Análisis tafonómicos de conjuntos arqueomalacológicos: concheros en la costa norte de Santa Cruz (Patagonia, Argentina)

En este trabajo se presenta una propuesta metodológica para el estudio de conjuntos arqueomalacológicos de concheros y su aplicación en el análisis de restos recuperados a partir de excavaciones sistemáticas en sitios ubicados al sur de la ría Deseado, en la costa norte de Santa Cruz, Patagonia argentina. Esta metodología se focaliza en el estudio de diferentes variables tafonómicas que afectan el registro arqueomalacológico para avanzar en la interpretación de los agentes y procesos involucrados en la formación de las estructuras de concheros y sobre las actividades humanas desarrolladas en los sitios. Además estos análisis son significativos para realizar interpretaciones paleoambientales, paleoecológicas, así como para evaluar la integridad de los conjuntos, interpretar las características estructurales y la variabilidad de los sitios.This paper proposes a method of studying archaeomalacological assemblages from shell middens, and describes an application of this method in the analysis of remains recovered from systematic excavations at sites located south of the Ría Deseado estuary (northern coast of Santa Cruz Province, Argentina). This methodology aims to isolate taphonomic variables affecting archaeomalacological records to aid identification of the agents and processes involved in shell midden formation and to improve interpretations of the human activities performed at the sites. These analyses are also relevant to paleoenvironmental and paleoecological reconstructions, and to interpretations of site variability through assessments of assemblage integrity and structure.Fil: Hammond, Heidi. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo. División Arqueología; Argentin

Safety, Security and Socio-Economic Wellbeing in Somaliland

This report documents the findings from a study on the relationship between safety/security and socio-economic wellbeing in Somaliland. The study was conducted for the Danish Demining Group (DDG) and Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining in twelve of DDG's project sites. It is based on a quantitative survey of 378 households and qualitative focus group interviews. Findings suggest a high degree of correlation between improvements in safety and security, many associated with the community safety work of DDG, and socio-economic benefits to communities. Reported benefits include fewer conflicts, more secure communities at night, fewer accidents involving small arms and explosive remnants of war, and better community-police relations. These are perceived to have contributed to improvements in access to markets, lengthening hours that businesses can remain open, improved opportunities for participating in savings activities, and generally increased household incomes. Recommendations for maximizing the benefits of improved security for socio-economic gains are provided

How many people are in the Ragman Roll?

In the previous two features of the month, John Reuben Davies explained the process by which the Ragman Rolls were produced and discussed the nature of the oaths taken by the men and women who submitted to King Edward I’s rule. In this feature and the features to follow, we will examine the people themselves whose names are recorded in this unique document. We will start by asking the question of just how many people are ‘in’ the Ragman Rolls. In this feature, we will focus on trying to ascertain exactly how many men and women swore fealty, and in some cases also performed homage, to King Edward in the Ragman Roll. Of course, it is worth keeping in mind that those swearing fealty were not the only people mentioned in the rolls – there were also the men acting as witnesses to their fealties. These witnesses could include ‘Scottish’ nobles like the earls of Angus and Dunbar or March, but most of them were Englishmen in the retinue of King Edward

Infinite cycles in the random stirring model on trees

We prove that, in the random stirring model of parameter T on an infinite rooted tree each of whose vertices has at least two offspring, infinite cycles exist almost surely, provided that T is sufficiently high. In the appendices, the bound on degree above which the result holds is improved slightly.Comment: 23 pages, two figure

Agricultural software : a case study of feed and animal information systems in the New Zealand dairy industry : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements of a Masters of AgriCommerce at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

Every farmer utilises agricultural software, either directly or indirectly, as part of feed and animal information systems (IS) used for decision making and compliance on New Zealand (NZ) dairy farms. With continued development and availability of advanced information and communication technologies (ICT), more farmers are using software in their IS. This study investigates: how NZ dairy farmers use agricultural software in their feed and animal IS; the software attributes that influence the use and impact of these software; and, the drivers and inhibitors of software use and impact. A case study research approach was used to investigate these questions. Evidence was collected using semi-structured interviews with six NZ dairy farmers with farms of different scale and ownership structure, and with five commercial agricultural software providers. Results show that feed and animal IS are particularly useful for farmer decision making and compliance at the operational and tactical management levels, but also produce data and information critical for strategic management. The number of software products used and the degree of data and information collation in animal IS compared to feed IS are considerably different. Animal IS were streamlined, with data and information collected and collated together in a limited number of software with only one or two ‘focal’ software as the centrepiece of the IS. In contrast, feed IS were less streamlined, with data and information flowing into a number of different software. Six important software attributes that influence use and impact of software were identified by farmers and providers, with ‘simplicity’ and, ‘integration with software and hardware’, the most highly recognised attributes. The delivery of software with these attributes was achieved by providers in a number of instances, however, other software failed to fully meet farmer needs. Organisational and people drivers/inhibitors had a greater effect on software use and impact than technological drivers/inhibitors indicating that these IS dimensions should be the focus of future improvements

Phase separation in random cluster models I: uniform upper bounds on local deviation

This is the first in a series of three papers that addresses the behaviour of the droplet that results, in the percolating phase, from conditioning the Fortuin-Kasteleyn planar random cluster model on the presence of an open dual circuit Gamma_0 encircling the origin and enclosing an area of at least (or exactly) n^2. (By the Fortuin-Kasteleyn representation, the model is a close relative of the droplet formed by conditioning the Potts model on an excess of spins of a given type.) We consider local deviation of the droplet boundary, measured in a radial sense by the maximum local roughness, MLR(Gamma_0), this being the maximum distance from a point in the circuit Gamma_0 to the boundary of the circuit's convex hull; and in a longitudinal sense by what we term maximum facet length, MFL(Gamma_0), namely, the length of the longest line segment of which the boundary of the convex hull is formed. The principal conclusion of the series of papers is the following uniform control on local deviation: that there are positive constants c and C such that the conditional probability that the normalised quantity n^{-1/3}\big(\log n \big)^{-2/3} MLR(Gamma_0) lies in the interval [c,C] tends to 1 in the high n-limit; and that the same statement holds for n^{-2/3}\big(\log n \big)^{-1/3} MFL(Gamma_0). In this way, we confirm the anticipated n^{1/3} scaling of maximum local roughness, and provide a sharp logarithmic power-law correction. This local deviation behaviour occurs by means of locally Gaussian effects constrained globally by curvature, and we believe that it arises in a range of radially defined stochastic interface models, including several in the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang universality class. This paper is devoted to proving the upper bounds in these assertions, and includes a heuristic overview of the surgical technique used in the three papers.Comment: 56 pages, 7 figures. Comm. Math. Phys., to appear. Several figures and a glossary of notation have been added, and numerous typos have been correcte