Aggregates, Formational Emergence, and the Focus on Practice in Stone Artifact Archaeology

The stone artifact record has been one of the major grounds for investigating our evolution. With the predominant focus on their morphological attributes and technological aspects of manufacture, stone artifacts and their assemblages have been analyzed as explicit measures of past behaviors, adaptations, and population histories. This analytical focus on technological andmorphological appearance is one of the characteristics of the conventional approach for constructing inferences from this record. An equally persistent routine involves ascribing the emerged patterns and variability within the archaeological deposits directly to long-term central tendencies in human actions and cultural transmission. Here we re-evaluate this conventional approach. By invoking some of the known concerns and concepts about the formation of archaeological record, we introduce notions of aggregates and formational emergence to expand on the understanding of how artifacts accumulate, what these accumulations represent, and how the patterns and variability among them emerge. To infer behavior that could inform on past lifeways, we further promote a shift in the focus of analysis from the technological and morphological appearance of artifacts and assemblages to the practice of stone use. We argue for a more rigorous and multi-level inferential procedure in modeling behavioral adaptation and evolution

Major Fallacies Surrounding Stone Artifacts and Assemblages

While lithic objects can potentially inform us about past adaptations and behaviors, it is important to develop a comprehensive understanding of all of the various processes that influence what we recover from the archaeological record. We argue here that many assumptions used by archaeologists to derive behavioral inferences through the definition, conceptualization, and interpretation of both individual stone artifact forms and groups of artifacts identified as assemblages do not fit squarely with what we have learned from both ethnographic sources and analyses of archaeological materials. We discuss this in terms of two fallacies. The first is the fallacy of the “desired end product” in stone artifact manufacture, which also includes our ability to recognize such end products. The second fallacy has to do with the notions that lithic assemblages represent simple accumulations of contemporary behaviors and the degree to which the composition of the depositional units we study reliably match the kinds of activities that took place. Although it is beyond the scope of this paper to offer a comprehensive set of new methodologies and theoretical perspectives to solve these problems, our goal here is to stress the importance of rethinking some of our most basic assumptions regarding the nature of lithic objects and how they become part of the archaeological record. Such a revision is needed if we want to be able to develop research questions that can be addressed with the data we have available to us

Genetic predisposition to mosaic Y chromosome loss in blood.

Mosaic loss of chromosome Y (LOY) in circulating white blood cells is the most common form of clonal mosaicism1-5, yet our knowledge of the causes and consequences of this is limited. Here, using a computational approach, we estimate that 20% of the male population represented in the UK Biobank study (n = 205,011) has detectable LOY. We identify 156 autosomal genetic determinants of LOY, which we replicate in 757,114 men of European and Japanese ancestry. These loci highlight genes that are involved in cell-cycle regulation and cancer susceptibility, as well as somatic drivers of tumour growth and targets of cancer therapy. We demonstrate that genetic susceptibility to LOY is associated with non-haematological effects on health in both men and women, which supports the hypothesis that clonal haematopoiesis is a biomarker of genomic instability in other tissues. Single-cell RNA sequencing identifies dysregulated expression of autosomal genes in leukocytes with LOY and provides insights into why clonal expansion of these cells may occur. Collectively, these data highlight the value of studying clonal mosaicism to uncover fundamental mechanisms that underlie cancer and other ageing-related diseases.This research has been conducted using the UK Biobank Resource under application 9905 and 19808. This work was supported by the Medical Research Council [Unit Programme number MC_UU_12015/2]. Full study-specific and individual acknowledgements can be found in the supplementary information

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

MUSiC : a model-unspecific search for new physics in proton-proton collisions at root s=13TeV

Results of the Model Unspecific Search in CMS (MUSiC), using proton-proton collision data recorded at the LHC at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 35.9 fb(-1), are presented. The MUSiC analysis searches for anomalies that could be signatures of physics beyond the standard model. The analysis is based on the comparison of observed data with the standard model prediction, as determined from simulation, in several hundred final states and multiple kinematic distributions. Events containing at least one electron or muon are classified based on their final state topology, and an automated search algorithm surveys the observed data for deviations from the prediction. The sensitivity of the search is validated using multiple methods. No significant deviations from the predictions have been observed. For a wide range of final state topologies, agreement is found between the data and the standard model simulation. This analysis complements dedicated search analyses by significantly expanding the range of final states covered using a model independent approach with the largest data set to date to probe phase space regions beyond the reach of previous general searches.Peer reviewe

Measurement of prompt open-charm production cross sections in proton-proton collisions at root s=13 TeV

The production cross sections for prompt open-charm mesons in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13TeV are reported. The measurement is performed using a data sample collected by the CMS experiment corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 29 nb(-1). The differential production cross sections of the D*(+/-), D-+/-, and D-0 ((D) over bar (0)) mesons are presented in ranges of transverse momentum and pseudorapidity 4 < p(T) < 100 GeV and vertical bar eta vertical bar < 2.1, respectively. The results are compared to several theoretical calculations and to previous measurements.Peer reviewe

Development and validation of HERWIG 7 tunes from CMS underlying-event measurements

This paper presents new sets of parameters (“tunes”) for the underlying-event model of the HERWIG7 event generator. These parameters control the description of multiple-parton interactions (MPI) and colour reconnection in HERWIG7, and are obtained from a fit to minimum-bias data collected by the CMS experiment at s=0.9, 7, and 13Te. The tunes are based on the NNPDF 3.1 next-to-next-to-leading-order parton distribution function (PDF) set for the parton shower, and either a leading-order or next-to-next-to-leading-order PDF set for the simulation of MPI and the beam remnants. Predictions utilizing the tunes are produced for event shape observables in electron-positron collisions, and for minimum-bias, inclusive jet, top quark pair, and Z and W boson events in proton-proton collisions, and are compared with data. Each of the new tunes describes the data at a reasonable level, and the tunes using a leading-order PDF for the simulation of MPI provide the best description of the dat

