Human uniqueness? Life history diversity among small-scale societies and chimpanzees.

BACKGROUND: Humans life histories have been described as "slow", patterned by slow growth, delayed maturity, and long life span. While it is known that human life history diverged from that of a recent common chimpanzee-human ancestor some ~4-8 mya, it is unclear how selection pressures led to these distinct traits. To provide insight, we compare wild chimpanzees and human subsistence societies in order to identify the age-specific vital rates that best explain fitness variation, selection pressures and species divergence. METHODS: We employ Life Table Response Experiments to quantify vital rate contributions to population growth rate differences. Although widespread in ecology, these methods have not been applied to human populations or to inform differences between humans and chimpanzees. We also estimate correlations between vital rate elasticities and life history traits to investigate differences in selection pressures and test several predictions based on life history theory. RESULTS: Chimpanzees' earlier maturity and higher adult mortality drive species differences in population growth, whereas infant mortality and fertility variation explain differences between human populations. Human fitness is decoupled from longevity by postreproductive survival, while chimpanzees forfeit higher potential lifetime fertility due to adult mortality attrition. Infant survival is often lower among humans, but lost fitness is recouped via short birth spacing and high peak fertility, thereby reducing selection on infant survival. Lastly, longevity and delayed maturity reduce selection on child survival, but among humans, recruitment selection is unexpectedly highest in longer-lived populations, which are also faster-growing due to high fertility. CONCLUSION: Humans differ from chimpanzees more because of delayed maturity and lower adult mortality than from differences in juvenile mortality or fertility. In both species, high child mortality reflects bet-hedging costs of quality/quantity tradeoffs borne by offspring, with high and variable child mortality likely regulating human population growth over evolutionary history. Positive correlations between survival and fertility among human subsistence populations leads to selection pressures in human subsistence societies that differ from those in modern populations undergoing demographic transition.

[Informative value of craniometric data for ethno-racial studies].

Skull measurements differ in terms of discriminative and taxonomic value. Facial signs carry much more taxonomic information than neurocranial structures. Differences in the informative value of selected craniological complexes provide a rationale for differential approach to the interpretation of the results of ethno-racial studies.

Ethnic and geographic variations in multimorbidty: Evidence from three large cohorts.

A common characteristic of patients seen at the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) is a high number of concurrent comorbidities (i.e. multimorbidity). This study (i) examines the magnitude and patterns of multimorbidity by race/ethnicity and geography; (ii) compares the level of variation explained by these factors in three multimorbidity measures across three large cohorts. We created three national cohorts for Veterans with chronic kidney disease (CKD:n = 2,190,564), traumatic brain injury (TBI:n = 167,954) and diabetes-mellitus (DM:n = 1,263,906). Multimorbidity was measured by Charlson-Deyo, Elixhauser and Walraven-Elixhauser scores. Multimorbidity differences by race/ethnicity and geography were compared using generalized linear models (GLM). Latent class analysis (LCA) was used to identify groups of conditions that are highly associated with race/ethnic groups. Differences in age (CKD,74.5, TBI,49.7, DM, 66.9 years), race (CKD,80.9%, TBI,76.4%, DM, 63.8% NHW) and geography (CKD,64.4%, TBI,70%, DM, 70.9% urban) were observed among the three cohorts. Accounting for these differences, GLM results showed that risk of multimorbidity in non-Hispanic blacks (NHB) with CKD were 1.16 times higher in urban areas and 1.10 times higher in rural areas compared to non-Hispanic whites (NHW) with CKD. DM and TBI showed similar results with risk for NHB, 1.05 higher in urban areas and 0.97 lower in rural areas for both diseases. Overall, our results show that (i) multimorbidity risk was higher for NHB in urban areas compared to rural areas in all three cohorts; (ii) multimorbidity risk was higher for Hispanics in urban areas compared to rural areas in the DM and CKD cohorts; and (iii) the highest overall multimorbidity risk of any race group or location exists for Hispanics in insular islands for all three disease cohorts. These findings are consistent among the three multimorbidity measures. In fact, our LCA also showed that a three class LC model based on Elixhauser or Charlson provides good discrimination by type and extent of multimorbidity.

