Obesity is an escalating threat of pandemic proportions, currently affecting billions of people worldwide and exerting a devastating socioeconomic influence in industrialized countries. Despite intensive efforts to curtail obesity, results have proved disappointing. Although it is well recognized that obesity is a result of gene-environment interactions and that predisposition to obesity lies predominantly in our evolutionary past, there is much debate as to the precise nature of how our evolutionary past contributed to obesity. The "thrifty genotype" hypothesis suggests that obesity in industrialized countries is a throwback to our ancestors having undergone positive selection for genes that favored energy storage as a consequence of the cyclical episodes of famine and surplus after the advent of farming 10 000 years ago. Conversely, the "drifty genotype" hypothesis contends that the prevalence of thrifty genes is not a result of positive selection for energy-storage genes but attributable to genetic drift resulting from the removal of predative selection pressures. Both theories, however, assume that selection pressures the ancestors of modern humans living in western societies faced were the same. Moreover, neither theory adequately explains the impact of globalization and changing population demographics on the genetic basis for obesity in developed countries, despite clear evidence for ethnic variation in obesity susceptibility and related metabolic disorders. In this article, we propose that the modern obesity pandemic in industrialized countries is a result of the differential exposure of the ancestors of modern humans to environmental factors that began when modern humans left Africa around 70 000 years ago and migrated through the globe, reaching the Americas around 20 000 years ago. This article serves to elucidate how an understanding of ethnic differences in genetic susceptibility to obesity and the metabolic syndrome, in the context of historic human population redistribution, could be used in the treatment of obesity in industrialized countries.

/pdf/on-the-evolutionary-origins-of-obesity-a-new-hypothesis-24bh94ila2.pdf

On the evolutionary origins of obesity: a new hypothesis.

This paper briefly outlines first the history of the development of carrier multiplex telegraphy and telephony. The fundamental principles underlying particularly the newer developments of the art are then discussed. Consideration is likewise given to the propagation characteristics of open wire lines, including those containing intermediate lengths of cable. Commercial types of apparatus and actual installations are then described and a brief statement made as to further applications of the art.

Carrier Current Telephony and Telegraphy

My dissertation is a study of standardization in four communications networks: AT&T’s monopoly telephone network, the Internet, digital cellular telephone networks, and the World Wide Web. A history of these networks that highlights standardization shows how engineers in industry committees replaced managers in monopoly hierarchies as the stewards of standards for communication networks. By the end of the twentieth century, the new networks—and the new institutions devised to sustain the standardization process—formed the technological and ideological infrastructure of the Third Industrial Revolution.

/pdf/industrial-legislatures-consensus-standardization-in-the-22ie0ye7f0.pdf

“industrial legislatures”: consensus standardization in the second and third industrial revolutions

The authors have explored further the effect of the tenure of an R&D group (that is, the length of time in which it has existed) on its performance. Several studies have shown that groups tend to reach a peak of productivity after a few years and decline thereafter. However, it seems that not all teams so decline and the aim of the authors' study reported in this paper was to see what could be learned from those groups that continued to be successful.



They therefore studied a sample of 181 teams comprising 2000 subjects drawn from a wide variety of R&D organizations. Their objectives were first to pick out those teams that remained effective and second, to discover the secret of their success. Group performances were assessed subjectively by senior members of each organization. Group tenures were measured by calculating the average time each individual member had spent in the group. Further information was obtained from questionnaires completed by participants.



Analysis of the results led to the surprising conclusion that there was no evidence whatever for the previously reported curvilinear relationship between performance and tenure. Nevertheless, some long-tenured teams per-formed much better than others and better than newly-formed teams, for which the authors have sought an explanation.



From information deduced from the questionnaires they conclude that the crucial factor is the extent to which the functional manager (department head) as distinct from the project manager nurtures individual researchers, especially in ensuring that they keep abreast of progress in relevant areas of expertise. The role of the project manager on the other hand is to maintain connection between the team and institutional objectives.

/pdf/project-team-aging-and-performance-the-roles-of-project-and-2qxxz1btit.pdf

Project team aging and performance: The roles of project and functional managers

Weather is a leading threat to the stability of our vital infrastructure. Last-mile Internet is no exception. Yet, unlike other vital infrastructure, weather's effect on last-mile Internet outages is not well understood. This work is the first attempt to quantify the effect of weather on residential outages. Investigating outages in residential networks due to weather is challenging because residential Internet is heterogeneous: there are different media types, different protocols, and different providers, in varying contexts of different local climate and geography. Sensitivity to these different factors leads to narrow categories when estimating how weather affects these different links. To address these issues we perform a large-scale study looking at eight years of active outage measurements that were collected across the bulk of the last mile Internet infrastructure in the United States.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3341302.3342084

Residential links under the weather

In this paper the authors have endeavored to set forth briefly but clearly the history of the research and development work which has led up to the final production of successful telephone repeaters. The various forms of amplifiers which have been suggested are described and their possibilities and limitations pointed out. The essential properties of repeater networks together with the necessary line conditions for successful repeater operation are described and illustrated. Tandem operation of repeaters is discussed as is also the use of repeaters in four-wire circuits. Illustrations are given showing a few of the more important repeater installations now in regular commercial service in the United States.

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/4763772/4765626/04765639.pdf

Telephone Repeaters

This paper presents the results which have been obtained up to the present time in developing telephone communication in the United States of America, this development having been worked out in a form to meet the particular conditions which present themselves in that country. The paper first deals with a brief description of the general structure and organization of the telephone communication system giving the organization of the Bell System which handles the greater part of the telephone service of the country and the reasons for and advantages of this organization. In this connection some figures are presented with respect to the technical personnel who are continuously engaged in studies to develop the art and to provide new methods and facilities for improving the service.

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel7/6731005/6768526/06768527.pdf

Telephone communication system of the united states

Crediting the extent and magnitude of the technical advancement of the past half-century to engineering as the motivating force in the application of the scientific knowledge developed through the powerful facilities of the organized and coordinated research that has been developed during the latter part of the half-century just closing, Doctor Jewett believes that from the present point of view there is no reason to expect results any less striking during the next 50 years.

Research and Engineering

To those not closely in touch with the telephone situation to-day, the importance of the modern telephone cable may be indicated by stating that of the 8,000,000 miles of wire in the exchange plants of the Associated Bell telephone companies, more than 6,800,000 miles are in the form of underground, aerial, or submarine cable. These figures refer solely to the wire used for outside construction and do not include the thousands of miles of wire in cable form employed in central offices or the wiring of large buildings.

Frank B. Jewett

Papers

Telephone Repeaters

Telephone communication system of the united states

Research and Engineering

The Modern Telephone Cable

Discussion on ``Multiplex Telephony and Telegraphy by Means of Electric Waves Guided by Wires.'' Chicago, June 28, 1911