OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: Background: Delirium is a well described form of acute brain organ dysfunction characterized by decreased or increased movement, changes in attention and concentration as well as perceptual disturbances (i.e., hallucinations) and delusions. Catatonia, a neuropsychiatric syndrome traditionally described in patients with severe psychiatric illness, can present as phenotypically similar to delirium and is characterized by increased, decreased and/or abnormal movements, staring, rigidity, and mutism. Delirium and catatonia can co-occur in the setting of medical illness, but no studies have explored this relationship by age. Our objective was to assess whether advancing age and the presence of catatonia are associated with delirium. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: Methods: We prospectively enrolled critically ill patients at a single institution who were on a ventilator or in shock and evaluated them daily for delirium using the Confusion Assessment for the ICU and for catatonia using the Bush Francis Catatonia Rating Scale. Measures of association (OR) were assessed with a simple logistic regression model with catatonia as the independent variable and delirium as the dependent variable. Effect measure modification by age was assessed using a Likelihood ratio test. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: Results: We enrolled 136 medical and surgical critically ill patients with 452 matched (concomitant) delirium and catatonia assessments. Median age was 59 years (IQR: 52–68). In our cohort of 136 patients, 58 patients (43%) had delirium only, 4 (3%) had catatonia only, 42 (31%) had both delirium and catatonia, and 32 (24%) had neither. Age was significantly associated with prevalent delirium (i.e., increasing age associated with decreased risk for delirium) (p=0.04) after adjusting for catatonia severity. Catatonia was significantly associated with prevalent delirium (p<0.0001) after adjusting for age. Peak delirium risk was for patients aged 55 years with 3 or more catatonic signs, who had 53.4 times the odds of delirium (95% CI: 16.06, 176.75) than those with no catatonic signs. Patients 70 years and older with 3 or more catatonia features had half this risk. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF IMPACT: Conclusions: Catatonia is significantly associated with prevalent delirium even after controlling for age. These data support an inverted U-shape risk of delirium after adjusting for catatonia. This relationship and its clinical ramifications need to be examined in a larger sample, including patients with dementia. Additionally, we need to assess which acute brain syndrome (delirium or catatonia) develops first.

Over the past 30 years, the number of US doctoral anthropology graduates has increased by about 70%, but there has not been a corresponding increase in the availability of new faculty positions. Consequently, doctoral degree-holding archaeologists face more competition than ever before when applying for faculty positions. Here we examine where US and Canadian anthropological archaeology faculty originate and where they ultimately end up teaching. Using data derived from the 2014–2015 AnthroGuide, we rank doctoral programs whose graduates in archaeology have been most successful in the academic job market; identify long-term and ongoing trends in doctoral programs; and discuss gender division in academic archaeology in the US and Canada. We conclude that success in obtaining a faculty position upon graduation is predicated in large part on where one attends graduate school.

Seven coprolites of the extinct Shasta ground sloth (Nothrotheriops shastense) were recently discovered in the Los Angeles County Museum collection from Shelter Cave, New Mexico. Three dung balls provided radiocarbon ages of 11,330, 12,330 and 12,430 yr B.P. Packrat (Neotoma) middens disclose a xeric juniper woodland at Shelter Cave during the sloth's occupation. Plant cuticles from the dung indicate that the ground sloth had a diet dominated by mormon tea (Ephedra) and other xerophytic shrubs. Pollen spectra from the coprolites have high representations of anemophilous plants and low representations of the dietary items shown in the cuticle analysis.

Fifteen radiocarbon dates of sloth dung obtained since 1974 strengthen the hypothesis that sloth extinction occurred about 11,000 yr B.P. Paleoenvironmental studies indicate that ground sloths lived in juniper woodlands and montane conifer communities. Nothrotheriops commonly dined on shrubs that are still present in these habitats. It is difficult to explain the demise of the Shasta ground sloth by climatic change or dietary stress. Human predation remains as a possible explanation; ground sloth extinction appears to coincide with the time of Clovis mammoth hunters.

A newly identified tephra in stratified deposits in southwestern Utah, dated ∼14,000 14C yr B.P., may aid in correlating late Pleistocene deposits across parts of the southern Great Basin and west-central Colorado Plateau. Geochemical analyses of the ash suggest the tephra originated from Mono Craters, California, and most probably correlates with Wilson Creek ash #3. Because the ash is 2 mm thick ∼550 km from its source, the event may have been larger than others correlated to Mono Craters eruptions.

