THE STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE OF MAYA SACRIFICE: A CASE STUDY OF RITUALIZED HUMAN SACRIFICE AT MIDNIGHT TERROR CAVE, BELIZE

The site of Midnight Terror Cave is located in the karstic Roaring Creek Valley near the village of Springfield in the Cayo District of Belize. The site was discovered in 2006 and fieldwork was conducted by the Western Belize Regional Cave Survey Project and California State University, Los Angeles, between 2008 and 2010. This dissertation focuses on the osteological analysis of the bones of 118 individuals recovered and recorded at the site. The osteological, contextual, and demographic evidence is framed within ritual and costly signaling theory of structural violence and viewed with the ethnohistoric and ethnographic literature of the ancient and modern Maya in mind. Analyses of the data indicate that the site’s remains constitute the largest assemblage of probably sacrificed individuals in the Southern Maya Lowlands, and that these sacrifices may have coincided with the Terminal Classic droughts. Demographic analysis indicates that the mortuary assemblage is significantly different from what would be expected for a “normal” cemetery assemblage of a horticultural society. The large quantities of older children and young adults apparently sacrificed in this cave suggest that these may have been petitions to the Maya rain deity. Isotopic data and paleopathology evidence suggest that geographical outsiders and possible social outcasts were at least sometimes chosen for sacrifice

DNA Methylation program in normal and alcohol-induced thinning cortex

While cerebral underdevelopment is a hallmark of fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD), the mechanism(s) guiding the broad cortical neurodevelopmental deficits are not clear. DNA methylation is known to regulate early development and tissue specification through gene regulation. Here, we examined DNA methylation in the onset of alcohol-induced cortical thinning in a mouse model of FASD. C57BL/6 (B6) mice were administered a 4% alcohol (v/v) liquid diet from embryonic (E) days 7–16, and their embryos were harvested at E17, along with isocaloric liquid diet and lab chow controls. Cortical neuroanatomy, neural phenotypes, and epigenetic markers of methylation were assessed using immunohistochemistry, Western blot, and methyl-DNA assays. We report that cortical thickness, neuroepithelial proliferation, and neuronal migration and maturity were found to be deterred by alcohol at E17. Simultaneously, DNA methylation, including 5-methylcytosine (5mC) and 5-hydroxcylmethylcytosine (5hmC), which progresses as an intrinsic program guiding normal embryonic cortical development, was severely affected by in utero alcohol exposure. The intricate relationship between cortical thinning and this DNA methylation program disruption is detailed and illustrated. DNA methylation, dynamic across the multiple cortical layers during the late embryonic stage, is highly disrupted by fetal alcohol exposure; this disruption occurs in tandem with characteristic developmental abnormalities, ranging from structural to molecular. Finally, our findings point to a significant question for future exploration: whether epigenetics guides neurodevelopment or whether developmental conditions dictate epigenetic dynamics in the context of alcohol-induced cortical teratogenesis

Transformations of continuously self-focusing and continuously self-defocusing dissipative solitons

Dissipative media admit the existence of two types of stationary self-organized beams: continuously self-focused and continuously selfdefocused. Each beam is stable inside of a certain region of its existence. Beyond these two regions, beams loose their stability, and new dynamical behaviors appear. We present several types of instabilities related to each beam configuration and give examples of beam dynamics in the areas adjacent to the two regions. We observed that, in one case beams loose the radial symmetry while in the other one the radial symmetry is conserved during complicated beam transformations

Dissipative ring solitons with vorticity

We study dissipative ring solitons with vorticity in the frame of the (2+1)-dimensional cubic-quintic complex Ginzburg-Landau equation. In dissipative media, radially symmetric ring structures with any vorticity m can be stable in a finite range of parameters. Beyond the region of stability, the solitons lose the radial symmetry but may remain stable, keeping the same value of the topological charge. We have found bifurcations into solitons with n-fold bending symmetry, with n independent on m. Solitons without circular symmetry can also display (m + 1)-fold modulation behaviour. A sequence of bifurcations can transform the ring soliton into a pulsating or chaotic state which keeps the same value of the topological charge as the original ring

