Middle and Late Woodland Settlements in Selected Areas of the Midsouth: A View from the Middle Duck River Drainage in Maury County, Tennessee

Archaeological remains in the Middle Duck River Drainage of Middle Tennessee and other selected areas of the Midsouth offer the opportunity to study human adaptation in Middle and Late Woodland cultures. The basic attributes of such an adaptive system are the elements of technology, subsistence economy, and settlement patterns with other ancillary attributes consisting of mortuary activities, ceremonialism, and interregional exchange. During the early Middle Woodland in the Midsouth semipermanent villages were established in the main river valley and adjacent uplands. In late Middle Woodland and Late Woodland times, these villages became larger and more intensively occupied in many areas. Subsistence practices were based on the gathering of wild plant foods, simple horticulture, and the exploitation of various faunal resources. Food procurement and production practices were notably influenced by horticulture (maize, squash, beans, and sunflower) in the Late Woodland period of possibly as early as the early Middle Woodland. Mortuary practices in the Midsouth included the establishment of large mortuary/habitation sites and, in certain areas, the construction of burial mounds. The early Middle Woodland is distinguished, in part, by the number and variety of nonlocal ceramic and lithic items included with burials. Interregional exchange decreased through late Middle Woodland and Late Woodland times as populations became more sedentary. A variety of tempering agents and surface treatments were used in the manufacture of ceramic vessels during the Middle and Late Woodland periods. Lithic assemblages include projectile points/knives, elbow pipes, gorgets, microlith tools, and a blade industry on local cherts. These attributes of human adaptation articulate in a cyclical system in which each element affects the other and is crucial for the maintenance of the whole system

No. 8, Prehistoric and Historic Archaeology in Rhea and Roane Counties, Tennessee, 40RH155, 40RH156, 40RE192

https://digitalcommons.memphis.edu/govpubs-tn-dept-environment-conservation-tdot-archaeology-publications/1004/thumbnail.jp

No. 1, The Aenon Creek Site (40MU493), Late Archaic, Middle Woodland, and Historic Settlement and Subsistence in the Middle Duck River Drainage of Tennessee

https://digitalcommons.memphis.edu/govpubs-tn-dept-environment-conservation-archaeology-miscellaneous/1000/thumbnail.jp

No. 5, Archaeological Investigations at the Forbus Site (40FN122), An Unplowed Multicomponent Site in the Eastern Highland Rim of Tennessee

https://digitalcommons.memphis.edu/govpubs-tn-dept-environment-conservation-archaeology-miscellaneous/1004/thumbnail.jp

No. 2, The Bailey Site (40GL26), Late Archaic, Middle Woodland, and Historic Settlement and Subsistence in the Lower Eld River Drainage of Tennessee

https://digitalcommons.memphis.edu/govpubs-tn-dept-environment-conservation-archaeology-miscellaneous/1001/thumbnail.jp

The Quasar Mass-Luminosity Plane III: Smaller Errors on Virial Mass Estimates

We use 62185 quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) DR5 sample to explore the quasar mass-luminosity plane view of virial mass estimation. Previous work shows deviations of ~0.4 dex between virial and reverberation masses. The decline in quasar number density for the highest Eddington ratio quasars at each redshift provides an upper bound of between 0.13 and 0.29 dex for virial mass estimate statistical uncertainties. Across different redshift bins, the maximum possible MgII mass uncertainties average 0.15 dex, while H{\beta} uncertainties average 0.21 dex and CIV uncertainties average 0.27 dex. Any physical spread near the high-Eddington-ratio boundary will produce a more restrictive bound. A comparison of the sub-Eddington boundary slope using H{\beta} and MgII masses finds better agreement with uncorrected MgII masses than with recently proposed corrections. The best agreement for these bright objects is produced by a multiplicative correction by a factor of 1.19, smaller than the factor of 1.8 previously reported as producing the best agreement for the entire SDSS sample.Comment: 5 pages, MNRAS letter

NGC 5548 in a Low-Luminosity State: Implications for the Broad-Line Region

We describe results from a new ground-based monitoring campaign on NGC 5548, the best studied reverberation-mapped AGN. We find that it was in the lowest luminosity state yet recorded during a monitoring program, namely L(5100) = 4.7 x 10^42 ergs s^-1. We determine a rest-frame time lag between flux variations in the continuum and the Hbeta line of 6.3 (+2.6/-2.3) days. Combining our measurements with those of previous campaigns, we determine a weighted black hole mass of M_BH = 6.54 (+0.26/-0.25) x 10^7 M_sun based on all broad emission lines with suitable variability data. We confirm the previously-discovered virial relationship between the time lag of emission lines relative to the continuum and the width of the emission lines in NGC 5548, which is the expected signature of a gravity-dominated broad-line region. Using this lowest luminosity state, we extend the range of the relationship between the luminosity and the time lag in NGC 5548 and measure a slope that is consistent with alpha = 0.5, the naive expectation for the broad line region for an assumed form of r ~ L^alpha. This value is also consistent with the slope recently determined by Bentz et al. for the population of reverberation-mapped AGNs as a whole.Comment: 24 pages, 3 tables, 7 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

