CHIPPING THROUGH TIME: THE EVOLUTION OF LITHIC SPATIAL ORGANIZATION AT THE BRIDGE RIVER PITHOUSE VILLAGE, BRITISH COLUMBIA

Archaeological investigations at Housepit 54 within the Bridge River site have, to date, exposed 15 discreet floors primarily dating to ca. 1500-1000 cal. B.P. In this thesis, the spatial distributions of lithic artifacts from every floor are examined. Questions will be addressed specifically towards formation processes and the potential relationships between the patterning of lithic distributions as they relate to hearth-centered activity areas or domestic areas and fluctuations in estimated population. In addition, this thesis explores spatial organization as a cultural trait or concept that can be transmitted through time. Using the same methodological and theoretical approach for each floor, we examine feature form and function, lithic tool production and maintenance, and spatial relationships of lithic distributions. From these studies, we draw conclusions regarding the spatial continuity of artifact distributions between subsequent floors. GIS software was used to display and analyze lithic artifact distributions on each individual floor. Results of this research permit us to develop a range of implications regarding household occupational history and sociality

No limits of acceptable change: A proposed research framework for informing visitor use management in the context of cultural resources

Cultural resources are commonly defined as resources that provide material evidence of past human activities. These resources are unique, as they are both finite and non-renewable. This provides a challenge for traditional visitor use management since these resources have no limits of acceptable change. However, with nearly every national park in the US containing cultural resources, coupled with ever-growing visitation, it is essential that managers of parks and protected areas have the ability to make science-informed decisions about cultural resources in the context of visitor use management. We propose a framework that can help provide context and exploration for these challenges. Drawing on previous literature, this framework includes risk-based approaches to decision making about visitor use; visitor cognitions related to cultural resources; emotions, mood, and affect related to cultural resource experiences; creating and evaluating interpretive programs; deviant visitor behaviors related to cultural resources; and co-management

Testing the Predictions of Surprisal Theory in 11 Languages

A fundamental result in psycholinguistics is that less predictable words take a longer time to process. One theoretical explanation for this finding is Surprisal Theory (Hale, 2001; Levy, 2008), which quantifies a word's predictability as its surprisal, i.e. its negative log-probability given a context. While evidence supporting the predictions of Surprisal Theory have been replicated widely, most have focused on a very narrow slice of data: native English speakers reading English texts. Indeed, no comprehensive multilingual analysis exists. We address this gap in the current literature by investigating the relationship between surprisal and reading times in eleven different languages, distributed across five language families. Deriving estimates from language models trained on monolingual and multilingual corpora, we test three predictions associated with surprisal theory: (i) whether surprisal is predictive of reading times; (ii) whether expected surprisal, i.e. contextual entropy, is predictive of reading times; (iii) and whether the linking function between surprisal and reading times is linear. We find that all three predictions are borne out crosslinguistically. By focusing on a more diverse set of languages, we argue that these results offer the most robust link to-date between information theory and incremental language processing across languages.Comment: This is a pre-MIT Press publication version of the pape

The fracture toughness of small animal cortical bone measured using arc-shaped tension specimens: Effects of bisphosphonate and deproteinization treatments

Small animal models, and especially transgenic models, have become widespread in the study of bone mechanobiology and metabolic bone disease, but test methods for measuring fracture toughness on multiple replicates or at multiple locations within a single small animal bone are lacking. Therefore, the objective of this study was to develop a method to measure cortical bone fracture toughness in multiple specimens and locations along the diaphysis of small animal bones. Arc-shaped tension specimens were prepared from the mid-diaphysis of rabbit ulnae and loaded to failure to measure the radial fracture toughness in multiple replicates per bone. The test specimen dimensions, crack length, and maximum load met requirements for measuring the plane strain fracture toughness. Experimental groups included a control group, bisphosphonate treatment group, and an ex vivo deproteinization treatment following bisphosphonate treatment (5 rabbits/group and 15 specimens/group). The fracture toughness of ulnar cortical bone from rabbits treated with zoledronic acid for six months exhibited no difference compared with the control group. Partially deproteinized specimens exhibited significantly lower fracture toughness compared with both the control and bisphosphonate treatment groups. The deproteinization treatment increased tissue mineral density (TMD) and resulted in a negative linear correlation between the measured fracture toughness and TMD. Fracture toughness measurements were repeatable with a coefficient of variation of 12–16% within experimental groups. Retrospective power analysis of the control and deproteinization treatment groups indicated a minimum detectable difference of 0.1 MPa·m1/2. Therefore, the overall results of this study suggest that arc-shaped tension specimens offer an advantageous new method for measuring the fracture toughness in small animal bones

