently published in the July issue of the journal PLoS One.
Using state-of-the-art technology to measure the daily energetic expenditure of the Hazda, a foraging people of Tanzania, Wood and co-authors Herman Pontzer (Hunter College) and David Raichlen (University of Arizona) discovered that even though these last remaining hunter-gatherers in Africa are quite physically active, they expend on average no more calories in a day than the adult population of the industrialized world. Given the total lack of obesity among the Hadza, whose average daily calorie consumption is far lower than that found in the developed world, the researchers concluded that increased caloric intake is the main source of rising obesity in Western populations. (more…)
Birds may have a more highly developed sense of smell than researchers previously thought, contend scholars who have found that penguins may use smell to determine if they are related to a potential mate.
The research by the University of Chicago and the Chicago Zoological Society, which manages Brookfield Zoo, shows how related birds are able to recognize each other. The study, published Wednesday, Sept. 21 in the article, “Odor-based Recognition of Familiar and Related Conspecifics: A First Test Conducted on Captive Humboldt Penguins (Spheniscus humboldti),” in the journal PLoS ONE, could help conservationists design programs to help preserve endangered species.
“Smell is likely the primary mechanism for kin recognition to avoid inbreeding within the colony,” said Heather Coffin, lead author of the paper. (more…)
