An Archaeological Survey on the Xoxocotlan Piedmont, Oaxaca, Mexico

Surface survey on the piedmont near the present village of Xoxocotlan, Oaxaca, Mexico, has revealed the pattern of prehistoric settlement around an irrigation canal that distributed water from a dammed reservoir located on the flanks of Monte Alban. Intensive systematic collection techniques have permitted quantitative statements to be made about the density of occupation and the contribution of the irrigation system to the food supply of Monte Alban

A Global Ecological Classification of Coastal Segment Units to Complement Marine Biodiversity Observation Network Assessments

A new data layer provides Coastal and Marine Ecological Classification Standard (CMECS) labels for global coastal segments at 1 km or shorter resolution. These characteristics are summarized for six US Marine Biodiversity Observation Network (MBON) sites and one MBON Pole to Pole of the Americas site in Argentina. The global coastlines CMECS classifications were produced from a partitioning of a 30 m Landsat-derived shoreline vector that was segmented into 4 million 1 km or shorter segments. Each segment was attributed with values from 10 variables that represent the ecological settings in which the coastline occurs, including properties of the adjacent water, adjacent land, and coastline itself. The 4 million segments were classified into 81,000 coastal segment units (CSUs) as unique combinations of variable classes. We summarize the process to develop the CSUs and derive summary descriptions for the seven MBON case study sites. We discuss the intended application of the new CSU data for research and management in coastal areas

The Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array Dish I: Beam Pattern Measurements and Science Implications

The Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA) is a radio interferometer aiming to detect the power spectrum of 21 cm fluctuations from neutral hydrogen from the Epoch of Reionization (EOR). Drawing on lessons from the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) and the Precision Array for Probing the Epoch of Reionization (PAPER), HERA is a hexagonal array of large (14 m diameter) dishes with suspended dipole feeds. Not only does the dish determine overall sensitivity, it affects the observed frequency structure of foregrounds in the interferometer. This is the first of a series of four papers characterizing the frequency and angular response of the dish with simulations and measurements. We focus in this paper on the angular response (i.e., power pattern), which sets the relative weighting between sky regions of high and low delay, and thus, apparent source frequency structure. We measure the angular response at 137 MHz using the ORBCOMM beam mapping system of Neben et al. We measure a collecting area of 93 m^2 in the optimal dish/feed configuration, implying HERA-320 should detect the EOR power spectrum at z~9 with a signal-to-noise ratio of 12.7 using a foreground avoidance approach with a single season of observations, and 74.3 using a foreground subtraction approach. Lastly we study the impact of these beam measurements on the distribution of foregrounds in Fourier space.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures. Replaced to match accepted ApJ versio

Dimensions of Liberal Education at Brockport

Editor: H. Larry Humm (College at Brockport emeritus). Editorial board: Robert W. Strayer (professor emeritus, College at Brockport) ; W. Bruce Leslie, (College at Brockport faculty member) ; Robert S. Getz (professor emeritus, College at Brockport) ; J. Douglas Hickerson (former Director of Student Affairs, College at Brockport), Kenneth L. Jones (former College at Brockport faculty member) ; Charles R. Edwards (professor emeritus, College at Brockport). Also includes chapters by the following emeriti and former faculty members and professionals of The College at Brockport: Donald S. Douglas (former provost), Harold L. Rakov (emeritus), Roger M. Weir (emeritus), Owen S. Ireland (current), Edward J. Gucker (emeritus), Warren Fraleigh (emeritus), Lynn H. Parsons (emeritus), Ian H. Henderson (emeritus), Robert J. Gemmett (emeritus), J. Emory Morris (emeritus), Beth E. VanFossen (former faculty member), Peter L. Marchant (emeritus), Gladdys W. Church (former Director of the Learning Skills Center). An instructional development project of the Educational Communications Center, State University College at Brockport, Brockport, New York. Contents: On coming to college for the first time : Great expectations, yours and ours / Donald S. Douglas -- High school and college, what’s the difference? / Harold L. Rakov -- Living in a college community / Roger M. Weir -- A liberal arts education: what, why and how: The liberating arts and personal freedom / J. Douglas Hickerson -- The liberal arts, preparation for a career / Roger M. Weir -- Liberally educated people, knowing them when you see them: Perspective 1, Gaining knowledge, discipline, and values / Owen S. Ireland -- Perspective 2, Nurturing curiosity, creativity, and commitment / Edward J. Gucker -- Perspective 3, Cultivating freedom / Warren Fraleigh -- Democracy and the liberal arts, Is there a connection? / Lynn H. Parsons -- From Socrates to Brockport, your place in a long tradition / W. Bruce Leslie -- Why study the fine arts? / Ian H. Henderson -- Why study the humanities? / Robert J. Gemmett -- Why study the sciences? / J. Emory Morris -- Why study the social sciences? / Beth E. VanFossen -- More than making it: getting the most out of college : Where am I going? How do I get there? Some thoughts on academic planning / Robert S. Getz -- Thinking about thinking / H. Larry Humm -- How not to be a victim of time, a first letter to an anxious student / Peter L. Marchant -- Reading in college, more than turning pages / Charles R. Edwards -- Going to class-- being there is not enough / H. Larry Humm -- How not to be a victim of essay assignments, a second letter to an anxious student / Peter L. Marchant -- Making the most of tests / Gladdys W. Church.https://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/bookshelf/1328/thumbnail.jp

