Human-environment interactions in pre-Columbian Amazonia: The case of the Llanos de Moxos, Bolivia

The reconstruction of past environmental and historical events is much needed in Amazonia, a region at the centre of heated debates about the extent of pre-Columbian human disturbance of the natural ecosystems. Important aspects of this debate are to establish to what extent the rise of social complexity was influenced by the local geo-ecology; and what productive strategies were adopted in order to sustain these societies. The Llanos de Moxos (LM), in the Bolivian Amazon, is a vast floodplain made up of a variety of geo-ecological sub regions that host many different types of pre-Columbian earthworks. Therefore, it offers an excellent opportunity to compare different kinds of archaeological landscapes and their relationship to different pre-Columbian cultures and environmental settings. This paper analyses the links between pre-Columbian earthworks and the local geo-ecology in two regions of the LM: 1) the platform field region (PFR) in the north of Santa Ana de Yacuma, where the highest concentration of raised fields has been documented, and 2) the monumental mounds region (MMR) south and east of Trinidad, where >100 pre-Columbian monumental mounds are found. The study draws from remote sensing and GIS analysis, field work in the Bolivian lowlands, and laboratory analysis. Differences in the way people transformed the landscape in the PFR and MMR seem to respond to differences in the local geo-ecology of the two sites. The results also suggest that environmental conditions exerted an important, though not exclusive, control over the levels of social complexity that were reached in different areas of the LM.

A linguistically informed autosomal STR survey of human populations residing in the Greater Himalayan Region

The greater Himalayan region demarcates two of the most prominent linguistic phyla in Asia: Tibeto-Burman and Indo-European. Previous genetic surveys, mainly using Y-chromosome polymorphisms and/or mitochondrial DNA polymorphisms suggested a substantially reduced geneflow between populations belonging to these two phyla. These studies, however, have mainly focussed on populations residing far to the north and/or south of this mountain range, and have not been able to study geneflow patterns within the greater Himalayan region itself. We now report a detailed, linguistically informed, genetic survey of Tibeto-Burman and Indo-European speakers from the Himalayan countries Nepal and Bhutan based on autosomal microsatellite markers and compare these populations with surrounding regions. The genetic differentiation between populations within the Himalayas seems to be much higher than between populations in the neighbouring countries. We also observe a remarkable genetic differentiation between the Tibeto-Burman speaking populations on the one hand and Indo-European speaking populations on the other, suggesting that language and geography have played an equally large role in defining the genetic composition of present-day populations within the Himalayas.

Long distance dispersal shaped patterns of human genetic diversity in Eurasia

Most previous attempts at reconstructing the past history of human populations did not explicitly take geography into account, or considered very simple scenarios of migration and ignored environmental information. However, it is likely that the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) affected the demography and the range of many species, including our own. Moreover, long-distance dispersal (LDD) may have been an important component of human migrations, allowing fast colonization of new territories and preserving high levels of genetic diversity. Here, we use a high-quality microsatellite dataset genotyped in 22 populations to estimate the posterior probabilities of several scenarios for the settlement of the Old World by modern humans. We considered models ranging from a simple spatial expansion to others including LDD and a LGM-induced range contraction, as well as Neolithic demographic expansions. We find that scenarios with LDD are much better supported by data than models without LDD. Nevertheless, we show evidence that LDD events to empty habitats were strongly prevented during the settlement of Eurasia. This unexpected absence of LDD ahead of the colonization wave front could have been caused by an Allee effect, either due to intrinsic causes such as an inbreeding depression built during the expansion, or to extrinsic causes such as direct competition with archaic humans. Overall, our results suggest only a relatively limited effect of the LGM-contraction on current patterns of human diversity. This is in clear contrast with the major role of LDD migrations, which have potentially contributed to the intermingled genetic structure of Eurasian populations.

Functional and structural mapping of human cerebral cortex: Solutions are in the surfaces

The human cerebral cortex is notorious for the depth and irregularity of its convolutions and for its variability from one individual to the next. These complexities of cortical geography have been a chronic impediment to studies of functional specialization in the cortex. In this report, we discuss ways to compensate for the convolutions by using a combination of strategies whose common denominator involves explicit reconstructions of the cortical surface. Surface-based visualization involves reconstructing cortical surfaces and displaying them, along with associated experimental data, in various complementary formats (including three-dimensional native configurations, two-dimensional slices, extensively smoothed surfaces, ellipsoidal representations, and cortical flat maps). Generating these representations for the cortex of the Visible Man leads to a surface-based atlas that has important advantages over conventional stereotaxic atlases as a substrate for displaying and analyzing large amounts of experimental data. We illustrate this by showing the relationship between functionally specialized regions and topographically organized areas in human visual cortex. Surface-based warping allows data to be mapped from individual hemispheres to a surface-based atlas while respecting surface topology, improving registration of identifiable landmarks, and minimizing unwanted distortions. Surface-based warping also can aid in comparisons between species, which we illustrate by warping a macaque flat map to match the shape of a human flat map. Collectively, these approaches will allow more refined analyses of commonalities as well as individual differences in the functional organization of primate cerebral cortex.

The law of human progress /

"This monograph comprises the five chapters of Book X of 'Progress and poverty'."

