COSMOLOGY AND SOCIETY: HOUSEHOLD RITUAL AMONG THE TERMINAL CLASSIC MAYA PEOPLE OF YAXHA (ca. A.D. 850-950), GUATEMALA

This study of domestic ritual and symbolism centers on the ancient Maya kingdom of Yaxha in northeastern Guatemala, during the last part of the Classic period (A.D. 850-950/1000). Classic Maya high-culture functioned within a dynastic cosmology that framed royalty’s power. The central question in this dissertation is ‘how did the non-royal population participate and interact with this dynastic cosmology?’ Exploring some possible ways in which ancient Yaxhaeans participated and interacted with the local dynastic cosmology, I have hypothesized three possible behaviors derived from ethnographic studies: active engagement, resistance, and passive compliance. A comparative study of ritual practices and symbolism in ten residences of different social ranks provides the grounds for the discussion. This sample of residences includes the royal palace, a noble palace, two high-end commoner residences, and six low-end commoner residences. While the data from the eight commoner residences was obtained through original research, the information from the royal and noble palaces was recovered from previous research and salvage archaeology projects at Yaxha. The same ritual and symbolic aspects were investigated: symbolism in architectural layouts, ritual feasting, funerary rituals, dedication and termination rituals, and ritual paraphernalia. I have concluded that while nobles and high-end commoners were actively engaged with the ruling dynastic cosmology, low-end commoners were more reluctant. A certain degree of disconnection in the ritual practices of the higher and lower ranks has been detected, suggesting that low-end commoners might have been more passively compliant than actively engaged with the ruling cosmology. No evidence for overt resistance has been found. Although passive compliance is not a behavior usually associated with social change, ethnographic observations suggest that as a form of passive resistance, it might be a symptom of social unrest

Evidencias de validez y confiabilidad del cuestionario de agresión reactiva y proactiva en adolescentes del Centro Poblado Menor Alto Trujillo

El presente trabajo de investigación buscó responder a la interrogante ¿Cuál es la evidencia de validez y confiabilidad del cuestionario de agresión reactiva y proactiva en adolescentes del Centro Poblado Menor Alto Trujillo? Para ello, tuvo a bien el determinar las evidencias de validez y confiabilidad de dicho cuestionario en base a la versión de Andreu, Peña y Ramírez (2009) el cual consta de 23 ítems. Se trabajó con una muestra de 499 adolescentes de ambos sexos de cuatro Instituciones Educativas más representativa de dicho lugar, sus edades oscilaban entre 12 a 17 años. El tipo de muestreo que se empleó fue no probabilístico por conveniencia y para hallar las evidencias de validez se hizo uso del análisis factorial confirmatorio, donde se encontró cargas factoriales entre 35 a 55 en el factor de agresión reactiva y de entre 32 a 59 en agresión proactiva. Se reportó un adecuado ajuste: Error cuadrático medio de aproximación (RMSEA) de .044, índice de ajuste comparativo (CFI) de .919, índice de ajuste de bondad (GFI) .941 y el índice de Tuker-Lewis (TLI) de .906 dichos valores resultaron mediante la eliminación de las cargas factoriales más bajas y la correlación de errores. En cuanto a la confiabilidad se alcanzó valores de .753 en la agresión reactiva y .831 en agresión proactiva con alfa Omega y con alfa de Cronbach en .842 en reactiva y .765 en proactiva

UC-185 GTRI: Analysis of Alternatives (Team 2)

The capstone project Analysis of Alternatives was where a group would research and test workstation deployment tools to see if they could fulfill the fifteen requirements that GTRI needs for a deployment tool. The project was broken down into four phases: planning, research, testing, documentation/recommendation. Planning phase was used to set up the pathway to follow to finish the project on time and meet every objective to the groups’ best abilities. Then, in the research phase we used this phase to discover what three tools we would test. In the testing phase we tested three workstation deployment tools, to see if they could meet every requirement. Based on results from the testing phase we used this to help us come to a decision on what tool to recommend to GTRI. The Analysis of Alternatives capstone project, is a project in which a group will recommend a workstation deployment tool to GTRI based on their results in the research and testing phase of the project

