Cooperation, collective action, and the archeology of large-scale societies

Archeologists investigating the emergence of large-scale societies in the past have renewed interest in examining the dynamics of cooperation as a means of understanding societal change and organizational variability within human groups over time. Unlike earlier approaches to these issues, which used models designated voluntaristic or managerial, contemporary research articulates more explicitly with frameworks for cooperation and collective action used in other fields, thereby facilitating empirical testing through better definition of the costs, benefits, and social mechanisms associated with success or failure in coordinated group action. Current scholarship is nevertheless bifurcated along lines of epistemology and scale, which is understandable but problematic for forging a broader, more transdisciplinary field of cooperation studies. Here, we point to some areas of potential overlap by reviewing archeological research that places the dynamics of social cooperation and competition in the foreground of the emergence of large-scale societies, which we define as those having larger populations, greater concentrations of political power, and higher degrees of social inequality. We focus on key issues involving the communal-resource management of subsistence and other economic goods, as well as the revenue flows that undergird political institutions. Drawing on archeological cases from across the globe, with greater detail from our area of expertise in Mesoamerica, we offer suggestions for strengthening analytical methods and generating more transdisciplinary research programs that address human societies across scalar and temporal spectra

The scale, governance, and sustainability of central places in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica

Examinations of the variation and relative successes or failures of past large-scale societies have long involved attempts to reconcile efforts at generalization and the identification of specific factors with explanatory value for regional trajectories. Although historical particulars are critical to understanding individual cases, there are both scholarly and policy rationales for drawing broader implications regarding the growing corpus of cross-cultural data germane to understanding variability in the constitution of human societies, past and present. Archaeologists have recently highlighted how successes and failures in communal-resource management can be studied over the long term through the material record to both engage and enhance transdisciplinary research on cooperation and collective action. In this article we consider frameworks that have been traditionally employed in studies of the rise, diversity, and fall of preindustrial urban aggregations. We suggest that a comparative theoretical perspective that foregrounds collective-action problems, unaligned individual and group interests, and the social mechanisms that promote or hamper cooperation advances our understanding of variability in these early cooperative arrangements. We apply such a perspective to an examination of pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican urban centers to demonstrate tendencies for more collective systems to be larger and longer lasting than less collective ones, likely reflecting greater sustainability in the face of the ecological and cultural perturbations specific to the region and era.Accepted manuscrip

Elliptical Galaxies with Emission Lines from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

We present the results of 11 elliptical galaxies with strong nebular emission lines during our study of star formation history along the Hubble sequence. After removing the dilution from the underlying old stellar populations by use of stellar population synthesis model, we derive the accurate fluxes of all emission lines for these objects, which are later classified with emission line ratios into one Seyfert 2, six LINERs and four HII galaxies. We also identify one HII galaxy (A1216+04) as a hitherto unknown Wolf-Rayet galaxy from the presence of the Wolf-Rayet broad bump at 4650 \AA. We propose that the star-forming activities in elliptical galaxies are triggered by either galaxy-galaxy interaction or the merging of a small satellite/a massive star cluster, as already suggested by recent numerical simulations

The Seventh Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

This paper describes the Seventh Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), marking the completion of the original goals of the SDSS and the end of the phase known as SDSS-II. It includes 11663 deg^2 of imaging data, with most of the roughly 2000 deg^2 increment over the previous data release lying in regions of low Galactic latitude. The catalog contains five-band photometry for 357 million distinct objects. The survey also includes repeat photometry over 250 deg^2 along the Celestial Equator in the Southern Galactic Cap. A coaddition of these data goes roughly two magnitudes fainter than the main survey. The spectroscopy is now complete over a contiguous area of 7500 deg^2 in the Northern Galactic Cap, closing the gap that was present in previous data releases. There are over 1.6 million spectra in total, including 930,000 galaxies, 120,000 quasars, and 460,000 stars. The data release includes improved stellar photometry at low Galactic latitude. The astrometry has all been recalibrated with the second version of the USNO CCD Astrograph Catalog (UCAC-2), reducing the rms statistical errors at the bright end to 45 milli-arcseconds per coordinate. A systematic error in bright galaxy photometr is less severe than previously reported for the majority of galaxies. Finally, we describe a series of improvements to the spectroscopic reductions, including better flat-fielding and improved wavelength calibration at the blue end, better processing of objects with extremely strong narrow emission lines, and an improved determination of stellar metallicities. (Abridged)Comment: 20 pages, 10 embedded figures. Accepted to ApJS after minor correction

The Fifth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

This paper describes the Fifth Data Release (DR5) of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). DR5 includes all survey quality data taken through June 2005 and represents the completion of the SDSS-I project (whose successor, SDSS-II will continue through mid-2008). It includes five-band photometric data for 217 million objects selected over 8000 square degrees, and 1,048,960 spectra of galaxies, quasars, and stars selected from 5713 square degrees of that imaging data. These numbers represent a roughly 20% increment over those of the Fourth Data Release; all the data from previous data releases are included in the present release. In addition to "standard" SDSS observations, DR5 includes repeat scans of the southern equatorial stripe, imaging scans across M31 and the core of the Perseus cluster of galaxies, and the first spectroscopic data from SEGUE, a survey to explore the kinematics and chemical evolution of the Galaxy. The catalog database incorporates several new features, including photometric redshifts of galaxies, tables of matched objects in overlap regions of the imaging survey, and tools that allow precise computations of survey geometry for statistical investigations.Comment: ApJ Supp, in press, October 2007. This paper describes DR5. The SDSS Sixth Data Release (DR6) is now public, available from http://www.sdss.or

