From Adam Kirsch,  Tablet

In Claude Lévi-Strauss: The Poet in the Laboratory (Penguin Press, $29.95), Patrick Wilcken has written the biography not just of a man, but of an intoxicating intellectual moment. This was the moment of structuralism, a new way of thinking about human culture that emerged in France in the 1950s and enjoyed a worldwide vogue. The literary critic Roland Barthes, the cultural historian Michel Foucault, the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan—all were structuralists of one sort or another, and all declared their indebtedness to Claude Lévi-Strauss, the founder of “structural anthropology.” Half a century later, all these names are still by-words for strenuous difficulty and theoretical sophistication; though they are classics by now, they retain the acrid perfume of the avant-garde. When people express contempt or dismay about “French theory,” it is usually the structuralists they have in mind.

It is a wonderful irony, then, that this most cutting-edge and Parisian of movements can be traced to a moment of epiphany in a primitive Indian village in western Brazil. In 1936, Lévi-Strauss and his wife Dina led an anthropological expedition to study the indigenous peoples of this region, at that time barely accessible from the big cities of Brazil’s Atlantic coast. One of the tribes they visited was the Bororo, and though Lévi-Strauss spent just three weeks with them, Bororo culture and myth would lie at the heart of his work for the next 60 years.

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From John Timmer, Nobel Intent

It’s been a busy year in research on recent human ancestry. Back in the spring, scientists completed a draft of the Neanderthal genome, which provided clear evidence that these now-extinct humans left some of their genes behind by interbreeding with some human ancestors. A bit earlier in the year, DNA sequencing revealed an even larger surprise: there seems to have been another population of premodern humans present in Asia that were genetically distinct from modern humans and Neanderthals. Now, the team behind both of these discoveries is back with a draft genome of this population that suggests it was genetically distinct from both humans and Neanderthals, and a single tooth that suggests it was physically distinct. And that it also interbred with the ancestors of a modern human population.

The new population was identified based on sequence from a single bone found in a cave called Denisova. Sequencing the genome of its mitochondria indicated it had branched off from the ancestor of both humans and Neanderthals roughly a million years ago, making it a relatively archaic lineage. But mitochondrial DNA is prone to rapid sequence changes as well as founder and bottleneck effects, which could exaggerate the divergence. The bone it came from didn’t differ significantly from either of these human populations, meaning there was no physical indication that the Denisova remains represented a new population.

In the new paper, which will be published in Nature, the researchers have gone back and corrected both of these issues.

They’ve used a new technique to limit the errors in the sequencing of ancient DNA. These arise primarily from sites where a base has been either lost or chemically modified so that it base pairs improperly. The authors treated their DNA with an enzyme that recognizes the modified base and chops it off, turning it into the equivalent of a missing base. They then used a second enzyme that cuts the DNA backbone wherever there are bases missing. Combined, these two treatments significantly cut down on the errors.

Despite the single source, the authors were able to obtain nearly two-fold coverage of the Denisova genome, meaning that, on average, each base was sequenced twice. Over the billions of base pairs in a human genome, however, that average means we’ll have both areas that are well sequenced and gaps that don’t appear at all.

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The latest papers published papers in The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences include:

• The Impact of Training on Productivity in Canadian Firms: Estimating Distributed Lags from the WES 1999-2005 by Amélie Bernier and Jean-Michel Cousineau.
• Encounters with Existential Intelligence: Possibilities for Today’s Effective Educator by Matthew Roberts.
• Bilateral Linkages with OECD and FDI Inflows in Leading Developing Countries by Mumtaz Hussain Shah.
• The Practice of Interdisciplinarity by Janet Stephenson, Rob Lawson, Gerry Carrington, Barry Barton, Paul Thorsnes and Miranda Mirosa.
• Food Security Under Siege: An Approach to Social and Geopolitical Implications of the Second Green Revolution: The Argentinean Case by Juan José Borrell.
• Tipping the Scales: A New Understanding of Food’s Power in the Political Sphere by Christian John Reynolds.
• A Way in the Wilderness: Using Critical Realism to Navigate Environmental Security’s Methodological Terrain by J. Jackson Ewing.
• Salt is Bitter: Salinity and Livelihood in a Bangladesh Village by Md. Ashiqur Rahman.
• But what makes it Doctoral? Taking on the Traditionalists: Interdisciplinary, Practice-led Doctoral Research in the Creative Industries – A Case Study in Academic Politics, Research, Rigour and Relevance by Christiaan Willems.
• An Architectural Genogram: Writing Architectural History Based on the Transfer of Social Capital by Igea Troiani.