Experiments on wind-perturbed rogue wave hydrodynamics using the Peregrine breather model

Being considered as a prototype for description of oceanic rogue waves, the Peregrine breather solution of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation has been recently observed and intensely investigated experimentally in particular within the context of water

Strain Differences in Developmental Vulnerability to Alcohol Exposure Via Embryo Culture in Mice

Background Prenatal alcohol exposure can result in varying degrees of neurodevelopmental deficits, growth retardation, and facial dysmorphology. Variation in these adverse outcomes not only depends on the dose and pattern of alcohol exposure but also on less well understood interactions among environmental, genetic, and maternal factors. The current study tested the hypothesis that fetal genotype is an important determinant of ethanol teratogenesis by evaluating effects of ethanol exposure via embryo culture in three inbred strains of mice known to differ in the vulnerability of prenatal alcohol exposure in vivo. Methods and results Three strains of mice, C57BL/6N (B6), DBA/2 (D2), and 129S6/SvEvTac (129S6) were assessed in a whole embryo culture beginning on embryonic day 8.25 (E8.25), with or without alcohol administration at 88mM for 6 hours followed by 42 hrs culture in ethanol-free media. Contrasting strain differences in susceptibility were observed for the brain, the face, and other organ systems using the Maele-Fabry and Picard scoring system. The forebrain, midbrain, hindbrain, heart, optic vesicle, caudal neural tube, and hindlimbs of the B6 mice were severely delayed in growth, whereas compared to the respective controls, only the forebrain and optic vesicle were delayed in the D2 mice, and no effects were found in the 129S6 mice. A large number of cleaved(c)-caspase3 positive (+) cells were found in regions of the brain, optic vesicles, cranial nerve nuclei V, VII, VIII, and IX as well as the craniofacial primordial; only a few were found in corresponding regions of the B6 controls. In contrast, only a small number of c-caspase 3-im cells were found in either the alcohol-treated or the controls of the D2 embryos and in 129S6 embryos. The independent apoptotic markers TUNEL and Nile blue staining further confirmed the strain differences in apoptotic responses in both the neural tube and craniofacial primordia. Conclusions Under embryo culture conditions, in which alcohol exposure factors and fetal developmental staging were controlled, and maternal and intrauterine factors were eliminated, the degree of growth retardation and the extent and type of neurodevelopmental teratogenesis varied significantly across strains. Notably, the 129S6 strain was remarkably resistant to alcohol-induced growth deficits, confirming a previous in vivo study, and the D2 strain was also significantly less affected than the B6 strain. These findings demonstrate that fetal genotype is an important factor that can contribute to the variation in fetal alcohol spectrum disorder

Does Identity Confusion Make People More Zealous and Hostile Toward Other Groups?

Identity confusion causes people to become more hostile and aggressive toward those who do not share their beliefs.York's Knowledge Mobilization Unit provides services and funding for faculty, graduate students, and community organizations seeking to maximize the impact of academic research and expertise on public policy, social programming, and professional practice. It is supported by SSHRC and CIHR grants, and by the Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation. [email protected] www.researchimpact.c

New Features of Extended Wormhole Solutions in the Scalar Field Gravity Theories

The present paper reports interesting new features that wormhole solutions in the scalar field gravity theory have. To demonstrate these, we obtain, by using a slightly modified form of the Matos-Nunez algorithm, an extended class of asymptotically flat wormhole solutions belonging to Einstein minimally coupled scalar field theory. Generally, solutions in these theories do not represent traversable wormholes due to the occurrence of curvature singularities. However, the Ellis I solution of the Einstein minimally coupled theory, when Wick rotated, yields Ellis class III solution, the latter representing a singularity-free traversable wormhole. We see that Ellis I and III are not essentially independent solutions. The Wick rotated seed solutions, extended by the algorithm, contain two new parameters a and \delta;. The effect of the parameter a on the geodesic motion of test particles reveals some remarkable features. By arguing for Sagnac effect in the extended Wick rotated solution, we find that the parameter a can indeed be interpreted as a rotation parameter of the wormhole. The analyses reported here have wider applicability in that they can very well be adopted in other theories, including in the string theory.Comment: 19 page