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Articles by Darcy R. Shapiro
5 ways AI is revolutionizing insurance
White Paper Sponsored by Amwins Market Factors Not the Only Driver for D&O Policy Pricing While market trends always influence an insured’s ability to obtain coverage, determining policy pricing, terms and conditions is ultimately dependent on the unique exposures of the insured and the coverages desired. Download this white paper to learn factors to consider when selling or renewing D&O policies in order to best meet the insured’s needs. Browse More Resources ›
Building reassurance for travelers with embedded insurance
White Paper Sponsored by EIS When Insurtech Meets Coretech, the Customer Wins In order to remain competitive and scalable, the next phase of digital transformation for insurance carriers must fulfill the need for customer experiences that are informed, personalized, and above all: fast. Download this white paper for a deep-dive into how coretech solves off-the-shelf insurtech woes and positions insurance companies to succeed in the future. Browse More Resources ›
How the pelvis, and not bipedalism, gave humans their narrow hips
The anatomy of our pelvis is a result of an evolutionary trade-off, but perhaps it's not the one we thought July 6, 2021 Giving birth is generally a difficult process for humans, often requiring long hours of labor and help from other people, but this doesn't seem to be the case for our closest living relatives, the African apes.
Leading Tech Brands That Embed Insurance Propositions for Customers
• In consumer retail, Amazon is a prime example—pardon the pun—of a global e-commerce leader that has been distributing warranties in the U.S. and Europe for 15 years. Lately, the behemoth has morphed its warranty approach into a specialization model with vetted partners, most of whom are traditional insurers. Its recently announced InsurTech partnership with Next Insurance on small commercial insurance gives an inkling of how Amazon might approach its expected forays into health.
An Embedded Insurance Future
Insurance can be a tough sell. It’s convoluted, related to a future risk that’s hard to imagine, expensive and seemingly needless. And on top of that, general public sentiment tells us consumers are increasingly distrusting of traditional carriers.
The mystery of the human butt
Take a look around the animal kingdom. Even our closest living relatives among the great apes (chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas), don’t have proportionally as big butts as humans do. The main reason for this probably comes down to our unique style of locomotion. … The pelvis is made up of three parts: two innominates (or “hip bones”) and the sacrum. Each innominate is also made up of three bones (the ilium, ischium, and pubis) that fuse together during growth and development.
Humans Have One of the Most Unique Butts of All Animals
Humans Have One of the Most Unique Butts of All Animals What makes humans different from other animals? Ask any ten people and you're likely to get ten different answers, ranging from our relatively large brains, to our incredible use of language and symbols, to our ability to dramatically modify the world around us. Read Full Article »
How did human butts evolve to look that way?
An evolutionary anthropologist tackles the mystery of the butt August 31, 2020 Ed: Welcome to Butt Month. Every Tuesday in September, Massive will publish an article on the evolution, science, and technology surrounding the butt. If it touches the butt, we'll be covering it. Why Butt Month? Why not. What makes humans different from other animals?
Inside the excavation of a South Dakota sinkhole that swallowed more than 60 mammoths
In a classic scene from the original Jurassic Park film, the audience first meets paleontologists Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler as they’re excavating a dinosaur skeleton somewhere in Montana. The camera follows the hands of the diggers as they gently brush and scoop loose sand away from complete, pristine bones, laid out exactly like the animal’s skeleton was in life. It’s practically museum-ready, no need for glue or additional cleaning, just set it upright and wait for the crowds.
The bugs your primate ancestors loved to eat found a way into your genes
The original paleo diet lives on in humans today February 12, 2018 Did you know that what your ancestors ate affects your genes today? In humans, anthropologists call this an example of gene-culture coevolution, the hypothesis that human culture and genes interact; changes in culture can drive genetic change (and vice versa). The best example of this is lactose tolerance (the ability to digest dairy), which has independently evolved something like five times in different human groups.
How did our ancestors start walking upright?
