Performing Tourism: Maya Women\u27s Strategies

Walter Little is assistant professor of anthropology at the State University of New York at Albany and codirector of Oxlajuj Aj, Tulane University’s Kaqchikel Language and Culture class in Guatemala. He has conducted fieldwork among Maya handicrafts producers and vendors since 1992 on issues related to tourism, gender roles, and identity performance, and this research is the subject of his book, Mayas in the Marketplace: Tourism, Globalization, and Cultural Identity (Austin: University of Texas, 2004)

Common Origins/ Different Identities in Two Kaqchikel Maya Towns

Kaqchikel Maya residents of San Antonio Aguas Calientes and Santa Catarina Barahona (neighboring towns in Guatemala) tell the same origin story. This story is used to root historically their concepts of collective identity and community. However, residents in each town hold that those in the other town have no real claim to the story. Both towns can equally claim this origin story, but the debate between residents of these towns offers an opportunity to discuss how the meaning of place is related to the historical and ethnographic contexts of which that place\u27s residents are part. By weighing the story and residents\u27 explanations about why it is theirs against previous historical accounts, I show that Spanish colonialism, religious evangelism, economic competition, and development contributed to divisions between the towns and skewed their concepts of origin

Home as a Place of Exhibition and Performance: Mayan Household Transformations in Guatemala

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the town of San Antonio Aguas Calientes, Guatemala, has been incorporated into transnational movements of people, commodities, and ideas through tourism, development, and religious evangelism. The Kaqchikel Mayas living there have long looked outward from their community as they embraced, ignored, or criticized these global flows. Contemporary Kaqchikel Mayas have incorporated these global flows into the organization and maintenance of their households, while giving them a local interpretation. Some families have made their homes a place to enact their culture through exhibitions and performances for tourists. Such performances are indicative of the strategies increasingly used by Kaqchikel women, where the private household/ domestic sphere becomes public and also part of the global. These enactments have changed the economic and social organization of the household in terms of gender relations

Mayanists’ Methods and Tradition Discourses: Research and the Politics of Maya Language and Cultural Practice

This essay reviews the following works: The Ch’ol Maya of Chiapas. Edited by Karen Bassie-Sweet, with Robert M. Laughlin, Nicholas A. Hopkins, and Andrés Brizuela Casimir. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 251. $45.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780806147024. Wellness beyond Words: Maya Compositions of Speech and Silence in Medical Care. By T. S. Harvey. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2013. Pp. vii + 256.$55.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780826352736. Maya Market Women: Power and Tradition in San Juan Chamelco, Guatemala. By S. Ashley Kistler. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014. Pp. ix + 160. $44.68 paperback. ISBN: 9780252079887. Southern Eastern Huastec Narratives: A Trilingual Edition. Translated and edited by Ana Kondic. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016. Pp. vii + 197.$24.95 hardcover. ISBN: 9780806151809. Indigenous Bodies, Maya Minds: Religion and Modernity in a Transnational K’iche’ Community. By C. James MacKenzie. Boulder: University Press of Colorado; Albany: Institute for Mesoamerican Studies, 2016. Pp. ix + 368. $34.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781607325567. Songs That Make the Road Dance: Courtship and Fertility Music of the Tz’utujil Maya. By Linda O’Brien-Rothe. Forewords by Allen J. Christenson and Sandra L. Orellana. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 244.$72.93 paperback. ISBN: 9781477305386. Language and Ethnicity among the K’ichee’ Maya. By Sergio Romero. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 123. $50.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9781607813972

Verified global optimization for estimating the parameters of nonlinear models

Nonlinear parameter estimation is usually achieved via the minimization of some possibly non-convex cost function. Interval analysis allows one to derive algorithms for the guaranteed characterization of the set of all global minimizers of such a cost function when an explicit expression for the output of the model is available or when this output is obtained via the numerical solution of a set of ordinary differential equations. However, cost functions involved in parameter estimation are usually challenging for interval techniques, if only because of multi-occurrences of the parameters in the formal expression of the cost. This paper addresses parameter estimation via the verified global optimization of quadratic cost functions. It introduces tools for the minimization of generic cost functions. When an explicit expression of the output of the parametric model is available, significant improvements may be obtained by a new box exclusion test and by careful manipulations of the quadratic cost function. When the model is described by ODEs, some of the techniques available in the previous case may still be employed, provided that sensitivity functions of the model output with respect to the parameters are available

