The municipal archives of the City of New York

Ith some 100,000 cubic feet of civic documents, vital and building records, libers, films and photographs, New York City's Municipal Archives is a magnet for researchers. Among those who benefit from centralized access to the wealth of material deposited in the Archives by city government agencies are genealogists, urban scholars and architectural historians

The Mississippian fin de siècle in the middle Cumberland region of Tennessee

Bayesian chronological modeling is used to investigate the chronology for a large-scale human depopulation event during the Mississippian period (AD 1000–1600) known as the Vacant Quarter phenomenon. The Middle Cumberland region (MCR) of Tennessee is within the Vacant Quarter area, and six villages from the final phase of Mississippian activity in the MCR have been subjected to radiocarbon dating. Complete radiocarbon datasets from these sites are presented within an interpretative Bayesian statistical framework. The results provide a unique history of each settlement and demonstrate that Mississippian occupations at each site likely terminated in the mid- to late fifteenth and possibly early sixteenth centuries AD, which is 50 to 100 years later than the most recent estimate for the timing of the Vacant Quarter. Mississippian abandonment in the MCR was relatively quick, likely occurring over less than a century. The exact reasons for abandonment are not entirely clear but appear to be linked to climate change. A radiocarbon simulation experiment indicates that future robust radiocarbon dating with well-selected samples could greatly improve the chronological precision for this late Mississippian activity. More broadly, this example demonstrates that model building with radiocarbon simulations can be used to address regional-scale chronological issues within the American Southeast and beyond

A Project Based Approach to Statistics and Data Science

In an increasingly data-driven world, facility with statistics is more important than ever for our students. At institutions without a statistician, it often falls to the mathematics faculty to teach statistics courses. This paper presents a model that a mathematician asked to teach statistics can follow. This model entails connecting with faculty from numerous departments on campus to develop a list of topics, building a repository of real-world datasets from these faculty, and creating projects where students interface with these datasets to write lab reports aimed at consumers of statistics in other disciplines. The end result is students who are well prepared for interdisciplinary research, who are accustomed to coping with the idiosyncrasies of real data, and who have sharpened their technical writing and speaking skills

Summoning the wind: Hydrodynamic cooperation of forcibly ejected fungal spores

The forcibly launched spores of the crop pathogen \emph{Sclerotinia sclerotiorum} must eject through many centimeters of nearly still air to reach the flowers of the plants that the fungus infects. Because of their microscopic size, individually ejected spores are quickly brought to rest by drag. In the accompanying fluid dynamics video we show experimental and numerical simulations that demonstrate how, by coordinating the nearly simultaneous ejection of hundreds of thousands of spores,\emph{Sclerotinia} and other species of apothecial fungus are able to sculpt a flow of air that carries spores across the boundary layer and around intervening obstacles. Many spores are sacrificed to create this flow of air. Although high speed imaging of spore launch in a wild isolate of the dung fungus \emph{Ascobolus} shows that the synchronization of spore ejections is self-organized, which could lead to spores delaying their ejection to avoid being sacrificed, simulations and asymptotic analysis show that, close the fruit body, ejected spores form a sheet-like jet that advances across the fruit body as more spores are ejected. By ejecting on the arrival of the sheet spores maximize \emph{both} their range and their contribution to the cooperative wind.Comment: Submission to the DFD 2009 Gallery of Fluid Motio

A Study of The Attitudes of 1000 High School Seniors Toward Teaching and The Teaching Profession

This study is concerned with The Attitude of 1000 High School Seniors Toward Teachers and the Teaching Profession. Limitations The scope of the study is limited to: (1) High school seniors now enrolled in high schools, (2) High schools within a reasonable radius of Fort Hays Kansas State College, (3) High schools within cities of the second and third class only. The information and data is of a subjective nature inasmuch as it is based upon the students own statements . The problem of analyzing human attitudes and motives is very complex, for often the individual is not fully aware of the influences back of his decision. The real reason f or what he does may consciously or unconsciously be suppressed. The reliability of this type of data should not be accepted as absolute

Developing a contrast agent for the in vivo detection of apoptosis

Currently, there is no way to assess apoptotic cell death in living organisms. We have developed a novel contrast agent targeted toward the detection of caspase-3 activity, the key enzymatic mediator of apoptosis. Our contrast agent consists of a dual magnetic resonance imaging/fluorescent probe coupled to a cell penetrating peptide (CPP) sequence by a peptide backbone containing a caspase-3 cleavage site. The CPP allows the agent to cross cell membranes and the blood brain barrier. In cells undergoing apoptosis, activated caspase-3 will cleave the agent removing the CPP and trapping the imaging probes inside the cell. The purpose of this study was to test the ability of our contrast agent to label apoptotic cells in cultured neurons and to explore its potential to detect apoptosis in vivo. Using multiple methods, we demonstrated that our contrast agent selectively labeled apoptotic but not healthy or necrotic neurons in culture. Furthermore, using a caspase-3 inhibitor we demonstrated that uptake and retention of the contrast agent was dependent on apoptosis and caspase-3 activation. To test our contrast agent in vivo, we examined the 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine mouse model of Parkinson’s disease to induce apoptosis in the dopaminergic neurons of the substantia nigra. At the time the mice were sacrificed, there was little evidence of apoptosis in the substantia nigra and we were not able to identify any cells with significant retention of the agent. Nonetheless, this data demonstrates that our agent effectively detects apoptosis in cultured neurons and reinforces its potential to image apoptosis in vivo

\u3cem\u3eRethinking Individuals and Agents in Archaeology\u3c/em\u3e, by A.B. Knapp and P. van Dommelen

A comment on Rethinking Individuals and Agents in Archaeology, by A.B. Knapp and P. van Dommelen