Get new Lab Notes sent to your inbox Submit a note Submit your own Lab Note Share an interesting science story or tell a short one of your own Have you ever wondered why we call floor plans and other diagrams “blueprints”? The term “blueprint” originates from the cyanotype printing process, which yields prints in vivid cyan-blue colors and was widely used to replicate complex technical drawings in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Just in time for Halloween, the spookiest primate tricks the world with a hidden thumb
Get new Lab Notes sent to your inbox Submit a note Submit your own Lab Note Share an interesting science story or tell a short one of your own Ed: All this week Massive is marking Halloween with stories of scary, witchy, and downright ghastly stories from nature. Changes in temperature and precipitation associated with climate change alter the habitable ranges for many species.
Unexpected gorilla snacking behaviors make scientists question what we know about early humans
(AP Photo/Ben Curtis, File) Gorillas’ eating habits don’t match their tooth specializations, raising questions about early human diets Darcy Shapiro October 20, 2019 8:29PM (UTC) This story originally appeared on Massive Science, an editorial partner site that publishes science stories by scientists. Subscribe to their newsletter to get even more science sent straight to you. It’s hard to know what early humans ate.
How gorillas eat African walnuts could make us rethink early human diets
It’s hard to know what early humans ate. Since we can’t ask them, in order to gain insight into the evolution of the human diet, scientists are generally forced to combine what we know about living primates with fossil records. And what we thought we knew about gorillas is that they’re adapted to chew tough vegetation for hours on end, using the sharp crests on their molars to shear through tough leaves and stems.
Unexpected gorilla snacking behaviors make scientists question what we know about early humans
Photo by Carlos Cram on Unsplash Gorillas' eating habits don't match their tooth specializations, raising questions about determining early human diets from fossil records October 15, 2019 It's hard to know what early humans ate. Since we can't ask them, in order to gain insight into the evolution of the human diet, scientists are generally forced to combine what we know about living primates with fossil records.
Bonobos' penchant for aquatic herbs might be why we have such big brains
Get new Lab Notes sent to your inbox Submit a note Submit your own Lab Note Share an interesting science story or tell a short one of your own Several weeks ago, the BBC and The Washington Post (among other outlets) reported on a 2018 study that seemed to imply that mobile phone use was causing “horns” to grow out of millennials’ heads. The problem? Well, the study was rife with issues, summarized well by PBS NewsHour science producer Nsikan Akpan in an article and on Twitter.
The key to capturing consumers with one-stop insurance offerings
Undoubtedly, the ways in which we shop have changed drastically in recent years. Every facet of people’s lives is now conducted online – whether it’s Amazon’s Subscribe & Save clockwork-like toilet paper cadence or the Dollar Shave Club’s doorstep razor deliveries, shopping today is all about ease. Consumers are looking for a seamless, stress-free experience from start to finish, and shopping for insurance is no different. Or it doesn’t have to be, rather.
Did humans evolve to eat raw, aged, or cooked meat? I tried to test digestion
That's how I ended up feeding raw meat to undergrads March 21, 2018 Anthropologists have long debated about the importance of meat-eating and cooking in human evolution. One prominent Harvard primatologist, Dr. Richard Wrangham, proposed in 1999 the idea that cooking is the most important adaptation that allowed humans to evolve into who we are today – but what if we didn't need to cook meat to make it more easily digestible?
Mummy DNA helped solve the mystery of watermelons
Get new Lab Notes sent to your inbox Submit a note Submit your own Lab Note Share an interesting science story or tell a short one of your own The correlation between pollution and lung health, particularly asthma, has been suspected since the industrial revolution, when cases of lung and respiratory illness skyrocketed with the rate of air pollution.
A Denisovan jaw bone is discovered; ancient human relative skeleton becomes more complete
The paleoanthropology of Asia got even more interesting this week when researchers published the first fossil from a Denisovan found outside of Denisova Cave in Siberia. Discovered in Baishiya Karst Cave (Xiahe, China) in 1980, the fossil - half of a lower jaw with two teeth - provides some of the first morphological data on the Denisovans (which are only known from very fragmentary fossils and DNA) and expands their geographical range onto the Tibetan Plateau.
