Did Proto-Chadic have velar nasals and prenasalised obstruents?

Proto - Lolo - Burmese velar clusters and the origin of Lisu palatal sibilants

Standard Northern Lisu has two series of palatal sibilants: (alveolo-)palatals [t ̊ t ̊æ d ̊ ] and palato-alveolars [t∆ t∆æ dÔ ∆ Ô]. The phonemic status of the latter is questionable, since they are in complementary distribution with the former, occurring only before vowels [u] and [Ω]. The vowel [Ω] is itself in complemetary distribution with [i], occurring only after the palatoalveolars. Thus ...

The Durban deep proto-team catastrophe--why did they die?

Did the Universe have a beginning?

The recent excellent article by Tom van Flandern on the evidence against the theory of the expanding universe stimulates an endeavour to get to the heart of the matter by logically reducing this complex problem to its simplest possible form. The improved instrumental capacity available to astronomers in recent years has progressively refined the evaluation of the Hubble constant, and a stage is...

Shakespeare's chancre: did the bard have syphilis?

Shakespeare's obsessive interest in syphilis, his clinically exact knowledge of its manifestations, the final poems of the sonnets, and contemporary gossip all suggest that he was infected with "the infinite malady." The psychological impact of venereal disease may explain the misogyny and revulsion from sex so prominent in the writings of Shakespeare's tragic period. This article examines the ...

Did trypanosomatid parasites have photosynthetic ancestors?

Some molecular phylogenies of plastid-like genes suggest that chloroplasts (the structures responsible for photosynthesis in plants and algae) might have been secondarily lost in trypanosomatid parasites. Chloroplasts are present in some euglenids, which are closely related to trypanosomatids, and it has been argued that chloroplasts arose early in the diversification of the lineage Euglenozoa,...