Fieldwork: man in the system of nature and priority of natural laws in human life.

Fieldwork is a branch of inseparable unity of natural and humanitarian sciences; it is aimed at the cultural origin of humanity on the maximum level of its variety. Practically all natural sciences have some space determined by ethnic conscience in nature cognition: ethnodemography, ethnobotany, ethnozoology, etc. Fieldwork guides the research of human culture from the laws of nature. This kind of knowledge is useful to balance human relations with nature and avoid conflicts. Peoples should exchange their wisdom in the dialogue with nature to be more safe. Fieldwork understood as traditional culture only, explaining the variety of ethnoses on our earth, is just the narrow and diachronic level of this branch of knowledge. The cosmological knowledge, where fantasy and not exhausted in its cognition understanding the world of nature are mixed, forms the source of fieldwork and in many respects explains the direction of knowledge: the man finds himself under the open sky, he is the child of nature. Then as time went on there appeared a gradual transition--first nature was creating the man, then by and by he began turning to answer nature by his activity. Nowadays the man is actively creating nature. There are two levels of fieldwork: the ancient one which deals with the origin of ethnoses and the modern one which explores how contemporary life is determined by ethnic specific traits. Fieldwork is the core of multidisciplinary situation in man's knowledge. It is related to such humanitarian sciences: semiotics, culturology, sociology, history, philosophy, literature, linguistics. In the cycle of natural sciences fieldwork stands close to anthropology, geography, biology, demography. Fieldwork as a science has the two main levels--the "sophy" level and the logos "level". The first one discovers wisdom of human life, the second one is aimed at logical structuring of knowledge, here proceed various classifications of peoples.

Ethnoecology - The best medicine against allergy?

This essay, which is the 6(th) in the series "Recollections, Reflections, and Revelations: Ethnobiologists and Their First Time in the Field", is a personal reflection by the researcher on his first field experiences with ethnobiology. Author writes on how Hungarian herders in the Hortobágy salt steppes and Csángó people in the Carpathian mountains changed his views on landscape, vegetation, local people, traditional small-scale grassland management and finally, ecology and nature conservation.

Multi-dimensionality and variability in folk classification of stingless bees (Apidae: Meliponini).

BACKGROUND: Not long ago Eugene Hunn suggested using a combination of cognitive, linguistic, ecological and evolutionary theories in order to account for the dynamic character of ethnoecology in the study of folk classification systems. In this way he intended to question certain homogeneity in folk classifications models and deepen in the analysis and interpretation of variability in folk classifications. This paper studies how a rural culturally mixed population of the Atlantic Forest of Misiones (Argentina) classified honey-producing stingless bees according to the linguistic, cognitive and ecological dimensions of folk classification. We also analyze the socio-ecological meaning of binomialization in naming and the meaning of general local variability in the appointment of stingless bees. METHODS: We used three different approaches: the classical approach developed by Brent Berlin which relies heavily on linguistic criteria, the approach developed by Eleonor Rosch which relies on psychological (cognitive) principles of categorization and finally we have captured the ecological dimension of folk classification in local narratives. For the second approximation, we developed ways of measuring the degree of prototypicality based on a total of 107 comparisons of the type "X is similar to Y" identified in personal narratives. RESULTS: Various logical and grouping strategies coexist and were identified as: graded of lateral linkage, hierarchical and functional. Similarity judgments among folk taxa resulted in an implicit logic of classification graded according to taxa's prototypicality. While there is a high agreement on naming stingless bees with monomial names, a considerable number of underrepresented binomial names and lack of names were observed. Two possible explanations about reported local naming variability are presented. CONCLUSIONS: We support the multidimensionality of folk classification systems. This confirms the specificity of local classification systems but also reflects the use of grouping strategies and mechanisms commonly observed in other cultural groups, such as the use of similarity judgments between more or less prototypical organisms. Also we support the idea that alternative naming results from a process of fragmentation of knowledge or incomplete transmission of knowledge. These processes lean on the facts that culturally based knowledge, on the one hand, and biologic knowledge of nature on the other, can be acquired through different learning pathways.

Participatory research on workers' health.

