Richard S Meindl

Kent State University | KSU · Department of Anthropology

Background Dehydroepiandrosterone-sulfate is the most abundant circulating androgen in humans and other catarrhines. It is involved in several biological functions, such as testosterone production, glucocorticoid antagonist actions, neurogenesis and neuroplasticty. Although the role of dehydroepiandrosterone-sulfate (DHEAS) in cognition remains elu...

In the absence of disease, ageing in the human brain is accompanied by mild cognitive dysfunction, gradual volumetric atrophy, a lack of significant cell loss, moderate neuroinflammation, and an increase in the amyloid beta (A β ) and tau proteins. Conversely, pathologic age-related conditions, particularly Alzheimer's disease (AD), result in exten...

Cardiac disease is a major cause of morbidity and mortality for adult gorillas. Previous research indicates a sex-based difference with predominantly males demonstrating evidence of left ventricular hypertrophy. To evaluate these findings, we analyzed serum markers with cardiac measures in a large sample of gorillas. The study sample included 44 ma...

In Alzheimer's disease (AD), the brain's primary immune cells microglia become activated and are found in close apposition to amyloid beta (Aβ) protein plaques and neurofibrillary tangles (NFT). The present study evaluated microglia density and morphology in a large group of aged chimpanzees (n = 20, ages 37‐62 years) with varying degrees of AD‐lik...

The researchers examined whether three predictors of post-school employment outcomes identified by the National Secondary Transition Technical Assistance Center (NSTTA C, 20 J 3) remained significant for five subgroups of students with: (a) learning disabilities, (b) intellectual disabilities, (c) multiple disabilities, (d) emotional disabilities,...

Neuropeptide Y (NPY) plays a role in a variety of basic physiological functions and has also been implicated in regulating cognition, including learning and memory. A decrease in neocortical NPY has been reported for Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression, potentially contributing to associated cognitive deficits. The...

This study examined the outcomes of 409 students with mental retardation or multiple disabilities from 177 school districts in a Great Lakes state. These students with intellectual disabilities were interviewed at exit and 1 year following graduation. The authors developed and tested three regression models—two to predict full-time employment and o...

This longitudinal transition study was conducted in collaboration with teachers who interviewed students who graduated from 177 school districts in a Great Lakes state. Special education students were interviewed at exit and 1 year following graduation using a survey based on the National Longitudinal Transition Study. The data were analyzed using...

In a previous study, we introduced the template method as a means of enlarging the Australopithecus afarensis postcranial sample to more accurately estimate its skeletal dimorphism. Results indicated dimorphism to be largely comparable to that of Homo sapiens. Some have since argued that our results were biased by artificial homogeneity in our Au....

The reduction of infant mortality (IM) continues to be a primary goal throughout much of the developing world, and a suite of methods have been proposed with which to achieve it. However, most attempts at IM reduction have taken place within the context of an almost bewilderingly complex regimen of simultaneous changes occurring in the physical env...

The modal number of lumbar vertebrae in modern humans is five. It varies between three and four in extant African apes (mean=3.5). Because both chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and gorillas (Gorilla gorilla) possess the same distributions of thoracic, lumbar, and sacral vertebrae, it has been assumed from parsimony that the last common ancestor (LCA)...

The order in which ectocranial sutures undergo fusion displays species-specific variation among primates. However, the precise relationship between suture closure and phylogenetic affinities is poorly understood. In this study, we used Guttman Scaling to determine if the modal progression of suture closure differs among Homo sapiens, Pan troglodyte...

Anthropoids in general and hominoids in particular exhibit differential adaptations in forearm and digital skeletal proportions to a diverse array of locomotor modes. Hox genes act as selector genes with spatially regulated expression patterns during development. Their expression in the forelimb appears to define modules that specify differential s...

The demographic reconstruction of extinct societies from archaeological sites is a complex problem. A variety of variables affect the adequacy of the cemetery census, especially aboriginal burial practices, post-mortem preservation, excavation techniques, and estimation of demographic variables by investigators. Most important of all is the need to...

IntroductionThe Libben Site, Ottawa County, OhioThe Osteology of AgingTotal Fertility and Intrinsic GrowthThe Human Species in Demographic ContextAcknowledgmentsReferences

The developmental anatomy of the proximal femur is complex. In some mammals, including humans, the femoral head and greater trochanter emerge as separate ossification centres within a common chondroepiphysis and remain separate throughout ontogeny. In other species, these secondary centres coalesce within the chondroepiphysis to form a single osseo...

