Biological and Physical Anthropology Commons^™

Contact With Caregivers Is Associated With Composition Of The Infant Gastrointestinal Microbiome In The First 6 Months Of Life, Kyle S. Wiley, Andrew M. Gregg, Molly M. Fox, Venu Lagishetty, Curt A. Sandman, Jonathan P. Jacobs, Laura M. Glynn

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

Objectives

Little is known about how physical contact at birth and early caregiving environments influence the colonization of the infant gastrointestinal microbiome. We investigated how infant contact with caregivers at birth and within the first 2 weeks of life relates to the composition of the gastrointestinal microbiome in a sample of U.S. infants (n = 60).

Methods

Skin-to-skin and physical contact with caregivers at birth and early caregiving environments were surveyed at 2 weeks postpartum. Stool samples were collected from infants at 2 weeks, 2, 6, and 12 months of age and underwent 16S rRNA sequencing as a proxy …

Dispensing With Reductionism And Dualism: Biological Anthropological Perspectives Towards Understanding Disease, Epidemics, And Pandemics, Anne Grauer

Anthropology: Faculty Publications and Other Works

At no time in recent history has the topic of disease, epidemics and pandemics been more at the forefront of public conversation than it is now. Previously, the threat of epidemics such as Ebola, the 1918 influenza epidemic, and the plague, were commonly framed as “back then” or “over there.” Perhaps COVID ended the public's delusion. For biological anthropologists, however, the perspective has differed appreciably. Pandemics and epidemics are viewed as integral and repeated aspects of human existence, and the kindling to start an outbreak of gargantuan proportion has been delicately stacked for centuries (if not millennia). If the public …

Reimagining The Inner Ear: A Morphometric Modeling Approach For Establishing Shape Change In The Evolution Of The Human Otolith System, Christopher M. Smith

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Our sense of balance is among the most central of our sensory systems, particularly in the evolution of human positional behavior. The peripheral vestibular system of the inner ear comprises the organs responsible for this sense; the semicircular canals (detecting angular acceleration) and otolith organs (utricle and saccule; detecting linear acceleration, vibration, and head tilt relative to gravity). The vestibular organs are often considered a single system, with most research focusing on the semicircular canals. The otolith organs, by comparison, remain largely unexplored despite their central role in balance. Consequently, this lack of knowledge limits understanding of vestibular functional morphology …