The Road Not Taken: How Early Landscape Learning and Adoption of a Risk-Averse Strategy Influenced Paleoindian Travel Route Decision Making in the Upper Ohio Valley

2020 ◽  
Vol 86 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-152
Author(s):  
Matthew P. Purtill
Keyword(s):  
Time Allocation ◽  
Selection Process ◽  
Sampling Bias ◽  
Ohio River ◽  
Risk Averse ◽  
Ohio Valley ◽  
The Road ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
Risk Sensitive ◽  
Path Distance

To evaluate a model of the travel-route selection process for upper Ohio Valley Paleoindian foragers (13,500–11,400 cal BP), this study investigates archaeological data through the theoretical framework of landscape learning and risk-sensitive analysis. Following initial trail placement adjacent to a highly visible escarpment landform, Paleoindians adopted a risk-averse strategy to minimize travel outcome variability when wayfaring between Sandy Springs, a significant Ohio River Paleoindian site, and Upper Mercer–Vanport chert quarries of east-central Ohio. Although a least-cost analysis indicates an optimal route through the lower Scioto Valley, archaeological evidence for this path is lacking. Geomorphic and archaeological data further suggest that site absence in the lower Scioto Valley is not entirely due to sampling bias. Instead, evidence indicates that Paleoindians preferred travel within the Ohio Brush Creek–Baker's Fork valley despite its longer path distance through more rugged, constricted terrain. Potential travel through the lower Scioto Valley hypothesizes high outcome variability due to the stochastic nature of the late Pleistocene hydroregime. In this case, perceived outcome variability appears more influential in determining travel-route decisions among Paleoindians than direct efforts to reduce energy and time allocation.

scholarly journals Physiologic Specialization of Puccinia triticina on Wheat in the United States in 2013

Plant Disease ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 99 (9) ◽  
pp. 1261-1267 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. A. Kolmer ◽  
M. E. Hughes
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Winter Wheat ◽  
Leaf Rust ◽  
Great Plains ◽  
Puccinia Triticina ◽  
The United States ◽  
Northern Great Plains ◽  
Ohio River ◽  
Ohio Valley ◽  
Red Winter Wheat

Collections of Puccinia triticina were obtained from rust-infected leaves provided by cooperators throughout the United States and from wheat fields and breeding plots by USDA-ARS personnel and cooperators in the Great Plains, Ohio River Valley, and southeastern states in order to determine the virulence of the wheat leaf rust population in 2013. Single uredinial isolates (490 total) were derived from the collections and tested for virulence phenotype on 20 lines of Thatcher wheat that are near-isogenic for leaf rust resistance genes. In 2013, 79 virulence phenotypes were described in the United States. Virulence phenotypes MBTNB, TNBGJ, and MCTNB were the three most common phenotypes. Phenotypes MBTNB and MCTNB are both virulent to Lr11, and MCTNB is virulent to Lr26. MBTNB and MCTNB were most common in the soft red winter wheat region of the southeastern states and Ohio Valley. Phenotype TNBGJ is virulent to Lr39/41 and was widely distributed throughout the hard red winter wheat region of the Great Plains. Isolates with virulence to Lr11, Lr18, and Lr26 were common in the southeastern states and Ohio Valley region. Isolates with virulence to Lr21, Lr24, and Lr39/41 were frequent in the hard red wheat region of the southern and northern Great Plains.

Central Greco-Roman Cities

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dora P. Crouch
Keyword(s):  
Agricultural Land ◽  
The Road ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
The North ◽  
Urban Core ◽  
Local Resources ◽  
Structure Morphology ◽  
The City ◽  
Eastern Edge

Argos, situated in the southern peninsula of Greece called the Peloponnese, lies on the northwest side of the Argos Plain, backed by hills to the north and west that are the eastern edge of an extensive region of mountains and intermountain basins. A road runs northward through the valley and over the hills to Nemea and Corinth. Eastward beyond the capricious rivers lie the old Mycenaean cities of Mycenae and Tiryns on their knolls, with the port of Nauplia closing the circuit to the southeast. Beyond Nauplia is the Argolid peninsula with the ancient pilgrimage and health center of Epidauros. (The term “Argolid” as used in the literature sometimes means all the area near Argos and sometimes means only the peninsula south and east of Nauplia. Herein, we will use Argolid for the latter and Argive Plain for the former.) Between Argos and the gulf about 6 km south is the marshy area of Lerna, remnant of a lake that once reached nearly to the outskirts of Argos, while the southeast part of the plain was until recently a series of lagoons (Piérart 1992). To the southwest, skirting the mountains, runs the road to Sparta. The advantages for Argos of being situated at the center of gravity in the triangular plain (Runnels 1995) continued throughout all the periods studied herein. Argos is unusual among ancient cities because we have ample modern geological investigations of regional structure, morphology, karst geology, and hydrogeology, literary evidence from antiquity, and archaeological data from decades of investigation. These materials contribute to a detailed understanding of how human settlement built on and responded to local resources. We will therefore describe the regional setting of the city before turning to an examination of the urban core. Below its mountains, the city of Argos stands on a shelf overlooking a plain of extensive fertile agricultural land that curves around the site from north to southwest. The stratigraphy is as follows, beginning with the topmost modern layers: . . . Higher plateau and mountains are Tripoli limestone. Tripoli plateau sits amid karstic mountains. (Older) Triassic and Jurassic limestones to the northeast. . . .

