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Distribution of variant rs10974944 of the JAK2 gene in Mestizos and Native Americans from Mexico regarding worldwide association studies with myeloproliferative diseases
Get PDFThe genetic variant rs10974944 (C\u3eG) in the JAK2 gene is associated with a higher risk of myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs) by increasing the probability of the somatic mutation V617F in the JAK2 protein. For this reason, we evaluated the distribution of rs10974944 in Mexican populations, including published data from association studies in worldwide populations. We analyzed five Mestizo (admixed) (n= 200) and four Native American population samples from Mexico (n= 200), representing the North, Center, West, and South regions of this country. Therefore, we genotyped rs10974944 by qPCR using Taqman probes. Allele and genotype frequencies were estimated in each population sample. The wild-type allele C, the homozygous C/C, and the heterozygous C/G were the most frequent in all Mexican populations. The genotype distribution in all these population samples were in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. Interestingly, genetic distances clustered most of the worldwide patient samples, including to Tarahumaras and Mayas, and they showed differences with Mexican and control samples. Although higher genetic susceptibility to MPNs could be predicted in these Native American populations, the homogeneous allele distribution among Mexican and worldwide control populations, compels to analyze further genetic and non-genetic factors. In brief, although worldwide population samples displayed homogeneous distribution for rs10974944, the genetic clustering of worldwide patients supports the claimed association with myeloproliferative neoplasms
A Spectrum of Violence: The Intersection of Antemortem and Postmortem Embodiment in Migrant Death Investigation at the U.S.-Mexico Border
Get PDFThe objective of the present literature review is to examine how the humanitarian crisis of migrant death at the U.S.-Mexico border epitomizes the antemortem and postmortem dimensions of structural violence and the lasting effects it can have on the human body. After describing the ongoing migrant death crisis, we review embodiment constructs in biological anthropology pertaining to structural violence and marginalization across the life course. We then survey studies examining skeletal and dental biomarkers of structural violence as embodied in migrant populations, including oral pathology, dental modifications, porotic hyperostosis, cribra orbitalia, enamel hypoplasia, cranial fluctuating asymmetry, vertebral neural canal size, and stature. These studies, conducted in forensic institutions with data collected through casework, provide evidence of structural vulnerabilities faced by different migrant groups, but also suggest that the migrant lived experience is not uniform. After death, the bodies and material artifacts of those who perish while migrating further embody structural violence by reflecting the arduousness of the journey, undergoing taphonomic changes, and receiving treatment that often leads to further erasure. While many migrant decedents are disappeared in desert and ranchland environments, those who are found are often trapped in the medicolegal system, either undergoing further bodily destruction for the purpose of identification or being buried in unmarked graves without proper investigation. To exemplify the various postmortem trajectories of migrant individuals, we provide an account of the investigative experiences of Operation Identification (OpID), a humanitarian forensic initiative in Texas, highlighting the realities of how embodiment principles are incorporated into migrant death casework. Throughout forensic exhumations and the identification process, OpID regularly encounters the biological and circumstantial evidence of violence reviewed throughout the paper. We conclude by discussing future directions for integrating embodiment frameworks into death investigation around the country. The purpose of this review is to 1) expose biological scientists to applied embodiment research in the U.S.-Mexico border context and 2) to further dialogues on the the utility of embodiment in medicolegal spheres
More than Ethics: Changing Approaches to Research in Human Biology
No full textWork in biological anthropology and human biology that engages with, extracts, manipulates, analyzes, and disseminates biological data from and associated with people requires serious ethical investment as central to method, theory, and practice. However, ethics is not enough. Moving beyond a call for better (or more) ethics, there is a core need for anthropological, historical, antiracist/anticolonialist method and theory in dealing with human data (existing, newly collected, and future collections). But there are structures in the academy, historical, financial, hierarchical, discriminatory, that impede sincere and effective actions to make such changes. Encouragingly, calls for structural change and some actions entailing it are under way. But individual efforts are not enough—systemic, profession-level processes need to be addressed
Mitochondrial DNA Variation in Southern Tunisian Populations
