Posts tagged work
CU study: We’re not so different than the Ancients
Feb 12th
rules of development, says CU-Boulder researcher
Recently derived equations that describe development patterns in modern urban areas appear to work equally well to describe ancient cities settled thousands of years ago, according to a new study led by a researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder.
“This study suggests that there is a level at which every human society is actually very similar,” said Scott Ortman, assistant professor of anthropology at CU-Boulder and lead author of the study published in the journal PLOS ONE. “This awareness helps break down the barriers between the past and present and allows us to view contemporary cities as lying on a continuum of all human settlements in time and place.”
Over the last several years, Ortman’s colleagues at the Santa Fe Institute (SFI), including Professor Luis Bettencourt, a co-author of the study, have developed mathematical models that describe how modern cities change as their populations grow. For example, scientists know that as a population increases, its settlement area becomes denser, while infrastructure needs per capita decrease and economic production per capita rises.
Ortman noticed that the variables used in these equations, such as cost of moving around, the size of the settled area, the population, and the benefits of people interacting, did not depend on any particular modern technology.
“I realized that if these models are adequate for explaining what’s going on in contemporary cities, they should apply to any settlements in any society,” he said. “So if these models are on the right track, they should apply to ancient societies too.”
To test his idea, Ortman used data that had been collected in the 1960s about 1,500 settlements in central Mexico that spanned from 1,150 years B.C. through the Aztec period, which ended about 500 years ago. The data included the number of dwellings the archaeologists were able to identify, the total settled area and the density of pottery fragments scattered on the surface. Taken together, these artifacts give an indication of the total population numbers and settlement density of the ancient sites.
“We started analyzing the data in the ways we were thinking about with modern cities, and it showed that the models worked,” Ortman said.
The discovery that ancient and modern settlements may develop in similar and predictable ways has implications both for archaeologists and people studying today’s urban areas. For example, it’s common for archaeologists to assume that population density is constant, no matter how large the settlement area, when estimating the population of ancient cities. The new equations could offer a way for archaeologists to get a more accurate head count, by incorporating the idea that population density tends to grow as total area increases.
In the future, the equations may also guide archaeologists in getting an idea of what they’re likely to find within a given settlement based on its size, such as the miles of roads and pathways. The equations could also guide expectations about the number of different activities that took place in a settlement and the division of labor.
“There should be a relationship between the population of settlements and the productivity of labor,” Ortman said. “So, for example, we would expect larger social networks to be able to produce more public monuments per capita than smaller settlements.”
The findings of the new study may also be useful to studies of modern societies. Because ancient settlements were typically less complex than today’s cities, they offer a simple “model system” for testing the equations devised to explain modern cities.
“The archaeological record actually provides surprisingly clear tests of these models, and in some cases it’s actually much harder to collect comparable data from contemporary cities,” Ortman said.
Other co-authors of the study include Andrew Cabaniss of Santa Fe Institute and the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and Jennie Sturm of the University of New Mexico.
The study is available at http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0087902.
-CU-
The Seahawks are swell. We all agree.
Feb 7th
The Seahawks’ magical 2013 season had come to its official end with a parade through more than 700,000 cheering fans and a championship celebration before 50,000 going-bonkers 12th Man fans at CenturyLink Field and 27,000 more at Safeco Field across the street. It was a sendoff befitting a Super Bowl champion, which the Seahawks became with their 43-8 victory over the Denver Broncos on Sunday night.
Before he left the stadium Wednesday, coach Pete Carroll held one more Q&A session with the media – in the same room where he had addressed them after each of the Seahawks’ 10 home games during the regular season and postseason.
But this one was different, because this season was different. For starters, it ended later than all but one of the Seahawks’ previous 37 seasons – with the exception being 2005, when the Seahawks lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super XL on Feb. 5, 2006.
So coach, are you behind already in the quest to not only defend, but extend, the Seahawks’ reign as Super Bowl champs?
“No,” Carroll said. “John (Schneider, the general manger) is all over it. So no, not at all.”
While the team was in New Jersey last week preparing for the Super Bowl, Schneider was meeting with his staff to prepare for the NFL Scouting Combine Feb. 19-25, the next big step for the May 8-10 NFL Draft; as well as the free agency period, which begins March 11.