Search for CP Violation in the Decay Z -> b (b bar) g

About three million hadronic decays of the Z collected by ALEPH in the years 1991-1994 are used to search for anomalous CP violation beyond the Standard Model in the decay Z -> b \bar{b} g. The study is performed by analyzing angular correlations between the two quarks and the gluon in three-jet events and by measuring the differential two-jet rate. No signal of CP violation is found. For the combinations of anomalous CP violating couplings, ${\hat{h}}_b = {\hat{h}}_{Ab}g_{Vb}-{\hat{h}}_{Vb}g_{Ab}$ and $h^{\ast}_b = \sqrt{\hat{h}_{Vb}^{2}+\hat{h}_{Ab}^{2}}$, limits of \hat{h}_b < 0.59$and$h^{\ast}_{b} < 3.02$ are given at 95\% CL.Comment: 8 pages, 1 postscript figure, uses here.sty, epsfig.st

Sexual Segregation and Flexible Mating Patterns in Temperate Bats

Social structure evolves from a trade-off between the costs and benefits of group-living, which are in turn dependent upon the distribution of key resources such as food and shelter. Males and females, or juveniles and adults, may have different priorities when selecting habitat due to differences in physiological or behavioural imperatives, leading to complex patterns in group composition. We studied social structure and mating behaviour in the insectivorous bat Myotis daubentonii along an altitudinal gradient, combining field studies with molecular genetics. With increasing altitude the proportion of males in summer roosts increased and only males were present in the highest roosts. With increasing altitude environmental temperature decreased, nightly variation in temperature increased, and bat foraging activity decreased, supporting the hypothesis that the harsher, high elevation sites cannot support breeding females. We found that offspring in female-dominated lowland roosts had a very high probability of being fathered by bats caught during autumn swarming at hibernation sites, in contrast to those in intermediate roosts, which had a high probability of being fathered by males sharing the nursery roost with the females. Whilst females normally appear to exclude males from nursery colonies, for those in marginal habitats, one explanation for the presence of males is that the thermoregulatory benefits to the females may outweigh disadvantages, such as competition for food, and give some males an opportunity to increase their breeding success. We suggest that the environment, and its effects on resource distribution, thus determine social structure, which in turn determines the mating pattern that has evolved

LSST: from Science Drivers to Reference Design and Anticipated Data Products

(Abridged) We describe here the most ambitious survey currently planned in the optical, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). A vast array of science will be enabled by a single wide-deep-fast sky survey, and LSST will have unique survey capability in the faint time domain. The LSST design is driven by four main science themes: probing dark energy and dark matter, taking an inventory of the Solar System, exploring the transient optical sky, and mapping the Milky Way. LSST will be a wide-field ground-based system sited at Cerro Pach\'{o}n in northern Chile. The telescope will have an 8.4 m (6.5 m effective) primary mirror, a 9.6 deg$^2$ field of view, and a 3.2 Gigapixel camera. The standard observing sequence will consist of pairs of 15-second exposures in a given field, with two such visits in each pointing in a given night. With these repeats, the LSST system is capable of imaging about 10,000 square degrees of sky in a single filter in three nights. The typical 5$\sigma$ point-source depth in a single visit in $r$ will be $\sim 24.5$ (AB). The project is in the construction phase and will begin regular survey operations by 2022. The survey area will be contained within 30,000 deg$^2$ with $\delta<+34.5^\circ$, and will be imaged multiple times in six bands, $ugrizy$, covering the wavelength range 320--1050 nm. About 90\% of the observing time will be devoted to a deep-wide-fast survey mode which will uniformly observe a 18,000 deg$^2$ region about 800 times (summed over all six bands) during the anticipated 10 years of operations, and yield a coadded map to $r\sim27.5$. The remaining 10\% of the observing time will be allocated to projects such as a Very Deep and Fast time domain survey. The goal is to make LSST data products, including a relational database of about 32 trillion observations of 40 billion objects, available to the public and scientists around the world.Comment: 57 pages, 32 color figures, version with high-resolution figures available from https://www.lsst.org/overvie