Fast quadtree level decision algorithm for H.264/HEVC transcoder

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Treatment of Infantile Inflammatory Bowel Disease and Autoimmunity by Allogeneic Stem Cell Transplantation in LPS-Responsive Beige-Like Anchor Deficiency

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in young children can be a clinical manifestation of various primary immunodeficiency syndromes. Poor clinical outcome is associated with poor quality of life and high morbidity from the complications of prolonged immunosuppressive treatment and malabsorption. In 2012, mutations in the lipopolysaccharide-responsive beige-like anchor (LRBA) gene were identified as the cause of an autoimmunity and immunodeficiency syndrome. Since then, several LRBA-deficient patients have been reported with a broad spectrum of clinical manifestations without reliable predictive prognostic markers. Allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (alloHSCT) has been performed in a few severely affected patients with complete or partial response. Herein, we present a detailed course of the disease and the transplantation procedure used in a LRBA-deficient patient suffering primarily from infantile IBD with immune enteropathy since the age of 6 weeks, and progressive autoimmunity with major complications following long-term immunosuppressive treatment. At 12 years of age, alloHSCT using bone marrow of a fully matched sibling donor-a healthy heterozygous LRBA mutant carrier-was performed after conditioning with a reduced-intensity regimen. During the 6-year follow-up, we observed a complete remission of enteropathy, autoimmunity, and skin vitiligo, with complete donor chimerism. The genetic diagnosis of LRBA deficiency was made post-alloHSCT by detection of two compound heterozygous mutations, using targeted sequencing of DNA samples extracted from peripheral blood before the transplantation

Novel LRBA Mutation and Possible Germinal Mosaicism in a Slavic Family

Peer reviewe

On Observability and Monitoring of Distributed Systems: An Industry Interview Study

Business success of companies heavily depends on the availability and performance of their client applications. Due to modern development paradigms such as DevOps and microservice architectural styles, applications are decoupled into services with complex interactions and dependencies. Although these paradigms enable individual development cycles with reduced delivery times, they cause several challenges to manage the services in distributed systems. One major challenge is to observe and monitor such distributed systems. This paper provides a qualitative study to understand the challenges and good practices in the field of observability and monitoring of distributed systems. In 28 semi-structured interviews with software professionals we discovered increasing complexity and dynamics in that field. Especially observability becomes an essential prerequisite to ensure stable services and further development of client applications. However, the participants mentioned a discrepancy in the awareness regarding the importance of the topic, both from the management as well as from the developer perspective. Besides technical challenges, we identified a strong need for an organizational concept including strategy, roles and responsibilities. Our results support practitioners in developing and implementing systematic observability and monitoring for distributed systems

Willingness to pay for biofertilizers among grain legume farmers in northern Ghana

Open Access Journal; Published online: 27 April 2018Background: The call for use of improved Soil Fertility Management (SFM) technologies is a prerequisite to increase agricultural productivity among farmers. This study assessed farmers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for selected financially rewarding biofertilizer technologies/packages for legume production in northern Ghana. Primary data was elicited from 400 grain legume farmers selected from Northern and Upper West Regions of Ghana through a simple random sampling technique. The double bounded dichotomous choice (DBDC) format of contingent valuation approach was employed to elicit willingness to pay values and determinants of farmers WTP was evaluated using the maximum likelihood estimation procedure. Results: The results showed that about 60%, 25% and 46% of soya, cowpea and groundnuts farmers were willing to pay for the selected biofertilizers (Biofix, BR3267 and Legumefix respectively) at prices not exceeding GHC 14.00, GHC 28.00 and GHC 20.00 per 0.2kg of the respective biofertilizers. Legume farmers in Northern Region were however willing to pay higher for the three biofertilizer technologies as compared to their counterparts in Upper West Region. For 0.2 kg each of Biofix, BR3267 and Legumefix, farmers in Northern Region were willing to pay approximately GHC 17.00, GHC 12.00 and GHC 23.00 respectively whereas those in Upper West Region were willing to pay GHC 14.00, GHC 9.00 and GHC 11.00 for the same quantity of each biofertilizer. The study identified farming experience, FBO membership, awareness and previous use of biofertilizers as significant determinants of farmers’ willingness to pay for Biofertilizers. Conclusion: Comparatively, mean prices farmers are willing to pay for these three technologies are below ex-factory prices, hence subsidizing the cost of production of these biofertilizers in the initial stages would be relevant for improving farmers’ uptake of these fertilizers. Sustained awareness creation through periodic education and sensitization by using FBOs as leverage points is also highly recommended to improve farmers’ understanding of the concept of biofertilizer use