The latest issue of The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences includes:

• Party Comedians as Facilitators of Language Development for Developing Nigeria by Mabel Osakwe.
• Human Trafficking: A Social Welfare Clubs Campaign for Social Justice by John Conahan and Eric Kyere.
• An Exploration of the Value of the Mystical Experience in Mental Health: Mysticism and Mental Health by George Drazenovich and Celia Kourie.
• Metaphors and Neuro-linguistic Programming* by María del Carmen Guarddon Anelo.
• Is the Death Penalty in America Racist? by David Gilboa.
• Nonverbal Behaviour as Communication: The Arabian Coffee Making Ritual by Lena Darweesh.
• The Political Engagement of Black and Minority Ethnic Groups: Does policy impede Civic Culture? by Bethany Waterhouse Bradley and Phil Ramsey.
• Caring, Quality of Life and Service Provision: A Perspective by Derek Skea.
• “Why” Building: The Layers of Architecture and Iconography and their Sociological Relevance for Minoan Society by Vander Beken Noach.
• Sufism: An Answer to Global Terrorism by Gauri Sharma.

Dr Andrew Whitehead reviews Tug of War: The Tension Concept and the Art of International Negotiation

In this scholarly but accessible book, the author achieves four main feats that are rare in the academic literature on negotiation and many other areas of the social sciences (including my own – business economics). First, he does not use statistics or any other weapon to kill off his flesh-and-blood informants. The book is alive with real and sometimes quirky individuals. Second, he bounces theory and practice off one another in a way that enhances the reader’s grasp of their relationship. While he does respect mainstream theorists in negotiation, and gives them focused coverage, he builds on their work without tugging his forelock as he argues for analysts to pay more attention to the nuanced concept of tension that is fundamental to negotiation. Third, he does not see his own discipline or himself as a fortress. He draws on a wide range of fields to support his particular theoretical approach, which he presents as one way, not the only way, of seeing international negotiation. Fourth, his expression is never pretentious and is almost always simple and fluid. This can be a trap for the unwary reader who might expect complex ideas to be written only in complex ways. This is a smooth read but not an easy one. The author uses jargon from time to time but only if there seems to be no other way out. The writing, including the footnotes, is never superfluous and is often entertaining. For example, “Gregory was cremated with a fat reefer in his pocket.”

The book is well-structured and takes the reader on a highly original journey into the world of expert players. In an unconventional and therefore risky way, the author convincingly presents and analyses two quite different cases in fine detail in order to demonstrate his theory of context, tensions and tension management. The first case is in diplomacy and the second in hostage negotiation. As a business analyst and manager with a special interest in China, I was disappointed at first that there was no detailed case in international business. However, I soon realised that business negotiation in China and elsewhere gets a lot of coverage in other ways. Several informants are business managers, and two are senior diplomats who have transferred their experience and skills to the business world.

