Life Sciences Commons^™

Brooks, Larry (Fa 1228), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

FA Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 1228. Student paper titled “Blacksmithing” in which Larry Brooks explores the history of blacksmithing, the proper way to shoe a horse, appropriate tools and supplies, and how craftsmen use various smithing methods to repair items such as shovels, plows, and wagon wheels. Brooks collected information from Earl Austin, a longtime farmer and blacksmith from Beaver Dam, Kentucky. The paper also contains black and white photographs of blacksmithing implements, the shoeing process, and Austin’s workspace.

Who Needs Data? I’Ve Got Experience!, Dawnie Wolfe Steadman

Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints

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New Approaches To Juvenile Age Estimation In Forensics: Application Of Transition Analysis Via The Shackelford Et Al. Method To A Diverse Modern Subadult Sample, Kelly R. Kamnikar, Nicholas P. Herrmann, Amber M. Plemons

Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints

Dental development is one of the most widely utilized and accurate methods available for estimating age in subadult skeletal remains. The timing of tooth growth and development is regulated by genetics and less affected by external factors, allowing reliable estimates of chronological age. Traditional methodology focuses on comparing tooth developmental scores to corresponding age charts. Using the Moorrees, Fanning, and Hunt (MFH) developmental scores, Shackelford and colleagues embed the dental development method in a statistical framework based on transition analysis. They generated numerical parameters underlining each “stage” and age-at-death distribution and applied them to fossil hominins and Neanderthals with limited …

Thinking Computationally About Forensics: Anthropological Perspectives On Advancements In Technologies, Data, And Algorithms, Bridget F.B. Algee-Hewitt, Jieun Kim, Cris E. Hughes

Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints

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Emergent Sustainability In Open Property Regimes, Mark Moritz, Roy Behnke, Christine M. Beitl, Rebecca Bliege Bird, Rafael Chiaravalloti, Julia Clark, Stefani Crabtree, Sean S. Downy, Ian M. Hamilton, Sui Chian Phang, Paul Scholte, Jim Wilson

Anthropology Faculty Scholarship

Current theoretical models of the commons assert that common-pool resources can only be managed sustainably with clearly defined boundaries around both communities and the resources that they use. In these theoretical models, open access inevitably leads to a tragedy of the commons. However, in many open-access systems, use of common-pool resources seems to be sustainable over the long term (i.e., current resource use does not threaten use of common-pool resources for future generations). Here, we outline the conditions that support sustainable resource use in open property regimes. We use the conceptual framework of complex adaptive systems to explain how processes …

Antonini, Virginia (Fa 1221), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

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Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 1221. Student paper titled “Moonshining” in which Virginia Antonini details the process of distilling moonshine from harvest to bottling. Antonini describes the equipment used to produce moonshine and includes several stories told by her informant, a man only referred to as “Jim,” about his methods and various run-ins with the law. The author also includes her mother’s wine recipe and additional “home brew” stories.

Ohio River Survey (Fa 656), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

FA Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 656. Kentucky Folklife Program project titled: “Ohio River Survey,” which includes interviews, tape logs, photographs and other documentation of folklife along the Ohio River in Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky. Interviews may include a description of belief, traditional occupation, practice, craft, or tool, informant’s name, age, birth date, and address.

Genau, Charles (Fa1212), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

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Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 1212. Student paper titled “Winemaking: The Old and New Way” in which Charles Genau details the process of wine production from harvest, to fermentation, bottling, and distribution. Genau compares and contrasts methods of traditional winemaking with contemporary approaches. He also gathered his information from two winemakers of different ages and ethnic backgrounds. The paper contains two illustrations of the winemaking process.

Griggs, Joe (Fa 1208), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

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Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 1208. Student paper titled “Moonshine” in which Joe Griggs interviews E.Y. Hurt, a native of Todd County, about his varied business ventures including owning motels, grocery stores, and, eventually, a moonshine still. Hurt describes the fermentation process, production, and running of moonshine in Kentucky during the Prohibition era. The paper also contains a brief biographical background of the informant as well as two fully transcribed interviews with Hurt.

