The paper describes the results of a radiographic evaluation of two elite individuals from the Early Classic period of Copan, Honduras; K’inich Yax K’uk’ Mo’, founder of the Early Classic Dynasty at Copan; and the principal individual recovered from the Motmot tomb. There were two primary goals: (1) the description of previously undocumented pathological processes; and (2) the evaluation of ind...

Nearly all science and engineering fields use search algorithms, which automatically explore a search space to find high-performing solutions: chemists search through the space of molecules to discover new drugs; engineers search for stronger, cheaper, safer designs, scientists search for models that best explain data, etc. The goal of search algorithms has traditionally been to return the sing...

It is now widely recognized that medical science was dramatically transformed from the mid-eighteenth to the early-twentieth centuries, while, at the same time, the organized medical profession came increasingly to monopolize health care in the western world. Less well known is the parallel shift, during this same period, of institutionalpower within medicine. At the beginning of the eighteenth...

Elites are subgroups of individuals within a society that have the ability and means to influence, lead, govern, and shape societies. Members of elites are often well connected individuals, which enables them to impose their influence to many and to quickly gather, process, and spread information. Here we argue that elites are not only composed of highly connected individuals, but also of inter...

In advanced economies interest rates generally vary inversely with the borrower’s socio-economic status, because status tends to depend inversely on default risk. Both of these relationships depend critically on the impartiality of the law. Specifically, they require a lender to be able to sue a recalcitrant borrower in a sufficiently impartial court. Where the law is markedly biased in favor o...

Elite mobilizations play a key role in shaping the contours of social institutions. Prior research has demonstrated that mobilizations and the resulting struggles between competing elites shape the social structure of markets (Fligstein 1996), corporate governance regimes (Davis and Thompson 1994), and organizations (Fligstein 1990; Zald and Berger 1978). More recent examples in the popular pre...