Hyperspace geography: Visualizing fitness landscapes beyond 4D

Human perception is finely tuned to extract structure about the 4D world of time and space as well as properties such as color and texture. Developing intuitions about spatial structure beyond 4D requires exploiting other perceptual and cognitive abilities. One of the most natural ways to explore complex spaces is for a user to actively navigate through them, using local explorations and global summaries to develop intuitions about structure, and then testing the developing ideas by further exploration. This article provides a brief overview of a technique for visualizing surfaces defined over moderate-dimensional binary spaces, by recursively unfolding them onto a 2D hypergraph. We briefly summarize the uses of a freely available Web-based visualization tool, Hyperspace Graph Paper (HSGP), for exploring fitness landscapes and search algorithms in evolutionary computation. HSGP provides a way for a user to actively explore a landscape, from simple tasks such as mapping the neighborhood structure of different points, to seeing global properties such as the size and distribution of basins of attraction or how different search algorithms interact with landscape structure. It has been most useful for exploring recursive and repetitive landscapes, and its strength is that it allows intuitions to be developed through active navigation by the user, and exploits the visual system's ability to detect pattern and texture. The technique is most effective when applied to continuous functions over Boolean variables using 4 to 16 dimensions.

Empirical analysis of human capital development and economic growth in Europe

Recent discussion of the knowledge-based economy draws increasingly attention to the role that the creation and management of knowledge plays in economic development. Development of human capital, the principal mechanism for knowledge creation and management, becomes a central issue for policy-makers and practitioners at the regional, as well as national, level. Facing competition both within and across nations, regional policy-makers view human capital development as a key to strengthening the positions of their economies in the global market. Against this background, the aim of this study is to go some way towards answering the question of whether, and how, investment in education and vocational training at regional level provides these territorial units with comparative advantages. The study reviews literature in economics and economic geography on economic growth (Chapter 2). In growth model literature, human capital has gained increased recognition as a key production factor along with physical capital and labour. Although leaving technical progress as an exogenous factor, neoclassical Solow-Swan models have improved their estimates through the inclusion of human capital. In contrast, endogenous growth models place investment in research at centre stage in accounting for technical progress. As a result, they often focus upon research workers, who embody high-order human capital, as a key variable in their framework. An issue of discussion is how human capital facilitates economic growth: is it the level of its stock or its accumulation that influences the rate of growth? In addition, these economic models are criticised in economic geography literature for their failure to consider spatial aspects of economic development, and particularly for their lack of attention to tacit knowledge and urban environments that facilitate the exchange of such knowledge. Our empirical analysis of European regions (Chapter 3) shows that investment by individuals in human capital formation has distinct patterns. Those regions with a higher level of investment in tertiary education tend to have a larger concentration of information and communication technology (ICT) sectors (including provision of ICT services and manufacture of ICT devices and equipment) and research functions. Not surprisingly, regions with major metropolitan areas where higher education institutions are located show a high enrolment rate for tertiary education, suggesting a possible link to the demand from high-order corporate functions located there. Furthermore, the rate of human capital development (at the level of vocational type of upper secondary education) appears to have significant association with the level of entrepreneurship in emerging industries such as ICT-related services and ICT manufacturing, whereas such association is not found with traditional manufacturing industries. In general, a high level of investment by individuals in tertiary education is found in those regions that accommodate high-tech industries and high-order corporate functions such as research and development (R&D). These functions are supported through the urban infrastructure and public science base, facilitating exchange of tacit knowledge. They also enjoy a low unemployment rate. However, the existing stock of human and physical capital in those regions with a high level of urban infrastructure does not lead to a high rate of economic growth. Our empirical analysis demonstrates that the rate of economic growth is determined by the accumulation of human and physical capital, not by level of their existing stocks. We found no significant effects of scale that would favour those regions with a larger stock of human capital. The primary policy implication of our study is that, in order to facilitate economic growth, education and training need to supply human capital at a faster pace than simply replenishing it as it disappears from the labour market. Given the significant impact of high-order human capital (such as business R&D staff in our case study) as well as the increasingly fast pace of technological change that makes human capital obsolete, a concerted effort needs to be made to facilitate its continuous development.

Influence of climate change and human activities on the organic and inorganic composition of peat during the Little Ice Age (El Payo mire, W Spain)

Acknowledgements This work was funded by the projects HAR2013-43701-P (Spanish Economy and Competitiveness Ministry) and CGL2010-20672 (Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation). This research was also partially developed with Xunta de Galicia funding (grants R2014/001 and GPC2014/009). N. Silva-Sánchez is currently supported by a FPU pre-doctoral grant (AP2010-3264) funded by the Spanish Government. We are grateful to Ana Moreno, Mariano Barriendos and Gerardo Benito who kindly provide us data included in Figure 5a. We also want to thank constructive comments from two anonymous reviewers.

Influence of climate change and human activities on the organic and inorganic composition of peat during the ‘Little Ice Age’ (El Payo mire, W Spain)

Acknowledgements This work was funded by the projects HAR2013-43701-P (Spanish Economy and Competitiveness Ministry) and CGL2010-20672 (Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation). This research was also partially developed with Xunta de Galicia funding (grants R2014/001 and GPC2014/009). N. Silva-Sánchez is currently supported by a FPU pre-doctoral grant (AP2010-3264) funded by the Spanish Government. We are grateful to Ana Moreno, Mariano Barriendos and Gerardo Benito who kindly provide us data included in Figure 5a. We also want to thank constructive comments from two anonymous reviewers.