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Recently published papers in The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences include:

• Cultivating Character: Savvy Students with Big Hearts by Donald B. Summers and Ross E. Stewart.
• Policy Learning and Post-Socialist Transition: The Case of Housing Policies in Russia by Ivan Trofimov.
• Five Hours to Baghdad: Lessons Learned by Two Psychologists on a Multidisciplinary Health Care Mission to Iraq by Denis Belicki and Kathryn Belicki.
• The Teaching Practice for Romanian Students in Social Sciences: The Romanian Students’ Teaching Practice on Civic Culture by Gruber Gabriela.
• The Distance between Birth and Nationality: The Mediation of an Ethnocentric Imagination by Yannis Pechtelidis.
• The Subaltern can Speak in Nadine Gordimer’s July’s People (1981) by Mohammad Deyab.
• Images and Consumers in Arabic Advertising: New Paradigms of Commercial Communication, an Approach to Ethnic Publicity by Olivera Taban.
• Economic and Social Dimensions of Rural Poverty in the Poorest Province of the Philippines by Bernadette Gavino-Gumba.
• The Integration of Academic Content, Additional Language Skill Building, and Civic and Citizenship Responsibility Learning: An Interdisciplinary Social Science Teaching Approach by Alan Brady.
• Understanding Malaysian Internet Addiction: A Comparative Study on Malaysia and Selected Countries by Aliza Abdul Latif, Marina Md Din, Rozita Ismail, Marini Othman and Azizah Suliman.

Volume 5, Number 7 contains:

• The Policy Implications of Territorial Embeddedness in a Developing Country: Case of New Energy Industrial Parks in China by Fan Yang and Yina Chai.
• Venus de Focus by Yvonne Kosma.
• Two Undesirable Consequences of Unfairness: Poor Performance and Poor Ethics in the Laboratory by Gizem Saka.
• Globalization and the Psychology of the New World Citizen: How the New Global Citizen Compares to Maslow’s Level of Self Transcendence by Henry Venter and Elaine Venter.
• The Influence of Personal Predispositions on Bosnian Refugees’ Resettlement Process by Wai Hsien Cheah, Ajlina Karamehic-Muratovic, Hisako Matsuo and Alma Poljarevic.
• Socio-economic Transformation of the Tribal Groups in Rajasthan, India by Divya Katewa.
• A Methodology of Edges: Culture and Science in Japanese and English by John Christopher Foster.
• A Knowledge Coupling Approach to Knowledge Translation: Implications for Decision Making and Patient Empowerment by Robert Weaver.
• Engaging Multidisciplinary University Students in “Triple Bottom Line” Reporting: Using Global Reporting Initiative Metrics Inside the Classroom by Elizabeth Gingerich.
• Use of Social Cognitive Theory to Guide a Medical Treatment Adherence Intervention by Marie Chisholm-Burns and Christina Spivey.

• Party Comedians as Facilitators of Language Development for Developing Nigeria by Mabel Osakwe.
• Human Trafficking: A Social Welfare Clubs Campaign for Social Justice by John Conahan and Eric Kyere.
• An Exploration of the Value of the Mystical Experience in Mental Health: Mysticism and Mental Health by George Drazenovich and Celia Kourie.
• Metaphors and Neuro-linguistic Programming* by María del Carmen Guarddon Anelo.
• Is the Death Penalty in America Racist? by David Gilboa.
• Nonverbal Behaviour as Communication: The Arabian Coffee Making Ritual by Lena Darweesh.
• The Political Engagement of Black and Minority Ethnic Groups: Does policy impede Civic Culture? by Bethany Waterhouse Bradley and Phil Ramsey.
• Caring, Quality of Life and Service Provision: A Perspective by Derek Skea.
• “Why” Building: The Layers of Architecture and Iconography and their Sociological Relevance for Minoan Society by Vander Beken Noach.
• Sufism: An Answer to Global Terrorism by Gauri Sharma.
• The Impact of Training on Productivity in Canadian Firms: Estimating Distributed Lags from the WES 1999-2005 by Amélie Bernier and Jean-Michel Cousineau.
• Encounters with Existential Intelligence: Possibilities for Today’s Effective Educator by Matthew Roberts.
• Bilateral Linkages with OECD and FDI Inflows in Leading Developing Countries by Mumtaz Hussain Shah.
• The Practice of Interdisciplinarity by Janet Stephenson, Rob Lawson, Gerry Carrington, Barry Barton, Paul Thorsnes and Miranda Mirosa.
• Food Security Under Siege: An Approach to Social and Geopolitical Implications of the Second Green Revolution: The Argentinean Case by Juan José Borrell.
• Tipping the Scales: A New Understanding of Food’s Power in the Political Sphere by Christian John Reynolds.
• A Way in the Wilderness: Using Critical Realism to Navigate Environmental Security’s Methodological Terrain by J. Jackson Ewing.
• Salt is Bitter: Salinity and Livelihood in a Bangladesh Village by Md. Ashiqur Rahman.
• But what makes it Doctoral? Taking on the Traditionalists: Interdisciplinary, Practice-led Doctoral Research in the Creative Industries – A Case Study in Academic Politics, Research, Rigour and Relevance by Christiaan Willems.
• An Architectural Genogram: Writing Architectural History Based on the Transfer of Social Capital by Igea Troiani.

