The Archaeology of Disjuncture: Classic Period Disruption and Cultural Divergence in the Tuxtla Mountains of Mexico

Reconstructing human interaction systems has been a major objective of archaeological research, but we have typically examined the topic in a conceptually limited manner. Most studies have—intentionally or unintentionally—focused on how trade, communication, conquest, and migration foster cultural similarities over long distances. It has largely been a positivistic endeavor that exclusively features groups linked through a single network but glosses over how alternative networks intersect with the former through common nodes. Models of long-distance interaction have largely ignored variation in how external influences are negotiated across space within the receiving region. We adapt Arjun Appadurai’s concept of disjuncture to conceptualize how human groups negotiate cultural messages transmitted through multiscalar interaction networks. Disjuncture fundamentally refers to the decoupling of different facets of culture, economy, and politics where human interactions follow variable trajectories through space. The variability with which human groups reconcile foreign cultural information within local social networks leads to cultural diversity across space in the receiving region. We use the concept to detail the variability with which Teotihuacan symbols, ideology, and economic influences were adopted across the Tuxtlas region of southern Veracruz, Mexico

A Collaborative Approach to Developing Culturally Themed Digital Collections

The College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Kentucky (UK) has created the Passport to the World Program (PWP) to celebrate campus-wide the cultural heritage of a country or region every academic year. The UK Libraries International Programs has been an active contributor to PWP by collaborating with faculty and different library departments to develop unique digital collections that serve to connect viewers with the featured country or region. To begin with, the Director of the International Programs (DIP) consults faculty and librarians at the UK Libraries Special Collections Research Center to select relevant materials for digitization. She also sources interesting artifacts from the larger community to create compilations of digital photos. Afterward, DIP invites faculty to annotate the images in order to highlight the cultural and historical significance of the materials and artifacts. The images, their annotations, and the accompanying metadata are ingested into UK’s institutional repository to create a virtual exhibit that is freely accessible online. At the same time, a corresponding physical exhibit is set up in the library to showcase the images. People interested in learning more about the images can scan QR codes to view the virtual exhibit, read the annotations, and download the images. Since the institutional repository tracks download rates of available items, faculty who have contributed to the virtual exhibit receive periodical notifications of the download counts of the images. The repository platform also offers an online dashboard for DIP and the faculty to assess the page hits of the virtual exhibit and to analyze the geographical and institutional distributions of the downloads. As part of the repository holdings, the virtual exhibit is preserved through the library’s participation in the Digital Preservation Network. This presentation demonstrates that the library can play a significant role in supporting a campus-wide initiative by leveraging its resources and services to build, assess, and preserve culturally themed digital collections. The outcome not only helps promote the awareness of a foreign culture but also increases the visibility of some little-known artifacts and rare library materials

A Collaborative Approach to Developing Culturally Themed Digital Collections

The College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Kentucky (UK) has created the Passport to the World Program (PWP) to celebrate campus-wide the cultural heritage of a country or region every academic year. The UK Libraries International Programs has been an active contributor to PWP by collaborating with faculty and different library departments to develop unique digital collections that serve to connect viewers with the featured country or region. To begin with, the Director of the International Programs (DIP) consults faculty and librarians at the UK Libraries Special Collections Research Center to select relevant materials for digitization. She also sources interesting artifacts from the larger community to create compilations of digital photos. Afterward, DIP invites faculty to annotate the images in order to highlight the cultural and historical significance of the materials and artifacts. The images, their annotations, and the accompanying metadata are ingested into UK’s institutional repository to create a virtual exhibit that is freely accessible online. At the same time, a corresponding physical exhibit is set up in the library to showcase the images. People interested in learning more about the images can scan QR codes to view the virtual exhibit, read the annotations, and download the images. Since the institutional repository tracks download rates of available items, faculty who have contributed to the virtual exhibit receive periodical notifications of the download counts of the images. The repository platform also offers an online dashboard for DIP and the faculty to assess the page hits of the virtual exhibit and to analyze the geographical and institutional distributions of the downloads. As part of the repository holdings, the virtual exhibit is preserved through the library’s participation in the Digital Preservation Network. This presentation demonstrates that the library can play a significant role in supporting a campus-wide initiative by leveraging its resources and services to build, assess, and preserve culturally themed digital collections. The outcome not only helps promote the awareness of a foreign culture but also increases the visibility of some little-known artifacts and rare library materials

Mesoamerican urbanism revisited: Environmental change, adaptation, resilience, persistence, and collapse

Urban adaptation to climate change is a global challenge requiring a broad response that can be informed by how urban societies in the past responded to environmental shocks. Yet, interdisciplinary efforts to leverage insights from the urban past have been stymied by disciplinary silos and entrenched misconceptions regarding the nature and diversity of premodern human settlements and institutions, especially in the case of prehispanic Mesoamerica. Long recognized as a distinct cultural region, prehispanic Mesoamerica was the setting for one of the world’s original urbanization episodes despite the impediments to communication and resource extraction due to the lack of beasts of burden and wheeled transport, and the limited and relatively late use of metal implements. Our knowledge of prehispanic urbanism in Mesoamerica has been significantly enhanced over the past two decades due to significant advances in excavating, analyzing, and contextualizing archaeological materials. We now understand that Mesoamerican urbanism was as much a story about resilience and adaptation to environmental change as it was about collapse. Here we call for a dialogue among Mesoamerican urban archaeologists, sustainability scientists, and researchers interested in urban adaptation to climate change through a synthetic perspective on the organizational diversity of urbanism. Such a dialogue, seeking insights into what facilitates and hinders urban adaptation to environmental change, can be animated by shifting the long-held emphasis on failure and collapse to a more empirically grounded account of resilience and the factors that fostered adaptation and sustainability