Competitive Pricing and Remanufacturing Problem in an Uncertain Closed-Loop Supply Chain with Risk-Sensitive Retailers

2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (01) ◽  
pp. 1850003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hua Ke ◽  
Yong Wu ◽  
Hu Huang
Keyword(s):  
Supply Chain ◽  
Closed Loop ◽  
Historical Data ◽  
Risk Sensitivity ◽  
Risk Averse ◽  
Closed Loop Supply Chain ◽  
Academic Fields ◽  
Risk Sensitive ◽  
The Face ◽  
Competitive Pricing

Nowadays, pricing and remanufacturing problems under uncertain markets have gained increasing attention from both industrial and academic fields. In the literature, it is generally assumed that all the channel members are risk-neutral, ignoring the influences of channel members’ risk attitudes in the face of dynamic market. This paper focuses on a pricing problem in a closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) with two competitive risk-sensitive retailers under uncertain environment. The uncertainty is associated with the recycling costs, consumer demands and remanufacturing costs. Due to the dynamic market, supply chain managers may be unable to collect enough historical data to estimate these demands and costs when making pricing and remanufacturing decisions. In such cases, experts’ estimations are usually employed to describe these uncertain parameters. To deal with these human estimations, an uncertainty theory-based model is proposed. Based on the equilibrium results, how the retailers’ risk sensitivity and human estimations (uncertain degrees) affect the prices and profits is analyzed. It is found that both the retailers will get lower profits while the manufacturer will gain more profit when either of the two retailers becomes more risk-averse. We also find that a higher level of uncertainty in the supply chain will induce a higher collecting rate.

scholarly journals Regional Patch Detection of Road Traffic Network

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Xia Zhu ◽  
Weidong Song ◽  
Lin Gao
Keyword(s):  
Complex Network ◽  
Road Traffic ◽  
Geographic Distance ◽  
Influence Factors ◽  
Impact Factors ◽  
Traffic Network ◽  
The Road ◽  
Key Points ◽  
Path Distance ◽  
Shortest Path Distance

Road traffic network (RTN) structure plays an important role in the field of complex network analysis. In this paper, we propose a regional patch detection method from RTN via community detection of complex network. Firstly, the refined Adapted PageRank algorithm, which combines with the influence factors of the location property weight, the geographic distance weight and the road level weight, is used to calculate the candidate ranking results of key nodes in the RTN. Secondly, the ranking result and the shortest path distance as two significant impact factors are used to select the key points of the RTN, and then the Adapted K-Means algorithm is applied to regional patch detection of the RTN. Finally, based on the experimental data of Zhangwu road traffic network, the analysis results are as follows: Zhangwu is divided into 9 functional structures with key node locations as the core. Regional patch structure is divided according to key points, and the RTN is actually divided into nine small functional communities. Nine functional regional patches constitute a new network structure, maintaining connectivity between the regional patches can improve the overall efficiency of the RTN.

The modulatory influence of end-point controllability on decisions between actions

2012 ◽  
Vol 108 (6) ◽  
pp. 1764-1780 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ignasi Cos ◽  
Farid Medleg ◽  
Paul Cisek
Keyword(s):  
Selection Process ◽  
Dynamic Properties ◽  
Human Subjects ◽  
Reaching Movements ◽  
End Point ◽  
Gradual Process ◽  
Path Distance ◽  
Maximal Mobility ◽  
Motor Actions ◽  
Biomechanical Factors

Recent work has shown that human subjects are able to predict the biomechanical ease of potential reaching movements and use these predictions to influence their choices. Here, we examined how reach decisions are influenced by specific biomechanical factors related to the control of end-point stability, such as aiming accuracy or stopping control. Human subjects made free choices between two potential reaching movements that varied in terms of path distance and biomechanical cost in four separate blocks that additionally varied two constraints: the width of the targets (narrow or wide) and the requirement of stopping in them. When movements were unconstrained (very wide targets and no requirement of stopping), subjects' choices were strongly biased toward directions aligned with the direction of maximal mobility. However, as the movements became progressively constrained, factors related to the control of the end point gained relevance, thus reducing this bias. This demonstrates that, before movement onset, constraints such as stopping and aiming participate in a remarkably adaptive and flexible action selection process that trades off the advantage of moving along directions of maximal mobility for unconstrained movements against exploiting biomechanical anisotropies to facilitate control of end-point stability whenever the movement constraints require it. These results support a view of decision making between motor actions as a highly context-dependent gradual process in which the subjective desirability of potential actions is influenced by their dynamic properties in relation to the intrinsic properties of the motor apparatus.