Netflix’s "Our Planet" showed walruses in distress. We need to find what humanity’s role is
(Sophie Lanfear / Silverback/Netf) Understanding walrus-human interactions in the past might shed some light on the “walrus scene” Darcy Shapiro April 26, 2019 10:00PM (UTC) This story originally appeared on Massive Science, an editorial partner site that publishes science stories by scientists. Subscribe to their newsletter to get even more science sent straight to you.
Netflix's Our Planet showed walruses in distress. We need to find what humanity's role is
Wikimedia Understanding walrus-human interactions in the past might shed some light on the "walrus scene" April 24, 2019 If you’ve watched the polar episode of the new Netflix documentary Our Planet, you might’ve been traumatized by footage of walruses throwing themselves off cliffs in Russia.
"Skeleton Keys" reveals the secrets hidden inside your bones
Brian Switek's book breathes new life into our understanding of old bones March 7, 2019 What will happen to your bones after you die? Will they be venerated as relics? Buried with care by your loved ones? Preserved as part of a museum's collection? Each of these treatments says something different about the value - religious, cultural, or scientific - that we place on the human skeleton.
Humans in South America evolved to live with arsenic poisoning
Pablo Trincado via Flickr The toxic environment offers clues to ancient mummies and human evolution February 4, 2019 Human history is a story of migration. From the first time our hominin ancestors left Africa around 1.8 million years ago, to the numerous subsequent waves of migration both out of that continent and back that we're still discovering, humans have been on the go.
Some spooky Halloween Archaeology facts from Massive Consortium member Darcy Shapiro
💀 You can estimate a person’s age from their skeleton (specifically, from how many/which bones have fused growth plates) — and the more skeletal bones you have, the better your age estimate! 🧛🏼♂️ Bioarchaeologists recently excavating a 17th-18th century cemetery in Poland have found graves of “suspected vampires” — people the locals interred with iron sickles or with rocks under their chins, to keep them from rising and feeding on the living.
The history of humanity is written across your smile
People don’t often stop to consider the clues their teeth hold about their past, from a person’s evolutionary ancestors, to their diet, to their cultural group or where they grew up. But a new book by anthropologist Dr. Tanya M. Smith, "The Tales Teeth Tell," unlocks the secrets hidden within our teeth (and those of our primate cousins and ancestors), and describes the centuries-long scientific journey into using them to understand our origins and ourselves.
The history of humanity is written across your smile
Allan Lasser 'The Tales Teeth Tell' traces the evolution of our teeth into "oral Swiss army knives" October 12, 2018 People don’t often stop to consider the clues their teeth hold about their past, from a person’s evolutionary ancestors, to their diet, to their cultural group or where they grew up. But a new book by anthropologist Dr. Tanya M.
The slap-dash nature of evolution makes entertaining reading
Photo by Shane Rounce on Unsplash Nathan Lents' new book details the accidental, incidental nature of human quirks May 29, 2018 If you've ever accidentally inhaled a bite of food, blown out a knee, or been called "four-eyes" for wearing glasses on the playground, you're already intimately familiar with the premise of human biologist Nathan H. Lents' new book, Human Errors, which came out earlier this month.
How the Diet of Human Ancestors Affects Our Genes | RealClearScience
How the Diet of Human Ancestors Affects Our Genes Did you know that what your ancestors ate affects your genes today?In humans, anthropologists call this an example of gene-culture coevolution, the hypothesis that human culture and genes interact; changes in culture can drive genetic change (and vice versa). The best example of this is lactose tolerance (the ability to digest dairy), which has independently evolved something like five times in different human groups.Read Full Article »
Turkeys on treadmills are helping anthropologists test the fossil record
Illustration by Allan Lasser Walk like a person, talk like a turkey November 21, 2017 Paleoanthropologists have historically been good at telling stories –some true, some later shown to be false – about how our ancestors lived.
Turkeys on treadmills are helping anthropologists test the fossil record
Paleoanthropologists have historically been good at telling stories –some true, some later shown to be false – about how our ancestors lived. It's a tradition that dates back at least to the 1950s and Raymond Dart (the discoverer of the Taung Child fossil in 1924), who wrote that the broken bones he found at several South African fossil sites meant that Australopithecus africanus was proficient at using animal teeth, horns, and bones as tools and even as weapons.
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