Prompted by a recent article by Jiang and Liu in Antiquity (80, 2006), Dorian Fuller and his co-authors return to the question of rice cultivation and consider some of the difficulties involved in identifying the transition from wild to domesticated rice. Using data from Eastern China, they propose that, at least for the Lower Yangtze region, the advent of rice domestication around 4000 BC was ...

Characteristic ion mobility spectra for volatile compounds present in fat were used to authenticate the feeding regime of Iberian pigs. Volatile compounds were obtained by heating the solid samples at 150 degrees C for 40 min. This produced a headspace that was introduced in the spectrometer ionization chamber by means of a highly purified nitrogen stream. The spectra thus, obtained for the fat...

The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of the rearing conditions during the fattening period of Iberian pigs on the acceptance of the dry-cured hams, and to research into the relationship between acceptance and sensory characteristics, chemical composition and physical-chemical parameters. The duration of the fattening period in Montanera (outdoor system based on acorns and g...

11 fungi sampled from Quercus acorns with symptoms of black rot and mummification and from necrotic twigs of Q. petraea were tested for pathogenicity towards seedlings of Q. petraea, Q. robur and Q. rubra in a field experiment. Six months after inoculation, necrosis on the main stem and the subsequent death of Q. robur and Q. petraea plants were observed after inoculation with Aureobasidium pul...

A new species is described, Lithocarpus orbicarpus Strijk, collected from Ton Pariwat Wildlife Sanctuary, Mueang district, Phang Nga Province in the Peninsular Floristic Region of Thailand. We provide the first technical illustrations and colour photographs of the new species, as well as a description of its conservation status and the collecting locality. The species can be easily distinguishe...

INTRODUCTION Although oaks dominate many forest ecosystems worldwide (Barnes and others 1998), several aspects of oak ecology remain poorly understood including oak regeneration and masting (McShea and Healy 2001). Animals that eat and disperse acorns, such as squirrels, mice, and jays may play a pivotal role in oak forest dynamics (Jones and others 1998, Ostfeld and others 1996), influencing r...

Niche expansion can lead to adaptive differentiation and speciation, but there are few examples from contemporary niche expansions about how this process is initiated. We assess the consequences of a niche expansion by Mexican jays (Aphelocoma ultramarina) along an elevation gradient. We predicted that jays at high elevation would have straighter bills adapted to feeding on pine cones, whereas ...

Iberian ham presents superior sensorial quality than other ones. Currently, chemical procedures are being used to determine fat level of the ham, but they can not give any information about its distribution. Some research made on Iberian hams from pigs with different feeding reveal similar fat level, but pigs fed on acorns and grass reached better qualifications in a sensorial analysis of the s...