Khirbet Al-Sheikh Humaid is found 615 m above sea level in the central highlands of Palestine, northwest of the city of Nablus. During rescue excavations carried out at the site, part of a male human skull with a tooth attached was discovered. Accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon (AMS 14C) dating and stable isotope analysis were performed on the tooth at the Hertelendi Laboratory in Debrecen, Hungary. Dating revealed the individual had lived in the time frame 900–1030 AD, which is within the Abbasid period (750–1258 AD). Dietary analysis gave information on the daily life of the inhabitants of the settlement, showing local agriculture provided a diet of legumes and vegetables.

This article proposes that Horace's Epodes and Ovid's Metamorphoses open with significant acrostics that comprise the first two letters, in some cases forming syllables, of successive lines: IB-AM/IAMB (Epod. 1.1–2) and IN-CO-(H)AS (Met. 1.1–3). Each acrostic, it will be argued, tees up programmatic concerns vital to the work it opens: generic identity and the interrelation of form and content (Epodes), etymology and monumentality (Metamorphoses). Moreover, as befits their placement at the head of collections, both acrostics negotiate the challenge of literary commencement. The introduction reviews recent developments in acrostic studies and discusses important predecessors and parallels for Horace's and Ovid's ‘two-letter’ and syllabic acrostics. Two subsequent sections examine the acrostics singly, and a conclusion compares the dialogues that these acrostics open between author and reader, underscoring the welcome challenge which Ovid's acrostic offers to the prevailing scholarly view that this form of wordplay is a strictly visual affair.

This article by Ian Hunter, which has been adapted from his BIALL Conference presentation at the Belfast Europa Hotel, examines increasing the visibility of law firm library and information services in terms of what should be done and what should not be done. Or, as Ian puts it: “Is saying yes to everything really the right thing to do?”

This Note explores an alarming, decades-old trend that has received renewed attention from enforcement agencies and the media: nursing homes suing family members and friends ("relatives") for residents’ unpaid bills. As justification, nursing homes point to “responsible party” clauses within admission agreements signed by relatives during the admission process. Undeterred by the 1987 Federal Nursing Home Reform Act’s (FNHRA) prohibition on requiring relatives to act as financial guarantors in exchange for residents’ admission, nursing homes use carefully worded “responsible party” clauses to obtain virtually the same result: relatives’ total liability for residents’ unpaid balances. Relatives are frequently caught off-guard by these lawsuits; many who sign admission agreements do so without a proper understanding of the potential liability they are assuming and have limited (if any) access to residents’ assets. This problem is aggravated by several aspects of the admission process that disadvantage relatives, such as the stressful and emotional nature of admission, the complicated language in admission agreements, and the inadequate—at times, misleading—guidance provided by nursing homes. This Note examines the tension between the FNHRA’s financial protections for relatives and nursing homes’ admission practices and use of “responsible party” clauses. Furthermore, this Note proposes solutions aimed at better informing relatives of the legal risks associated with “responsible party” clauses.

When using dyadic data (i.e., data indexed by pairs of units), researchers typically assume a linear model, estimate it using Ordinary Least Squares, and conduct inference using “dyadic-robust” variance estimators. The latter assumes that dyads are uncorrelated if they do not share a common unit (e.g., if the same individual is not present in both pairs of data). We show that this assumption does not hold in many empirical applications because indirect links may exist due to network connections, generating correlated outcomes. Hence, “dyadic-robust” estimators can be biased in such situations. We develop a consistent variance estimator for such contexts by leveraging results in network statistics. Our estimator has good finite-sample properties in simulations, while allowing for decay in spillover effects. We illustrate our message with an application to politicians’ voting behavior when they are seating neighbors in the European Parliament.

The papers in this cluster—and sound studies more broadly—attune our ears to hearing and listening, to paying attention to that “other” important sense of modernity: the aural or sonic that so often is asked to play second fiddle to the visual. The challenge of sound studies, Jonathan Sterne reminds us, “is to think across sounds, to consider sonic phenomena in relationship to one another—as types of sonic phenomena rather than as things-in-themselves—whether they be music, voices, listening, media, buildings, performances, or another other path into sonic life.”

ChatGPT launched in November 2022, triggering a global debate on the use of artificial intelligence (AI). A debate on AI-enabled lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS) has been underway far longer. Two sides have emerged: one in favor and one opposed to an international law ban on LAWS. This essay explains the position of advocates of a ban without attempting to persuade opponents. Supporters of a ban believe LAWS are already unlawful and immoral to use without the need of a new treaty or protocol. They nevertheless seek an express prohibition to educate and publicize the threats these weapons pose. Foremost among their concerns is the “black box” problem. Programmers cannot know what a computer operating a weapons system empowered with AI will “learn” from the algorithm they use. They cannot know at the time of deployment if the system will comply with the prohibition on the use of force or the human right to life that applies in both war and peace. Even if they could, mechanized killing affronts human dignity. Ban supporters have long known that “AI models are not safe and no one knows how to reliably make them safe” or morally acceptable in taking human life.

Survey teams at the El Pilar Archaeological Reserve for Maya Flora and Fauna have mapped 70 percent of its 20 km2 area and revealed the extent of settlement around the city center. Large-scale civic architecture, and the distribution of smaller ceremonial groups and minor centers, reflect the wealth and power of Maya rulers presiding over the largest Classic period city in the upper Belize River area. Previous analyses suggest disparities in wealth at El Pilar were more nuanced than the elite/commoner dichotomy commonly invoked for Classic Maya society. This article works to understand wealth inequality at ancient El Pilar by computing Gini coefficients from areal and volumetric calculations of primary residential units—the class of settlement remains most likely to represent ancient households. Presentation of Gini coefficients and their potential interpretations follows a discussion of settlement classification and residential group labor investment. We conclude by contextualizing these results within prior settlement pattern analyses to explore how disparities in wealth may have been distributed across the physical and social landscape.

Medical-legal partnership (MLP) embeds attorneys and paralegals into care delivery to help clinicians address root causes of health inequities. Notwithstanding decades of favorable outcomes, MLP is not as well-known as might be expected. In this essay, the authors explore ways in which strategic alignment of legal services with healthcare services in terms of professionalism, information collection and sharing, and financing might help the MLP movement become a more widespread, sustainable model for holistic care delivery.

This paper presents two proposals to improve the text of an important passage in Manilius’ Astronomica, 1.456–68, in which the poet explains natura's rationale for arranging the stars in such a way as to create only a partial, rather than a full, representation of the constellation figures. The text of line 464 is repunctuated in order to give proper emphasis to natura's parsimonious disposition of the stars. Scholars have noted that the sentence atque ignibus ignes | respondent in 466–7 is not consistent with the poet's account of how the constellation figures were delineated nor with what an observer sees in the heavens. The conjecture insignibus (neuter plural), for the transmitted atque ignibus in line 466, is offered to indicate that it is the distinctive features (insignia) of the figures to which specific stars correspond and by means of which the figures are described. Attention is also drawn to a striking paronomasia in 466–7, designat … insignibus ignes, which creates a meaningful phonetic constellation of celestial fire (ignis), sign (signum) and insigne (distinctive feature) and thus provides evidence, on the linguistic level, of natura's providentia.