Evolutionary Origin and Maintenance of Sociality in the Small Carpenter Bees

Many arthropods exhibit behaviours precursory to social life, including adult longevity, parental care, nest loyalty and mutual tolerance, yet there are few examples of social behaviour in this phylum. The small carpenter bees, genus Ceratina, provide important insights into the early stages of sociality. I described the biology and social behaviour of five facultatively social species which exhibit all of the preadaptations for successful group living, yet present ecological and behavioural characteristics that seemingly disfavour frequent colony formation. These species are socially polymorphic with both / solitary and social nests collected in sympatry. Social colonies consist of two adult females, one contributing both foraging and reproductive effort and the second which remains at the nest as a passive guard. Cooperative nesting provides no overt reproductive benefits over solitary nesting, although brood survival tends to be greater in social colonies. Three main theories explain cooperation among conspecifics: mutual benefit, kin selection and manipulation. Lifetime reproductive success calculations revealed that mutual benefit does not explain social behaviour in this group as social colonies have lower per capita life time reproductive success than solitary nests. Genetic pedigrees constructed from allozyme data indicate that kin selection might contribute to the maintenance of social nesting -, as social colonies consist of full sisters and thus some indirect fitness benefits are inherently bestowed on subordinate females as a result of remaining to help their dominant sister. These data suggest that the origin of sociality in ceratinines has principal costs and the great ecological success of highly eusociallineages occurred well after social origins. Ecological constraints such as resource limitation, unfavourable weather conditions and parasite pressure have long been considered some of the most important selective pressures for the evolution of sociality. I assessed the fitness consequences of these three ecological factors for reproductive success of solitary and social colonies and found that nest sites were not limiting, and the frequency of social nesting was consistent across brood rearing seasons. Local weather varied between seasons but was not correlated with reproductive success. Severe parasitism resulted in low reproductive success and total nest failure in solitary nests. Social colonies had higher reproductive success and were never extirpated by parasites. I suggest that social nesting represents a form of bet-hedging. The high frequency of solitary nests suggests that this is the optimal strategy when parasite pressure is low. However, social colonies have a selective advantage over solitary nesting females during periods of extreme parasite pressure. Finally, the small carpenter bees are recorded from all continents except Antarctica. I constructed the first molecular phylogeny of ceratinine bees based on four gene regions of selected species covering representatives from all continents and ecological regions. Maximum parsimony and Bayesian Inference tree topology and fossil dating support an African origin followed by an Old World invasion and New World radiation. All known Old World ceratinines form social colonies while New World species are largely solitary; thus geography and phylogenetic inertia are likely predictors of social evolution in this genus. This integrative approach not only describes the behaviour of several previously unknown or little-known Ceratina species, bu~ highlights the fact that this is an important, though previously unrecognized, model for studying evolutionary transitions from solitary to social behaviour.

Indigenous Language Reclamation: The Learners Perspective

ABSTRACT This study explored the link between learning an Indigenous language and the meanings second language learners attach to their language recovery experiences. The study delves into the factors that motivate, enhance and serve as barriers to individual language revitalization efforts. With the goal of reasserting an Indigenous world view, the traditional teachings of the Ojibwe medicine wheel were combined with the lessons of the seven Grandfathers to provide a methodological basis for conducting ethical research with and for the benefit of First Nations people. Within the context of our relationships with self, community, spirit and environment, the pairing of Indigenous theory with the practical community experiences of Indigenous second language learners, demonstrates how Indigenous systems of thought and ontology lend themselves well to the critical understanding necessary to enhance the recovery our own endangered languages. These research findings indicate that there is a definite link between ancestral language reclamation and increased levels of self-esteem, a sense of grounded cultural identity and resilience, an overall sense of healing and the social responsibility that comes with receiving the gift of language. The barriers associated with learning an ancestral language intersect on multiple and often simultaneous levels making it difficult for the language learners to discover their origin.This research found that it was important for language learners to identify that they often carry a collective sense of shame associated with an internalized attachment to the modality of Indigeneity. Once the origin of this shame was acknowledged – as resulting from settler/assimilation logics, it was often possible for people to move forward in their language recovery journeys, while at the same time considering more broadly the structural barriers that make individual learning so difficult.

The Vintners Quality Alliance - VQA Officially Launches its "Appellation of Origin" System for Ontario Wines, June 27 1989

An official launch for the '"Appellation of Origin" System for Ontario Wines'. The VQA announces the labeling system which will identify "Ontario wines based on the origin of the grapes from which they are produced". The system relies on Provincial and Geographic Designations which are outlined in the announcement.