Demographics Regarding Belief In Non-Human Animal Sentience And Emotional Empathy With Animals: A Pilot Study Among Attendees Of An Animal Welfare Symposium, Amelia Cornish, Bethany Wilson, David Raubenheimer, Paul Mcgreevy

Societal Attitudes Toward Animals Collection

Attitudes to animals are linked to beliefs about their ability to experience pain and suffering, their cognition, and their sentience. Education and awareness-raising play a pivotal role in increasing society’s consideration of non-human animal welfare. The current pilot study explores the attitudes towards animal welfare among a unique population of people who attended an animal welfare symposium at the University of Sydney. It involved administration of a validated questionnaire that assessed attitudes to animals; specifically exploring participants’ (n = 41) beliefs about the sentience of animals and their emotional empathy with animals. The resultant data revealed significant associations between participants’ …

Livelihoods Of The People Of Mazumbai: A Collection Of Stories And Portraits, Tanga Region, Tanzania, Joseph Baldus

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Despite rapid urbanization in Tanzania, agriculture remains central to the nation, the economy, and the livelihoods of a large portion of the population. Smallholder farmers account for the vast majority of agricultural production, yet are an extremely vulnerable population due to poverty, single-sourced income, and climate-dependency for both subsistence and cash-crop agriculture (Rapsomanikis, 2015). This report explores these dynamic rural livelihoods through interviews and portrait photographs in a case study on Mazumbai, Tanga region, Tanzania. Semi-structured interviews explore the people’s modes of economic subsistence, domestic lives, education, challenges, and life stories. Excerpts from these interviews combined with portrait photographs create …

Intro To Folk Studies Oral History Project (Fa 1206), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

FA Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 1206. Collection consists of interviews conducted by students in Barry Kaufkins’ Introduction to Folk Studies (FLK 276) class at WKU. Students conducted interviews with various family members, friends, and coworkers. Topics include childhood memories, cultural traditions, professional responsibilities, and other issues relating to personal narratives. Collection also contains brief summaries of subjects covered in the interviews. Audio recordings of the interviews that were recorded and submitted are stored in the WKU Sound Archives.

Justice Served Fresh: Associations Between Food Insecurity, Community Gardening, And Property Value, Micajah Daniels, Courtney Coughenour Ph.D

McNair Poster Presentations

Numerous stakeholders in Nevada have used a variety of efforts to combat the growth of food insecurity facing Nevadans. The purpose of this research project is to understand the association between food insecurity, community gardens, and property value. Following the wealth of scholarship on these topics and data collected from community garden agencies in Southern Nevada, the research questions for this project include: (1) Where are community gardens located in SNV? (2) What efforts community gardens agencies are doing to address food insecurity (most interested in their efforts using community gardens)? (3) What are the perceptions of supports and barriers …

Stevens, Donald (Fa 1205), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

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Finding aid and full-text scan of paper (Click on “Additional Files” below) for Folklife Archives Project 1205. Student paper titled “Digging Ginseng” in which Donald Stevens describes the process of locating, cleaning, drying, and selling ginseng root. Stevens collected information from Charlie Dean Ashley, a Breckenridge County native, and Stevens’ neighbor in Dillsboro, Indiana. The paper also includes a photograph of Ashley along with his favorite hunting grounds.

Welfare-Adjusted Life Years (Waly): A Novel Metric Of Animal Welfare That Combines The Impacts Of Impaired Welfare And Abbreviated Lifespan, Kendy Tzu-Yun Teng, Brecht Devleesschauwer, Charline Maerten De Noordhout, Peter Bennett, Paul Mcgreevy, Po-Yu Chiu, Jenny-Ann L.M.L. Toribio, Navneet Dhand

Assessment of Animal Welfare Collection

Currently, separate measures are used to estimate the impact of animal diseases on mortality and animal welfare. This article introduces a novel metric, the Welfare-Adjusted Life Year (WALY), to estimate disease impact by combining welfare compromise and premature death components. Adapting the Disability-Adjusted Life Year approach used in human health audits, we propose WALY as the sum of a) the years lived with impaired welfare due to a particular cause and b) the years of life lost due to the premature death from the same cause. The years lived with impaired welfare are the product of the average duration of …

Foodways (Fa 1202), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

FA Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 1202. Collection of papers written by students in Professor Barry Kaufkins’ Foodways class (FLK/ANTH 388) at Western Kentucky University. While a majority of the papers focus on Easter traditions, other topics of note include immigrant foodways traditions, fundraising efforts, community organizations, tailgating, and sorority life. Papers also include photographs taken by students.

