The earliest recorded observations of Antarctic icebergs occurred in 1688 and 1700 in the Gregorian New Style (NS) Calendar. The first sighting took place after Christmas 1687 in the Julian Old Style (OS) Calendar, when just north of the Antarctic Peninsula, Edward Davis observed “ice islands” with lengths of 5–10 km; the second occurred in February 1699 OS, when north of South Georgia, Edmond Halley observed and first sketched tabular icebergs. Although these were the earliest documented observations, because icebergs occur adjacent to New Zealand and South America, seagoing Māori and indigenous South Americans may have observed them eight centuries earlier. Davis and Halley’s observations were in the iceberg stream that flows to the east of the Antarctic Peninsula. Davis’s observations were the result of the Batchelor’s Delight being blown south from Cape Horn by a storm; his misadjusted compass meant they sailed east across instead of north through the stream. Comparison of Davis’s positions with satellite iceberg trajectories suggests his observations occurred at 62.5°S between 53.0° and 54.3°W. Davis assumed his icebergs were floating, but because Halley’s ice islands appeared stationary, he thought they were grounded, missing an opportunity to speculate on the existence of a southern ice-covered continent.

The rapid growth of cultural evolutionary science, its expansion into numerous fields, its use of diverse methods, and several conceptual problems have outpaced corollary developments in theory and philosophy of science. This has led to concern, exemplified in results from a recent survey conducted with members of the Cultural Evolution Society, that the field lacks ‘knowledge synthesis’, is poorly supported by ‘theory’, has an ambiguous relation to biological evolution and uses key terms (e.g. ‘culture’, ‘social learning’, ‘cumulative culture’) in ways that hamper operationalization in models, experiments and field studies. Although numerous review papers in the field represent and categorize its empirical findings, the field's theoretical challenges receive less critical attention even though challenges of a theoretical or conceptual nature underlie most of the problems identified by Cultural Evolution Society members. Guided by the heterogeneous ‘grand challenges’ emergent in this survey, this paper restates those challenges and adopts an organizational style requisite to discussion of them. The paper's goal is to contribute to increasing conceptual clarity and theoretical discernment around the most pressing challenges facing the field of cultural evolutionary science. It will be of most interest to cultural evolutionary scientists, theoreticians, philosophers of science and interdisciplinary researchers.

Female fertility is a complex trait with age-specific changes in spontaneous dizygotic (DZ) twinning and fertility. To elucidate factors regulating female fertility and infertility, we conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) on mothers of spontaneous DZ twins (MoDZT) versus controls (3273 cases, 24,009 controls). This is a follow-up study to the Australia/New Zealand (ANZ) component of that previously reported (Mbarek et al., 2016), with a sample size almost twice that of the entire discovery sample meta-analysed in the previous article (and five times the ANZ contribution to that), resulting from newly available additional genotyping and representing a significant increase in power. We compare analyses with and without male controls and show unequivocally that it is better to include male controls who have been screened for recent family history, than to use only female controls. Results from the SNP based GWAS identified four genomewide significant signals, including one novel region, ZFPM1 (Zinc Finger Protein, FOG Family Member 1), on chromosome 16. Previous signals near FSHB (Follicle Stimulating Hormone beta subunit) and SMAD3 (SMAD Family Member 3) were also replicated (Mbarek et al., 2016). We also ran the GWAS with a dominance model that identified a further locus ADRB2 on chr 5. These results have been contributed to the International Twinning Genetics Consortium for inclusion in the next GWAS meta-analysis (Mbarek et al., in press).