The concern for workers' health has increased in Latin America during the last decade both on the part of research institutions and trade unions. A special emphasis has been given to active participation of workers not just in the transformation of working conditions to improve health but also in generation of knowledge. This paper presents an action oriented participatory research methodology based on a collective questionnaire that permits the recollection of data on characteristics of the labour process, risks and health damage. A comparison between the information on risks, health damage and the relationship risks-damage obtained with this methodology and those of an individual questionnaire applied at the same steel factory shows that the results produced are very similar. In view of these findings it is concluded that the participatory methodology has some important advantages over traditional methodologies since it provides qualitative information on the labour process, a precise picture of the main risks and how they are produced and semi-quantitative data on health damage, and at the same time, generates a process of consciousness and organization among workers that enables them to promote health oriented action.

Studying knowledge, culture, and behavior in applied medical anthropology.

In this article we argue that the concept of knowledge, as utilized by public health professionals, is best regarded as cultural belief, as defined in anthropology. The implications of this position are explored, particularly as it relates to the development of a decision-making approach to the understanding and analysis of health care behavior. The methodological challenges posed by the new theoretical perspective that has emerged from the emphasis on decision making is discussed from the perspective of applied research. The role of focused ethnographic studies is examined and contrasted with ethnomedicine and survey approaches. Some main features of focused ethnographic methods are described and illustrated with a case example of acute respiratory infection (ARI) in Gambia.

Understanding efficacy in psychotherapy: an ethnomethodological perspective on the therapeutic alliance.

In recent years there has been considerable interest in the discovery of a universal paradigm to explain how psychotherapy works. One potential paradigm, known as the therapeutic alliance, is highly correlated with positive patient change. However, the phenomenology and clinical significance of the alliance remains ambiguous. Using a sociological subdiscipline known as ethnomethodology, the author advances a novel perspective on the therapeutic alliance that promises to resolve this ambiguity.

Culture care theory: a major contribution to advance transcultural nursing knowledge and practices.

This article is focused on the major features of the Culture Care Diversity and Universality theory as a central contributing theory to advance transcultural nursing knowledge and to use the findings in teaching, research, practice, and consultation. It remains one of the oldest, most holistic, and most comprehensive theories to generate knowledge of diverse and similar cultures worldwide. The theory has been a powerful means to discover largely unknown knowledge in nursing and the health fields. It provides a new mode to assure culturally competent, safe, and congruent transcultural nursing care. The purpose, goal, assumptive premises, ethnonursing research method, criteria, and some findings are highlighted.

Qualitative research methodologies: an overview.

Qualitative approaches are becoming more widely used in nursing research. Though many different qualitative approaches exist, there are similarities in their assumptions, goals and design. Phenomenology, ethnography and grounded theory are inductive methods aimed at describing and explaining human phenomena. These methods offer nurses avenues for understanding human responses to health and illness.

Anthropology, occupational therapy, and action research.

This paper describes the research process and methodology used in the American Occupational Therapy Association/American Occupational Therapy Foundation Clinical Reasoning Study. This study examined the clinical reasoning of occupational therapists through a 2-year ethnography of therapists at one hospital site. The research was innovative in several important respects. One important innovation was a combined ethnographic and action research design that involved collaboration between the research team and those therapists being studied. Therapists who were research subjects became actively involved in examining and reflecting on their own practice through group analysis of videotaped sessions with clients. One outcome of this action research component was that the study served as both a research and a staff development project.

Beyond the unobtrusive observer: reflections on researcher-informant relationships in urban ethnography.

Ethnographic research involves the creation and ongoing renegotiations of relationships between researchers and informants. Prolonged engagement contributes to the complexity as relationships deepen and shift over time and participants accumulate a substantial reservoir of shared experiences. Reflections about the relationships we have co-constructed with informants in several research projects have contributed to our identification of several critical aspects of building and maintaining researcher-informant relationships in cross-cultural research. Aspects of relationship work specifically related to conducting ethnography with children, within the communities in which researchers live, and within the practice of occupational therapy are discussed.