Linguistic imperialism : a study of language and yoruba rituals in Wole Soyinka’s Death and the king’s horseman

L’objectif de ce mémoire est de démontrer le rôle important de la langue dans la pièce de théâtre Death and the King’s Horseman par l’auteur nigérian Wole Soyinka. Le premier chapitre traite les implications de l'écriture d'un texte postcolonial dans la langue anglaise et revisite les débats linguistiques des années 1950 et 1960. En plus de l'anglais, ce mémoire observe l'utilisation d'autres formes de communication telles que l'anglais, le pidgin nigérian, les dialectes locaux et les métaphores Yoruba. Par conséquent, l'intersection entre la langue et la culture devient évidente à travers la description des rituels. La dernière partie de ce mémoire explore l'objectif principal de Soyinka de créer une «essence thrénodique». Avec l'utilisation de masques rituels, de la danse et de la musique, il développe un type de dialogue qui dépasse les limites de la forme écrite et est accessible seulement à ceux qui sont équipés de sensibilités culturelles Yoruba.

THE RED RAIN PHENOMENON OF KERALA AND ITS POSSIBLE EXTRATERRESTRIAL ORIGIN

A red rain phenomenon occurred in Kerala, India starting from 25th July 2001, in which the rainwater appeared coloured in various localized places that are spread over a few hundred kilometers in Kerala. Maximum cases were reported during the first 10 days and isolated cases were found to occur for about 2 months. The striking red colouration of the rainwater was found to be due to the suspension of microscopic red particles having the appearance of biological cells. These particles have no similarity with usual desert dust. An estimated minimum quantity of 50,000 kg of red particles has fallen from the sky through red rain. An analysis of this strange phenomenon further shows that the conventional atmospheric transport processes like dust storms etc. cannot explain this phenomenon. The electron microscopic study of the red particles shows fine cell structure indicat- ing their biological cell like nature. EDAX analysis shows that the major elements present in these cell like particles are carbon and oxygen. Strangely, a test for DNA using Ethidium Bromide dye fluorescence technique indicates absence of DNA in these cells. In the context of a suspected link between a meteor airburst event and the red rain, the possibility for the extraterrestrial origin of these particles from cometary fragments is discussed.

Classification of sags according to their origin based on the waveform similarity

A statistical method for classification of sags their origin downstream or upstream from the recording point is proposed in this work. The goal is to obtain a statistical model using the sag waveforms useful to characterise one type of sags and to discriminate them from the other type. This model is built on the basis of multi-way principal component analysis an later used to project the available registers in a new space with lower dimension. Thus, a case base of diagnosed sags is built in the projection space. Finally classification is done by comparing new sags against the existing in the case base. Similarity is defined in the projection space using a combination of distances to recover the nearest neighbours to the new sag. Finally the method assigns the origin of the new sag according to the origin of their neighbours

The construction of national identity as a developmental process from childhood to adolescence in Catalonia

La idea que per entendre alguna cosa hem d'entendre el procés pel qual s'ha produït va ser assumida des de l'origen de l'estudi "La construcció de la identitat nacional com a procés de desenvolupament des de la infància a l'adolescència a Catalunya". Per tal d'estudiar el procés de desenvolupament relacionat amb la construcció de la identitat nacional, no és suficient considerar-lo en el seu context social, sinó que és necessari considerar la seva construcció social. Tres objectius principals van orientar el nostre estudi . Primer, indagar si els processos de categorització, identificació, coneixement, imatge, avaluació i afecte són també elements implicats en la construcció de la identitat nacional des de la infància a l'adolescència. Segon investigar el procés de desenvolupament d'aquests elements des dels 6 anys fins als 15 anys per contribuir amb dades a I'explicació sobre com es desenvolupa del coneixement social. Tres són les explicacions principals; la primera que es basa en processos cognitius d'inclusió-decentració; la segona, si aquest desenvolupament es dóna en cercles concèntrics des de I'interior (contextos quotidians) fins a l'exterior (amb intercanvis més amples i una educació formal envers la vida social); i la tercera, si el desenvolupament del coneixement social d'allò més immediat i directe es reorganitzat i adquireix nous significats per la integració dels elements més generals i abstractes. Tercer, donat el fet que el 50% de les famílies tenen el català com a llengua materna, hem estudiat la influència de la llengua o llengües utilitzades en el context familiar en el procés de construcció de la identitat nacional. Es va dissenyar una entrevista individual seguint una estructura amb les parts següents: identificació subjectiva i identificació nacional; coneixement dels països; estereotips, avaluació i sentiments, i entorn social. La mostra del present estudi va estar formada per 495 nens i adolescents de 6, 9, 12 i 15 anys d'edat. Es va utilitzar per cada grup un número similar de nens i nenes. La mostra es va dividir en tres grups segons la o les llengües utilitzades pel nen o nena en el seu context familiar. Tres van ser les categones lingüístiques utilitzades: castellà, nens que només utilitzin el castellà a casa; català, nens que només usen el català en el context familiar; i bilingües, nens que utilitzin tots dos idiomes a casa. Aquestes categories lingüístiques s'han utilitzat com a indicador dels contextos familiars. Dues conclusions principals es poden extreure d'aquest estudi. Primer, I'ús de categories nacionals no és una conseqüència del procés cognitiu d'inclusió-decentració ni en cercles concentrics (concret/abstracte). La idea d'un procés del món en paral·lel, d'un coneixement que integra simultàniament creences i sentiments de l'ambient concret o proper i de l'abstracte o llunyà pot explicar millor els nostres resultats. Els nens aprenen i pensen sobre la vida quotidara, les característiques de l'ambient, la informació circulant en el seu entom social i la importància o els diferents nivells de coneixement depenent del context. Els nens integren la informació que està circulant en el seu ambient i construeixen un món que necessàriament no ha de coincidir amb el món deis adults, però que els ajuda a comunicar-se i a entendre les situacions en les quals estan immersos. Els nens més joves són capaços d'utilitzar categories nacionals de manera similar als adolescents. Segon, la identitat nacional a Catalunya es construeix al voltant del nucli de la llengua parlada a casa. A través de tot I'estudi es pot veure un resultat consistent i reiterat. Els infants d'un entom familiar en què s'usa només el castellà s'identifiquen com a pertanyents a tots dos grups nacionals, Espanyol i Català. Els infants d'un entom familiar que utilitzen només el català s'identifiquen com a pertanyents només al grup Català. Aquestes identificacions guien com aquests nens avaluen i senten envers el propi grup nacional i els altres. A més, sembla que el context sòcio-polític és un vehicle important en la transmissió de les estructures de semblances i que I'estructura d'afecte es transmet principalment a través de I'entom familiar.

