A Survey on Approximation in Parameterized Complexity: Hardness and Algorithms

Parameterization and approximation are two popular ways of coping with NP-hard problems. More recently, the two have also been combined to derive many interesting results. We survey developments in the area both from the algorithmic and hardness perspectives, with emphasis on new techniques and potential future research directions

LIPIcs, Volume 261, ICALP 2023, Complete Volume

LIPIcs, Volume 261, ICALP 2023, Complete Volum

LIPIcs, Volume 248, ISAAC 2022, Complete Volume

LIPIcs, Volume 248, ISAAC 2022, Complete Volum

LIPIcs, Volume 244, ESA 2022, Complete Volume

LIPIcs, Volume 244, ESA 2022, Complete Volum

What Hope Lies Buried Here: Differential Mortality and Mortuary Treatment of Adolescents in Dubuque's Third Street Cemetery

Appendix C is available at https://doi.org/10.24378/exe.2763 and Appendix D is available at https://doi.org/10.24378/exe.2764Excavations at the Catholic Third Street Cemetery in Dubuque, Iowa (2007-2011), uncovered 939 unmarked graves dating to the period between 1833 and 1880. Skeletal analysis identified 43 individuals whose age estimate ranges overlapped with osteological (12 to 20 years) and social (13 to 19 years) adolescence, as defined for this cultural context. The current research design focused on mortality patterns and mortuary preparations of these individuals and highlights differences between teenagers and the rest of the cemetery population. This interdisciplinary project utilised data from osteological analyses and archival research to explore health and mortality among adolescent non-survivors. Palaeopathological observations reflecting early life health insults (linear enamel hypoplasias, cribra orbitalia, porotic hyperostosis) and later illness (labyrinthine endocranial lesions, periosteal new bone formation, tubercular lesions) were studied to explore the potential vulnerability of adolescents with frailty acquired through earlier health stresses. Perimortem trauma and local death records were examined to determine the proportion of teenage mortality due to external causes such as accidents, homicide, and suicide. The lack of perimortem trauma observed in the Third Street adolescent sample was explained to some extent by the number of teenagers who perished from, but were unmarked by, a single accidental cause – drowning. The investigation of mortuary treatment examined combinations of burial attributes – including coffin hardware, burial clothing, religious objects, and nonreligious grave goods – and demonstrated how age-related patterns reflect an increase in socially acceptable sentimentality and changing views of the afterlife, with preferential treatment afforded to some adolescents. Comparative pathological marker and burial attribute data were gathered from publications on nine additional nineteenth-century burial populations, and death records from a tenth were consulted. Despite issues with inconsistent data collection procedures for parts of the comparative sample, results tentatively support the observations from Third Street. The proportion of adolescents with both early-life stress markers and later pathological manifestations is higher than that of other age classes, suggesting that survival of health insults in infancy or early childhood left teenagers more susceptible to fatal disease, particularly when their immune systems were vulnerable due to competing pubertal energy investments. Observed regional differences in skeletal marker rates suggest that this “double signal” may be more pronounced in populations with a high prevalence of TB. Perimortem trauma levels are equal to those of adults, though greater evidence of violence in the South and Southwest reflects the unstable social conditions in those areas. Regional, as well as temporal, trends were also identified in adolescent funerary preparations. Mid-nineteenth-century adolescents received preferential treatment, though general increases in mortuary elaboration overshadow this distinction in some later cemetery populations. Parental grief at the loss of near-adult offspring was expressed in the tendency to employ the metaphor of death as a journey when preparing adolescents for the grave, instead of the metaphor of sleep applied to younger children. Meanwhile, in frontier areas, independently living teenagers were often interred without familial involvement in the equivalent of paupers’ graves