Archaeological Investigations in the Arctic and Subarctic, 1957

... I shall attempt to summarize the various archaeological activities that occurred in the Arctic and subarctic during the last summer. ... Members of a party called Operation Hazen organized by the Defence Research Board as part of the Canadian program for the International Geophysical Year worked on archaeological remains on Ellesmere Island, discovering four sites of aboriginal structures. One, about twenty miles north of Lake Hazen; one on the shores of Lake Hazen; and two along the Ruggles River. Few artifacts were uncovered since they did no digging. These sites, however, are of considerable significance for not only are they the northernmost sites in the Canadian Arctic but they are situated along the hypothetical route of migration from the Canadian Arctic to Greenland. ... Dr. Jorgen Meldgaard of the National Museum of Denmark, returned to the Alarnerk Site in the Igloolik area on the Melville Peninsula after two season's absence. ... Most of these early pre-Dorset remains appear to belong to an early and late period having burins, micro-blades, side-blades, small end-blades, and other artifacts indicating a close relationship with both the Cape Denbigh Flint Complex of Alaska as well as with Sarqaq of Greenland. The sequential changes in his artifact types from these pre-Dorset remains closely parallel change of types from the four middle cultural phases from the Firth River in the Canadian Yukon. ... Mr. William E. Taylor of the National Museum of Canada undertook preliminary excavation and survey in the interior as well as the coast and adjacent islands of the northern part of the Ungava Peninsula. His activities in the interior were at Payne Lake where he found about forty house remains, of which he excavated four. All of these were Dorset with one having a slight overlay of Eskimo remains. On the coast at the estuary of the Payne River, he uncovered another Dorset site as well as one Dorset burial. ... At Sugluk, seven sites were investigated and five of these appear to be Dorset villages with semi-subterranean rectangular houses. My endeavours were in the southern part of the Yukon Territory between Johnsons Crossing, Kluane Lake, Dawson City, and Mayo. Ninety-seven sites were discovered as well as about 1,000 artifacts. The sites seem to belong to at least six different artifact complexes, four of which were below the volcanic ash layers dated about 300 A.D. Twenty-eight of the sites are micro-blade sites. In Alaska, Dr. Ivar Skarland of the Department of Anthropology of the University of Alaska, during the last part of the summer, investigated interior sites on which "Puma" projectile points have been found. Mr. Gordon Lowther, of the McCord Museum of McGill University of Montreal, undertook archaeological survey in the Old Crow Flats in the Yukon Territory. He was most successful in finding fourteen archaeological sites as well as places at which mammoth bones occurred. As yet, his materials have not been analysed ...

Geology of the Engigstciak Archaeological Site, Yukon Territory

Reports geological investigations is 1956-1957 to aid in dating the archeological finds. Quaternary sediments in a clay and a sand sequence are described; their stratigraphic relationships have been disrupted by soil movements resulting from freezing and thawing and from downslope creep. These soil movements, their mechanisms and rates postulated, apparently buried an organic layer containing artifacts progressively between two layers of marine clay. Due to overturning and mixing of layers of different ages, further complicated by a possible upthrust of the marine clay by glacier ice, the artifacts cannot be dated by geological means. From evidence indicating only one marine invasion coincident with glacial advance however, the archeological material is concluded to postdate the last Pleistocene glaciation

Mutually unbiased bases, orthogonal Latin squares, and hidden-variable models

Mutually unbiased bases encapsulate the concept of complementarity - the impossibility of simultaneous knowledge of certain observables - in the formalism of quantum theory. Although this concept is at the heart of quantum mechanics, the number of these bases is unknown except for systems of dimension being a power of a prime. We develop the relation between this physical problem and the mathematical problem of finding the number of mutually orthogonal Latin squares. We derive in a simple way all known results about the unbiased bases, find their lower number, and disprove the existence of certain forms of the bases in dimensions different than power of a prime. Using the Latin squares, we construct hidden-variable models which efficiently simulate results of complementary quantum measurements.Comment: Published versio

Feasibility and Effectiveness of a Worksite-Weight-Loss Program for Cancer Prevention among School-District Employees with Overweight and Obesity

The effects of Vibrant Lives, a 6-month worksite-weight-loss program, were examined in a cohort of school-district employees with overweight or obesity. The VL Basic (VLB) participants received materials and tailored text messages, the VL Plus (VLP) participants additionally received WIFI-enabled activity monitors and scales and participated in health challenges throughout the school year, and the VL Plus with Support (VLP + S) participants additionally received coaching support. The levels of program satisfaction and retention and changes in weight, physical activity (PA), and diet were compared across groups using Pearson chi-square tests, repeated-measure mixed models, and logistic regression. After the program, the VLB (n = 131), VLP (n = 87), and VLP + S (n = 88) groups had average weight losses of 2.5, 2.5, and 3.4 kg, respectively, and average increases in weekly PA of 40.4, 35.8, and 65.7 min, respectively. The VLP + S participants were more likely than the other participants to have clinically significant weight loss (≥3%; p = 0.026). Compared with the VLB participants, the VLP participants were less likely to meet the recommendations for consuming fast food (p = 0.022) and sugar-sweetened beverages (p = 0.010). The VLP and VLP + S participants reported higher program satisfaction than the VLB participants. The VL program facilitates weight loss among school-district employees with overweight and obesity by increasing their PA and healthy diet

