INTRODUCTION I first heard the term ‘Asperger syndrome’ 20 years ago when I accompanied my sister-in-law Elizabeth and her son Ivan on a visit to a child psychiatrist. Ivan was 19 years old and had an odd pattern of behaviours since childhood. As none of the experts he had seen had been able to clearly diagnose his problem, we hoped that this new consultation would give a better insight into hi...

This article shows how to fit reticulate finite and infinite sites sequence spectra to aligned data from five modern human genomes (San, Yoruba, French, Han and Papuan) plus two archaic humans (Denisovan and Neanderthal), to better infer demographic parameters. These include interbreeding between distinct lineages. Major improvements in the fit of the sequence spectrum are made with successivel...

Paleopathological assessment of the late Middle Pleistocene archaic human cranium from Maba, South China, has documented a right frontal squamous exocranially concave and ridged lesion with endocranial protrusion. Differential diagnosis indicates that it resulted from localized blunt force trauma, due to an accident or, more probably, interhuman aggression. As such it joins a small sample of pr...

By the early 16th century, the Ottoman Empire had emerged as a major military power in Southeastern Europe and the Middle East. The Ottomans were feared and admired by contemporaneous Europeans from Niccol6 Machiavelli to Ivan Peresvetov. The latter regarded the empire of Sultan Mehmed II (r. 1444-46, 1451-81) as a model to be emulated by his own ruler, Ivan IV of Muscovy (r. 1547-84), and inde...