Prevention and management of malaria during pregnancy: findings from a comparative qualitative study in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi

BACKGROUND: In endemic regions of sub-Saharan Africa, malaria during pregnancy (MiP) is a major preventable cause of maternal and infant morbidity and mortality. Current recommended MiP prevention and control includes intermittent preventive treatment (IPTp), distribution of insecticide-treated bed nets (ITNs) and appropriate case management. This article explores the social and cultural context to the uptake of these interventions at four sites across Africa. METHODS: A comparative qualitative study was conducted at four sites in three countries: Ghana, Malawi and Kenya. Individual and group interviews were conducted with pregnant women, their relatives, opinion leaders, other community members and health providers. Observations, which focused on behaviours linked to MiP prevention and treatment, were also undertaken at health facilities and in local communities. RESULTS: ITNs were generally recognized as important for malaria prevention. However, their availability and use differed across the sites. In Malawi and Kenya, ITNs were sought-after items, but there were complaints about availability. In central Ghana, women saved ITNs until the birth of the child and they were used seasonally in northern Ghana. In Kenya and central Ghana, pregnant women did not associate IPTp with malaria, whereas, in Malawi and northern Ghana, IPTp was linked to malaria, but not always with prevention. Although IPTp adherence was common at all sites, whether delivered with directly observed treatment or not, a few women did not comply with IPTp often citing previous side effects. Although generally viewed as positive, experiences of malaria testing varied across the four sites: treatment was sometimes administered in spite of a negative diagnosis in Ghana (observed) and Malawi (reported). Despite generally following the advice of healthcare staff, particularly in Kenya, personal experience, and the availability and accessibility of medication – including anti-malarials – influenced MiP treatment. CONCLUSION: Although ITNs were valued as malaria prevention, health messages could address issues that reduce their use during pregnancy in particular contexts. The impact of previous side effects on adherence to IPTp and anti-malarial treatment regimens during pregnancy also requires attention. Overtreatment of MiP highlights the need to monitor the implementation of MiP case management guidelines

Genomic, Pathway Network, and Immunologic Features Distinguishing Squamous Carcinomas

This integrated, multiplatform PanCancer Atlas study co-mapped and identified distinguishing molecular features of squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs) from five sites associated with smokin

Pan-Cancer Analysis of lncRNA Regulation Supports Their Targeting of Cancer Genes in Each Tumor Context

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are commonly dys-regulated in tumors, but only a handful are known toplay pathophysiological roles in cancer. We inferredlncRNAs that dysregulate cancer pathways, onco-genes, and tumor suppressors (cancer genes) bymodeling their effects on the activity of transcriptionfactors, RNA-binding proteins, and microRNAs in5,185 TCGA tumors and 1,019 ENCODE assays.Our predictions included hundreds of candidateonco- and tumor-suppressor lncRNAs (cancerlncRNAs) whose somatic alterations account for thedysregulation of dozens of cancer genes and path-ways in each of 14 tumor contexts. To demonstrateproof of concept, we showed that perturbations tar-geting OIP5-AS1 (an inferred tumor suppressor) andTUG1 and WT1-AS (inferred onco-lncRNAs) dysre-gulated cancer genes and altered proliferation ofbreast and gynecologic cancer cells. Our analysis in-dicates that, although most lncRNAs are dysregu-lated in a tumor-specific manner, some, includingOIP5-AS1, TUG1, NEAT1, MEG3, and TSIX, synergis-tically dysregulate cancer pathways in multiple tumorcontexts

Pan-cancer Alterations of the MYC Oncogene and Its Proximal Network across the Cancer Genome Atlas

Although theMYConcogene has been implicated incancer, a systematic assessment of alterations ofMYC, related transcription factors, and co-regulatoryproteins, forming the proximal MYC network (PMN),across human cancers is lacking. Using computa-tional approaches, we define genomic and proteo-mic features associated with MYC and the PMNacross the 33 cancers of The Cancer Genome Atlas.Pan-cancer, 28% of all samples had at least one ofthe MYC paralogs amplified. In contrast, the MYCantagonists MGA and MNT were the most frequentlymutated or deleted members, proposing a roleas tumor suppressors.MYCalterations were mutu-ally exclusive withPIK3CA,PTEN,APC,orBRAFalterations, suggesting that MYC is a distinct onco-genic driver. Expression analysis revealed MYC-associated pathways in tumor subtypes, such asimmune response and growth factor signaling; chro-matin, translation, and DNA replication/repair wereconserved pan-cancer. This analysis reveals insightsinto MYC biology and is a reference for biomarkersand therapeutics for cancers with alterations ofMYC or the PMN

Spatial Organization and Molecular Correlation of Tumor-Infiltrating Lymphocytes Using Deep Learning on Pathology Images

Beyond sample curation and basic pathologic characterization, the digitized H&E-stained images of TCGA samples remain underutilized. To highlight this resource, we present mappings of tumorinfiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) based on H&E images from 13 TCGA tumor types. These TIL maps are derived through computational staining using a convolutional neural network trained to classify patches of images. Affinity propagation revealed local spatial structure in TIL patterns and correlation with overall survival. TIL map structural patterns were grouped using standard histopathological parameters. These patterns are enriched in particular T cell subpopulations derived from molecular measures. TIL densities and spatial structure were differentially enriched among tumor types, immune subtypes, and tumor molecular subtypes, implying that spatial infiltrate state could reflect particular tumor cell aberration states. Obtaining spatial lymphocytic patterns linked to the rich genomic characterization of TCGA samples demonstrates one use for the TCGA image archives with insights into the tumor-immune microenvironment