Re-interpretation of early speech perception test (standard version) in Urdu language

This paper resulted in the Urdu language version of the Early Speech Perception Test(ESP).

Overview and response to reviewers of The Singing Neanderthals

Why are humans musical? Why do people in all cultures sing or play instruments? Why do we appear to have specialized neurological apparatus for hearing and interpreting music as distinct from other sounds? And how does our musicality relate to language and to our evolutionary history? Anthropologists and archaeologists have paid little attention to the origin of music and musicality — far less than for either language or ‘art’. While art has been seen as an index of cognitive complexity and language as an essential tool of communication, music has suffered from our perception that it is an epiphenomenal ‘leisure activity’, and archaeologically inaccessible to boot. Nothing could be further from the truth, according to Steven Mithen; music is integral to human social life, he argues, and we can investigate its ancestry with the same rich range of analyses — neurological, physiological, ethnographic, linguistic, ethological and even archaeological — which have been deployed to study language. In The Singing Neanderthals Steven Mithen poses these questions and proposes a bold hypothesis to answer them. Mithen argues that musicality is a fundamental part of being human, that this capacity is of great antiquity, and that a holistic protolanguage of musical emotive expression predates language and was an essential precursor to it. This is an argument with implications which extend far beyond the mere origins of music itself into the very motives of human origins. Any argument of such range is bound to attract discussion and critique; we here present commentaries by archaeologists Clive Gamble and Iain Morley and linguists Alison Wray and Maggie Tallerman, along with Mithen's response to them. Whether right or wrong, Mithen has raised fascinating and important issues. And it adds a great deal of charm to the time-honoured, perhaps shopworn image of the Neanderthals shambling ineffectively through the pages of Pleistocene prehistory to imagine them humming, crooning or belting out a cappella harmonies as they went.

Loss of language in early development of autism and specific language impairment

Background:  Several authors have highlighted areas of overlap in symptoms and impairment among children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and children with specific language impairment (SLI). By contrast, loss of language and broadly defined regression have been reported as relatively specific to autism. We compare the incidence of language loss and language progression of children with autism and SLI. Methods:  We used two complementary studies: the Special Needs and Autism Project (SNAP) and the Manchester Language Study (MLS) involving children with SLI. This yielded a combined sample of 368 children (305 males and 63 females) assessed in late childhood for autism, history of language loss, epilepsy, language abilities and nonverbal IQ. Results:  language loss occurred in just 1% of children with SLI but in 15% of children classified as having autism or autism spectrum disorder. Loss was more common among children with autism rather than milder ASD and is much less frequently reported when language development is delayed. For children who lost language skills before their first phrases, the phrased speech milestone was postponed but long-term language skills were not significantly lower than children with autism but without loss. For the few who experienced language loss after acquiring phrased speech, subsequent cognitive performance is more uncertain. Conclusions:  Language loss is highly specific to ASD. The underlying developmental abnormality may be more prevalent than raw data might suggest, its possible presence being hidden for children whose language development is delayed.