In vivo measurement of skin surface strain and sub-surface layer deformation induced by natural tissue stretching.

Stratum corneum and epidermal layers change in terms of thickness and roughness with gender, age and anatomical site. Knowledge of the mechanical and tribological properties of skin associated with these structural changes are needed to aid in the design of exoskeletons, prostheses, orthotics, body mounted sensors used for kinematics measurements and in optimum use of wearable on-body devices. In this case study, optical coherence tomography (OCT) and digital image correlation (DIC) were combined to determine skin surface strain and sub-surface deformation behaviour of the volar forearm due to natural tissue stretching. The thickness of the epidermis together with geometry changes of the dermal-epidermal junction boundary were calculated during change in the arm angle, from flexion (90°) to full extension (180°). This posture change caused an increase in skin surface Lagrange strain, typically by 25% which induced considerable morphological changes in the upper skin layers evidenced by reduction of epidermal layer thickness (20%), flattening of the dermal-epidermal junction undulation (45-50% reduction of flatness being expressed as Ra and Rz roughness profile height change) and reduction of skin surface roughness Ra and Rz (40-50%). The newly developed method, DIC combined with OCT imaging, is a powerful, fast and non-invasive methodology to study structural skin changes in real time and the tissue response provoked by mechanical loading or stretching

IMRT in oral cavity cancer

BACKGROUND: Except for early T1,2 N0 stages, the prognosis for patients with oral cavity cancer (OCC) is reported to be worse than for carcinoma in other sites of the head and neck (HNC). The aim of this work was to assess disease outcome in OCC following IMRT. Between January 2002 and January 2007, 346 HNC patients have been treated with curative intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) at the Department of Radiation Oncology, University Hospital Zurich. Fifty eight of these (16%) were referred for postoperative (28) or definitive (30) radiation therapy of OCC. 40 of the 58 OCC patients (69%) presented with locally advanced T3/4 or recurred lesions. Doses between 60 and 70 Gy were applied, combined with simultaneous cisplatin based chemotherapy in 78%. Outcome analyses were performed using Kaplan Meier curves. In addition, comparisons were performed between this IMRT OCC cohort and historic in-house cohorts of 33 conventionally irradiated (3DCRT) and 30 surgery only patients treated over the last 10 years. RESULTS: OCC patients treated with postoperative IMRT showed the highest local control (LC) rate of all assessed treatment sequence subgroups (92% LC at 2 years). Historic postoperative 3DCRT patients and patients treated with surgery alone reached LC rates of ~70–80%. Definitively irradiated patients revealed poorest LC rates with ~30 and 40% following 3DCRT and IMRT, respectively. T1 stage resulted in an expectedly significantly higher LC rate (95%, n = 19, p < 0.05) than T2-4 and recurred stages (LC ~50–60%, n = 102). Analyses according to the diagnosis revealed significantly lower LC in OCC following definitive IMRT than that in pharyngeal tumors treated with definitive IMRT in the same time period (43% vs 82% at 2 years, p < 0.0001), while the LC rate of OCC following postoperative IMRT was as high as in pharyngeal tumors treated with postoperative IMRT (>90% at 2 years). CONCLUSION: Postoperative IMRT of OCC resulted in the highest local control rate of the assessed treatment subgroups. In conclusion, generous indication for IMRT following surgical treatment is recommended in OCC cases with unfavourable features like tight surgical margin, nodal involvement, primary tumor stage >T1N0, or already recurred disease, respectively. Loco-regional outcome of OCC following definitive IMRT remained unsatisfactory, comparable to that following definitive 3DCRT