The present research investigates the relationship between dietary habits and mortality patterns in the Roman Imperial and Medieval periods. The reconstructions of population dynamics and subsistence strategies provide a fascinating source of information for understanding our history. This is particularly true given that the changes in social, economic, political, and religious aspects related to the transition from the Roman period to the Middle Ages have been widely discussed. We analyzed the isotopic and mortality patterns of 616 individuals from 18 archeological sites (the Medieval Latium sites of Colonna, Santa Severa, Allumiere, Cencelle, and 14 Medieval and Imperial funerary contexts from Rome) to compile a survivorship analysis. A semi-parametric approach was applied, suggesting variations in mortality patterns between sexes in the Roman period. Nitrogen isotopic signatures influenced mortality in both periods, showing a quadratic and a linear effect for Roman Imperial and Medieval populations, respectively. No influence of carbon isotopic signatures has been detected for Roman Imperial populations. Conversely, increased mortality risk for rising carbon isotopic values was observed in Medieval samples. 相似文献
Investigation of fossil charged-particle tracks in various mineral phases of extraterrestrial samples is a powerful method for research the early stages of the solar system. Examination of fossil charged-particle tracks in the phosphate and olivine crystals of 5 pallasites coupled with U content determination allowed the estimation of the contributions of all possible track sources to the total track density and calculation of a value of model fission-track age.
Phosphate crystals from all studied pallasites were established to contain fossil tracks due to galactic cosmic rays (VH, VVH nuclei); induced fission of U and Th by cosmic rays; spontaneous fission of 238U; spontaneous fission of extinct short-lived 244Pu nuclei presented in significant quantities in the early solar system. The discovery of a high track density attributed to the extinct 244Pu pointed obviously to the high value of the fission-track age. Model fission-track ages of (4.37±0.02) Gyr for the Marjalahti pallasite; (4.37±0.01) Gyr for the Omolon pallasite; (4.19±0.02) Gyr for the Bragin pallasite; (4.18±0.03) Gyr for the Krasnoyarsk pallasite; (4.21±0.02) Gyr for the Brenham pallasite were calculated. The comparison of represented data with petrographic analyses allowed us to interpret a value of fission-track age as the time of the last intensive shock/thermal event in the cosmic history of a pallasite. 相似文献
Forty-eight cuticular hydrocarbons (CHCs) were characterized by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry from the epicuticular surface of the major Afrotropical malaria vector Anopheles gambiae. The hydrocarbons identified were 14 n-alkanes, 16 monomethyl alkanes, 13 dimethyl alkanes, 5 alkenes, with main-chain lengths ranging from C(17) to C(47), and the results are consistent with those from other Culicidae species. Qualitative differences were not observed between laboratory pools of three females and males, between different age-groups (0-16 days) and between single field specimens, whereas quantitative differences in CHC profiles were observed. Differences between sexes were more marked in individuals aged 0-2 days than in older ones. Both sexes undergo strong CHC profile changes with age, and individuals aged 0-2 days differ remarkably from the older ones. The possibility of exploiting these changes for estimating the age of mosquito was explored through multivariate analyses of the relative abundance of the compounds, using either the whole CHC profile or a subset of CHCs. Such a method allows us to assign more than 85% of females and 75% of males to the correct age-group. Although preliminary, these results show that the method is promising, as it has already been shown in Aedes aegypti and An. stephensi. The correct determination of the vector age (particularly in the case of the An. gambiae complex of sibling species) provides valuable information in malaria epidemiology and in evaluation of the effectiveness of vector control strategies. Further efforts will be made to validate this method on single specimens reared in seminatural conditions before being proposed to medical entomologists working in the Afrotropical region. 相似文献
Epidemic models with infection age of infectious individuals have been extensively studied, however, most of the existing works ignore the combined effects of immigration and nonlinear incidence. In this paper, we incorporate both the effects of immigration and nonlinear incidence, based on which we formulate an SEIR epidemic model. We give a rigorous mathematical analysis on some necessary technical materials. Then, by constructing a Lyapunov functional, we show that the endemic equilibrium is globally asymptotically stable. Numerical simulations of an application are given to support our theoretical results. 相似文献
We propose a new model – we call it a smoothed threshold life table (STLT) model – to generate life tables incorporating information on advanced ages. Our method allows a smooth mortality transition from non-extreme to extreme ages, and provides objectively determined highest attained ages with which to close the life table.We proceed by modifying the threshold life table (TLT) model developed by Li et al. (2008). In the TLT model, extreme value theory (EVT) is used to make optimal use of the relatively small number of observations at high ages, while the traditional Gompertz distribution is assumed for earlier ages. Our novel contribution is to constrain the hazard function of the two-part lifetime distribution to be continuous at the changeover point between the Gompertz and EVT models. This simple but far-reaching modification not only guarantees a smooth transition from non-extreme to extreme ages, but also provides a better and more robust fit than the TLT model when applied to a high quality Netherlands dataset. We show that the STLT model also compares favourably with other existing methods, including the Gompertz–Makeham model, logistic models, Heligman–Pollard model and Coale–Kisker method, and that a further generalisation, a time-dependent dynamic smooth threshold life table (DSTLT) model, generally has superior in-sample fitting as well as better out-of-sample forecasting performance, compared, for example, with the Cairns et al. (2006) model. 相似文献