Chihuahuan Archaeology

Author(s):  
Michael E. Whalen ◽  
Paul E. Minnis

Northwestern Chihuahua, Mexico, and the U.S. Southwest share broadly similar pre-colonial cultures and sequences of change. In fact, the present-day international boundary artificially divides a single culture area. Even so, northwestern Chihuahua is not simply a southern extension of the U.S. Southwest. This chapter reviews the past of northwestern Chihuahua from the early pre-ceramic era through late pre-Hispanic times, showing how these cultures were similar to and different from their counterparts in the Southwest. It is clear that maize farming and at least semi-sedentary life were introduced early in Chihuahua, and this formed a basis for the rapid development of subsequent cultures. The apogee of the area’s late pre-colonial period is the famous center of Paquimé (or Casas Grandes). It is widely recognized as one of the most complex societies of the pre-Hispanic Pueblo world.

Author(s):  
Jeremy Zallen

The myth of light and progress has blinded us. In our electric world, we are everywhere surrounded by effortlessly glowing lights that simply exist, as they should, seemingly clear and comforting proof that human genius means the present will always be better than the past, and the future better still. At best, this is half the story. At worst, it is a lie. From whale oil to kerosene, from the colonial period to the end of the U.S. Civil War, modern, industrial lights brought wonderful improvements and incredible wealth to some. But for most workers, free and unfree, human and nonhuman, these lights were catastrophes. This book tells their stories. The surprisingly violent struggle to produce, control, and consume the changing means of illumination over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries transformed slavery, industrial capitalism, and urban families in profound, often hidden ways. Only by taking the lives of whalers and enslaved turpentine makers, match-manufacturing children and coal miners, night-working seamstresses and the streetlamp-lit poor--those American lucifers--as seriously as those of inventors and businessmen can the full significance of the revolution of artificial light be understood.


Author(s):  
D Samba Reddy

This article provides a brief overview of novel drugs approved by the U.S. FDA in 2016.  It also focuses on the emerging boom in the development of neurodrugs for central nervous system (CNS) disorders. These new drugs are innovative products that often help advance clinical care worldwide, and in 2016, twenty-two such drugs were approved by the FDA. The list includes the first new drug for disorders such as spinal muscular atrophy, Duchenne muscular dystrophy or hallucinations and delusions of Parkinson’s disease, among several others. Notably, nine of twenty-two (40%) were novel CNS drugs, indicating the industry shifting to neurodrugs. Neurodrugs are the top selling pharmaceuticals worldwide, especially in America and Europe. Therapeutic neurodrugs have proven their significance many times in the past few decades, and the CNS drug portfolio represents some of the most valuable agents in the current pipeline. Many neuroproducts are vital or essential medicines in the current therapeutic armamentarium, including dozens of “blockbuster drugs” (drugs with $1 billion sales potential).  These drugs include antidepressants, antimigraine medications, and anti-epilepsy medications. The rise in neurodrugs’ sales is predominantly due to increased diagnoses of CNS conditions. The boom for neuromedicines is evident from the recent rise in investment, production, and introduction of new CNS drugs.  There are many promising neurodrugs still in the pipeline, which are developed based on the validated “mechanism-based” strategy. Overall, disease-modifying neurodrugs that can prevent or cure serious diseases, such as multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, and Alzheimer’s disease, are in high demand. 


Author(s):  
Oriol Bohigas ◽  
Hans A. Weidenmüller

An overview of the history of random matrix theory (RMT) is provided in this chapter. Starting from its inception, the authors sketch the history of RMT until about 1990, focusing their attention on the first four decades of RMT. Later developments are partially covered. In the past 20 years RMT has experienced rapid development and has expanded into a number of areas of physics and mathematics.


Author(s):  
Raymond J. Batvinis

Counterintelligence is the business of identifying and dealing with foreign intelligence threats to a nation, such as the United States. Its main concern is the intelligence services of foreign states and similar organizations of non-state actors, such as transnational terrorist groups. Counterintelligence functions both as a defensive measure that protects the nation's secrets and assets against foreign intelligence penetration and as an offensive measure to find out what foreign intelligence organizations are planning to defeat better their aim. This article addresses the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) foreign counterintelligence function. It briefly traces its evolution by examining the key events and the issues that effected its growth as the principle civilian counterintelligence service of the U.S. government.


