Human sacrifice is one of the most dramatic and enduring rituals known to ancient societies. Death of the victim represents the climax of the event because lethal violence produces vivid images that articulate power relations between the organizers, audience, and those sacrificed. This study reconstructs burial treatments, biological profiles, and trauma patterns on 49 human sacrifices excavated from the site El Pollo located 13 km from Chan Chan, the capital city of the Chim & uacute; Empire (AD 1050/1100-1450), in the Moche Valley, Peru. Children and adolescents (n = 31/37) exhibit cutmarks to the anterior chest, which mirror the victim profiles and patterning of skeletal trauma documented at other Chim & uacute; sacrificial sites. Sacrifice at El Pollo also involved opening the chest cavities of adult males, dispatching bound male captives, and administering incisions to victim torsos to release blood. Given the administrative capacity and imperial enterprises of the Chim & uacute; Empire, these data indicate that sacrifice at El Pollo was part of a highly systematic ritual program staged throughout the Moche Valley and overseen by ruling elites at Chan Chan. This study provides evidence that sacrifice was modified to suit the civic-ceremonial needs of the empire and supported imperial efforts of militaristic expansion. El sacrificio humano fue uno de los rituales m & aacute;s dram & aacute;ticos y duraderos de las sociedades antiguas. La muerte de la v & iacute;ctima representaba el cl & iacute;max del evento, donde se articulaban las relaciones de poder entre los organizadores, el p & uacute;blico y los sacrificados. Este estudio reconstruye tratamientos funerarios, perfiles biol & oacute;gicos y patrones de trauma en 49 sacrificios humanos excavados en el sitio El Pollo, ubicado en el Valle de Moche a 13 km de Chan Chan, la capital del Imperio Chim & uacute; (1050/1100-1450 dC). Los ni & ntilde;os y adolescentes (n = 31/37) exhiben marcas de corte en la parte anterior del t & oacute;rax que reflejan los perfiles de las v & iacute;ctimas y los patrones de traumatismo esquel & eacute;tico documentados en otros sitios Chim & uacute;. El sacrificio en El Pollo tambi & eacute;n implicaba abrir la cavidad tor & aacute;cica de los hombres adultos, matar a los cautivos y realizar incisiones en el torso de las v & iacute;ctimas para derramar su sangre. El sitio El Pollo form & oacute; parte de un programa ritual sistem & aacute;tico llevado a cabo en todo el valle Moche y supervisado por las & eacute;lites gobernantes de Chan Chan. Este estudio proporciona evidencia de que el sacrificio fue modificado para satisfacer las necesidades c & iacute;vico-ceremoniales imperiales y apoyar la expansi & oacute;n militar.
Background: Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly present in counselling, from clinical practice to the classroom. To date, little empirical research has examined how counsellors themselves view the role of AI in the profession. Objective This study aimed to explore counsellors' attitudes, beliefs and emotional responses to AI in counselling practice, ethics and future applications. Methods: We assessed emotions and attitudes toward AI among professional counsellors (N = 159) through a Qualtrics-based survey. Results: Counsellors most strongly endorsed positive emotions, such as excitement about AI's potential to address problems, while expressing concerns related to diminished human connection, privacy and bias. Results also revealed counsellors' favourable attitudes toward AI in practice and optimism about its ability to reduce workload and burnout, but scepticism remained regarding AI's relational capacity. Notably, school counsellors and counsellors from racial and ethnic minority groups reported greater optimism about AI. Conclusions: Findings suggest that counsellors view AI as a promising addition to the profession, despite concerns.
Carceral handbooks are an obscure yet significant set of material artifacts and practices that reshape how we think about media. While media studies scholars have contended that carceral facilities are a medium or test bed for technology, handbooks written for and distributed to incarcerated people are understudied. These are examples of what I call custodial media. Through a focus on Immigration and Customs Enforcement's National Detainee Handbook and counter-media produced by activist-artists, I show how custodial media perform an epistemic practice and orchestrate the services incarcerated people must engage in to maintain the media infrastructures of their own incarceration.
Additional food sources for an introduced predator are known to increase its efficiency on a target pest. In this context, inhibiting factors such as interference, predator competition, and the introduction of temporally dependent quantity and quality of additional food are all known to enable pest extinction. As climate change and habitat degradation have increasing effects in enhancing patchiness in ecological systems, the effect of additional food in patch models has also been recently considered. However, the question of complete pest extinction in such patchy systems remains open. In the current manuscript, we consider a biological control model where additional food drives competition among predators in one patch, and they subsequently disperse to a neighboring patch via drift or dispersal. We show that complete pest extinction in both patches is possible. Further, this state is proved to be globally asymptotically stable under certain parametric restrictions. We also prove a codimension-2 Bogdanov–Takens bifurcation. We discuss our results in the context of designing pest management strategies under enhanced climate change and habitat fragmentation. Such strategies are particularly relevant to control invasive pests such as the Soybean aphid (Aphis glycines), in the North Central United States.
Motivated by the goal of forecasting public sentiments, we consider a forecasting problem in the context of the Mean Field Games theory. We develop a numerical method, which is a version of the so-called convexification method. We provide theoretical convergence analysis that establishes global convergence of the method with a convergence rate. We also conduct numerical experiments that demonstrate the accurate performance of the convexification technique and highlight some promising features of this approach.