Sufficient vitamin D status is crucial for successful pregnancy and fetal development. The assessment of 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) concentrations is commonly used to evaluate vitamin D status. Our objective was to examine the interrelated biodynamics of maternal and neonatal total, free and bioavailable 25(OH)D in maternal–neonatal dyads at birth and their associations with homeostasis and neonatal birth anthropometry. We analysed a cohort of seventy full-term mother–child pairs. We found positive associations between all neonatal measures of vitamin D status. Maternal forms exhibited a similar pattern of association, except for the bioavailable maternal form. In multivariate analysis, both total and free maternal 25(OH)D concentrations were correlated with all neonatal forms (neonatal total 25(OH)D: 1·29 (95 % CI, 1·12, 1·46) for maternal total 25(OH)D, 10·89 (8·16, 13·63) for maternal free 25(OH)D), (neonatal free 25(OH)D: 0·15 for maternal total 25(OH)D, 1·28 (95 % CI, 0·89, 1·68) for maternal free 25(OH)D) and (0·13 (95 % CI, 0·10, 0·16), 1·06 (95 % CI, 0·68, 1·43) for maternal free 25(OH)D), respectively, with the exclusion of the bioavailable maternal form. We observed no significant interactions within or between groups regarding maternal and neonatal vitamin D parameters and maternal calcium and parathyroid hormone concentrations, and neonatal birth anthropometry. Our study indicates that bioavailable maternal and neonatal 25(OH)D have no significant effects on vitamin D equilibrium, Ca homeostasis and neonatal anthropometry at birth. However, we observed an interaction between maternal and neonatal total and free 25(OH)D concentrations at the maternal–neonatal interface, with no associations observed with other calciotropic or anthropometric outcomes.

Se presentan los resultados del análisis tecnológico, morfológico y estilístico de una muestra cerámica hallada en estratigrafía en una estructura del sitio Corral Grande 1, asignada al período Formativo regional (2400-1100 años aP), en Antofagasta de la Sierra (provincia de Catamarca, Argentina), Andes meridionales. El objetivo del estudio fue caracterizar distintos aspectos de la cerámica para explorar las potenciales diferencias funcionales de las vasijas en el marco de las actividades agropastoriles desarrolladas en el sitio, los patrones de movilidad y el uso del espacio en la región. Los análisis permitieron identificar una alta variabilidad de estilos tecnológicos en el total del conjunto, e inferir que las vasijas pudieron elaborarse para funciones de almacenaje de productos agrícolas, de cocción y servicio de alimentos. Los tiestos más pequeños y livianos pudieron transportarse en el marco de actividades de pastoreo y caza de camélidos. Las comparaciones a nivel regional evidenciaron similitudes tecnológicas y estilísticas con la cerámica de otros asentamientos, y características decorativas que indican la integración del sitio a escala regional e interregional.

Psychological and cultural evolutionary accounts of human sociality propose that beliefs in punitive and monitoring gods that care about moral norms facilitate cooperation. While there is some evidence to suggest that belief in supernatural punishment and monitoring generally induce cooperative behaviour, the effect of a deity's explicitly postulated moral concerns on cooperation remains unclear. Here, we report a pre-registered set of analyses to assess whether perceiving a locally relevant deity as moralistic predicts cooperative play in two permutations of two economic games using data from up to 15 diverse field sites. Across games, results suggest that gods’ moral concerns do not play a direct, cross-culturally reliable role in motivating cooperative behaviour. The study contributes substantially to the current literature by testing a central hypothesis in the evolutionary and cognitive science of religion with a large and culturally diverse dataset using behavioural and ethnographically rich methods.

Biomarkers may be useful endophenotypes for genetic studies if they share genetic sources of variation with the outcome, for example, with all-cause mortality. Australian adult study participants who had reported their parental survival information were included in the study: 14,169 participants had polygenic risk scores (PRS) from genotyping and up to 13,365 had biomarker results. We assessed associations between participants’ biomarker results and parental survival, and between biomarker results and eight parental survival PRS at varying p-value cut-offs. Survival in parents was associated with participants’ serum bilirubin, C-reactive protein, HDL cholesterol, triglycerides and uric acid, and with LDL cholesterol for participants’ fathers but not for their mothers. PRS for all-cause mortality were associated with liver function tests (alkaline phosphatase, butyrylcholinesterase, gamma-glutamyl transferase), metabolic tests (LDL and HDL cholesterol, triglycerides, uric acid), and acute-phase reactants (C-reactive protein, globulins). Association between offspring biomarker results and parental survival demonstrates the existence of familial effects common to both, while associations between biomarker results and PRS for mortality favor at least a partial genetic cause of this covariation. Identification of genetic loci affecting mortality-associated biomarkers offers a route to the identification of additional loci affecting mortality.