Modern Italy ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Gianmarco Mancosu

This article aims to expose the political and cultural processes that contributed to the eradication of problematic memories of the Italian colonial period during the national reconstruction following the Second World War. It offers a systematic examination of newsreels and documentaries about the Italian former colonies that were produced between 1946 and 1960, a film corpus that has largely been neglected by previous scholarship. The article first dissects the ambiguous political scenario that characterised the production of this footage through the study of original archival findings. The footage configured a particular form of self-exculpatory memory, which obstructed a thorough critique of the colonial period while articulating a new discourse about the future presence of Italy in the former colonies. This seems to be a case of aphasia rather than amnesia, insofar as the films addressed not an absence, but an inability to comprehend and articulate a critical discourse about the past. This aphasic configuration of colonial memories will be tackled through a close reading of the voice-over and commentary. In so doing, this work suggests that the footage actively contributed to spread un-problematised narratives and memories about the colonial period, whose results still infiltrate Italian contemporary society, politics and culture.


2006 ◽  
Vol 2 (SPS5) ◽  
pp. 221-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michèle Gerbaldi

AbstractThis paper outlines the main features of the International Schools for Young Astronomers (ISYA), a programme developed by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in 1967. The main goal of this programme is to support astronomy in developing countries by organizing a school lasting 3 weeks for students with typically a M.Sc. degree. The context in which the ISYA were developed has changed drastically over the past 10 years. We have moved from a time when access to any large telescope was difficult and mainly organized on a national basis, to the situation nowadays where data archives are established at the same time that any major telescope, ground-based or in space, is built, and these archives are accessible from everywhere. The concept of the virtual observatory reinforces this access. However, the rapid development of information and communications technologies and the increasing penetration of internet have not yet removed all barriers to data access. The role of the ISYA is addressed in this context.


Author(s):  
DongBack Seo

For first generation (1G) wireless communications technology standards, the Japanese government’s early decision provided an opportunity for its national manufacturers to be first movers in the global market, while the late development of wireless communications in Korea made the Korean market dependent on foreign manufacturers by adopting the U.S. standard (AMPS). Moving toward the 2G wireless technology market, both countries decided to develop standards instead of adopting a technology from outside their regions. Japan developed its own standard, PDC, while Korea developed CDMA systems with Qualcomm, the U.S. technology provider. Although these governments’ decisions on technologies looked only slightly different, the socio-economic consequences were greatly distinctive. The Korean success brought not only the rapid development of its domestic market but also opportunities for its manufacturers to become global leaders, while the PDC standard only provided the fast growth of the Japanese domestic market without any opportunities for the Japanese manufacturers to grow further internationally in the 1990s. By the end of 1990s, two nations again had to decide a 3G technology standard with vast challenges and pressures.


Laws ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 12
Author(s):  
Paul Baumgardner

When coronavirus began to descend upon the United States, religious freedom advocates across the country sounded the alarm that citizens’ religious practices and institutions were under threat. Although some of the most extreme arguments championed by these advocates were not validated by our legal system, many were. This article explores the underappreciated gains made by religious freedom advocates before the U.S. Supreme Court over the past year. As a result of the “Pandemic Court”, religious freedom in the United States has been rewritten. This promises to radically change the educational, employment, and health prospects of millions of Americans for the rest of the pandemic and long afterwards.


2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 366-385 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Cassels Johnson ◽  
Crissa Stephens ◽  
Stephanie Gugliemo Lynch

Abstract This article examines reactions to the changing linguistic ecology in the U.S. state of Iowa, which is experiencing a demographic phenomenon often referred to as the New Latino Diaspora (NLD) (Hamann et al., 2002). We first examine the historical processes and social structures that link current language policy initiatives within Iowa to local and national nativism. We then analyze public policies and texts to reveal how language ideologies circulate across diverse texts and contexts, forming discourses that shape the experiences of Latin@s in Iowa.


1984 ◽  
Vol 17 (01) ◽  
pp. 33-40
Author(s):  
Robert Jervis

A rational strategy for the employment of nuclear weapons is a contradiction in terms. The enormity of the destruction, either executed or threatened, severs the nexus of proportionality between means and ends which used to characterize the threat and use of force. This does not mean, however, that all nuclear strategies are equally irrational. The nuclear policy of the Reagan administration—which is essentially the same as that of the Carter administration and which has its roots in developments initiated by even earlier administrations—is particularly ill-formed. As I will demonstrate, the basic reason for this is that the strategy rests on a profound underestimation of the impact of nuclear weapons on military strategy and attempts to understand the current situation with intellectual tools appropriate only in the pre-nuclear era.American strategy for the past several years—the “countervailing strategy”—has been based on the assumption that what is crucial is the ability of American and allied military forces to deny the Soviets military advantage from any aggression they might contemplate. The U.S. must be prepared to meet and block any level of Soviet force. The strategy is then one of counterforce—blocking and seeking to destroy Soviet military power. The goal is deterrence. Although it is concerned with how the U.S. would fight many different kinds of wars, both nuclear and non-nuclear, it is not correct to claim that the strategy seeks to engage in wars rather than deter them.


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