▪ Abstract Current methods in skeletal biology have improved significantly our ability to estimate the demographic parameters of extinct populations. Gross morphological and histological age indicators have been developed and tested in a variety of contexts, revealing great variation in the levels of accuracy of age prediction of each indicator. Pr...

The substantial fossil record for Australopithecus afarensis includes both an adult partial skeleton [Afar Locality (A.L.) 288-1, "Lucy"] and a large simultaneous death assemblage (A.L. 333). Here we optimize data derived from both to more accurately estimate skeletal size dimorphism. Postcranial ratios derived from A.L. 288-1 enable a significant...

MAK-VP-1/1, a proximal femur recovered from the Maka Sands (ca. 3.4 mya) of the Middle Awash, Ethiopia, and attributed to Australopithecus afarensis, is described in detail. It represents the oldest skeletal evidence of locomotion in this species, and is analyzed from a morphogenetic perspective. X-ray, CT, and metric data are evaluated, using a va...

Richmond and Strait argue that evidence of ancestral knuckle-walking is retained in the distal radius of Australopithecus1, basing their conclusions on a canonical variate analysis that uses four measurements of the distal radial joint surface in higher primates. We dispute their claim that early hominids retained a specialized wrist morphology ass...

The length of the radial neck has been assumed to vary in living and extinct primates in accordance with its role as a moment arm during flexion by the m. biceps brachii. We here use a simple developmental approach to investigate whether or not this trait does, in fact, vary in such a manner. We find, instead, that virtually all variation in radial...

Accurate identification of fetal age is important in a wide variety of circumstances. Seventeen anthropometric and radiographic measurements were taken on fetuses between 15 and 42 weeks of gestational age, both with and without pathologic conditions. A full evaluation including radiographic, karyotypic, gross anatomic, and histologic examination o...

The USAF has been using a multivariate method for specifying pilot body size for nearly ten years. The Multivariate Accommodation software was originally written for a VMS environment using the statistical package SAS. It is now available for PC computers. The program is based on the CADRE statistical method developed by Bittner (1987), and the Ant...

Identifying patterns of fetal growth alteration benefits both the clinician and the researcher. Twenty-four measurements in three variable sets (anthropometric measures, organ weights, and long-bone measures from radiographs) were taken on fetuses both with and without pathological conditions that are suspected to result in growth alteration. In ad...

Current methods in skeletal biology have improved significantly our ability to estimate the demographic parameters of extinct populations. Gross morphological and histological age indicators have been developed and tested in a variety of contexts, revealing great variation in the levels of accuracy of age prediction of each indicator. Primary atten...

Cortical area, area moment of inertia, and polar moment of inertia were determined from the midshafts of a series of 62 femurs (34 female and 28 male) from a U. S. white population, ages 51–95. The density of osteons and osteon fragments (per mm2) was also determined. Neither osteon nor osteon fragment density was significantly correlated with age....

The effects of changes in nutritional and health status upon bone and enamel development are examined in a sample of 63 rural Guatemalan children (24 females, 39 males). The number of ossified hand-wrist centers at 3 years and the number of linear enamel hypoplasias (LEH) in ∼0–3 year zones of developing teeth were used to monitor the response of b...

The sternal surface of the 4th rib has been suggested as a useful predictor of adult age-at-death (Iscan et al.: Journal of Forensic Sciences 29:1094–1104, 1984; American Journal of Physical Anthropology 65:141–156, 1984). We tested its ability to do so in two tests. In the first, we developed a method of seriation and target age assignment for the...

The multifactorial aging method has been shown to be a highly reliable method of skeletal aging because it incorporates age information from as many age indicators as are available for each skeleton (Lovejoy et al.; Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 68 :1–14, 1985). The present study was a blind test to assess its accuracy on a skeletal sample composed of 55...

Body size accommodation in USAF cockpits is still a significant problem despite all the years of experience and the many aircraft designs that have been developed. Adequate reach to controls, body clearances (particularly during escape), and vision (internal and external), are all functions of pilot body size and position in the cockpit. one of the...

This paper introduces and discusses the use of standardized residuals as a technique for comparing the growth of normal and pathologic human fetuses. Anthropometric measures, radiographic measures, and organ weights were regressed on known gestational age of second- and third-trimester fetuses. Standardized residuals were calculated for a group of...

