The Khao Wong Prachan Valley of central Thailand is one of four known prehistoric loci of copper mining, smelting and casting in Southeast Asia. Many radiocarbon determinations from bronze-consumption sites in north-east Thailand date the earliest copper-base metallurgy there in the late second millennium BC. By applying kernel density estimation analysis to approximately 100 new AMS radiocarbon dates, the authors conclude that the valley's first Neolithic millet farmers had settled there by c. 2000 BC, and initial copper mining and rudimentary smelting began in the late second millennium BC. This overlaps with the established dates for Southeast Asian metal-consumption sites, and provides an important new insight into the development of metallurgy in central Thailand and beyond.

In prehistoric coastal and western-central Thailand, rice was the dominant cultivar. In eastern-central Thailand, however, the first known farmers cultivated millet. Using one of the largest collections of archaeobotanical material in Southeast Asia, this article examines how cropping systems were adapted as domesticates were introduced into eastern-central Thailand. The authors argue that millet reached the region first, to be progressively replaced by rice, possibly due to climatic pressures. But despite the increasing importance of rice, dryland, rain-fed cultivation persisted throughout ancient central Thailand, a result that contributes to refining understanding of the development of farming in Southeast Asia.

We use data from hypothetical and nonhypothetical choice-based conjoint analysis to estimate willingness to pay for local food products. The survey was administered to three groups: consumers from a buying club with experience with local and grass-fed production markets, a random sample of Maryland residents, and shoppers at a nonspecialty Maryland supermarket. We find that random-sample and supermarket shoppers are willing to pay a premium for local products but view local and grass-fed production as substitutes. Conversely, buying-club members are less willing to pay for local production than the other groups but do not conflate local and grass-fed production.

Background: The gold standard for determining the left ventricular ejection fraction is cardiac magnetic resonance imaging. Other parameters for determining the ejection fraction such as M-mode echocardiography are operator-dependant and often inaccurate. Assessment of the displacement of the mitral valve annulus using two-dimensional speckle tracking echocardiography may provide an accurate and simple method of determining the left ventricular ejection fraction in children. Method: We retrospectively studied 70 healthy 9-year-old children with no history of cardiovascular disease who had been assessed using cardiac magnetic resonance imaging and two-dimensional transthoracic echocardiography. Mitral displacement was determined using the tissue motion annular displacement (TMAD) feature of Philips QLAB version 9. The midpoint displacement of the mitral valve was calculated, and the predicted left ventricular ejection fraction was compared with magnetic resonance imaging-derived and M-mode-derived ejection fractions. Results: The mean ejection fraction derived from magnetic resonance imaging (64.5 (4.6)) was similar to that derived from the TMAD midpoint (60.9 (2.7), p = 0.001) and the M-mode (61.9 (7), p = 0.012). The TMAD midpoint correlated strongly with the magnetic resonance imaging-derived ejection fraction (r = 0.69, p < 0.001), as did the predicted fraction (r = 0.67, p < 0.001). The M-mode ejection fraction showed a poor linear correlation with both magnetic resonance imaging-derived and TMAD-derived fractions (r = 0.33 and 0.04, respectively). Conclusion: TMAD of the mitral valve is a simple, effective, and highly reproducible method of assessing the ejection fraction in normal children. It shows a strong linear correlation with magnetic resonance imaging-derived ejection fraction and is superior to M-mode-derived ejection fractions.

Several Trichoderma virens (syn. Gliocladium virens) strains have good biocontrol activity against Rhizoctonia solani on cotton but lack some of the commercially desirable characteristics found in other Trichoderma species. In an attempt to combine these desirable characteristics, we used a highly effective biocontrol strain of T. virens in protoplast fusions with a strain of T. koningii, which had good storage qualities, but little biocontrol efficacy. All fusants were morphologically similar to one of the parental species. However, when compared to the morphologically similar T. koningii parent, two fusants showed significantly better biocontrol activity against R. solani on cotton. In addition, one T. virens-like fusant gave significantly less control than the T. virens parent. Fusants also differed from the morphologically similar parent in the production of secondary metabolites. One fusant was obtained which maintained biocontrol activity during storage for up to a year.

Richard Grassby, an economic historian of Early Modern England now at the Institute for Advanced Studies, has written a sly, slender contribution to the Rowman & Littlefield “Critical Issues in History” series. An extended essay on the question of what capitalism is, it begins by examining the attempts of Marx, Weber, Sombart, and Schumpeter, among others, to locate the essence of capitalism in this or that particular feature of economic, social, or political life. Grassby's method is to select a theory and then debunk it by producing a piece of evidence for which it cannot account. Hence, for example, comparison of “traditional marxist teaching” to the basic facts, as he sees them, of agrarian capitalism in Early Modern England (p. 26). Where a Marxist theorist would assert that a change in the mode of production transformed the rural economy, a dogged empiricist like Grassby finds that the motors of change were “in fact” demographic pressure and “the market with some government support.” To the extent that he allows himself a general theory, it is a non-linear, cyclical one reminiscent of the Enlightenment thinkers: equilibrium and disequilibrium, freedom and regulation, activity and decay all wrestle one another in eternal combat, and there is no final victory to be had (pp. 30, 45).

Since 1984, the Ek Balam Project has been investigating the organization and developmental history of a large Maya polity in the northeastern part of the Yucatan Peninsula. The survey included both urban Ek Balam, the largest regional center during the Late Classic period (a.d. 600–900), covering a minimum of 12 km2, and its rural hinterland. One result of this project has been the construction of a preliminary ceramic history of the region, the subject of this report. Evidence supports a sequence of occupations extending from the Middle Preclassic through the Hispanic period (600 b.c.–a.d. 1600). The ceramic sequence, constructed from a type-variety analysis of more than a quarter of a million pieces of pottery from surface survey and excavations, consists of six preliminary ceramic complexes. This ceramic analysis extends our understanding of Maya cultural development in the northern Maya lowlands to a largely unknown area of the peninsula.