Nimuendajú, a Senhorita Doutora e os 'etnógrafos berlineses': rede de conhecimento e espaços de circulaçâo na configuraçâo da etnologia alemâ na Amazônia no início do século XX / Nimuendajú, Fräulein Doktor and the 'berliner ethnographers': network of knowledge and spaces of circulation in the configuration of German ethnology in the Amazon in the early 20th Century

O artigo analisa a participação da zoóloga alemã Emília Snethlage (1868-1929), pesquisadora e depois diretora do Museu Goeldi, em Belém, Brasil, na rede de conhecimento que se estabeleceu no início do século XX na região amazônica, destinada à investigação etnológica e à coleta de artefatos indígenas, e que teve, entre seus mais conhecidos atores, os alemães Theodor Koch-Grünberg (1872-1924) e Curt Nimuendajú (1883-1945). Ambos são reconhecidos pelo trabalho em prol dos povos indígenas do Brasil e pelo legado científico nos campos da antropologia, arqueologia e linguística. Menos conhecida, Snethlage teve, entretanto, decisiva participação na inserção de Nimuendajú no meio científico. A partir de uma extensa pesquisa em fontes documentais localizadas no Brasil e na Alemanha, demonstra-se que, no primeiro período em que Nimuendajú esteve vinculado ao Museu Goeldi, entre 1913 e 1921, Snethlage viabilizou suas primeiras expedições e publicações científicas, além de articular suas relações com museus e etnólogos alemães, incluindo aquele que viria a ser seu dileto amigo e interlocutor, Koch-Grünberg, de maneira a lhe permitir trabalhar também como coletor profissional

The article analyses the participation of the German zoologist Emilia Snethlage (1868-1929), researcher and later director of the Goeldi Museum, in Belém, Brazil, in the network of knowledge that was established in the early 20th century in the Amazonian region, aimed at ethnological research and to the collection of indigenous artifacts, and among its best known actors were Germans Theodor Koch-Grünberg (1872-1924) and Curt Nimuendajú (1883-1945). Both are recognized for working for the indigenous peoples of Brazil and for the scientific legacy in the fields of anthropology, archaeology and linguistics. Less well-known, Snethlage had, however, decisive participation in the insertion of Nimuendajú in the scientific environment. From an extensive research on documentary sources located in Brazil and Germany, it is shown that in the first period when Nimuendajú was linked to the Goeldi Museum between 1913 and 1921, Snethlage made possible his first expeditions and scientific publications, in addition to articulating his relations with German museums and ethnologists, including the one who would become his beloved friend and interlocutor, Koch-Grünberg, in order to allow him to work as a professional collector

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Placement education pedagogy as social participation: what are students really learning?

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: This paper draws on empirical fieldwork data of naturally occurring UK physiotherapy placement education to make visible how education is actually carried out and suggest what students may be learning through their placement interactions. The data challenge everyone involved in placement education design and practice to consider the values and practices students are learning to perpetuate through placement education experiences. METHODS: The researcher undertook an ethnomethodologically informed ethnographic observation of naturally occurring physiotherapy placement education in two UK NHS placement sites. This study adopted a social perspective of learning to focus on the minutiae of placement educator, student and patient interaction practices during student-present therapeutic activities. Two days of placement for each of six senior students were densely recorded in real-time focussing specifically on the verbal, kinesics and proxemics-based elements of the participants' interaction practices. Repeated cycles of data analysis suggested consistent practices irrespective of the placement, educators, students or patients. RESULTS: The data suggest that placement education is a powerful situated learning environment in which students see, experience and learn to reproduce the physiotherapy practices valued by the local placement. Consistently, placement educators and students co-produced patient-facing activities as spectacles of physiotherapy-as-science. In each setting, patients were used as person-absent audiovisual teaching aids from which students learnt to make a case for physiotherapy intervention. DISCUSSION: The paper challenges physiotherapists and other professions using work-placement education to look behind the rhetoric of their placement documentation and explore the reality of students' learning in the field. The UK-based physiotherapy profession may wish to consider further the possible implications of its self-definition as a 'science-based healthcare profession' on its in-the-presence-of-students interactions with patients.

