Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology

Considerable research has examined human mate preferences across cultures, finding universal sex differences in preferences for attractiveness and resources as well as sources of systematic cultural variation. Two competing perspectives—an evolutionary psychological perspective and a biosocial role perspective—offer alternative explanations for these findings. However, the original data on which each perspective relies are decades old, and the literature is fraught with conflicting methods, analyses, results, and conclusions. Using a new 45-country sample ( N = 14,399), we attempted to replicate classic studies and test both the evolutionary and biosocial role perspectives. Support for universal sex differences in preferences remains robust: Men, more than women, prefer attractive, young mates, and women, more than men, prefer older mates with financial prospects. Cross-culturally, both sexes have mates closer to their own ages as gender equality increases. Beyond age of partner, neither pathogen prevalence nor gender equality robustly predicted sex differences or preferences across countries.

The Triangular Theory of Love (measured with Sternberg's Triangular Love Scale - STLS) is a prominent theoretical concept in empirical research on love. To expand the culturally homogeneous body of previous psychometric research regarding the STLS, we conducted a large-scale cross-cultural study with the use of this scale. In total, we examined more than 11,000 respondents, but as a result of applied exclusion criteria, the final analyses were based on a sample of 7332 participants from 25 countries (from all inhabited continents). We tested configural invariance, metric invariance, and scalar invariance, all of which confirmed the cultural universality of the theoretical construct of love analyzed in our study. We also observed that levels of love components differ depending on relationship duration, following the dynamics suggested in the Triangular Theory of Love. Supplementary files with all our data, including results on love intensity across different countries along with STLS versions adapted in a few dozen languages, will further enable more extensive research on the Triangular Theory of Love.

In an urban area of Guinea-Bissau where the general state of nutrition seemed fairly good, the case fatality rate for measles among children less than three years of age who were examined clinically during an epidemic was 25.0%. Nutritional indicators (weight-for-age, height-for-age, and weight-for-height ratios) measured a few months before the epidemic were about equal both for the group of 60 children who subsequently died of measles and for the general child population. Because no community study has demonstrated that the nutritional state influences the outcome of measles, the assumed importance of the state of nutrition for measles fatality rates is questioned. Children in monogamous households had a lower risk of dying of measles. It is suggested that measles may be more severe in polygamous families because several children can have the disease simultaneously.

Abstract Economic reforms and trade liberalization have brought profound changes to the Chinese labor market. In this paper, we apply the technique of decomposing the coefficient of variation to examine the impact of changes in married women's employment and earnings on income inequality among Chinese urban households. Using the Chinese Household Income Surveys from 1988, 1995, and 2002, we explore the differences between two phases of economic transition: the gradualist reform period (1988–1995) and the radical reform period (1995–2002). Our analysis shows that the public-sector labor retrenchment of the late 1990s has led to a drastic decline in the employment rates of women, especially those married to low-earning husbands, and the change in women's employment was a major force driving income inequality in post-restructuring urban China.

Malnutrition has been considered the major determinant of high measles mortality. Data from a rural area of Guinea-Bissau suggest that overcrowding and age may be more important as determinants than nutritional status. Case fatality rate was significantly higher in houses with several cases than in homes with only a single case. Measles vaccination may contribute to increased survival rates by limiting the number of infections, raising the mean age of attack, and by impeding clustering of cases.

This paper presents several arguments for applying a relative poverty line to urban China. For example between 2002 and 2013 urban residents in China changed their assessment of how much money that is necessary. Data from the China Household Income Project indicate that while, assessed against an absolute poverty line, poverty among Chinese urban residents was already fairly low in 2007, increasing proportions fell under a relative poverty line from 1988 to 2007. Thus income growth in urban China was more rapid in the middle segments of the income distribution that at it’s lower segments. In 2013, at least as large fractions of the urban population as in many rich countries were deemed poor in relative terms. We also specify and estimate logit models for 2002 and 2013 after first having divided the samples into children, adults and elderly people. We find that the risk of being relative poor in urban China both years under study was positively associated with lack of work among adult household members, a low education of the household head, living in a low-income city, the number of children, and being aged and not receiving a pension. Pensions for the aged in combination with co-residency with adult children or with other adults have kept poverty rates among the increasing number of elderly in urban China from exceeding those among adults. In contrast, relative poverty rates are somewhat higher among children than among the entire urban population.

