Great kivas served as important ritual spaces and played significant roles in community integration throughout the Pithouse period (AD 550–1000) occupation of the Mimbres Mogollon region of southwestern New Mexico. This article uses data from excavations at the Harris site, a large pithouse village located in the Mimbres Valley, to explore the role of great kivas and an associated plaza in community integration as the village grew, extended family households formed, and social distinctions developed. Data from excavations of sequentially used great kivas surrounding the plaza along with household data from domestic structures are used to examine the role of ritual space during the Pithouse period.

There is a paucity of educational resources for potential clinical trial participants, particularly resources in plain language, attentive to health literacy principles and translated into native languages. The New England Research Subject Advocacy Group was formed to explore common issues, interests, and concerns related to the experience of participation in clinical research and research participant safety. Specifically, the group sought to increase community awareness and trust through the development and distribution of publicly accessible informational resources. In support of these aims, the group developed a robust library of high-quality, plain-language educational materials covering topics in health research, research participation, and common research procedures, and translated the majority of the materials into an additional 15 languages. These resources have been downloaded over 130,000 times. After English, the most common languages downloaded are Vietnamese, Spanish, and Korean.

A 2-yr experiment repeated at five locations across the northeastern United States evaluated the effect of weed density and time of glyphosate application on weed control and corn grain yield using a single postemergence (POST) application. Three weed densities, designed to reduce corn yields by 10, 25, and 50%, were established across the locations, using forage sorghum as a surrogate weed. At each weed density, a single application of glyphosate at 1.12 kg ai/ha was applied to glyphosate-resistant corn at the V2, V4, V6, and V8 growth stages. At low and medium weed densities, the V4 through V8 applications provided nearly complete weed control and yields equivalent to the weed-free treatment. Weed biomass and the potential for weed seed production from subsequent weed emergence made the V2 timing less effective. At high weed densities, the V4 followed by the V6 timing provided the most effective weed control, while maintaining corn yield. Weed competition from subsequent weed emergence in the V2 application and the duration of weed competition in the V8 timing reduced yield on average by 12 and 15%, respectively. This research shows that single POST applications can be successful but weed density and herbicide timing are key elements.

The Late Pithouse period in the Mimbres Mogollon region of southwestern New Mexico was a dynamic time during which many social changes occurred. One of the more significant of these changes appears to be related to the role of land-holding kin groups at some of the larger pithouse sites. We present bioarchaeological data from our recent excavations at the Harris Site in the Mimbres River Valley to illustrate that certain kin groups were gaining social power compared to others in the village. We discuss the reasons for these power differentials and the implications that they have for understanding the myriad other social changes occurring valley-wide at the end of the Pithouse period.

A blackboard based intelligent control system has been developed for a family of complex non-equilibrium materials processes. The system is being tested in the laboratory for control of a particular high risk, high value-added step in the manufacture of carbon-carbon composites. The system uses knowledge based methods in several fundamental ways to fill gaps left by control theory and process models. Most notable of these are (1) inferring from indirect measurements and history the process state at multiple, changing levels of abstraction, (2) anticipating problems and planning actions to reach goal (end of process) states, (3) selecting, executing and interpreting approximate models to predict process progression and (4) changing control objectives as the physical situation changes. The system has been demonstrated to substantially reduce processing time.

Recent studies of Middle Paleolithic lithic assemblages have focused on questions of interest to lithic analysts everywhere, including the effect of raw material availability, occupation span, and tool maintenance on assemblage characteristics. In this paper, we add to the growing database on Middle Paleolithic assemblages using material recently excavated at Combe-Capelle Bas in the Dordogne region of southern France. The site provides a unique opportunity for addressing questions concerning lithic assemblage variability because it is located on a high quality flint source. We present data on core reduction, blank selection, raw material procurement, and lithic transport that provide information on lithic use pertinent for both Old World and New World archaeologists. Our data show that raw material availability and group mobility influenced blank selection, production, and transport at Combe-Capelle.