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| 2. |
- Bakker, F. T., et al.
(författare)
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The Global Museum: natural history collections and the future of evolutionary science and public education
- 2020
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Ingår i: PeerJ. - : PeerJ. - 2167-8359. ; 8
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Natural history museums are unique spaces for interdisciplinary research and educational innovation. Through extensive exhibits and public programming and by hosting rich communities of amateurs, students, and researchers at all stages of their careers, they can provide a place-based window to focus on integration of science and discovery, as well as a locus for community engagement. At the same time, like a synthesis radio telescope, when joined together through emerging digital resources, the global community of museums (the 'Global Museum') is more than the sum of its parts, allowing insights and answers to diverse biological, environmental, and societal questions at the global scale, across eons of time, and spanning vast diversity across the Tree of Life. We argue that, whereas natural history collections and museums began with a focus on describing the diversity and peculiarities of species on Earth, they are now increasingly leveraged in new ways that significantly expand their impact and relevance. These new directions include the possibility to ask new, often interdisciplinary questions in basic and applied science, such as in biomimetic design, and by contributing to solutions to climate change, global health and food security challenges. As institutions, they have long been incubators for cutting-edge research in biology while simultaneously providing core infrastructure for research on present and future societal needs. Here we explore how the intersection between pressing issues in environmental and human health and rapid technological innovation have reinforced the relevance of museum collections. We do this by providing examples as food for thought for both the broader academic community and museum scientists on the evolving role of museums. We also identify challenges to the realization of the full potential of natural history collections and the Global Museum to science and society and discuss the critical need to grow these collections. We then focus on mapping and modelling of museum data (including place-based approaches and discovery), and explore the main projects, platforms and databases enabling this growth. Finally, we aim to improve relevant protocols for the long-term storage of specimens and tissues, ensuring proper connection with tomorrow's technologies and hence further increasing the relevance of natural history museums.
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| 4. |
- Almås, Ingvild, et al.
(författare)
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Fairness and family background
- 2017
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Ingår i: Politics, Philosophy and Economics. - 1470-594X .- 1741-3060. ; 16:2, s. 117-131
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Fairness preferences fundamentally affect individual behavior and play an important role in shaping social and political institutions. However, people differ both with respect to what they view as fair and with respect to how much weight they attach to fairness considerations. In this article, we study the role of family background in explaining these heterogeneities in fairness preferences. In particular, we examine how socioeconomic background relates to fairness views and to how people make trade-offs between fairness and self-interest. To study this, we conducted an economic experiment with a representative sample of 14- to 15-year-old and matched the experimental data to administrative data on parental income and education. The participants made two distributive choices in the experiment. The first choice was to distribute money between themselves and another participant in a situation where there was no difference in merit. The second choice was to distribute money between two other participants with unequal merits. Our main finding is that there is a systematic difference in fairness view between children from low-socioceconomic status (SES) families and the rest of the participants; more than 50 percent of the participants from low-SES families are egalitarians, whereas only about 20 percent in the rest of the sample hold this fairness view. In contrast, we find no significant difference in the weight attached to fairness between children from different socioeconomic groups.
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| 5. |
- Gibbs, Kevin, et al.
(författare)
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Exploring the emergence of an 'Aquatic' Neolithic in the Russian Far East : organic residue analysis of early hunter-gatherer pottery from Sakhalin Island
- 2017
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Ingår i: Antiquity. - : Antiquity Publications. - 0003-598X .- 1745-1744. ; 91:360, s. 1484-1500
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Neolithic in north-east Asia is defined by the presence of ceramic containers, rather than agriculture, among hunter-gatherer communities. The role of pottery in such groups has, however, hitherto been unclear. This article presents the results of organic residue analysis of Neolithic pottery from Sakhalin Island in the Russian Far East. Results indicate that early pottery on Sakhalin was used for the processing of aquatic species, and that its adoption formed part of a wider Neolithic transition involving the reorientation of local lifeways towards the exploitation of marine resources.
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| 6. |
- Pietrow, Alexander G.M. 1991-
(författare)
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Investigations into the origin of Einstein’s Sink
- 2018
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Ingår i: Studium. - : Uopen Journals. - 1876-9055 .- 2212-7283. ; 11:4, s. 260-268
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Einstein’s sink is a well-known object among physics and astronomy students at Leiden University. Stories about its origin have been passed down since it was moved to the large lecture room of the then newly built Oort Building in 1998. These stories claim that it was seen as an Einstein relic by the physics faculty, kept close to inspire young minds. After researching this story, I found that the sink is from the early 20th century and that it once stood in the large lecture room of the Kamerlingh Onnes Laboratory in Leiden. It is likely that at this time it was used by many scientists, including Einstein. However, my research also shows that the move from the KOL was done purely for financial reasons and had nothing to do with Einstein. It is possible that the story was made up to conceal this fact, creating a more appealing reason for these cutbacks. The sink is seen by many as a connection to Einstein’s and the university’s past and is liked for this fact and not the aforementioned legend.
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| 7. |
- Schuenemann, Verena J., et al.
(författare)
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Genome-Wide Comparison of Medieval and Modern Mycobacterium leprae
- 2013
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Ingår i: Science. - : American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). - 0036-8075 .- 1095-9203. ; 341:6142, s. 179-183
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Leprosy was endemic in Europe until the Middle Ages. Using DNA array capture, we have obtained genome sequences of Mycobacterium leprae from skeletons of five medieval leprosy cases from the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Denmark. In one case, the DNA was so well preserved that full de novo assembly of the ancient bacterial genome could be achieved through shotgun sequencing alone. The ancient M. leprae sequences were compared with those of 11 modern strains, representing diverse genotypes and geographic origins. The comparisons revealed remarkable genomic conservation during the past 1000 years, a European origin for leprosy in the Americas, and the presence of an M. leprae genotype in medieval Europe now commonly associated with the Middle East. The exceptional preservation of M. leprae biomarkers, both DNA and mycolic acids, in ancient skeletons has major implications for palaeomicrobiology and human pathogen evolution.
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| 8. |
- Villa-Islas, Viridiana, et al.
(författare)
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Demographic history and genetic structure in pre-Hispanic Central Mexico
- 2023
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Ingår i: Science. - : American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). - 0036-8075 .- 1095-9203. ; 380:6645
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Aridoamerica and Mesoamerica are two distinct cultural areas in northern and central Mexico, respectively, that hosted numerous pre-Hispanic civilizations between 2500 BCE and 1521 CE. The division between these regions shifted southward because of severe droughts ~1100 years ago, which allegedly drove a population replacement in central Mexico by Aridoamerican peoples. In this study, we present shotgun genome-wide data from 12 individuals and 27 mitochondrial genomes from eight pre-Hispanic archaeological sites across Mexico, including two at the shifting border of Aridoamerica and Mesoamerica. We find population continuity that spans the climate change episode and a broad preservation of the genetic structure across present-day Mexico for the past 2300 years. Lastly, we identify a contribution to pre-Hispanic populations of northern and central Mexico from two ancient unsampled “ghost” populations.
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