Sefer ha-hinukh al tora me-et Aharon nasi ha-Levim me-Bartselona... nidfas ka-et im perush Minhat Yitshak ... hevrati ... Yitshak ha-Kohen Aronovski. Helek rishon, Bereshit u-shemot

https://www.ester.ee/record=b5447929*es

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

Angular clustering properties of the DESI QSO target selection using DR9 Legacy Imaging Surveys

The quasar target selection for the upcoming survey of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) will be fixed for the next 5 yr. The aim of this work is to validate the quasar selection by studying the impact of imaging systematics as well as stellar and galactic contaminants, and to develop a procedure to mitigate them. Density fluctuations of quasar targets are found to be related to photometric properties such as seeing and depth of the Data Release 9 of the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys. To model this complex relation, we explore machine learning algorithms (random forest and multilayer perceptron) as an alternative to the standard linear regression. Splitting the footprint of the Legacy Imaging Surveys into three regions according to photometric properties, we perform an independent analysis in each region, validating our method using extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS) EZ-mocks. The mitigation procedure is tested by comparing the angular correlation of the corrected target selection on each photometric region to the angular correlation function obtained using quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 16. With our procedure, we recover a similar level of correlation between DESI quasar targets and SDSS quasars in two-thirds of the total footprint and we show that the excess of correlation in the remaining area is due to a stellar contamination that should be removed with DESI spectroscopic data. We derive the Limber parameters in our three imaging regions and compare them to previous measurements from SDSS and the 2dF QSO Redshift Survey

Characterizing genomic alterations in cancer by complementary functional associations.

Systematic efforts to sequence the cancer genome have identified large numbers of mutations and copy number alterations in human cancers. However, elucidating the functional consequences of these variants, and their interactions to drive or maintain oncogenic states, remains a challenge in cancer research. We developed REVEALER, a computational method that identifies combinations of mutually exclusive genomic alterations correlated with functional phenotypes, such as the activation or gene dependency of oncogenic pathways or sensitivity to a drug treatment. We used REVEALER to uncover complementary genomic alterations associated with the transcriptional activation of β-catenin and NRF2, MEK-inhibitor sensitivity, and KRAS dependency. REVEALER successfully identified both known and new associations, demonstrating the power of combining functional profiles with extensive characterization of genomic alterations in cancer genomes

Fabrication of the DESI corrector lenses

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) is under construction to measure the expansion history of the Universe using the Baryon Acoustic Oscillation technique. The spectra of 35 million galaxies and quasars over 14000 square degrees will be measured during the life of the experiment. A new prime focus corrector for the KPNO Mayall telescope will deliver light to 5000 fiber optic positioners. The fibers in turn feed ten broad-band spectrographs. We describe the DESI corrector optics, a series of six fused silica and borosilicate lenses. The lens diameters range from 0.8 to 1.1 meters, and their weights 84 to 237 kg. Most lens surfaces are spherical, and two are challenging 10th-order polynomial aspheres. The lenses have been successfully polished and treated with an antireflection coating at multiple subcontractors, and are now being integrated into the DESI corrector barrel assembly at University College London. We describe the final performance of the lenses in terms of their various parameters, including surface figure, homogeneity, and others, and compare their final performance against the demanding DESI corrector requirements. Also we describe the reoptimization of the lens spacing in their corrector barrel after their final measurements are known. Finally we assess the performance of the corrector as a whole, compared to early budgeted estimates