Collaborative and competitive strategies in the variability and resiliency of large-scale societies in Mesoamerica

Examinations of the variation and duration of past large-scale societies have long involved a conceptual struggle between efforts at generalization and the unraveling of specific trajectories. Although historical particulars are critical to understanding individual cases, there exist both scientific 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 paid increased attention to successes and failures in communal-resource management over the long term, as articulated by the transdisciplinary theory 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 large-scale preindustrial 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 cities from pre-Columbian Mesoamerica to demonstrate tendencies for more collective systems to be larger and longer lasting than less collective ones, likely reflecting greater resiliency in the face of the ecological and cultural perturbations specific to the region and era

Alien Registration- Feinman, Celia (Portland, Cumberland County)

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Security Mechanisms on Web-Based Exams in Introductory Statistics Community College Courses

The credibility of unsupervised online exams is an ongoing concern in higher education. Proctoring, in the form of physical or remote supervision, has been the main mechanism for maintaining academic integrity. However, both forms of proctoring are expensive and inconvenient. Several researchers have examined security mechanisms as a substitute for proctoring and obtained mixed results. This article describes a quasi-experimental study, the main goal of which was to examine the effectiveness of nonbiometric security mechanisms. The security mechanisms were selected based on the taxonomy of cheating reduction techniques rooted in the fraud triangle theory. The security mechanisms were considered effective if the scores were equivalent or lower on the unproctored exams. Two one-sided dependent t tests were used to test for equivalence of scores on two sets of proctored and unproctored exams in face-to-face (N = 704), hybrid (N = 91), and online (N = 55) introductory statistics community college courses. In the first set, the proctored exam was followed by the unproctored exam; in the second set, the order was reversed. In the first set, the scores on proctored and unproctored exams were equivalent in face-to-face and online groups, but students in the hybrid group had significantly lower scores on the unproctored exam. In the second set, the students’ scores were lower on the unproctored exam in all groups. The study’s results suggest that the used security mechanisms were effective

Mining the Final Frontier: Keeping Earth's Asteroid Mining Ventures from Becoming the Next Gold Rush

“Space: The Final Frontier.”  While that phrase has been a call to arms for generations of science fiction fans and space enthusiasts to look up at the night sky in wonder and amazement, it has increasingly become a siren call for private space pioneers. Since man first went to space, humankind has been pushing the boundaries of experimentation, research, and exploration into the cosmos. Even though Earth’s supply of certain rare and precious metals may be reaching depletion, researchers have found that asteroids are likely to contain vast quantities of these resources.  Today, several companies are attempting to tap into this potential wealth of resources for use, both on Earth and in space.  Before these companies can begin mining, however, stronger property laws are needed to ensure the Asteroid Belt of our solar system is not described as the next California Gold Rush.  This Article argues that the international community must be united on the policies and customs surrounding property ownership in space so these mining operations can be performed in a peaceful and safe manner