Palynological data from sediment cores from the Ruby Marshes provide a record of environmental and climatic changes over the last 40,000 yr. The modern marsh waters are fresh, but no deeper than ∼3 m. A shallow saline lake occupied this basin during the middle Wisconsin, followed by fresh and perhaps deep waters by 18,000 to 15,000 yr B.P. No sediments were recovered for the period between 15,000 and 11,000 yr B.P., possibly due to lake desiccation. By 10,800 yr B.P. a fresh-water lake was again present, and deeper-than-modern conditions lasted until 6800 yr B.P. The middle Holocene was characterized by very shallow water, and perhaps complete desiccation. The marsh system deepened after 4700 yr B.P., and fresh-water conditions persisted until modern times. Vegetation changes in Ruby Valley were more gradual than those seen in the paleolimno-logical record. Sagebrush steppe was more widespread than at present through the late Pleistocene and early Holocene, giving way somewhat to expanded shadscale vegetation between 8500 and 6800 yr B.P. Shadscale steppe contracted by 4000 yr B.P., but had greater than modern coverage until 1000 to 500 yr ago. Pinyon-juniper woodland was established in the southern Ruby Mountains by 4700 yr B.P.

Sediments of Balsam Meadow have produced a 11,000-yr pollen record from the southern Sierra Nevada of California. The Balsam Meadow diagram is divided into three zones. (1) The Artemisia zone (11,000–7000 yr B.P.) is characterized by percentages of sagebrush (Artemisia) and other nonarboreal pollen higher than can be found in the modern local vegetation. Vegetation during this interval was probably similar to the modern vegetation on the east slope of the Sierra Nevada and the climate was drier than that of today. (2) Pinus pollen exceeded 80% from 7000 to 3000 yr B.P. in the Pinus zone. The climate was moister than during the Artemisia zone. (3) Fir (Abies, Cupressaceae, and oak (Quercus) percentages increased after 3000 yr B.P. in the Abies zone as the modern vegetation at the site developed and the present cool-moist climatic regime was established. Decreased fire frequency after 1200 yr B.P. is reflected in decreased abundance of macroscopic charcoal and increased concentration of Abies magnifica and Pinus murrayana needles.

Radiocarbon dates of plant materials from packrat middens in caves below the elevation of the last high stand of Pleistocene Lake Lahontan, in conjunction with radiocarbon dates of ancient archaeological materials, provide evidence that the last high stand terminated before 12,070 yr B.P. This new information suggests that the last major fluctuation in the level of Lake Lahontan was approximately synchronous with those of Lakes Bonneville and Russell, and that these three lakes probably responded contemporaneously to the same regional paleoclimatic changes.

Quantitative estimates of late-Quaternary climate in the northeastern United States are reconstructed from fossil pollen data to evaluate changes in the regional moisture balance inferred from water-level fluctuations. We use environmental response surfaces to calibrate modern pollen data (for 17 different taxa) to an index of effective soil moisture and mean annual precipitation. We apply these response surfaces to fossil pollen data from 60 sites in the region to reconstruct changes in soil moisture and mean annual precipitation at 3000-yr intervals from 12,000 yr B.P. to present. The mapped reconstructions of soil moisture and mean annual precipitation illustrate how the regional moisture balance of the Northeast may have changed over the last 12,000 yr in response to changing climate. Reconstructions of annual precipitation show a gradual increase from 30% below modern values at 12,000 yr B.P. to near-modern values by 6000 yr B.P. and then remain relatively constant thereafter. Reconstructed changes in the index of effective soil moisture, however, show a pattern of near-modern values at 12,000, 6000, and 3000 yr B.P., with significantly lower values estimated for 9000 yr B.P., the time of maximum pine pollen abundances in the Northeast. This pattern of change is similar to the change in regional moisture balance inferred from stratigraphic records of water-level fluctuations. These results confirm previous interpretations, based on records of water-level fluctuations, that conditions in the Northeast were significantly drier during the early to middle Holocene than at other times during the last 12,000 yr.

Shorelines and surficial deposits (including buried forest-floor mats and organic-rich wetland sediments) show that Great Salt Lake did not rise higher than modern lake levels during the earliest Holocene (11.5–10.2 cal ka BP; 10–9 14C ka BP). During that period, finely laminated, organic-rich muds (sapropel) containing brine-shrimp cysts and pellets and interbedded sodium-sulfate salts were deposited on the lake floor. Sapropel deposition was probably caused by stratification of the water column — a freshwater cap possibly was formed by groundwater, which had been stored in upland aquifers during the immediately preceding late-Pleistocene deep-lake cycle (Lake Bonneville), and was actively discharging on the basin floor. A climate characterized by low precipitation and runoff, combined with local areas of groundwater discharge in piedmont settings, could explain the apparent conflict between evidence for a shallow lake (a dry climate) and previously published interpretations for a moist climate in the Great Salt Lake basin of the eastern Great Basin.