A Reassessment of Average Lunate Length as a Chronological Marker

Average lunate length, in conjunction with the percentage of bifacial backing retouch, has been used with moderate success as a chronological marker for ordering late Epipaleolithic Natufian assemblages in the Levant. Several problems with the use of these attributes are discussed, including sample size, radiocarbon dates, and assemblages that do not conform to the proposed frameworks. It is suggested that modifications considering macroenvironmental zones can further refine the currently existing chronological arrangements.La longueur moyenne des segments de cercle ainsi que la retouche bifaciale oblique ont été considérés comme éléments déterminants pour l'établissement de la séquence chronologique des industries natoufiennes du Levant. Plusieurs problèmes relatifs à l'utilisation de ces deux attributs sont discutés : taille de l'échantillon, déterminations UC et assemblages qui ne sont pas conformes aux schémas établis. Afin de raffiner la chronologie généralement admise il est proposé ici de tenir compte de la distribution écologique des types.Olszewski Deborah I. A Reassessment of Average Lunate Length as a Chronological Marker. In: Paléorient, 1986, vol. 12, n°1. pp. 39-44

Tool blank selection, debitage and cores from Abu Hureyra 1, Northern Syria

An analysis of tool blank selection, debitage and cores from the Epipaleolithic levels at Abu Hureyra shows that several chronological changes occur. The most important of these is a reduction in the production of flakes, and consequently less use of flakes as tool blanks through time. The latest levels at Abu Hureyra 1, those of Unit 4, appear to be roughly contemporary with Phase la from Tell Mureybet, and point to similarities, as well as differences, in the occupations at these two sites at the end of the Epipaleolithic period in the Levant.L'analyse de la sélection des supports d'outils, des produits de débitage ainsi que des nucleus en provenance des niveaux épipaléolithiques d'Abu Hureyra indique plusieurs changements chronologiques. Le plus important d'entre eux est une baisse de la production d'éclats et donc une utilisation réduite des éclats comme supports d'outils au fil du temps. Les niveaux les plus récents d'Abu Hureyra 1, ceux de l'unité 4, semblent à peu près contemporains de la Phase la de Tell Mureybet, et mettent en évidence aussi bien des similitudes que des différences au cours des occupations successives de ces deux sites à la fin de l'Epipaléolithique au Levant.Olszewski D. I. Tool blank selection, debitage and cores from Abu Hureyra 1, Northern Syria. In: Paléorient, 1989, vol. 15, n°2. pp. 29-37

Issues in the Levantine Epipaleolithic : The Madamaghan, Nebekian and Qalkhan (Levant Epipaleolithic)

No two archaeological assemblages are ever identical. Archaeologists are thus continually faced with the problem of recognizing groups of assemblages that are more or less similar. Once grouped, these become named industries, traditions, techno-complexes, and so forth. Such entities are then contrasted with other groupings that contain different characteristics. One of the main problems, of course, is to know how different an assemblage must be from another assemblage in order to warrant the creation of a new grouping. While the splitter-lumper pendulum is always moving, it appears that for the Levantine Epipaleolithic, distinctions between groupings are currently being over-emphasized, because within this quite small geographical area during a relatively brief period of about 12 000 years, a minimum of 18 lithic industries has been identified. This paper discusses three of these Epipaleolithic lithic industries, the Madamaghan, the Qalkhan, and the Nebekian. It is argued that these are not, in fact, distinct entities. A less than careful consideration of the microlith types and the inaccurate assignment of the site of Wadi Madamagh as a type assemblage for the Madamaghan have created undue confusion. Many sites currently assigned to these three lithic industries should actually be considered as belonging to the Nebekian.Deux ensembles archéologiques n’étant jamais identiques, les archéologues sont sans cesse confrontés au problème de la définition de groupes plus ou moins semblables qu’ils nomment «industries», «traditions» ou encore «techno-complexes». Ces entités sont alors confrontées à des assemblages présentant d’autres caractéristiques. Un des problèmes majeurs reste de décider quand un ensemble se différencie assez d’un autre pour justifier la création d’un nouveau terme. Alors que parmi les archéologues travaillant sur l’Épipaléolithique levantin le balancier entre «séparateurs» et «regroupeurs» est toujours en mouvement, il nous est apparu que le nombre d’ensembles aujourd’hui reconnus est fort exagéré comme en attestent les 18 industries lithiques définies pour une zone somme toute petite et pour une période assez courte (environ 12 000 ans). Cet article porte sur trois de ces industries: le Madamaghien, le Qalkhien et le Nébekien. Á notre sens, celles-ci ne représentent pas des entités distinctes. Le manque de soin apporté à l’identification de types de microlithes et l’attribution fausse au Wadi Madamagh d’un «ensemble type» désigné comme Madamaghien ont entraîné une confusion. De nombreux sites définis aujourd’hui comme Madamaghien, Qalkien ou Nébekien devraient à notre avis être considérés comme Nébekien.Olszewski Deborah I. Issues in the Levantine Epipaleolithic : The Madamaghan, Nebekian and Qalkhan (Levant Epipaleolithic). In: Paléorient, 2006, vol. 32, n°1. pp. 19-26