The Vacant Quarter Revisited: Late Mississippian Abandonment of the Lower Ohio Valley

2002 ◽  
Vol 67 (4) ◽  
pp. 625-641 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles R. Cobb ◽  
Brian M. Butler
Keyword(s):  
Ohio River ◽  
Ohio Valley ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
Eastern Woodlands ◽  
Hill Country ◽  
Mississippian Period ◽  
The North ◽  
Unique Event ◽  
Widespread Phenomenon

The idea that a substantial portion of the North American midcontinent centered on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers confluence was largely depopulated around A.D. 1450–1550—Stephen Williams's “Vacant Quarter” hypothesis—has been generally accepted by archaeologists. There has been, however, some disagreement over the timing and extent of the abandonment. Our long-term research along the Ohio River in southern Illinois's interior hill country has yielded a substantial corpus of late Mississippian period radiocarbon dates, indicating that depopulation of the lower Ohio Valley occurred at the early end of Williams's estimate. Furthermore, the abandonment was a widespread phenomenon that involved Mississippian groups living in remote settings, as well as along major drainages. Although causes for the Vacant Quarter are still debated, evidence from other regions indicates that regional abandonment by agricultural groups was not a unique event in the Eastern Woodlands.

scholarly journals An Intersection Importance Estimation Method Based on the Road Network Topology

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 239-249
Author(s):  
Ting Lu ◽  
Dan Zhao ◽  
Yanhong Yin
Keyword(s):  
Network Topology ◽  
Road Network ◽  
Estimation Method ◽  
Graph Connectivity ◽  
Estimation Model ◽  
Continuous Increase ◽  
Sorting Method ◽  
The Road ◽  
Path Distance ◽  
On The Road

Introduction: The expansion of road network and continuous increase of vehicle ownership challenge the performance of routine traffic control. It is necessary to make a balanced adjustment and control from the perspective of the road network to disperse the traffic flow on the entire road network. Methods: This paper develops a method to quantify the intersections’ importance at a global level based on the road network topology, which is the location of the intersection in the road network and the structural characteristics of the intersection decided by the traffic movement. The priority order in traffic signal coordination is the sorting results of intersection’s importance. The proposed method consists of two consecutive algorithms. Firstly, the graph connectivity of network is defined based on the shortest path distance and spatial connectivity between adjacent intersections. Secondly, The Importance Estimation Model (IEM) is built, which is the function of the importance indexes of current intersection and its neighboring intersections. A simulated case of a six by eight grid network was employed to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method in TRANSYT. Results and Conclusion: The results show that the Importance Estimation Model (IEM) minimized the measure of effectiveness compared with the schemes obtained by the volume sorting method, the saturation degree sorting method, and the method SMOO. It also created a higher frequency of small queues than the other methods.

scholarly journals Expected palaeoanthropological and archaeological signal from a Neolithic demographic transition on a worldwide scale

2004 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 25-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Pierre Bocquet-Appel ◽  
Jérôme Dubouloz
Keyword(s):  
Demographic Transition ◽  
Birth Rate ◽  
Abrupt Change ◽  
Sampling Bias ◽  
Noticeable Increase ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
The Social ◽  
Historical Root ◽  
Social Area ◽  
True Signal

A s signal of major demographic change was detected from a palaeoanthropologicaldatabase of 68 Meso-Neolithic cemeteries in Europe (reduced to 36 due to a sampling bias). The signal is characteriyed by a relatively abrupt change in the proportion of immature skeletons (aged 5-19 years), relative to all buried skeletons (5 years +). From the Meso to the Neolithic, the proportion rose from approximately 20% to 30%. This change reflects a noticeable increase in the birth rate over a duration of about 500-700 years, and is referred to as the Neolithic Demographic Transition (NDT). Another category of independent archaeological data, on enclosures (N =694), which are interpreted as a response to population growth within the social area, reveals a similar signal at the same tempo. If this is a true signal, we should expect it to be detected also in all the independent centresof agricultural invention worldwide. The NDT is at the historical root of the pre-industrial populations that would gradually spread across the Earthand which are now rapidly disappearing.

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