A review of elliptical and disc galaxy structure, and modern scaling laws

A century ago, in 1911 and 1913, Plummer and then Reynolds introduced their models to describe the radial distribution of stars in `nebulae'. This article reviews the progress since then, providing both an historical perspective and a contemporary review of the stellar structure of bulges, discs and elliptical galaxies. The quantification of galaxy nuclei, such as central mass deficits and excess nuclear light, plus the structure of dark matter halos and cD galaxy envelopes, are discussed. Issues pertaining to spiral galaxies including dust, bulge-to-disc ratios, bulgeless galaxies, bars and the identification of pseudobulges are also reviewed. An array of modern scaling relations involving sizes, luminosities, surface brightnesses and stellar concentrations are presented, many of which are shown to be curved. These 'redshift zero' relations not only quantify the behavior and nature of galaxies in the Universe today, but are the modern benchmark for evolutionary studies of galaxies, whether based on observations, N-body-simulations or semi-analytical modelling. For example, it is shown that some of the recently discovered compact elliptical galaxies at 1.5 < z < 2.5 may be the bulges of modern disc galaxies.Comment: Condensed version (due to Contract) of an invited review article to appear in "Planets, Stars and Stellar Systems"(www.springer.com/astronomy/book/978-90-481-8818-5). 500+ references incl. many somewhat forgotten, pioneer papers. Original submission to Springer: 07-June-201

An Outbreak of Dengue Fever in St. Croix (US Virgin Islands), 2005

BACKGROUND: Periodic outbreaks of dengue fever occur in the United States Virgin Islands. In June 2005, an outbreak of dengue virus (DENV) serotype-2 with cases of dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) was detected in St. Croix, US Virgin Islands. The objective of this report is to describe this outbreak of DENV-2 and the findings of a case-control study examining risk factors for DHF. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: This is the largest dengue outbreak ever recorded in St. Croix, with 331 suspected dengue cases reported island-wide during 2005 (62.2 cases/10,000 population); 54% were hospitalized, 21% had at least one hemorrhagic manifestation, 28% had thrombocytopenia, 5% had DHF and 1 patient died. Eighty-nine laboratory-positive hospitalized patients were identified. Of these, there were 15 (17%) who met the WHO criteria for DHF (cases) and 74 (83%) who did not (controls). The only variable significantly associated with DHF on bivariate or multivariable analysis was age, with an adjusted odds ratio (95% confidence interval) of 1.033 (1.003,1.064). CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: During this outbreak of DENV-2, a high proportion of cases developed DHF and increasing age was significantly associated with DHF

Disclosure of cholesterol recognition motifs in transmembrane domains of the human nicotinic acetylcholine receptor

Cholesterol influences ion-channel function, distribution and clustering in the membrane, endocytosis, and exocytic sorting of the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (AChR). We report the occurrence of a cholesterol recognition motif, here coined “CARC”, in the transmembrane regions of AChR subunits that bear extensive contact with the surrounding lipid, and are thus optimally suited to convey cholesterol-mediated signaling from the latter. Three cholesterol molecules could be docked on the transmembrane segments of each AChR subunit, rendering a total of 15 cholesterol molecules per AChR molecule. The CARC motifs contribute each with an energy of interaction between 35 and 52 kJ.mol−1, adding up to a total of about 200 kJ.mol−1 per receptor molecule, i.e. ∼40% of the lipid solvation free energy/ AChR molecule. The CARC motif is remarkably conserved along the phylogenetic scale, from prokaryotes to human, suggesting that it could be responsible for some of the above structural/functional properties of the AChR

Evaluation of Oxfendazole, Praziquantel and Albendazole against Cystic Echinococcosis: A Randomized Clinical Trial in Naturally Infected Sheep

Cystic Echinococcosis (CE) is a near-cosmopolitan parasitic zoonosis that causes economic losses in many regions of the world. This parasitic infection can be regarded as an emerging or re-emerging disease causing considerable losses in livestock production. CE is produced by the larval cystic stage (hydatid) of the dog parasite Echinococcus granulosus. After infective eggs are ingested, cysts develop mainly in lungs and liver of humans and animals (sheep, cattle, pigs, horses, etc). Infected people may require surgery and/or Albendazole-based chemotherapy. In this study, we evaluated the effects of Oxfendazole alone (an antiparasitic drug used in animals), Oxfendazole plus Praziquantel, and Albendazole plus Praziquantel against hydatid cysts in sheep over 4 to 6 weeks of treatment. All of the treatments in this study were efficacious in killing the larval stages and, therefore, in minimizing the risk of a dog acquiring new infections (taenias). These treatment schemes can be added to control measures in animals and eventually could be used for the treatment of human infection. Further investigations on different schedules of monotherapy or combined chemotherapy are needed, as well as studies to evaluate the safety and efficacy of Oxfendazole in humans