Evidence of Resource Procurement and Manufacturing Techniques in Caddoan Ceramic Assemblages from the Sabine, Cypress, and Sulphur River Drainage Basins, Rusk and Titus Counties, Texas

Texas Utilities Services and Espey, Huston & Associates, Inc. have conducted ongoing archaeological investigations of cultural resources in Northeast Texas for the past 15 years. As a part of these studies, prehistoric Caddoan ceramic assemblages were recovered from 13 sites in three distinct drainage basins: three sites from the Sabine River drainage; three sites from the Cypress Creek drainage; and seven sites from the Sulphur River drainage. Recent research on the ceramic collections has emphasized variability in surface treatment, vessel form, and paste composition by means of a detailed attribute analysis and petrographic examination of a sample of the Caddoan sherds. This paper focuses on the paste composition of a sherd sample selected to undergo petrographic analysis. The sample contains representatives among the sherds of the major tempering agents identified during a macroscopic examination of the pastes. The initial goal of the analyses was establishment of a baseline for paste composition in the study areas. A detailed point count, and grain size measurements, allowed for the identification of constituents in a range of frequencies from among the sites located in each of the three drainage basins. Upon completion of the initial studies, the results of the analyses from the three studies were compared. This paper presents a discussion of preliminary patterns identified in Caddoan ceramic assemblages of resource procurement and manufacturing techniques observed among the site samples

Utilizing Pregnancy Associated Glycoproteins to improve reproductive efficiency in cattle

Diagnosing and maintaining successful pregnancies are one of the most important components to profitable and efficient management of beef and dairy cattle operations. Pregnancy loss is a major component of reproductive inefficiency and has been investigated less intensively in beef cattle than in dairy cattle. Pregnancy Associate Glycoproteins [PAGs] are placental products which have been identified as an accurate tool for pregnancy diagnosis and as substantial evidence indicates, markers of embryo and placental competence. The aim of these two studies is to further distinguish characteristics of pregnancies based on PAG concentration. Serial embryo transfer was used in beef heifers to asses PAG concentrations of heifers of varying fertility status. There was no difference in PAG concentration between high or subfertility heifers. However, heifers which maintained pregnancy until day 60 of gestation had an increased PAG concentration compared to those that lost pregnancy between day 28 and 60 (P=0.051). The second study examined the use of PAG concentration at day 24 of gestation as a tool for early gestation pregnancy diagnosis in Holstein dairy heifers carrying in vitro produced embryos. Circulating PAG concentration at day 24 was increased in animals that were pregnant compared to animals that were not; however, pregnancy maintenance could not be determined based on day 24 PAG concentration. Early gestation pregnancy diagnosis using PAG may be a viable option with more data and possible assay refinement for specific PAGs

Observing the CMB at High-l using the VSA and AMI

We discuss two experiments - the Very Small Array (VSA) and the Arcminute MicroKelvin Imager (AMI) - and their prospects for observing the CMB at high angular multipoles. Whilst the VSA is primarily designed to observe primary anisotropies in the CMB, AMI is designed to image secondary anisotropies via the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect. The combined l-range of these two instruments is between l = 150 and ~10000.Comment: 8 pages, 13 figures. To be published in the proceedings of "The Cosmic Microwave Background and its Polarization", New Astronomy Reviews, (eds. S. Hanany and K.A. Olive

The Effects of Light Wavelength and Gravity on Physarum polycephalum Growth

Physarum is a slime mold in the genus of mycetozoan and the family of Physaraceae. It is a single cellular, multinuclear organism that is not classified as an animal, plant, or fungi. The purpose of this experiment is to study the effect of different light wavelengths and the influence of gravity on Physarum growth patterns. The Physarum is grown in a bacteriological agar with distributed oats as its food base. Red, green, blue, red and blue, and no light was studied and expansion was documented. The possible effects of gravity conditions were introduced by a clinostat. The experiments showed that different light and gravity environments had no effect on expansion and growth of the Physarum in these conditions. The experimental results were analyzed using a single factor ANOVA test, concluding, all p-values showed statistical indifference between each condition. Therefore, the search for a food source has more influence on Physarum growth than different wavelengths of light and clinostat conditions