Evidence from Escalera al Cielo: Abandonment of a Terminal Classic Puuc Maya Hill Complex in Yucatán, Mexico

This is a postprint (author's final draft) version of an article published in Journal of Field Arhcaeology in 2012. The final version of this article may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1179/0093469012Z.00000000025 (login may be required). The version made available in OpenBU was supplied by the author.Excavations at the hilltop site of Escalera al Cielo, located in the Puuc Maya region of Yucatán, Mexico, have uncovered evidence of a planned abandonment at the end of the Terminal Classic period (A.D. 800–950). Six buildings investigated among three residential groups contain rich floor assemblages similar to those known from only a few rapidly abandoned sites in the Maya area. Through an analysis of de facto refuse—most of which was recovered in locations of storage and provisional discard—and midden refuse, this paper illustrates how the assemblages represent an example of household-level abandonment with anticipated return. We also consider Escalera al Cielo in light of our present understanding of the political and environmental history of the Puuc region during the late 9th century A.D

Testing and Templates: Building Effective Research Guides

The Savannah College of Art and Design has nearly 12,000 students at 5 separate campus locations, and offers more than 40 areas of concentration within art and design. The students are incredibly career-minded, and class assignments are built to mimic the professional experience. Through the SCAD Libraries, students have access to nearly 90 databases, many of which are professional level resources, and hundreds of trade and scholarly print journals. Using Spring Share\u27s LibGuides, the small research and instruction team has created a series of course and subject specific research guides to highlight the professional databases and teach valuable information literacy skills, for both occasions when we are able to visit classes and for those times when we cannot. However, through Spring Share\u27s click-tracking, we noticed the students were only exploring the homepage tabs of each guide, and therefore not grasping the full scope of resources available. With the migration to LibGuides 2.0, we saw we had an opportunity to re-assess our many guides and implement change. After a series of usability testing, we created two separate templates, one for subject guides and one for course guides, that were more efficient and effective research tools. The new guides better highlight professional level resources, while still providing relevant tips and research assistance

Using Classroom Observation to Investigate Productive Student Participation in Higher- and Lower-Performing Qatari Schools

In 2002, Qatar established key elements of educational reform in schools including national curriculum standards; emphasis on critical thinking through student-centered teaching; establishment of charter (independent) schools; standards-based assessment; English as the language of instruction in math and science, and extensive teacher professional development. While classrooms characterized by these reform elements should emerge as more successful on Qatari standards-based assessments, little research has been done to examine the relationship between these characteristics and standards attainment or even to determine whether these classroom teaching and learning elements exist (Knight et al., 2011). Three phases of research were conducted in a research project funded by the Qatar National research Foundation over a period of three years. The first phase provided descriptions of teaching and learning in reform-focused schools (see Akhlef & Knight, 2011). The current study extends the profiles developed in Phase I through further investigation of observed differences in student-centered instruction and productive participation of elementary math and science students in higher and lower performing Qatari schools implementing the reform. Data were collected in the Fall of 2008 in 17 schools randomly selected from 46 schools that had implemented the Qatar standards for at least 3 years. Findings from this study emphasize the 2011 AERA theme involving the use of educational research that contributes to public policy and public good. This research provides information about teaching and learning in student-centered classrooms at two levels – the professional knowledge base and the Qatar educational context and can inform Qatari policy makers who are involved in the reform movement.The Qatar National Research Foundation, National Priorities Research Program Grant # 13-6-7-1

Long live the queen: studying aging in social insects

Aging is a fascinating, albeit controversial, chapter in biology. Few other subjects have elicited more than a century of ever-increasing scientific interest. In this review, we discuss studies on aging in social insects, a group of species that includes ants and termites, as well as certain bee and wasp species. One striking feature of social insects is the lifespan of queens (reproductive females), which can reach nearly 30 years in some ant species. This is over 100 times the average lifespan of solitary insects. Moreover, there is a tremendous variation in lifespan among castes, with queens living up to 500 times longer than males and 10 times longer than workers (non-reproductive individuals). This lifespan polymorphism has allowed researchers to test the evolutionary theory of aging and - more recently - to investigate the proximate causes of aging. The originality of these studies lies in their use of naturally evolved systems to address questions related to aging and lifespan determination that cannot be answered using the conventional model organism