As has been the case since Carroll and Schneider arrived in 2010, their first priority is retaining their own players who are scheduled to become free agents – a list that includes defensive lineman Michael Bennett, who led the team in sacks; and wide receiver Golden Tate, who led the team in receiving.
“We want this team together, we want to see if we can keep this team together,” Carroll said. “Every decision is difficult that we have to face. And guys that are at the end of their contracts, those are big issues for us. We love the guys; we love what they do and what they bring. And we’d like to keep it together as best we can.
“John will be faced with some really challenging discussions and things to get that done, but we’ll be very much in concert on it and what we want to get done and then we’ll go set about it one step at a time. And it’ll take us a good while, always with our eye on what’s going on with the draft and all that, and we’ll see if we put it together just right.”
PHOTO GALLERY: Players Celebrate 48
As for free agency, the Seahawks will be choosey, as they have been in the past, because they can afford to be after what Schneider and Carroll have done the past four offseasons.
“We have what we need,” Carroll said. “We just need to get back to work, when the time comes, with the right attitude and the right focus. That’s all I’m concerned about. We’ll have an opportunity to add some players to our team through the draft and all. We’ll take a good look at free agency.
“I don’t see anything that we need to add. We just need to get better.”
The players will be around Virginia Mason Athletic Center in the coming weeks and months, but the offseason program does not start until April 21.
“It seems like forever,” Carroll said. “I think we walk out of here totally arm in arm with the fact that we’re going to have a great offseason. That means that the guys have to be totally committed to having a great offseason, because they’re going to have a lot of distractions and a lot of people pulling them in different directions.”
Carroll addressed that during the final team meeting on Tuesday, when the players also cleaned out their lockers and took their exit physicals.
“Quite frankly, each guy’s got to set his plan in motion and not let the distractions get in the way of the hard work that it takes to put this thing back together again,” Carroll said.
“It’s an extraordinary opportunity, because it’s so difficult for teams to come back and play well after winning the Super Bowl. We take that challenge on now, nose to nose. We’re going to go after it and see what we can do about it.”
And Carroll doesn’t care for talk of a repeat – as no team has repeated as Super Bowl champion since the New England Patriots in 2003 and 2004, and they were the first to do it since the Broncos in 1997 and 1998. Or even the Super Bowl, for that matter. He’s all about improving each day, which allows you to improve each week, which allows you to improve each season.
“Let me say it even more specifically, it’s not about repeating to me,” he said. “That isn’t it. We’re trying to do something really good for a really long time. And we want to see how far we can go, and someday we can look back and see what we accomplished. In the middle of it, I don’t think it’s time to assess it.
PHOTO GALLERY: Fans Celebrate 48
“In this year, I never talked about the Super Bowl. I talked about trying to help these guys be the best they possibly can be.”
And in 2013, the Seahawks were the best in team in all of football.
Brooks: Buffs Rely On Tightened ‘D’ In Rout Of Utes
Feb 2nd
Colorado’s coach was more focused on what her team didn’t do than most anything Utah did – and fine-tuning her team was the right approach. Lappe’s Buffs clamped down defensively, made a few offensive tweaks and dispatched the Utes 61-45 at the Coors Events Center.
“It was good to get that win,” Lappe said. “I thought our players stepped up and did some good things on the defensive end and in rebounding.”
Winning for only the second time in their past eight games, the Buffs (13-8, 3-7) scored the afternoon’s first points and never trailed thereafter. CU led 33-16 at halftime, by as many as 20 points early in the second half, and allowed the Utes (10-11, 3-7) no closer than 13 for the rest of the game.
‘D’ was key for the Buffs, who had shot below 40 percent from the field in nine of their previous 11 games. While Sunday’s shooting percentage didn’t climb above 40 (35.8), CU held Utah to a frigid 25.9 percent – well below the 38.8 the Utes shot in Wednesday night’s 58-55 win.
In that game, CU’s Arielle Roberson and Jen Reese combined for only nine points. By halftime Sunday, Roberson-Reese had 16 between them – Roberson with 9, Reese with 7. Reese didn’t score in the second half, but Roberson doubled her first-half productivity and finished as the game’s high scorer (18).