Open-Source Tools For Dense Facial Tissue Depth Mapping (Ftdm) Of Computed Tomography Models, Terrie Simmons-Ehrhardt, Catyana Falsetti, Anthony B. Falsetti, Christopher J. Ehrhardt

Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints

Computed tomography (CT) scans provide anthropologists with a resource to generate three- dimensional (3D) digital skeletal material to expand quantification methods and build more standardized reference collections. The ability to visualize and manipulate the bone and skin of the face simultaneously in a 3D digital environment introduces a new way for forensic facial approximation practitioners to access and study the face. Craniofacial relationships can be quantified with landmarks or with surface processing software that can quantify the geometric properties of the entire 3D facial surface. This paper describes tools for the generation of dense facial tissue depth maps (FTDMs) using …

Of Typicality And Predictive Distributions In Discriminant Function Analysis, Lyle W. Konigsberg, Susan R. Frankenberg

Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints

While discriminant function analysis is an inherently Bayesian method, researchers attempting to estimate ancestry in human skeletal samples often follow discriminant function analysis with the calculation of frequentist-based typicalities for assigning group membership. Such an approach is problematic in that it fails to account for admixture and for variation in why individuals may be classified as outliers, or non-members of particular groups. This paper presents an argument and methodology for employing a fully Bayesian approach in discriminant function analysis applied to cases of ancestry estimation. The approach requires adding the calculation, or estimation, of predictive distributions as the final step …

Comparison Of Two Ancient Dna Extraction Protocols For Skeletal Remains From Tropical Environments, Maria A. Nieves-Colon, Andrew T. Ozga, William J. Pestle, Andrea Cucina, Vera Tiesler, Travis W. Stanton, Anne C. Stone

Biology Faculty Articles

Objectives

The tropics harbor a large part of the world's biodiversity and have a long history of human habitation. However, paleogenomics research in these climates has been constrained so far by poor ancient DNA yields. Here we compare the performance of two DNA extraction methods on ancient samples of teeth and petrous portions excavated from tropical and semi‐tropical sites in Tanzania, Mexico, and Puerto Rico (N = 12).

Materials and Methods

All samples were extracted twice, built into double‐stranded sequencing libraries, and shotgun sequenced on the Illumina HiSeq 2500. The first extraction protocol, Method D, was previously designed for …

Using Machine Learning To Classify Extant Apes And Interpret The Dental Morphology Of The Chimpanzee-Human Last Common Ancestor, Tesla A. Monson, David W. Armitage, Leslea J. Hlusko

Anthropology Faculty and Staff Publications

Machine learning is a formidable tool for pattern recognition in large datasets. We developed and expanded on these methods, applying machine learning pattern recognition to a problem in paleoanthropology and evolution. For decades, paleontologists have used the chimpanzee as a model for the chimpanzee-human last common ancestor (LCA) because they are our closest living primate relative. Using a large sample of extant and extinct primates, we tested the hypothesis that machine learning methods can accurately classify extant apes based on dental data. We then used this classification tool to observe the affinities between extant apes and Miocene hominoids. We assessed …

Growing Up In Tell El-Amarna: An Examination Of Growth And Non-Specific Stress Indicators In New Kingdom Children., Ashley Elizabeth Shidner

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The health status of the subadult skeletal remains from the South Tombs Cemetery at Tell el-Amarna were assessed by examining fluctuations in childhood growth and rates of skeletal indicators of physiological stress within a biocultural framework. The long bone standardization method outlined by Goode et al. (1993) was used to compare the South Tombs cemetery’s cross-sectional growth data to subadult samples from other cemeteries during which major social, political, and economic changes were taking place. The comparative subadult samples included the HK43 cemetery from Hierakonpolis (Egypt), the African American Cemetery from Cedar Grove (Arkansas), and the St. Martin’s Churchyard from …

Morphological Variation In The Genus Chlorocebus: Ecogeographic And Anthropogenically Mediated Variation In Body Mass, Postcranial Morphology, And Growth, Trudy R. Turner, Christopher A. Schmitt, Jennifer Danzy Cramer, Joseph Lorenz, J. Paul Grobler, Clifford J. Jolly, Nelson B. Freimer

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of the Sciences

Objectives

Direct comparative work in morphology and growth on widely dispersed wild primate taxa is rarely accomplished, yet critical to understanding ecogeographic variation, plastic local variation in response to human impacts, and variation in patterns of growth and sexual dimorphism. We investigated population variation in morphology and growth in response to geographic variables (i.e., latitude, altitude), climatic variables (i.e., temperature and rainfall), and human impacts in the vervet monkey (Chlorocebus spp.).

