More Like this

1. Craniofacial skeletal response to encephalization: How do we know what we think we know?

   https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.23766  

   Lesciotto, Kate M.; Richtsmeier, Joan T. (January 2019, American Journal of Physical Anthropology)

   Abstract Dramatic changes in cranial capacity have characterized human evolution. Important evolutionary hypotheses, such as the spatial packing hypothesis, assert that increases in relative brain size (encephalization) have caused alterations to the modern human skull, resulting in a suite of traits unique among extant primates, including a domed cranial vault, highly flexed cranial base, and retracted facial skeleton. Most prior studies have used fossil or comparative primate data to establish correlations between brain size and cranial form, but the mechanistic basis for how changes in brain size impact the overall shape of the skull resulting in these cranial traits remains obscure and has only rarely been investigated critically. We argue that understanding how changes in human skull morphology could have resulted from increased encephalization requires the direct testing of hypotheses relating to interaction of embryonic development of the bones of the skull and the brain. Fossil and comparative primate data have thoroughly described the patterns of association between brain size and skull morphology. Here we suggest complementing such existing datasets with experiments focused on mechanisms responsible for producing the observed patterns to more thoroughly understand the role of encephalization in shaping the modern human skull. 

   more » « less
2. What we talk about when we talk about colors

   https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2109237118  

   Twomey, Colin R.; Roberts, Gareth; Brainard, David H.; Plotkin, Joshua B. (September 2021, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

   Names for colors vary widely across languages, but color categories are remarkably consistent. Shared mechanisms of color perception help explain consistent partitions of visible light into discrete color vocabularies. But the mappings from colors to words are not identical across languages, which may reflect communicative needs—how often speakers must refer to objects of different color. Here we quantify the communicative needs of colors in 130 different languages by developing an inference algorithm for this problem. We find that communicative needs are not uniform: Some regions of color space exhibit 30-fold greater demand for communication than other regions. The regions of greatest demand correlate with the colors of salient objects, including ripe fruits in primate diets. Our analysis also reveals a hidden diversity in the communicative needs of colors across different languages, which is partly explained by differences in geographic location and the local biogeography of linguistic communities. Accounting for language-specific, nonuniform communicative needs improves predictions for how a language maps colors to words, and how these mappings vary across languages. Our account closes an important gap in the compression theory of color naming, while opening directions to study cross-cultural variation in the need to communicate different colors and its impact on the cultural evolution of color categories. 

   more » « less
3. Volcanologists—who are we and where are we going?

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s00445-022-01547-7  

   Kavanagh, Janine L.; Annen, Catherine J.; Burchardt, Steffi; Chalk, Caitlin; Gallant, Elisabeth; Morin, Julie; Scarlett, Jazmin; Williams, Rebecca (May 2022, Bulletin of Volcanology)

   Abstrakt Jämlikhet, mångfald och inkludering (EDI efter engelska Equity, diversity and inclusivity) är värden som alla forskargrupper och organisationer ska sträva efter. Dessa värden säkrar arbetsvillkor, policies och praktik som inte bara främjar forskningsresultat av hög kvalité men även det vulkanologiska samhällets välbefinnande. I denna artikel reflekterar vi över EDI framsteg inom vulkanologin genom att utvärdera internationella organisationers medlemsdata, sammansättningen av nämnder, fördelning av priser och förstaförfattarskap av artiklar i vulkanologiska tidskrifter. På grund av den otillräckliga tillgången på data fokuserar vi vår analys utifrån diskriminering som kan kopplas till könsidentitet, men visar även att diskriminering på grund av etnicitet, sexuell läggning, religion, fysisk förmåga och socioekonomisk bakgrund förekommer och att om flera av dessa faktorer korsas leder det till ännu värre marginalisering inom det vulkanologiska samhället. Vi delar förslag och råd från andra discipliner om hur individer, forskargrupper och organisationer kan främja, utveckla och implementera nya initiativ som identifierar och tar itu med diskriminering och förbättrar EDI inom vulkanologin. Det finns mycket förbättringspotential om vi alla ser vår roll i att skapa ett jämlikare, och inkluderande vulkanologiskt samhälle med mer mångfald. Att uppnå detta kräver: 1) Medvetenhet: erkännandet av problemet, 2) Engagemang: genom att anta EDI i värdegrunden och utveckla handlingsplaner, uppförandekoder och riktlinjer, 3) Handling med målet att uppnå alla gruppers representation och 4) Reflektion: utveckling genom kritisk självreflektion och viljan att ta itu med brister. 

   more » « less
4. Do We Run How We Say We Run? Formalization and Practice of Governance in OSS Communities

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3641980  

   Chakraborti, Mahasweta; Atkisson, Curtis; Stănciulescu, Ştefan; Filkov, Vladimir; Frey, Seth (May 2024, ACM)
5. How We Code

   https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67788-6_5  

   Shaffer, David W.; Ruis, Andrew R. (January 2021, Advances in Quantitative Ethnography: Second International Conference, ICQE 2020, Malibu, CA, USA, February 1-3, 2021, Proceedings)

   Ruis, Andrew R.; Lee, Seung B. (Ed.)

   Coding data—defining concepts and identifying where they occur in data—is a critical aspect of qualitative data analysis, and especially so in quantitative ethnography. Coding is a central process for creating meaning from data, and while much has been written about coding methods and theory, relatively little has been written about what constitutes best practices for fair and valid coding, what justifies those practices, and how to implement them. In this paper, our goal is not to address these issues comprehensively, but to provide guidelines for good coding practice and to highlight some of the issues and key questions that quantitative ethnographers and other researchers should consider when coding data. 

   more » « less