The latest papers published papers in The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences include:

• Cooperative Research: An Example from the Wet Tropics of Queensland by Leanne Claire Cullen-Unsworth, James R A Butler, Rosemary Hill and Marilyn Wallace.
• Happiness among Turkish and Moroccan Immigrants in the Netherlands by Ozge Gokdemir and Devrim Dumludag.
• An Investigation of the Perceived Stigma: Among People with HIV Infection in Romania by Ioana Todor and Iosif Marincu.
• Prevalence of Communication Apprehension at a Community College by Rosemary K. Degner.
• Carmen, Flamenco and the Spanish Gypsies: An Introduction by Anna Hamling.
• Localization and the Legitimacy of International Organization(s) by Bhavna Thakur.
• The Inclusiveness of Learned Workforce in Managing Higher Education Institutions and Sustaining Competitive Delivery System by Faizul Abdullah, Fatimah Yusof, Mohd. Yusof Hussain and Sivapalan Selvadurai.
• It Takes Two to Talk: A Focused Intervention Program for Parents and Children with Language Delays by Deslea Konza, Carmel Maloney and Patricia Grafton.
• Re-engaging Disadvantaged Youth through Science: Developing a Framework of Practice by Kimberley Luanne Wilson, David Lake and Sue McGinty.
• An Exploratory Overview of African Media Representation of Homosexuality: Lessons from Nollywood by Samuel K. Tesunbi.
• Coping Strategies as a Manifestation of Resilience in the Face of Postpartum Depression: Experiences of Women in Northern Ontario by Arshi Shaikh and Carol Kauppi.
• The Myth: Responsibility for Education is Exclusive to the Provinces in Canada by Ron Phillips.

Recently published papers in The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences include:

• Sustaining Technical Efficiency and the Socialised Home: Examining the Social Dimension within Sustainable Architecture and the Home by Phillipa Marsh.
• Beyond Student-Centered Instruction: A Model for Teaching Learning-to-Learn Strategies by Ronald Paige.
• Spatial Production of Ankara as Capital City of Republican Turkey by F. Aysin K. Turhanoglu.
• When Societies Collide: A Trilogy About Immigration: Part One: Stakeholder Identification through the Synthesis of Information by Patricia Strait.
• Website Development and use in CBOs: A Knowledge Management Perspective by Scott Bingley, Gerry Urwin, M Gordon Hunter and Stephen Burgess.
• Activist Knowledge: Interrogating the Ideational Landscape of Social Movements by S. A. Hamed Hosseini.
• Connecting the Disconnected: Background, Practices and Motives of Labour Brokers in Isan, Thailand – an Explorative Study* by Thanapauge Chamaratana, Dusadee Ayuwat, Luuk Knippenberg and Edwin de Jong.
• Locating Community in School Education: A Study of Village Education Committees in Haryana, India by Kamlesh Narwana.
• The Cultural Implications of Coming Home by Bitsy Wedin.
• The Mediating Effect of Incentive and Reward System on the Relationship between Enterprise Ownership and Knowledge Sharing in Electronic Industry in Southern China by Sheung Chun Lai and Canon Tong.
• A Day in Hogarth’s London by Paula Rama Silva.
• Lanscape and Identity in Contemporary South Asian Women Writers by Margarida Martins.