Effective problem solving using SAT solvers

In this article we demonstrate how to solve a variety of problems and puzzles using the built-in SAT solver of the computer algebra system Maple. Once the problems have been encoded into Boolean logic, solutions can be found (or shown to not exist) automatically, without the need to implement any search algorithm. In particular, we describe how to solve the $n$-queens problem, how to generate and solve Sudoku puzzles, how to solve logic puzzles like the Einstein riddle, how to solve the 15-puzzle, how to solve the maximum clique problem, and finding Graeco-Latin squares.Comment: To appear in Proceedings of the Maple Conference 201

Reducing Risk For Chronic Disease: Evaluation of a Collective Community approach to Sustainable Evidence-Based Health Programming

BACKGROUND: Community initiatives can shape health behaviors, such as physical activity and dietary habits, across a population and help reduce the risk of developing chronic disease. to achieve this goal and impact health outcomes, Pasadena Vibrant Community aimed to engage communities in an ongoing dialogue about the importance of healthy behaviors, implement and advance community-based strategies to promote health, and improve diet and physical activity behaviors. The initiative was centered around a collaboration between a backbone organization, steering committee, and 7 collaborating organizations funded to implement multicomponent, evidence-based programs.. The common agenda was detailed in a community action plan, which included 19 interventions targeting healthy eating and active living among adults and youth in Pasadena, Texas. METHODS: A mixed methods evaluation of the initiative was conducted over 4 years. Data sources included document reviews of quarterly progress reports (n = 86) and supplemental data reports (n = 16) provided by collaborating organizations, annual Steering Committee surveys (n = 4), and interviews conducted with staff from a subset of Collaborating Organizations (n = 4). RESULTS: The initiative reached over 50,000 community members per year through 19 evidence-based interventions and impacted health outcomes, including knowledge and adoption of healthy eating practices and increased physical activity. Thirty-one systems-level changes were implemented during the initiative, including 16 environmental changes. Steering Committee meetings and shared goals enabled connections, communication, and cooperation, which allowed Collaborating Organizations to address challenges and combine resources to deliver their programs. CONCLUSIONS: Community initiatives can effectively permeate the community by reaching individuals, improving physical activity and dietary habits, and ensuring sustainability. Based on the experience reported here, the success of a community initiative can be facilitated if collaborating organizations come together to implement evidence-based interventions and tailor them to the community, and if they are empowered by significant leadership and supportive collaboration and aligned by a common agenda

Comprehensive study of mtDNA among Southwest Asian dogs contradicts independent domestication of wolf, but implies dog–wolf hybridization

Studies of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) diversity indicate explicitly that dogs were domesticated, probably exclusively, in southern East Asia. However, Southwest Asia (SwAsia) has had poor representation and geographical coverage in these studies. Other studies based on archaeological and genome-wide SNP data have suggested an origin of dogs in SwAsia. Hence, it has been suspected that mtDNA evidence for this scenario may have remained undetected. In the first comprehensive investigation of genetic diversity among SwAsian dogs, we analyzed 582 bp of mtDNA for 345 indigenous dogs from across SwAsia, and compared with 1556 dogs across the Old World. We show that 97.4% of SwAsian dogs carry haplotypes belonging to a universal mtDNA gene pool, but that only a subset of this pool, five of the 10 principal haplogroups, is represented in SwAsia. A high frequency of haplogroup B, potentially signifying a local origin, was not paralleled with the high genetic diversity expected for a center of origin. Meanwhile, 2.6% of the SwAsian dogs carried the rare non-universal haplogroup d2. Thus, mtDNA data give no indication that dogs originated in SwAsia through independent domestication of wolf, but dog–wolf hybridization may have formed the local haplogroup d2 within this region. Southern East Asia remains the only region with virtually full extent of genetic variation, strongly indicating it to be the primary and probably sole center of wolf domestication. An origin of dogs in southern East Asia may have been overlooked by other studies due to a substantial lack of samples from this region

Teosinte Inflorescence Phytolith Assemblages Mirror Zea Taxonomy

Molecular DNA analyses of the New World grass (Poaceae) genus Zea, comprising five species, has resolved taxonomic issues including the most likely teosinte progenitor (Zea mays ssp. parviglumis) of maize (Zea mays ssp. mays). However, archaeologically, little is known about the use of teosinte by humans both prior to and after the domestication of maize. One potential line of evidence to explore these relationships is opaline phytoliths produced in teosinte fruit cases. Here we use multidimensional scaling and multiple discriminant analyses to determine if rondel phytolith assemblages from teosinte fruitcases reflect teosinte taxonomy. Our results indicate that rondel phytolith assemblages from the various taxa, including subspecies, can be statistically discriminated. This indicates that it will be possible to investigate the archaeological histories of teosinte use pending the recovery of appropriate samples

Developmental Functional Adaptation to High Altitude: Review

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/96751/1/ajhb22367.pd