Saturday 31 December 2011

Maya-Toolkit

This toolkit compiles very useful information about the health status of several Maya groups. Everybody interested in this topic should be aware of this great tool.
http://www.brycs.org/maya-toolkit/upload/Maya-Toolkit.pdf

Wednesday 28 December 2011

What we did in 2011

The year of 2011 was very productive for all of us involved in the BEMICELU project.

Publications
Hannah was the first author of two papers published on the American Journal of Human Biology. Inês has one paper in press on Collegium Antropologicum. See details of our publications here bemicelu.blogspot.com/p/publications-on-maya-issues.html

Presentation in conferences
We presented our work at the Human Biology Association Annual Meeting, in Minneapolis; at a conference on 'Anthropolohy and Health' in Dubrovnik; and at the SSHB Symposium 'The Human Biology of Jim Tanner', in Cambridge.

PhDs updates
Hannah has submitted her PhD dissertation and will have her viva in February or March 2012. Well done, Hannah. Hugo has been conducting fieldwork in Merida since October and is planning to keep going for 6 months more. Before Christmas he had been able to collect data from 30 family clusters (i.e. child, mother and grandmother). This is a great achievement.

Funding
Just before Christmas Hugo got extra funding from CONACYT. This will speed up some aspects of the fieldwork because it will be able to pay for another fieldworker.

Visits to Mexico
Ines and Barry visited Merida in July. We met with Fede, Hugo and the rest of the team at CINVESTAV. Ines went back in November to give a talk, to participate a bit on the fieldwork and to meet with the rest of the team.

Sabbaticals and visitorships
Fede and his wife Tere are coming to Loughborough to do a 1-year of sabbatical with Ines and Barry. Also, Adriana will start a 4-month visit to work with Ines and finish her Masters dissertation. Mexico is coming to Loughborough!!

Next year
We need to keep publishing steadily and, above all, write a couple of solid grant proposals focusing on the energy expenditure issues. Hopefully we will have a go on some epigenetics.


Three generations of Maya 
 Happy New Year to all. Thanks for reading our blog.

inesvsilva1@gmail.com has sent you a New Scientist story.

Your friend thought you should see this article on newscientist.com today.

World's first fat tax: what will it achieve?
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228356.600

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Their message:
Not the solution to the obesity problem in Mexico...or...would this work?

NewScientist.com is the world's leading online science and technology news service, with a global network of award-winning journalists. Visit www.newscientist.com now for constantly updated and authoritative reporting that's both fast and fascinating.

Tuesday 20 December 2011

Tuesday 13 December 2011

Conference presentation tomorrow

Hannah  is doing an oral presentation at the Society for the Study of Human Biology Symposium "The Human Biology of Jim Tanner". From 13-15th December at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

Title of the presentation: Resting metabolic rate explains the relationship between stunting and overweight/obesity in a sample of urban Maya children (Wilson H, Dickinson F, Griffiths P, Bogin B, Varela-Silva MI).


 All data presented at the Symposium was collected gathered during our fieldwork in 2010


Thursday 1 December 2011

Mother and grandmother

Project: Nutritional dual burden and health outcomes among three generations of Maya in the Yucatan

One of our families

Three generations participating in the project "Nutritional dual burden and health outcomes among three generations of Maya in the Yucatan"