La discriminación percibida, la empleabilidad y el bienestar psicológico en los inmigrantes latinoamericanos en Chile / Perceived discrimination, employability, and psychological well-being among Latin American immigrants in Chile

Los estudios que indagan en el funcionamiento psicológico de los inmigrantes ponen de relevancia el impacto negativo de la discriminación sobre el bienestar psicológico. Así también existe consenso respecto de la importancia del trabajo en su ajuste en países receptores; no obstante, escasamente se ha estudiado el efecto de la empleabilidad en su bienestar. Este trabajo indaga en las relaciones entre la discriminación percibida, la empleabilidad y el bienestar psicológico de 100 inmigrantes latinoamericanos asentados en Chile. Se buscó determinar la contribución de la discriminación y la empleabilidad en la explicación del bienestar y establecer la incidencia de la empleabilidad en la relación entre discriminación y bienestar psicológico. La discriminación percibida y la empleabilidad explicaron el 31.5% de la variabilidad del bienestar y la empleabilidad medió la relación entre discriminación y bienestar. Se discute acerca de la empleabilidad como recurso psicosocial en el contexto de la inmigración

Research about immigrants' psychological functioning emphasizes the negative impact of discrimination on psychological well-being. Although there is agreement about the relevance of job access to immigrants' adjustment to host countries, employability's effects on immigrants' well-being have been scarcely studied. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between perceived discrimination, employability, and psychological well-being in a sample of 100 Latin-American immigrants settled in Chile. We aimed to determine the contribution of discrimination and employability on well-being's explanation, and to establish the incidence of employability on the relation between discrimination and well-being. Perceived discrimination and employability explained the 31.5% of well-being's variability, and employability mediated the relation between discrimination and well-being. Employability's role as a psychosocial resource in a migratory context is discussed

Ethnology in the metropole: Robert Knox, Robert Gordon Latham and local sites of observational training.

Anthropologists have traditionally separated the history of their discipline into two main diverging methodological paradigms: nineteenth-century armchair theorizing, and twentieth-century field-based research. But this tradition obscures both the complexity of the observational practices of early nineteenth-century researchers and the high degree of continuity between these practices and the techniques that came later. While historians have long since abandoned the notion that nineteenth-century ethnologists and anthropologists were merely 'armchair' theorists, this paper shows that there is still much to learn once one asks more insistently what the observational practices of early researchers were actually like. By way of bringing out this complexity and continuity, this essay re-examines the work of two well-known British ethnologists, Robert Knox, and Robert Gordon Latham; looking in particular at their methods of observing, analysing and representing different racial groups. In the work of each figure, early training in natural history, anatomy and physiology can be seen to have influenced their observational practices when it came to identifying and classifying human varieties. Moreover, in both cases, Knox and Latham developed locally-based observational training sites.

Latitude, local ecology, and hunter-gatherer dietary acid load: implications from evolutionary ecology.

BACKGROUND: Past estimations of the net base-producing nature of the Paleolithic "Diet of Evolutionary Adaptedness" derived primarily from interpretations of ethnographic data of modern historically studied hunter-gatherers. In our recent ethnographic analyses, we observed large variations in diet-dependent net endogenous acid production (NEAP) among hunter-gatherer diets. OBJECTIVE: We proposed to determine whether differences in ecologic environments influence estimations of NEAP. DESIGN: By using ethnographic data of plant-to-animal subsistence ratios and mathematical models established previously, we computed frequency distributions of estimated NEAP in relation to latitude in 229 worldwide modern hunter-gatherer societies. Four different models of animal fat density were used: models A (3%), B (10%), C (15%), and D (20%). In addition, we estimated NEAP by primary ecologic environments in those hunter-gatherer societies (n = 63) for which data were documented. RESULTS: With increasing latitude intervals, 0°-10° to >60°, NEAP increased in all 4 models. For models A, B, and C, the diets tend to be net acid-producing at >40° latitude and net base-producing at <40°; the same held for model D (>50° and <50°, respectively). For models A, B, and C, the diets of hunter-gatherers living in northern areas (tundra and coniforest) and in temperate grassland and tropical rainforests are net acid-producing. In all other ecologic niches, hunter-gatherers seem to consume a neutral or net base-producing diet. CONCLUSIONS: Latitude and ecologic environments codetermine the NEAP values observed in modern hunter-gatherers. The data support the hypothesis that the diet of Homo sapiens' East African ancestors was predominantly net base-producing.