The Mass of the Black Hole in the Seyfert 1 Galaxy NGC 4593 from Reverberation Mapping

We present new observations leading to an improved black hole mass estimate for the Seyfert 1 galaxy NGC 4593 as part of a reverberation-mapping campaign conducted at the MDM Observatory. Cross-correlation analysis of the H_beta emission-line light curve with the optical continuum light curve reveals an emission-line time delay of 3.73 (+-0.75) days. By combining this time delay with the H_beta line width, we derive a central black hole mass of M_BH = 9.8(+-2.1)x10^6 M_sun, an improvement in precision of a factor of several over past results.Comment: 22 pages, 3 tables, 5 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

Measuring Lensing Magnification of Quasars by Large Scale Structure using the Variability-Luminosity Relation

We introduce a technique to measure gravitational lensing magnification using the variability of type I quasars. Quasars' variability amplitudes and luminosities are tightly correlated, on average. Magnification due to gravitational lensing increases the quasars' apparent luminosity, while leaving the variability amplitude unchanged. Therefore, the mean magnification of an ensemble of quasars can be measured through the mean shift in the variability-luminosity relation. As a proof of principle, we use this technique to measure the magnification of quasars spectroscopically identified in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, due to gravitational lensing by galaxy clusters in the SDSS MaxBCG catalog. The Palomar-QUEST Variability Survey, reduced using the DeepSky pipeline, provides variability data for the sources. We measure the average quasar magnification as a function of scaled distance (r/R200) from the nearest cluster; our measurements are consistent with expectations assuming NFW cluster profiles, particularly after accounting for the known uncertainty in the clusters' centers. Variability-based lensing measurements are a valuable complement to shape-based techniques because their systematic errors are very different, and also because the variability measurements are amenable to photometric errors of a few percent and to depths seen in current wide-field surveys. Given the data volume expected from current and upcoming surveys, this new technique has the potential to be competitive with weak lensing shear measurements of large scale structure.Comment: Accepted for publication in Ap

LMP1-Induced Sumoylation Influences the Maintenance of Epstein-Barr Virus Latency through KAP1

ABSTRACT As a herpesvirus, Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) establishes a latent infection that can periodically undergo reactivation, resulting in lytic replication and the production of new infectious virus. Latent membrane protein-1 (LMP1), the principal viral oncoprotein, is a latency-associated protein implicated in regulating viral reactivation and the maintenance of latency. We recently found that LMP1 hijacks the SUMO-conjugating enzyme Ubc9 via its C-terminal activating region-3 (CTAR3) and induces the sumoylation of cellular proteins. Because protein sumoylation can promote transcriptional repression, we hypothesized that LMP1-induced protein sumoylation induces the repression of EBV lytic promoters and helps maintain the viral genome in its latent state. We now show that with inhibition of LMP1-induced protein sumoylation, the latent state becomes less stable or leakier in EBV-transformed lymphoblastoid cell lines. The cells are also more sensitive to viral reactivation induced by irradiation, which results in the increased production and release of infectious virus, as well as increased susceptibility to ganciclovir treatment. We have identified a target of LMP1-mediated sumoylation that contributes to the maintenance of latency in this context: KRAB-associated protein-1 (KAP1). LMP1 CTAR3-mediated sumoylation regulates the function of KAP1. KAP1 also binds to EBV OriLyt and immediate early promoters in a CTAR3-dependent manner, and inhibition of sumoylation processes abrogates the binding of KAP1 to these promoters. These data provide an additional line of evidence that supports our findings that CTAR3 is a distinct functioning regulatory region of LMP1 and confirm that LMP1-induced sumoylation may help stabilize the maintenance of EBV latency. IMPORTANCE Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) latent membrane protein-1 (LMP1) plays an important role in the maintenance of viral latency. Previously, we documented that LMP1 targets cellular proteins to be modified by a ubiquitin-like protein (SUMO). We have now identified a function for this LMP1-induced modification of cellular proteins in the maintenance of EBV latency. Because latently infected cells have to undergo viral reactivation in order to be vulnerable to antiviral drugs, these findings identify a new way to increase the rate of EBV reactivation, which increases cell susceptibility to antiviral therapies