La imagen y la narrativa como herramientas para el abordaje psicosocial en escenarios de violencia en el Municipio de Piedecuesta, Playa Belén, Fonseca, Ocaña.

Los últimos 60 años de historia de nuestro hermoso país de Colombia han estado marcados por el conflicto armado, en todos los rincones del país se ha sentido este fenómeno de la violencia y ha dejado miles de personas afectadas, algunas han perdido sus seres queridos, otras sus viviendas, sus recursos y hasta su identidad. La guerra los ha obligado a migrar a refugiarse en otros lugares en donde les ha tocado iniciar de nuevo. Hay múltiples consecuencias psicosociales, la tasa de enfermedades mentales y trastornos post traumáticos producto de la guerra entre el estado y grupos al margen de la ley. En esta fase final del diplomado denominado “diplomado de profundización acompañamiento psicosocial en escenarios de violencia”, se realiza un ejercicio de reflexión basado en la temática La imagen y la narrativa como herramientas para el abordaje psicosocial en escenarios de violencia. Se hace un análisis de 5 relatos de víctimas de la violencia en el país en años anteriores, se selecciona el caso de Carlos Arturo un joven que pierde parte de su movilidad al ser víctima de una mina antipersona, un joven que sufre no solo psicológicamente por ver a su mejor amigo hecho pedazos a causa del explosivo, sino también físicamente porque varios de sus miembros se afectaron, alrededor de este caso se plantean una serie de interrogantes y se plantean estrategias de intervención psicosocial para contribuirle a Carlos Arturo en su proceso de recuperación. También se aborda un caso de una comunidad en los límites con el país de Panamá, caso para el que se aborda con las referencias bibliográficas indicadas para esta unidad. Palabras Claves: Relatos de vida, estrategias de acción psicosocial, experiencia de foto voz, circular, reflexivas.The last 60 years of history of our beautiful country of Colombia have been marked by the armed conflict, in all corners of the country this phenomenon of violence has been felt and has left thousands of people affected, some have lost their loved ones, others their homes, their resources and even their identity. The war has forced them to migrate to take refuge in other places where they have had to start over. There are multiple psychosocial consequences, the rate of mental illnesses and post-traumatic disorders resulting from the war between the state and groups outside the law. In this final phase of the diploma called “diploma of deepening psychosocial accompaniment in scenarios of violence”, a reflection exercise is carried out based on the theme Image and narrative as tools for the psychosocial approach in violence scenarios. An analysis of 5 stories of victims of violence in the country in previous years is made, the case of Carlos Arturo is selected, a young man who loses part of his mobility as a victim of an antipersonnel mine, a young man who suffers not only psychologically because of seeing his best friend shattered because of the explosive, but also physically because several of his members were affected, around this case a series of questions are raised and psychosocial intervention strategies are raised to contribute to Carlos Arturo in his recovery process . A case of a community in the limits with the country of Panama is also addressed, case for which it is approached with the bibliographic references indicated for this unit Key words: Life stories, psychosocial action strategies, photo voice experience, circular, reflexive