New data on hominoid dental development are presented. Individual bivariate pairings of all mandibular teeth were made for African apes and humans. Data were analyzed with a full linear regression model. No statistically significant differences were found among apes, although a consistent pattern of earlier incisal development was observed in Pan r...

Estimates of age-at-death are a function of the sidereal growth rate of the tissue(s) being employed to gauge development, and cannot be made without a priori knowledge of that growth rate. The latter cannot be determined from any inherent differences in pattern in the developing tissues of extant taxa. Such similarities and/or differences are usua...

The blind test procedures used by Lovejoy et al., (Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 68:1–14, 1985a) have been criticized because they used the Hamann-Todd collection as their known-age population. It has been suggested that variation within this sample was reduced by selection procedures designed to ensure accuracy of age at death. Powerful statistical test...

Traditional analyses of dental eruption pattern and enamel attrition suggested that the South African australopithecines exhibited a human-like or delayed maturation rate. Recent work has challenged this view by proposing that early hominids matured at a rate more like extant apes. We show that relative growth rates of ape and human dental structur...

European populations have both a particularly long history of pulmonary tuberculosis and extremely high frequencies of cystic fibrosis (CF). While carriers of the recessive gene are asymptomatic for CF disease, their fibroblasts produce excessive amounts of hyaluronic acid, whose role in successful isolation of virulent pathogens appears to be espe...

Traditional methods of estimating skeletal age at death have relied solely on the pubic symphyseal face or on this indicator combined with others in nonsystematic ways. A multifactorial method is presented that uses a principal components weighting of five indicators (public symphyseal face, auricular surface, radiographs of proximal femur, dental...

A new method for the determination of adult skeletal age at death based upon chronological changes in the auricular surface of the ilium is presented. Formal stages have been constructed following extensive tests and refinements in observations made of such changes. Two completely "blind" tests were conducted to assess the accuracy and bias of the...

A new method for estimation of age-at-death based on the degree of suture closure is presented. The method employs simple ectocranial scoring of specific sites on the external table. Composite scores for two groups of sutures, lateral-anterior and vault systems, which are used to provide estimates of age-at-death, have been developed from a sample...

All current standardized methods of age determination using the os pubis were tested by blind assessment of a skeletal sample with documented ages (from the Todd collection; N = 96). No demographic data (sex, age, race, age composition) were known to the assessors prior to completion of the test. Results showed the Todd method to be more reliable t...

Determinations of sex by subjective assessment of the skulls from a skeletal series of known sex were compared to fully independent assessments based on pelves of the same specimens. Within-sex correlations of cranial and pelvic morphologies measured on an android-gynecoid scale were smaller than expected. Subjective assessment by means of the skul...

A method of estimating adult age at death in the skeleton using seriation and multifactorial age determination was tested using subsamples of the Hamann-Todd Collection. Over 3000 cadaver records were surveyed from which over 250 were chosen to construct two distinct populations of specified survivorship. Each of the two samples was then aged and s...

In this paper we investigate two distinct but related questions: The longevity of individuals and the longevity of families. Following a brief review of the literature on genetic contributions to life-span we provide a simple, empirical test of the presence or absence of a 'family' component to longevity utilizing sib and parent/offspring correlati...

Childhood disease may have far-reaching effects on adult longevity in high-mortality populations. It was earlier reported from demographic analysis of 19th century New England communities that survivors of high-fatality childhood epidemics lived significantly longer than their unstressed counter-parts. As part of a broader survey of agricultural fa...

The Libben site, a Late Woodland ossuary and occupation site from the Great Black Swamp of northern Ohio has yielded a well-preserved skeletal sample of 1327 articulated individuals. The outstanding preservation and completeness of the site and the utilization of an exhaustive aging methodology make this the largest and most comprehensively censuse...

RESUMEN A lo largo del Río Green en Kentucky se localizan cementerios prehistóricos muy antiguos que están asociados con sitios habitados. La arquelogía del Arcaico tardío, biología esquelética y paleodemografía han sido descritas para el Indian Knoll (15Oh2) y Carlston-Annis (15Bt5), las cualas revelan distribuciones de edad jóvenes, altas tasas d...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Massachusetts, 1979. Bibliography: leaves 212-220. Photocopy