Knowledge and use of the lexicon in French as a second language

This special issue of JFLS focuses on what learners know about French words, on how they use that knowledge and on how it can be investigated and assessed. In many ways, it is a sequel to the special issue on the Acquisition of French as a Second Language edited by Myles and Towell that appeared in JFLS in 2004. While articles on the L2 acquisition of the French lexicon have appeared in a variety of journals, including JFLS, this special issue (SI) is the first volume which specifically focuses on lexical knowledge and use among learners of French as a second language. The issue is timely, because of the growing importance of vocabulary in the SLA research agenda, but also because research into vocabulary acquisition appears at the top of a list of areas in which teachers of Modern Foreign Languages are most interested.

Influence of geographical origin, host animal and stx gene on the virulence characteristics of Escherichia coli O26 strains

The influence of geographical origin, host animal and presence of the stx gene on the virulence of Escherichia coli O26 strains from ruminants was determined in this study. A clear association was found between the virulence profile and geographical origin of Shiga-toxigenic E. coli (STEC) O26 strains, with UK STEC O26 strains harbouring virtually identical profiles, whilst central European strains showed considerable heterogeneity in plasmid-encoded genes. The former group were also more likely to be non-motile and katP gene positive. Comparison of UK STEC and atypical enteropathogenic E. coli (aEPEC O26 strains showed that the presence of the stx1 gene was positively correlated with the presence of espP and katP genes and negatively associated with the presence of the yagP-yagT region and with rhamnose fermentation. In contrast to the uniform profiles of STEC O26 strains from ruminants in the UK, aEPEC O26 strains of bovine and ovine origin showed diverse profiles both within and between groups, and could not be separated into discrete groups. These results indicate that the characteristics of UK O26 strains from ruminants are distinct from those of O26 strains from ruminants and humans in other regions in central Europe. Such differences are expected to influence the zoonotic potential of this pathogen and the subsequent incidence of O26-associated human disease.

L2 performance and context of language learning: a comparative study of learners in Tehran and London

The importance of learning context has stirred debates in the field of second language acquisition over the past two decades since studying a second language (L2) abroad is believed to provide authentic opportunities that facilitate L2 acquisition and development. The present paper examines whether language performance of learners studying English in a formal language classroom context at home (AH) is different from performance of learners who study English abroad (SA) where they would have to use English for a range of communicative purposes. The data for this comparative study is part of a larger corpus of L2 performance of 100 learners of English, 60 in Tehran and 40 in London, on four oral narrative tasks. The two groups’ performances are compared on a range of different measures of fluency, accuracy, syntactic complexity and lexical diversity. The results of the analyses indicate that learners in the two contexts are very similar with respect to the grammatical accuracy and aspects of the oral fluency of their performance. However, the SA group appears to have benefited from living and studying abroad in producing language of higher syntactic complexity and lexical diversity. These results have significant implications for language teaching in AH contexts.

The time-course of morphological processing in a second language

We report findings from psycholinguistic experiments investigating the detailed timing of processing morphologically complex words by proficient adult second (L2) language learners of English in comparison to adult native (L1) speakers of English. The first study employed the masked priming technique to investigate -ed forms with a group of advanced Arabic-speaking learners of English. The results replicate previously found L1/L2 differences in morphological priming, even though in the present experiment an extra temporal delay was offered after the presentation of the prime words. The second study examined the timing of constraints against inflected forms inside derived words in English using the eye-movement monitoring technique and an additional acceptability judgment task with highly advanced Dutch L2 learners of English in comparison to adult L1 English controls. Whilst offline the L2 learners performed native-like, the eye-movement data showed that their online processing was not affected by the morphological constraint against regular plurals inside derived words in the same way as in native speakers. Taken together, these findings indicate that L2 learners are not just slower than native speakers in processing morphologically complex words, but that the L2 comprehension system employs real-time grammatical analysis (in this case, morphological information) less than the L1 system.

Production and on-line comprehension of definite articles and clitic pronouns by Greek sequential bilingual children and monolingual children with specific language impairment

The present study compared production and on-line comprehension of definite articles and third person direct object clitic pronouns in Greek-speaking typically developing, sequential bilingual (L2-TD) children and monolingual children with specific language impairment (L1-SLI). Twenty Turkish Greek L2-TD children, 16 Greek L1-SLI children, and 31 L1-TD Greek children participated in a production task examining definite articles and clitic pronouns and, in an on-line comprehension task, involving grammatical sentences with definite articles and clitics and sentences with grammatical violations induced by omitted articles and clitics. The results showed that the L2-TD children were sensitive to the grammatical violations despite low production. In contrast, the children with SLI were not sensitive to clitic omission in the on-line task, despite high production. These results support a dissociation between production and on-line comprehension in L2 children and for impaired grammatical representations and lack of automaticity in children with SLI. They also suggest that on-line comprehension tasks may complement production tasks by differentiating between the language profiles of L2-TD children and children with SLI.