Book Review of Archaeological Theory and the Politics of Cultural Heritage by Laurajane Smith

The passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) in 1991 significantly changed the way archaeology would be done in the United States. This act was presaged by growing complaints and resentment directed at the scientific community by Native Americans over the treatment of their ancestral remains. Many of the underlying issues came to a head with the discovery and subsequent court battles over the 9,200-year-old individual commonly known as Kennewick Man. This had a galvanizing effect on the discipline, not only perpetuating the sometimes adversarial relationship between archaeologists and Native Americans, but also creating a rift between those archaeologists who understood Native American concerns and those who saw their ancestral skeletal remains representing the legacy of humankind and thus belonging to everyone. Similar scenarios have emerged in Australia.

Routing Algorithms for All-Optical Networks with Power Considerations: The Unicast Case

In this paper, we investigate the problem of routing connections in all-optical networks while allowing for degradation of routed signals by different optical components. To overcome the complexity of the problem, we divide it into two parts. First, we solve the pure RWA problem using fixed routes for every connection. Second, power assignment is accomplished by either using the smallest-gain first (SGF) heuristic or using a genetic algorithm. Numerical examples on a wide variety of networks show that (a) the number of connections established without considering the signal attenuation was most of the time greater than that achievable considering attenuation and (b) the genetic solution quality was much better than that of SGF, especially when the conflict graph of the connections generated by the linear solver is denser.

United States v. Steinmetz: The Legal Legacy of the Civil War, Revisited

One of the enduring and yet unresolved issues concerning the Civil War is its legal nature: Was it an insurrection or an international war? During the war and since, the United States courts have repeatedly been called upon to determine the status of property which was under the control of the Confederacy and its agents during the Civil War. In the process of making such determinations, the courts have reopened questions about the war's legal status. United States v. Steinmetz is such a case.