Cooperation, collective action, and the archeology of large-scale societies

Archeologists investigating the emergence of large-scale societies in the past have renewed interest in examining the dynamics of cooperation as a means of understanding societal change and organizational variability within human groups over time. Unlike earlier approaches to these issues, which used models designated voluntaristic or managerial, contemporary research articulates more explicitly with frameworks for cooperation and collective action used in other fields, thereby facilitating empirical testing through better definition of the costs, benefits, and social mechanisms associated with success or failure in coordinated group action. Current scholarship is nevertheless bifurcated along lines of epistemology and scale, which is understandable but problematic for forging a broader, more transdisciplinary field of cooperation studies. Here, we point to some areas of potential overlap by reviewing archeological research that places the dynamics of social cooperation and competition in the foreground of the emergence of large-scale societies, which we define as those having larger populations, greater concentrations of political power, and higher degrees of social inequality. We focus on key issues involving the communal-resource management of subsistence and other economic goods, as well as the revenue flows that undergird political institutions. Drawing on archeological cases from across the globe, with greater detail from our area of expertise in Mesoamerica, we offer suggestions for strengthening analytical methods and generating more transdisciplinary research programs that address human societies across scalar and temporal spectra

Anaesthesia and airway management in mucopolysaccharidosis

Abstract This paper provides a detailed overview and dis-cussion of anaesthesia in patients with mucopolysacchari-dosis (MPS), the evaluation of risk factors in these patients and their anaesthetic management, including emergency airway issues. MPS represents a group of rare lysosomal storage disorders associated with an array of clinical mani-festations. The high prevalence of airway obstruction and restrictive pulmonary disease in combination with cardio-vascular manifestations poses a high anaesthetic risk to these patients. Typical anaesthetic problems include airway obstruction after induction or extubation, intubation diffi-culties or failure [can’t intubate, can’t ventilate (CICV)], possible emergency tracheostomy and cardiovascular and cervical spine issues. Because of the high anaesthetic risk, the benefits of a procedure in patients with MPS shoul

Visual afferences to flight steering muscles controlling optomotor responses of the fly

Egelhaaf M. Visual afferences to flight steering muscles controlling optomotor responses of the fly. Journal of Comparative Physiology, A: Sensory Neural and Behavioral Physiology. 1989;165(6):719-730.In tethered flying house-flies (Musca domestica) visually induced turning reactions were monitored under open-loop conditions simultaneously with the spike activity of four types of steering muscles (M.b1, M.b2, M.I1, M.III1). Specific behavioral response components are attributed to the activity of particular muscles. Compensatory optomotor turning reactions to large-field image displacements mainly occur when the stimulus pattern oscillates at low frequencies. In contrast, turning responses towards objects are preferentially induced by motion of relatively small stimuli at high oscillation frequencies. The different steering muscles seem to be functionally specialized in that they contribute to the control of these behavioral responses in different ways. The muscles I1, III1 and b2 are preferentially active during small-field motion at high oscillation frequencies. They are much less active during small-field motion at low oscillation frequencies and large-field motion at all oscillation frequencies which were tested. M.b2 is most extreme in this respect. These steering muscles thus mediate mainly turns towards objects. In contrast, M.b1 responds best during large-field motion at low oscillation frequencies and, thus, is appropriate to control compensatory optomotor responses. However, the activity of this muscle is also strongly modulated during small-field motion at high oscillation frequencies and, therefore, may be involved also in the control of turns towards objects. These functional specializations of the different steering muscles in mediating different behavioral response components are related to the properties of two parallel visual pathways that are selectively tuned to large-field and small-field motion, respectively