Initial interpretation of the sediments from the Burmester core (Eardley et al. (1973). Geological Society of America Bulletin 84, 211–216) indicated that 17 deep-lake cycles, separated by shallow-lake and soil-forming intervals, occurred in the Bonneville basin during the Brunhes Chron (the last 780 × 103 yr). Our re-examination of the core, along with new sedimentological, geochronological, and paleontological data, indicate that only four deep-lake cycles occurred during this period, apparently correlative with marine oxygen-isotope stages 2, 6, 12, and 16. This interpretation suggests that large lakes formed in the Bonneville basin only during the most extensive of the Northern Hemisphere glaciations.

Data from a transect of four cores collected in the Makepeace Cedar Swamp, near Carver, Massachusetts, record past changes in deposition, vegetation, and water level. Time series of palynological data provide a 14,000-yr record of regional and local vegetation development, a means for biostratigraphic correlation and dating, and information about changes in water level. Differences in records among cores in the basin show that water level decreased at least 1.5 m between ∼10,800 and 9700 cal yr B.P., after which sediment accumulation was slow and intermittent across the basin for about 1700 yr. Between 8000 and 5600 cal yr B.P., water level rose ∼2.0 m, after which slow peat accumulation indicates a low stand about the time of the hemlock decline at 5300 ± 200 cal yr B.P. Dry conditions may have continued after this time, but by 3200 cal yr B.P., the onset of peat accumulation in shallow cores indicates that water level had risen to close to its highest postglacial level, where it is today. Peat has accumulated across the whole basin since 3200 cal yr B.P. Data from Makepeace and the Pequot Cedar Swamp, near Ledyard, Connecticut, indicate an early Holocene dry interval in southern New England that began 11,500 yr ago near the end of the Younger Dryas interval. The dry conditions prevailed between 10,800 and 8000 cal yr B.P. and coincide with the arrival and later rise to dominance of white pine trees (Pinus strobus) both regionally and near the basins. Our results indicate a climatic cause for the “pine period” in New England.

In North America, terrestrial records of biodiversity and climate change that span Marine Oxygen Isotope Stage (MIS) 5 are rare. Where found, they provide insight into how the coupling of the ocean–atmosphere system is manifested in biotic and environmental records and how the biosphere responds to climate change. In 2010–2011, construction at Ziegler Reservoir near Snowmass Village, Colorado (USA) revealed a nearly continuous, lacustrine/wetland sedimentary sequence that preserved evidence of past plant communities between ~140 and 55 ka, including all of MIS 5. At an elevation of 2705 m, the Ziegler Reservoir fossil site also contained thousands of well-preserved bones of late Pleistocene megafauna, including mastodons, mammoths, ground sloths, horses, camels, deer, bison, black bear, coyotes, and bighorn sheep. In addition, the site contained more than 26,000 bones from at least 30 species of small animals including salamanders, otters, muskrats, minks, rabbits, beavers, frogs, lizards, snakes, fish, and birds. The combination of macro- and micro-vertebrates, invertebrates, terrestrial and aquatic plant macrofossils, a detailed pollen record, and a robust, directly dated stratigraphic framework shows that high-elevation ecosystems in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado are climatically sensitive and varied dramatically throughout MIS 5.

Ninety plant macrofossil taxa from the Ziegler Reservoir fossil site near Snowmass Village, Colorado, record environmental changes at high elevation (2705 m asl) in the Rocky Mountains during the Last Interglacial Period. Present-day vegetation is aspen forest (Populus tremuloides) intermixed with species of higher (Picea, Abies) and lower (Artemisia, Quercus) elevations. Stratigraphic units 4–13 contain montane forest taxa found near the site today and several species that today generally live at lower elevations within (Abies concolor, Lycopus americanus) and outside Colorado (Najas flexilis). These data suggest near-modern climatic conditions, with slightly warmer summer and winter temperatures. This montane forest period was succeeded by a shorter treeless interval (Unit 14) representing colder and/or drier conditions. In units 15–16, conifer trees reoccur but deciduous and herb taxa are lacking, suggesting a return to warmer conditions, although cooler than during the earlier forest period. Comparison of these inferred paleoclimatic changes with the site's geochronologic framework indicates that the lower interval of sustained warmth correlates with late MIS 6–early 5b (~138–94 ka), the cold interval with MIS 5b (~94–87 ka), and the uppermost cool assemblages with MIS 5a (~87–77 ka).