10.1 The forbidden experiment Language and culture separate humans from all other species. No human group lacks either, which must mean that both are deeply seated in human nature. What are the essential ingredients of these two most human of attributes? Our central task as linguists is to try to answer this question for language. One strategy for tackling this problem is to trace all existing ...

This past November, I attended chipmaker Nvidia’s GPU Technology Conference, which was held in Washington, DC. Its focus was artificial intelligence. You might be wondering, as I did, what AI has to do with graphical processing units and, by extension, video games. Here’s your answer: The calculations needed to track, say, the stream of ignited fuel that shoots from Master Chief’s flamethrower ...

A Bedouin infant born to consanguineous parents and grandparents is reported. She had Müllerian aplasia and the phenotypic features of the limb/pelvis-hypoplasia/aplasia syndrome (MIM 276820). Phenotypic variability of this newly recognised syndrome is briefly discussed.

A sign language has emerged among three generations of deaf people and their families in a Bedouin community in the Negev desert. This newly reported case sheds light on the minimal environmental social factors required to generate a language.

We report here the main characteristics of 'Arabia massiliensis' strain Marseille-P3078T gen. nov., sp. nov., 'Gordonibacter massiliensis' Marseille-P2775T sp. nov. and 'Bacilliculturomica massiliensis' strain Marseille-P3303 gen. nov., sp. nov. The culturomics approach combined with taxonogenomics was used to characterize these strains, which were all isolated from a faecal specimen of a 50-ye...

It is generally difficult to establish a timeline for the appearance of different technologies and tools during human cultural evolution. Here I use stochastic character mapping of discrete traits using human mtDNA phylogenies rooted to the Reconstructed Sapiens Reference Sequence (RSRS) as a model to address this question. The analysis reveals that the ancestral state of Homo sapiens was hunti...

This community-based study examined emotional and somatic symptoms of 129 Bedouin women whose husbands serve in the Israel Defense Forces. Wives of men diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) reported more symptoms than wives of men diagnosed with other disorders and wives of men with no diagnosis. Findings indicate that not only was PTSD in Bedouin servicemen positively associated ...