Conforming Courts,Homegrown Hominids,The Outer Outlet,and Cash Crop Culture

Much is said of China’s judicial system and much more remains conspicuously unsaid,but recent changes have seen promising reforms for the state’s beleaguered court system.For starters,the authorities are beginning to take notice that judges,those on the front lines of dispensing-justice,are underpaid,overworked,and unappreciated.There’s also the rather troubling matter of jurisdiction,but recent changes have provided more provincial

U-series Dating of Ganqian Cave in Guangxi and Its Anthropological Implications

From Ganqian (Tubo) Cave a total of 17 hominid teeth attributed to late Homo sapiens has been collected along with an abundance of mammalian fossils. The fossiliferous deposits are bracketed by the capping and second flowstone layers, which yielded 230 Th/ 234 U dates of ～93 and ～220 ka, marking the minimum and maximum age of the hominid teeth respectively. Two U series methods performed on two mammalian teeth gave dates in the range of 85 and 139 ka, lending support to the stratigraphic order of the depositional sequence. The results presented in this paper point to an occurrence of modern Homo sapiens in southern China much earlier than has been thought, which is supported by the dating of nearby Liujiang and Bailiandong hominid sites. Taken together, these data suggest that China should not be considered as a backwater in recent human evolution where all the previous populations were replaced.

Computational identification and analysis of neurodegenerative disease associated protein kinases in hominid genomes

Protein kinases play an important role in the incidence of neurodegenerative diseases.However their incidence in non-human primates is found to be very low.Small differences among the genomes might influence the disease susceptibilities.The present study deals with finding the genetic differences of protein kinases in humans and their three closest evolutionary partners chimpanzee,gorilla and orangutan for three neurodegenerative diseases namely,Alzheimer’s,Parkinson’s and Huntington’s diseases.In total 47 human protein kinases associated with three neurodegenerative diseases and their orthologs from other three nonhuman primates were identified and analyzed for any possible susceptibility factors in humans.Multiple sequence alignment and pairwise sequence alignment revealed that,18 human protein kinases including DYRK1A,RPS6KB1,and GRK6 contained significant indels and substitutions.Further phosphorylation site analysis revealed that eight kinases including MARK2 and LTK contained sites of phosphorylation exclusive to human genomes which could be particular candidates in determining disease susceptibility between human and non-human primates.Final pathway analysis of these eight kinases and their targets revealed that these kinases could have long range consequences in important signaling pathways which are associated with neurodegenerative diseases.

A zooarchaeological study of bone assemblages from the Ma'anshan Paleolithic site

Ten thousands of bone fragments were recovered from the Ma’anshan Paleolithic site, of which 4358 pieces can be identified to skeletal elements or species. In this research, the bone assemblages are quantified based on elements of MNI, MNE, and MAU. Then bone surface modifications and skeletal element profiles of the bone assemblages are studied to understand shlepping behaviors and reveal the technique of disarticulating and defleshing the animals’ bodies, etc. Based on the analyses of bone assemblages and the comparative study with the ethnoarchaeological as well as experimental data, it is assumed that later hominids at the site made fuller use of the game animals than the earlier hominids. Incorporating the lines of evidence from chronological dating, paleoenvironment, and polished bone tools between the two cultural layers, here we propose three hypotheses suggesting that the changes of environment, the migrations of the hominids from the North, or the demographic pulses may cause such a behavioral difference. However, it is yet to be determined which hypothesis can better explain the changes.

Preliminary study on enamel microstructure of Yuanmou Miocene hominoids of China

Preliminary study on enamel microstructure of 5 lower permanent incisors of Late Mio-cene Yuanmou hominoids was conducted using a scanning electron microscope (SEM). The enamel incremental markings, as well as perikymata spacing and its periodicity were observed and counted. Using the perikymata number and periodicity, the crown formation times of the incisors are estimated. The transverse and longitudinal microstructures of the enamel prisms are also ob-served. Comparison of the dental development and enamel microstructure features of Yuanmou hominoids with those of Lufeng hominoids shows that there are similarities and also some differ-ences between them. The relationship between Yuanmou hominoids and early hominids is dis-cussed.