Technology in Parkinson's disease:challenges and opportunities

The miniaturization, sophistication, proliferation, and accessibility of technologies are enabling the capture of more and previously inaccessible phenomena in Parkinson's disease (PD). However, more information has not translated into a greater understanding of disease complexity to satisfy diagnostic and therapeutic needs. Challenges include noncompatible technology platforms, the need for wide-scale and long-term deployment of sensor technology (among vulnerable elderly patients in particular), and the gap between the "big data" acquired with sensitive measurement technologies and their limited clinical application. Major opportunities could be realized if new technologies are developed as part of open-source and/or open-hardware platforms that enable multichannel data capture sensitive to the broad range of motor and nonmotor problems that characterize PD and are adaptable into self-adjusting, individualized treatment delivery systems. The International Parkinson and Movement Disorders Society Task Force on Technology is entrusted to convene engineers, clinicians, researchers, and patients to promote the development of integrated measurement and closed-loop therapeutic systems with high patient adherence that also serve to (1) encourage the adoption of clinico-pathophysiologic phenotyping and early detection of critical disease milestones, (2) enhance the tailoring of symptomatic therapy, (3) improve subgroup targeting of patients for future testing of disease-modifying treatments, and (4) identify objective biomarkers to improve the longitudinal tracking of impairments in clinical care and research. This article summarizes the work carried out by the task force toward identifying challenges and opportunities in the development of technologies with potential for improving the clinical management and the quality of life of individuals with PD. © 2016 International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society

Evidence for early life in Earth’s oldest hydrothermal vent precipitates

Although it is not known when or where life on Earth began, some of the earliest habitable environments may have been submarine-hydrothermal vents. Here we describe putative fossilized microorganisms that are at least 3,770 million and possibly 4,280 million years old in ferruginous sedimentary rocks, interpreted as seafloor-hydrothermal vent-related precipitates, from the Nuvvuagittuq belt in Quebec, Canada. These structures occur as micrometre-scale haematite tubes and filaments with morphologies and mineral assemblages similar to those of filamentous microorganisms from modern hydrothermal vent precipitates and analogous microfossils in younger rocks. The Nuvvuagittuq rocks contain isotopically light carbon in carbonate and carbonaceous material, which occurs as graphitic inclusions in diagenetic carbonate rosettes, apatite blades intergrown among carbonate rosettes and magnetite–haematite granules, and is associated with carbonate in direct contact with the putative microfossils. Collectively, these observations are consistent with an oxidized biomass and provide evidence for biological activity in submarine-hydrothermal environments more than 3,770 million years ago

Seasonality of birth in children with central nervous system tumours in Denmark, 1970–2003

We investigated possible seasonal variation of births among children <20 years with a central nervous system tumour in Denmark (N=1640), comparing them with 2 582 714 children born between 1970 and 2003. No such variation was seen overall, but ependymoma showed seasonal variation

Binding between Crossveinless-2 and Chordin Von Willebrand Factor Type C Domains Promotes BMP Signaling by Blocking Chordin Activity

BACKGROUND: Crossveinless-2 (CV2) is an extracellular BMP modulator protein of the Chordin family, which can either enhance or inhibit BMP activity. CV2 binds to BMP2 via subdomain 1 of the first of its five N-terminal von Willebrand factor type C domains (VWC1). Previous studies showed that this BMP binding is required for the anti-, but not for the pro-BMP effect of CV2. More recently, it was shown that CV2 can also bind to the BMP inhibitor Chordin. However, it remained unclear which domains mediate this binding, and whether it accounts for an anti- or pro-BMP effect. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Here we report that a composite interface of CV2 consisting of subdomain 2 of VWC1 and of VWC2-4, which are dispensable for BMP binding, binds to the VWC2 domain of Chordin. Functional data obtained in zebrafish embryos indicate that this binding of Chordin is required for CV2's pro-BMP effect, which actually is an anti-Chordin effect and, at least to a large extent, independent of Tolloid-mediated Chordin degradation. We further demonstrate that CV2 mutant versions that per se are incapable of BMP binding can attenuate the Chordin/BMP interaction. CONCLUSIONS: We have physically dissected the anti- and pro-BMP effects of CV2. Its anti-BMP effect is obtained by binding to BMP via subdomain1 of the VWC1 domain, a binding that occurs in competition with Chordin. In contrast, its pro-BMP effect is achieved by direct binding to Chordin via subdomain 2 of VWC1 and VWC2-4. This binding seems to induce conformational changes within the Chordin protein that weaken Chordin's affinity to BMP. We propose that in ternary Chordin-CV2-BMP complexes, both BMP and Chordin are directly associated with CV2, whereas Chordin is pushed away from BMP, ensuring that BMPs can be more easily delivered to their receptors