Because household-based survey designs are notoriously ineffective in studying hard-to-reach groups such as irregular migrants, these groups, however numerically large they may be, are rarely represented in demographic analyses. In this paper, we repor

As a shining pearl in traditional Tibetan culture, historical Tibetan documents have received extensive attention from historians, linguists and Buddhist scholars. These documents are converted into digital form using Tibetan document segmentation and recognition methods. The document digitization is of great significance for the research, protection and inheritance of Tibetan history. This paper proposes an overall segmentation and recognition framework for historical Tibetan document images. Firstly, the historical Tibetan document image is preprocessed to correct imbalanced illumination, tilt and noises, and is further transformed into the binarized image. Secondly, we propose a layout segmentation method based on block projection to segment Tibetan document images into texts, lines and frames. Thirdly, in order to solve the problems of touching strokes between text-lines and curvilinear text-lines, we present a text-line segmentation method based on graph model for historical Tibetan text-line segmentation. Lastly, we present a touching segmentation method to segment touching Tibetan character string, and then recognize Tibetan characters. Experimental results show our proposed methods on layout segmentation, text-line segmentation and touching character string segmentation, achieve the satisfactory performance. The proposed methods can also be applied to other fonts in Tibetan font family.

The central epidemiologic features of subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE)--young age of measles attack and overrepresentation or males--are usually explained as resulting from age- and sex-dependent host reactions. In this report, an alternative hypothesis is offered: intensive exposure, presumably due to the dose of infection, is a risk factor in the pathogenesis of SSPE. A hypothetical model of the influence of age and sex on the transmission of measles is suggested. According to this model, girls are exposed to measles more easily outside the home. Furthermore, small children are most likely to be exposed to measles at home. Consistent with this model is the fact that all studies indicate that female SSPE patients contract measles at a younger age than do male patients. Reports in the epidemiologic literature suggest that several characteristics of SSPE may result not from host reactions per se but from the distribution of intensive exposure to measles.

Abstract Using a household sample survey for 2006, this article shows that the Hui population in the rural part of Ningxia Autonomous Region in China is disadvantaged compared to the Han majority as regards length of education and household per capita wealth. Yet, there is no gap in average disposable incomes between the two ethnic groups and poverty rates are very similar. This paradox is owing to members of Hui households earning more off-farm income than members of Han households. In particular, young Hui males living in poor villages have a remarkably high likelihood of migrating, thereby bringing back income to their households.

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Based on 2006 urban survey data of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, this paper studies the impact of ethnic characteristics on the region's income determination mechanism. Using the decomposition methods of Blinder and Oaxaca, Fields, and Morduch and Sicular, we analyze income gaps between employed Hui and Han as well as income inequality within the two groups. The main conclusions are that there is almost no income gap between Han and Hui in Ningxia, but different ethnic characteristics affect the income determination mechanism. Ethnic factors such as religion and social capital have no obvious effect on the income determination.

China's reform and openness have now been ongoing for a quarter century. During this important period, while China's economy has developed rapidly and personal incomes have increased, changes in income distribution, especially rising income inequality, have raised social concerns. Income and wealth are closely correlated. The people's well-being depends not only on incomes but also on the level and distribution of wealth (Schneider 2004, pp. vii, 6). Since 1990 China has experienced a period of rapid accumulation of personal wealth combined with unequal distribution of that wealth. The country has established the objective of constructing a well-off society. The issue of wealth distribution thus has become a new focus of concern.

This study of Central Asian migration and of Russian interpretations of it reveals that "how does one begin to see oneself as a migrant?" may be a more useful question than "who are the migrants?" The study also highlights the importance of everyday practices, local communities, and transnational space.

OBJECTIVES: Haplogroup C2a-M48 is the predominant paternal lineage of Tungusic-speaking populations, one of the largest population groups in Siberia. Up until now, the origins and dispersal of Tungusic-speaking populations have remained unclear. In this study, the demographic history of Tungusic-speaking populations was explored using the phylogenetic analysis of haplogroup C2a-M86, the major subbranch of C2a-M48. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In total, 18 newly generated Y chromosome sequences from C2a-M48 males and 20 previously available Y-chromosome sequences from this haplogroup were analyzed. A highly revised phylogenetic tree of haplogroup C2a-M86 with age estimates was reconstructed. Frequencies of this lineage in the literature were collected and a comprehensive analysis of this lineage in 13 022 individuals from 245 populations in Eurasia was performed. RESULTS: The distribution map of C2a-M48 indicated the most probable area of origin and diffusion route of this paternal lineage in North Eurasia. Most C2a-M86 samples from Tungusic-speaking populations belonged to the sublineage C2a-F5484, which emerged about 3300 years ago. We identified six unique sublineages corresponding to the Manchu, Evenks, Evens, Oroqen, and Daurpopulations; these sublineages diverged gradually over the past 1900 years. Notably, we observed a clear north-south dichotomous structure for sublineages derived from C2a-F5484, consistent with the internal north-south divergence of Tungusic languages and ethnic groups. CONCLUSIONS: We identified the important founding paternal haplogroup, C2a-F5484, for Tungusic-speaking populations as well as numerous unique subgroups of this haplogroup. We propose that the timeframe for the divergence of C2a-F5484 corresponds with the early differentiation of ancestral Tungusic-speaking populations.