The civilian Automatic Identification System (AIS) has no inherent protection against spoofing. Spoofed AIS messages have the potential to interfere with the safe navigation of a vessel by, amongst other approaches, spoofing maritime virtual aids to navigation and/or differential global navigation satellite system (DGNSS) correction data conveyed across it. Acting maliciously, a single transmitter may spoof thousands of AIS messages per minute with the potential to cause considerable nuisance; compromising information provided by AIS intended to enhance the mariner's situational awareness. This work describes an approach to authenticate AIS messages using public key cryptography (PKC) and thus provide unequivocal evidence that AIS messages originate from genuine sources and so can be trusted. Improvements to the proposed AIS authentication scheme are identified which address a security weakness and help avoid false positives to spoofing caused by changes to message syntax. A channel loading investigation concludes that sufficient bandwidth is available to routinely authenticate all AIS messages whilst retaining backwards compatibility by carrying PKC ‘digital signatures’ in a separate VHF Data Exchange System (VDES) side channel.

Mortality risk is known to be associated with many physiological or biochemical risk factors, and polygenic risk scores (PRSs) may offer an additional or alternative approach to risk stratification. We have compared the predictive value of common biochemical tests, PRSs and information on parental survival in a cohort of twins and their families. Common biochemical test results were available for up to 13,365 apparently healthy men and women, aged 17−93 years (mean 49.0, standard deviation [SD] 13.7) at blood collection. PRSs for longevity were available for 14,169 study participants and reported parental survival for 25,784 participants. A search for information on date and cause of death was conducted through the Australian National Death Index, with median follow-up of 11.3 years. Cox regression was used to evaluate associations with mortality from all causes, cancers, cardiovascular diseases and other causes. Linear relationships with all-cause mortality were strongest for C-reactive protein, gamma-glutamyl transferase, glucose and alkaline phosphatase, with hazard ratios (HRs) of 1.16 (95% CI [1.07, 1.24]), 1.15 (95% CI 1.04–1.21), 1.13 (95% CI [1.08, 1.19]) and 1.11 (95% CI [1.05, 1.88]) per SD difference, respectively. Significant nonlinear effects were found for urea, uric acid and butyrylcholinesterase. Lipid risk factors were not statistically significant for mortality in our cohort. Family history and PRS showed weaker but significant associations with survival, with HR in the range 1.05 to 1.09 per SD difference. In conclusion, biochemical tests currently predict long-term mortality more strongly than genetic scores based on genotyping or on reported parental survival.

Previous genetic studies on hair morphology focused on the overall morphology of the hair using data collected by self-report or researcher observation. Here, we present the first genome-wide association study (GWAS) of a micro-level quantitative measure of hair curvature. We compare these results to GWAS results obtained using a macro-level classification of observable hair curvature performed in the same sample of twins and siblings of European descent. Observational data were collected by trained observers, while quantitative data were acquired using an Optical Fibre Diameter Analyser (OFDA). The GWAS for both the observational and quantitative measures of hair curvature resulted in genome-wide significant signals at chromosome 1q21.3 close to the trichohyalin (TCHH) gene, previously shown to harbor variants associated with straight hair morphology in Europeans. All genetic variants reaching genome-wide significance for both GWAS (quantitative measure lead single-nucleotide polymorphism [SNP] rs12130862, p = 9.5 × 10–09; observational measure lead SNP rs11803731, p = 2.1 × 10–17) were in moderate to very high linkage disequilibrium (LD) with each other (minimum r2 = .45), indicating they represent the same genetic locus. Conditional analyses confirmed the presence of only one signal associated with each measure at this locus. Results from the quantitative measures reconfirmed the accuracy of observational measures.

OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: Abnormalities in sensorimotor behavior are present in the majority of individuals with ASD and associated with core symptoms. Cortico-cerebellar networks that control sensorimotor behavior have been implicated in ASD, but little is known about their function during sensorimotor actions. The purpose of this functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study was to examine cortical-cerebellar function during feedback-guided motor behavior in ASD. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: Individuals with ASD (11-30 years; N = 18) and age-matched controls (N = 15) completed a visuomotor task of feedback-guided precision gripping during fMRI. Participants pressed with their right thumb and forefinger on a force transducer while viewing a green FORCE bar on a screen that moved upwards with increased force toward a fixed white TARGET bar. Individuals were instructed to maintain the FORCE bar at the level of the TARGET bar for 24 seconds. Target force levels were set at 20% and 60% of each participant’s maximum voluntary contraction (MVC). Force variability was characterized as the coefficient of variation (i.e., standard deviation of the force time series / mean force output; CoV). RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: Mean force did not differ between groups indicating participants were able to follow task demands. Participants with ASD showed increased force variability (F(1,30) = 5.214, p = 0.03) at both 20% (d = .45) and 60% (d = .77) MVC compared to controls. Compared to controls, individuals with ASD showed decreased activation in left angular gyrus during the visuomotor task compared to rest (AG; maximum t = 4.31). Individuals with ASD also showed greater visuomotor activation compared to controls in ipsilateral ventral M1, extending anteriorly into posterior ventral pre-motor cortex (PMv; maximum t = −4.06, cluster size = 38 voxels). This difference reflected the finding that control participants showed a selective deactivation of ipsilateral M1/PMv during visuomotor behavior, whereas individuals with ASD did not show this pattern. A significant group x force interaction was observed for contralateral Crus I activation (maximum t = −2.42) that was driven by an increase in activity during 60% compared to 20% MVC in control participants, while individuals with ASD showed no change in Crus I activation between force levels. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF IMPACT: Increased force variability in individuals with ASD suggests impaired processing of sensory feedback to guide precision motor behaviors. Individuals with ASD did not show deactivation of right motor cortex during visuomotor behavior relative to rest, suggesting reduced ability to selectively modulate motor cortical output. Reduced activation in left AG may reflect an inability to integrate visual, haptic, and proprioceptive inputs to reactively adjust ongoing motor output. Failure to show force-dependent scaling of Crus I in ASD suggests lateral cerebellar circuits do not adapt sensory prediction and error processes to maintain precision motor output during more demanding conditions. Together, our results demonstrate multiple cortical-cerebellar mechanisms associated with sensorimotor imprecision in ASD.

Whether monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twins differ from each other in a variety of phenotypes is important for genetic twin modeling and for inferences made from twin studies in general. We analyzed whether there were differences in individual, maternal and paternal education between MZ and DZ twins in a large pooled dataset. Information was gathered on individual education for 218,362 adult twins from 27 twin cohorts (53% females; 39% MZ twins), and on maternal and paternal education for 147,315 and 143,056 twins respectively, from 28 twin cohorts (52% females; 38% MZ twins). Together, we had information on individual or parental education from 42 twin cohorts representing 19 countries. The original education classifications were transformed to education years and analyzed using linear regression models. Overall, MZ males had 0.26 (95% CI [0.21, 0.31]) years and MZ females 0.17 (95% CI [0.12, 0.21]) years longer education than DZ twins. The zygosity difference became smaller in more recent birth cohorts for both males and females. Parental education was somewhat longer for fathers of DZ twins in cohorts born in 1990–1999 (0.16 years, 95% CI [0.08, 0.25]) and 2000 or later (0.11 years, 95% CI [0.00, 0.22]), compared with fathers of MZ twins. The results show that the years of both individual and parental education are largely similar in MZ and DZ twins. We suggest that the socio-economic differences between MZ and DZ twins are so small that inferences based upon genetic modeling of twin data are not affected.

Elemental, chemical, and structural analysis of polycrystalline materials at the micron scale is frequently carried out using microfocused synchrotron X-ray beams, sometimes on multiple instruments. The Maia pixelated energy-dispersive X-ray area detector enables the simultaneous collection of X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and diffraction because of the relatively large solid angle and number of pixels when compared with other systems. The large solid angle also permits extraction of surface topography because of changes in self-absorption. This work demonstrates the capability of the Maia detector for simultaneous measurement of XRF and diffraction for mapping the short- and long-range order across the grain structure in a Ni polycrystalline foil.

We analyzed birth order differences in means and variances of height and body mass index (BMI) in monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twins from infancy to old age. The data were derived from the international CODATwins database. The total number of height and BMI measures from 0.5 to 79.5 years of age was 397,466. As expected, first-born twins had greater birth weight than second-born twins. With respect to height, first-born twins were slightly taller than second-born twins in childhood. After adjusting the results for birth weight, the birth order differences decreased and were no longer statistically significant. First-born twins had greater BMI than the second-born twins over childhood and adolescence. After adjusting the results for birth weight, birth order was still associated with BMI until 12 years of age. No interaction effect between birth order and zygosity was found. Only limited evidence was found that birth order influenced variances of height or BMI. The results were similar among boys and girls and also in MZ and DZ twins. Overall, the differences in height and BMI between first- and second-born twins were modest even in early childhood, while adjustment for birth weight reduced the birth order differences but did not remove them for BMI.