Roberson said Lappe’s characterization of the Buffs now as “underdogs” made them “all come out and be more aggressive . . . we threw the first punch and were more aggressive.”
Defensively, said Roberson, the Buffs “boxed out a lot better, got a lot of defensive rebounds. We were better on our fouls, so I think (Lappe) was very pleased about that. We were scrappy, we were in passing lanes, and that set the tone for our offense.”
Brittany Wilson added 10 points for CU, seven of them in the second half. Freshmen Haley Smith contributed eight points and eight rebounds, matching Roberson’s board total. Lappe said Smith “played tremendous. I liked her demeanor . . . she was aggressive and that gave us a lot of energy and helped our overall intensity.”
Smith, a 6-0 wing from Sammamish, Wash., called Sunday’s win “a good bounce-back game for us . . . I think our mentality is changing.”
Sophomore Jamee Swan, who had scored 15 points and collected eight rebounds in Wednesday night’s loss, was held out of Sunday’s first for violating a team rule. She played 5 minutes, totaling one point and two rebounds.
Utah had one player in double figures – guard Danielle Rodriguez with 11. Forward Michelle Plouffe, the Utes’ high scorer (14) in Wednesday’s game, went 1-for-10 from the field Sunday and finished with 7 points. Cheyenne Wilson, who had 11 points against the Buffs in the earlier meeting, managed nine in the rematch.
Lappe credited Roberson, Reese and Rachel Hargis for their defensive work on Plouffe and for turning Sunday’s game in a guards duel.
“We match up well with her (but) you always have to know where (Plouffe) is,” Lappe said, noting that Hargis did “a great job” in spelling Roberson, which allowed Roberson to stay fresh on the offensive end.
The Buffs raced to a 33-16 halftime lead, finally ending a long 3-point drought and getting an impressive first-half finish from freshman Zoe Beard-Fails.
After missing the last 13 trey attempts – a span of 88:33 or two-plus games – CU got a 3-pointer from Reese to take a 5-2 lead that was never relinquished. Roberson closed the Buffs’ first-half scoring with a straightaway triple from the top of the key.
CU finished the half 2-of-6 from beyond the arc and got one of its top 3-point shooters – junior guard Lexy Kresl – back on the court. Kresl, out for the previous three games with a lower leg injury, played 4 first-half minutes but did not attempt a shot. But with 6:45 to play in the game, she knocked down a critical trey to send CU ahead 50-31. The Buffs finished 3-of-11 from behind the arc.
Lappe said Kresl wasn’t necessarily ahead of schedule in her comeback, noting that she will be brought along slowly and monitored for this week’s games. The Buffs visit the Pacific Northwest this week, playing at Oregon State on Friday (9 p.m. MT) and at Oregon on Sunday (3 p.m. MT).
Beard-Fails, who had scored six points in the previous nine Pac-12 games, matched that total in final 2:38 of Sunday’s first half. The 6-2 Beard-Fails, of Herndon, Va., followed a pair of free throws with two inside baskets as the Buffs stretched their advantage to 30-16.
Half a minute later, Roberson drained her 3-pointer, giving CU its 17-point lead at the break. The Buffs owned a healthy 27-12 rebounding edge after the first 20 minutes (51-35 for the game), but they committed 11 turnovers (17 for the game) which the Utes converted into 11 first-half points – the key number in keeping Utah as close as it was after one half. The plus-15 board advantage was the Buffs’ biggest in a half this season.
CU shot 42.9 percent in the opening half and went into the second half wanting that stat to hold up. It didn’t, but the Buffs compensated on the defensive end. They kept their intensity up to open the final 20 minutes, opened a pair of 20-point leads and kept the Utes playing catch up for the remainder of the game.
Utah coach Anthony Levrets applauded CU for adjusting after Wednesday’s game: “When they played big the first time, we had our two guards guarding Arielle on the perimeter, and then that allowed Plouffe to guard Reese.
“When they went back small today, it was a really good move by them because then our ‘five’ man has to either guard Reese or Roberson –and neither one of them is ever a ‘five.’ Playing on the perimeter was really hard for our big girls. It was a great adjustment by Colorado and I give a lot of credit to them.”
Contact: BG.Brooks@Colorado.EDU