Methods

We trapped over 1,600 wild vervets from across Sub‐Saharan Africa and the Caribbean, and compared measurements of body mass, body length, and relative thigh, leg, and foot …

Pollen Evidence Of Medicine From An Embalming Jar Associated With Vittoria Della Rovere, Florence, Italy, Karl Reinhard, Kelsey B. Lynch, Annie Larsen, Braymond Adams, Leon Higley, Marina Milanello Do Amaral, Julia Russ, Donatella Lippi, Johnica J. Morrow, Dario Piombino-Mascali

Karl Reinhard Publications

Various samples of human viscera fragments, sponges, and cloth were collected from embalming jars belonging to members of the Medici family of Florence. One jar was labeled with the name Vittoria della Rovere, who died in March of 1694. This jar contained viscera fragments that were identified as a section of collapsed intestine. The intestine of the Vittoria della Rovere sample contained a large concentration of pollen belonging to the Myrtaceae family. The Myrtaceae pollen was sometimes observed in clusters during analysis, which is indicative of purposeful ingestion of flowers, buds, or a substance derived from floral structures. Thus, the …

Differential Preservation Of Endogenous Human And Microbial Dna In Dental Calculus And Dentin, Allison E. Mann, Susanna Sabin, Kirsten Ziesemer, Ashild J. Vagene, Hannes Schroeder, Andrew T. Ozga, Krithivasan Sankaranarayanan, Courtney A. Hofman, James A. Fellows Yates, Domingo C. Salazar-Garcia, Bruno Frohlich, Mark Aldenderfer, Menno Hoogland, Christopher Read, George R. Milner, Anne C. Stone, Cecil M. Lewis Jr., Johannes Krause, Corinne Hofman, Kirsten I. Bos, Christina Warinner

Biology Faculty Articles

Dental calculus (calcified dental plaque) is prevalent in archaeological skeletal collections and is a rich source of oral microbiome and host-derived ancient biomolecules. Recently, it has been proposed that dental calculus may provide a more robust environment for DNA preservation than other skeletal remains, but this has not been systematically tested. In this study, shotgun-sequenced data from paired dental calculus and dentin samples from 48 globally distributed individuals are compared using a metagenomic approach. Overall, we find DNA from dental calculus is consistently more abundant and less contaminated than DNA from dentin. The majority of DNA in dental calculus is …

Fields, Jeri Lea (Fa 1200), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

FA Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 1200. Student paper titled “Folklore in Horse Training of the American Saddle Bred Show Horse” in which Jeri Fields details the experiences of Joseph Daniel Wilson, a show horse trainer living in Rossville, Georgia. Wilsondescribes his background with breeding, training, and showing class-ranked horses. The paper also includes folk beliefs, sayings, terms, and cures as they relate tohorses.

Phelps, Bob (Fa 1189), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

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Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 1189. Student paper titled “Showing Quarter Horses” in which Bob Phelps interviews his uncle, Loyd Blair, about his experiences regarding raising, training, and showing horses. Phelps also details the more commercial aspects of showing horses including the acquisition of horses, veterinary care, specialized equipment, and travel-related expenses. The paper also includes a description of how shows are operated, the various classes and age ranges involved in competition, and how individual owners train their respective animals. Phelps also includes color photographs of his informants, show-day events, and drawings of different routine patterns.

Johnson, Danny (Fa 1188), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

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Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 1188. Student paper titled “Folk Agricultural Tools” in whichDanny Johnson offers insight into the types of implements used on farms during the pre-industrial period. Johnson narrows his scope even more to the types of tools used during the planting and harvesting processes and describes which tools are best suited for the task at hand. Included in his paper are brief biographies of each informant and color photographs of various pieces of equipment and descriptions of their use.

Spinks, Martha (Fa 1179), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

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Finding aid only of Folklife Archives Project 1179. Student paper titled “The Lucas Homestead: A Study ofTraditional Farm Structures” in which Martha Spinks investigatesthe origins and functions of a Sand Hill farm owned by HerschelLucas in Warren County, Kentucky. The structure, which was constructed by Luther Parrish in 1820, began as a single-pen log cabin; however, additional units, such as a smoke house, storage rooms, bedrooms, and a chimney, were built by succeeding owners. Spinks also describes materials used during the construction of the main building and other outlying structures, describes the purpose of several locations on the property, and …

Norris, Walter (Fa 1173), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

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Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 1173. Student paper titled “Food Preservation: Curing CountryHam – Kentucky Style” in which Walter Norris describes the aging process, preparation, and preservation of cured country ham. Norris’ informants, specifically his parents and grandparents, detail their cooking methods, recipes, and familial traditions, while the owners of several commercial operators and distributors discuss their chemically simulated processes.

Cutliff, Maxine (Fa 1160), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

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Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 1160. Student folk studies project titled “Folklore Project: [Cotton Growing and Ginning]” which includes an interview with the description of the cotton growing, ginning, and uses in Green County, Kentucky. Sheets may include a photograph, brief description, and informant’s name.