Exploring differences in adverse symptom event grading thresholds between clinicians and patients in the clinical trial setting

Symptomatic adverse event (AE) monitoring is essential in cancer clinical trials to assess patient safety, as well as inform decisions related to treatment and continued trial participation. As prior research has demonstrated that conventional concordance metrics (e.g., intraclass correlation) may not capture nuanced aspects of the association between clinician and patient-graded AEs, we aimed to characterize differences in AE grading thresholds between doctors (MDs), registered nurses (RNs), and patients using the Bayesian Graded Item Response Model (GRM)

Acute Inflammatory Profiles Differ with Sex and Age After Spinal Cord Injury

Background Sex and age are emerging as influential variables that affect spinal cord injury (SCI) recovery. Despite a changing demographic towards older age at the time of SCI, the effects of sex or age on inflammation remain to be elucidated. This study determined the sex- and age-dependency of the innate immune response acutely after SCI. Methods Male and female mice of ages 4- and 14-month-old received T9 contusion SCI and the proportion of microglia, monocyte-derived macrophages (MDM), and neutrophils surrounding the lesion were determined at 3- and 7-day post-injury (DPI) using flow cytometry. Cell counts of microglia and MDMs were obtained using immunohistochemistry to verify flow cytometry results at 3-DPI. Microglia and MDMs were separately isolated using fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) at 3-day post-injury (DPI) to assess RNA expression of 27 genes associated with activation, redox, and debris metabolism/clearance. Results Flow cytometry revealed that being female and older at the time of injury significantly increased MDMs relative to other phagocytes, specifically increasing the ratio of MDMs to microglia at 3-DPI. Cell counts using immunohistochemistry revealed that male mice have more total microglia within SCI lesions that can account for a lower MDM/microglia ratio. With NanoString analyses of 27 genes, only 1 was differentially expressed between sexes in MDMs; specifically, complement protein C1qa was increased in males. No genes were affected by age in MDMs. Only 2 genes were differentially regulated in microglia between sexes after controlling for false discovery rate, specifically CYBB (NOX2) as a reactive oxygen species (ROS)-associated marker as well as MRC1 (CD206), a gene associated with reparative phenotypes. Both genes were increased in female microglia. No microglial genes were differentially regulated between ages. Differences between microglia and MDMs were found in 26 of 27 genes analyzed, all expressed higher in MDMs with three exceptions. Specifically, C1qa, cPLA2, and CD86 were expressed higher in microglia. Conclusions These findings indicate that inflammatory responses to SCI are sex-dependent at both the level of cellular recruitment and gene expression

Are Thiel-embalmed Cadavers Effective Tools in Educating Medical Students to Perform Knee Arthrocentesis?