The author poses a question about the connection between archeology and the ideology of nationalism. Defining nationalism as ideology and social practice that makes nation a subject of politics and give priority to the national interests over all others, he argues that the value of archeology for nationalism is determined by its ability to provide material evidence of long cultural continuity and real ties with the ancestors. This renders the issue of archeologists' responsibility and role in "forming identities" in a rather new way, since we are now dealing with "multiple pasts." It becomes especially complicated when contested territories or struggle for historical heritage come into play, as in the case when neighboring groups compete for the ancient heritage, each trying to ascribe local archeological remnants to their own ancestors.

The complicated ethnopolitical situation existing on the Crimean peninsula now, in 1994, is a product of the clash of several different and, at times, diametrically opposed forces. On the one hand, there is a powerful pro-Russian movement, bringing together several parties and groups, as well as the masses of unorganized inhabitants of Crimea. Its participants are not only Russians, who constitute a large majority of the Crimean population (67 percent in 1989 and 61.6 percent in 1993), but also representatives of many other ethnic groups, including some Russified Ukrainians who favor union with Russia and Greeks, Armenians, Bulgarians, Belarusians, and other minorities.1 During the campaign for the election of the first president of the Crimean Republic this movement crystallized most obviously in the Russia electoral bloc, and on 30 January 1994, it brought victory in these elections to Iurii Meshkov (he garnered 73 percent of the votes). It is based on a precarious social situation; mass dissatisfaction with an economic situation verging on financial collapse and critical food shortages, in which Crimea has found itself as part of the independent Ukrainian state; and discontent caused by the breakdown of traditional ties with Russia and other regions of the former USSR, which brought Crimea relative prosperity as a holiday resort area (the "all-union health resort") and provided a market for the southern agricultural products that flowed unimpeded north to Russia. A powerful factor fueling this movement is the position of the military forces (most of the command and the rank-and-file of the Black Sea Fleet). The epicenter of pro-Russian (anti-Ukrainian) state orientations and moods is Sevastopol, the "city of Russian military glory." Sevastopol has taken a clear separatist course of secession from Ukraine, which it is determined to achieve, at least for itself (using the argument that it was given a special status in 1948 as a city directly under republic jurisdiction, on which account, it is alleged, the handing over of Crimea to Ukraine in 1954 did not pertain to Sevastopol) and at most for all Crimea.

The discovery in the southern Urals of a perfectly conserved city some 3,600 years old was not merely a significant archaeological event. As V. A. Shnirelman explains, it set off a chain reaction of far‐fetched speculation and extreme ethnic nationalism which sought to exploit the find for purely political purposes. The author is a member of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

The best advantage of Tibetan word segmentation based on word-position is to reduce segmentation errors for unknown words. In this article authors upgrade usual 4-tag set to 6-tag set to fit in with the features of Tibetan characters, using CRF as tagging model to train and test corpus data, then building post processing modules to revise the result data. The experimental result shows that this method achieves a good performance and deserves further study, including expanding the corpus and optimizing the tag set and feature templates.

This paper, using literature analysis, explores the development of low-carbon pilot cities in China and its research progress, including the enrichment of the connotations of low carbon and low-carbon city, the progress in building China’s low-carbon cities, the relevant research by Chinese and foreign scholars and its trends. The result shows that for the construction of low-carbon cities in China, domestic and foreign scholars have conducted in-depth research on the connotations of low-carbon economy and low-carbon city, low-carbon index, carbon discharges peak value, technological approaches, energy utilization, low-carbon society, policy instruments and evaluating system, but the research is still subject to several limitations. For example, judging from the evaluation system of low-carbon cities, the research assigned small weights to the non-technical indexes such as low-carbon policies, governance mechanism and performance appraisal system. Judging from the spatial scale of case studies, the studies on the relatively developed cities in eastern China outnumber those on the cities in western China, especially in the minority areas. In terms of the factors influencing the construction of low-carbon cities, inadequate attention has been paid to the related psychological factors, in particular those of ethnic minorities.