No full textDue to its complex history of migrations and colonization of African, European, and Asian people, the Tunisian territory is an ideal area to study the e fects of cultural change on the genetic structure of human populations. This study investigated genetic variation in the mitochondrial DNA of Tunisian populations to detect the possible impact of recent historical events on their gene pool. Two Arab and three Berber communities were analyzed using a comparison data set of other populations comprising African, Arabian, Asian, European, and Near Eastern groups. Results were compared with those produced using a large panel of autosomal single-nucleotide polymorphisms. We observed a slight but important di ference between the populations that inhabit the southern and central-northern areas of Tunisia. Furthermore, robust signatures of genetic isolation were detected in two Berber populations (Nouvelle Zraoua and Tamezret) and in the R’Baya people, a seminomadic Arab group. This investigation suggests that the genetic structure of investigated southern Tunisian populations retains signatures of historical events that occurred between the th and th centuries, particularly the trans-Saharan slave trade and the emigration of Berbers in remote areas of the south during the Arab conquest
Love, the Moon, and the Body: George MacDonald’s “The Light Princess” and “Little Daylight” as Reflections on the Embodied Mind
No full textIn George MacDonald’s “The Light Princess,” the connection between states of mind and bodily reactions is represented and explored, with a particular focus on the meaning of lightness and heaviness in relation to love and emotions—which the form of the tale itself mirrors by alternating comedy and tragedy. Likewise, “Little Daylight” offers innovative meditations on the female body, its changes, and its interrelation with the mind’s states. Both stories are inspired by the traditional tale “Sleeping Beauty,” but they propose a very different take on the unconscious sleep of mind and body portrayed in the original story by concentrating instead on their complex and dynamic intertwinement. This article aims to elucidate and analyze the provocative representations of the two princesses’ embodied minds in George MacDonald’s unconventional and ingenious fairy tales
“Jewish” Genocidal Villains for Children? Emergent Holocaust Consciousness and Postwar Antisemitism in One Hundred and One Dalmatians and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
No full textThis article studies how two popular 1960s Anglophone children’s films projected antisemitic ideas onto genocidal villains. Focusing on Cruella de Vil of Walt Disney’s One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) and the Child Catcher of Ken Hughes’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), it analyzes the appearance of ethnically stereotyped, Jewish-suggestive figures presented as enactors of genocidal violence, rather than as victims or survivors of it. Subliminally reversing the resonance of the Holocaust’s Jewish victimization by non-Jewish Europeans, these films both touch upon themes of genocidal atrocity that were belatedly emerging in broader Western popular culture of the 1960s, as well as maintain an antisemitic ethnic hierarchy in which implicitly “Jewish,” non-white, and queer bodies appear unworthy or dangerous. In these films, villains marked by Jewish, racialized, and queer stereotypes, as well as by antisemitic paradigms, categorically oppose the existence of an entire demographic or seek to confine and/or annihilate that demographic for their own perceived wellbeing. Contextualizing and analyzing this phenomenon, I consider its potential meanings for 1960s American audiences in relation to their shifting social and political realities, including the waning of public antisemitism, as well as the emergence of Second-Wave Feminism and the Gay Liberation movement
Visual-Textual Encounters with a German Grandfather: The Work of Angela Findlay
No full textIn this article, I consider the artistic and literary work of Angela Findlay, the daughter of a German mother and English father, and the granddaughter of a highly decorated Wehrmacht soldier. Working as a visual artist, public speaker and writer, Findlay moves between representational forms in order to express the complexities associated with her dual heritage and the “legacy of shame” that she carries with her. I take Findlay’s In My Grandfather’s Shadow as a case study that foregrounds new forms of visual-textual witnessing in the descendants of the war generation. I conclude that, by moving between different artistic practices, Findlay is able to encapsulate the complex and transnational experience of being a descendant of both Germany and the Allied nations; in so doing, she challenges the reader to question the conceptual boundaries of testimony, straightforward perceptions of perpetration, and the diluted, but nevertheless affected and affective, experiences of subsequent generations
The Language of Suffering: A Review of Ghost Words and Invisible Giants by Lheisa Dustin
Get PDFGhost Words and Invisible Giants by Lheisa Dustin. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2021. Pp. 308. $133.00 hardback