INTRODUCTION: The purposes of this study are to determine whether Thiel-embalmed cadavers are an effective educational tool in teaching medical students to perform knee arthrocentesis, to compare the use of Thiel-embalmed cadavers to formalin-embalmed cadavers in arthrocentesis education, and to determine whether the use of Thiel-embalmed cadavers is potentially generalizable to the instruction of other orthopedic procedures. METHODS: Sixty-eight third-year medical students participated in the study. The participants first completed a pre-survey to assess their prior experience with arthrocentesis procedures and Thiel-embalmed cadavers. Participants then attended an instructional session where the knee arthrocentesis procedure was demonstrated on a Thiel-embalmed cadaver. Participants then individually performed the simulated knee arthrocentesis procedure twice: once on a Thiel-embalmed cadaver and once on a formalin-embalmed cadaver. Success of each attempt was determined through the visualization of aspirated joint fluid. Following the laboratory session, each participant completed a post-survey to determine whether the session improved their perceived confidence in performing knee arthrocentesis, if they preferred the use of Thiel-embalmed cadavers or formalin-embalmed cadavers as a teaching tool, and if they believed simulated practice using Thiel-embalmed cadavers would be effective for learning other orthopedic procedural skills. RESULTS: Sixty-eight students participated in the laboratory session and successfully completed both pre- and post-course surveys. 96% of participants reported that they felt confident performing knee arthrocentesis under physician supervision following their participation in the laboratory session (versus 15% of participants in the pre-survey). 96% of participants reported that the Thiel-embalmed cadavers provided a more realistic teaching model than formalin-embalmed cadavers for learning knee arthrocentesis. 100% of participants believed the incorporation of simulated practice using Thiel-embalmed cadavers is an effective method in teaching students to perform knee arthrocentesis. 100% of participants reported that they would participate in future sessions using Thiel-embalmed cadavers to learn and practice other orthopedic procedural techniques. DISCUSSION: This study used a moderate sample size of third-year medical students to provide data regarding the suitability of using Thiel cadavers in arthrocentesis education. Results indicate that Thiel cadavers are effective tools in teaching medical students to perform knee arthrocentesis, that students preferred the Thiel cadavers to the formalin cadavers, and that the use of Thiel cadavers is a safe, engaging, and high-quality teaching modality for demonstrating proper arthrocentesis procedural technique to medical students. Since this study looked specifically at teaching knee arthrocentesis to medical students, it is uncertain whether the benefits of Thiel cadavers are generalizable to the education of other orthopedic procedures and subject groups such as residents, fellows, and practicing physicians. Further studies should be performed to assess whether Thiel cadavers are beneficial in teaching other orthopaedic procedures and if these benefits extend to other subject groups

Development of the Sandia Cooler.

This report describes an FY13 effort to develop the latest version of the Sandia Cooler, a breakthrough technology for air-cooled heat exchangers that was developed at Sandia National Laboratories. The project was focused on fabrication, assembly and demonstration of ten prototype systems for the cooling of high power density electronics, specifically high performance desktop computers (CPUs). In addition, computational simulation and experimentation was carried out to fully understand the performance characteristics of each of the key design aspects. This work culminated in a parameter and scaling study that now provides a design framework, including a number of design and analysis tools, for Sandia Cooler development for applications beyond CPU cooling

A Domain-Agnostic Approach for Characterization of Lifelong Learning Systems

Despite the advancement of machine learning techniques in recent years, state-of-the-art systems lack robustness to "real world" events, where the input distributions and tasks encountered by the deployed systems will not be limited to the original training context, and systems will instead need to adapt to novel distributions and tasks while deployed. This critical gap may be addressed through the development of "Lifelong Learning" systems that are capable of 1) Continuous Learning, 2) Transfer and Adaptation, and 3) Scalability. Unfortunately, efforts to improve these capabilities are typically treated as distinct areas of research that are assessed independently, without regard to the impact of each separate capability on other aspects of the system. We instead propose a holistic approach, using a suite of metrics and an evaluation framework to assess Lifelong Learning in a principled way that is agnostic to specific domains or system techniques. Through five case studies, we show that this suite of metrics can inform the development of varied and complex Lifelong Learning systems. We highlight how the proposed suite of metrics quantifies performance trade-offs present during Lifelong Learning system development - both the widely discussed Stability-Plasticity dilemma and the newly proposed relationship between Sample Efficient and Robust Learning. Further, we make recommendations for the formulation and use of metrics to guide the continuing development of Lifelong Learning systems and assess their progress in the future.Comment: To appear in Neural Network