Protecting the Right to Exist as a People: Intellectual Property as a Means to Protect Traditional Knowledge and Indigenous Culture

The dominant Western culture has created a legal system premised upon an individualistic and commercial foundation for intellectual property rights (IPR). This system necessarily excludes the protection of traditional knowledge and other components of Indigenous cultures, as well as concepts of communal responsibility for the keeping and transfer of such ideas and knowledge. These concepts are foundational to Indigenous knowledge systems in Alaska, as well as throughout the world. Today, a focus on this issue is critical to the preservation of indigenous cultures and their ways of knowing. We examine where national and international intellectual property rights systems are in addressing Indigenous cultural and intellectual property rights (Indigenous CIPR). We also examine opportunities for expansion of such rights in Alaska and around the world.Ye

Cult Statuary in the Judean Temple at Yeb

A revisitation of the Yeb archives with an eye to the question of cult statuary. The present article inventories the state of the question and makes several constructive suggestions. Its primary contributions are: to address the Yeb evidence, even preliminarily, to the debate over Yhwh statuary in the Jerusalem temple; to make a fresh interpretation of TAD A4.7/8; and to reread other key textual data for information about statuary

Götter, Tempel und Kult der Judäo–Aramäer von Elephantine: archäologische und schriftliche Zeugnisse aus dem perserzeit-lichen Ägypten

A review of Angela Rohrmoser's book, Götter, Tempel und Kult der Judäo–Aramäer

Gender Identity and Sense of Self Sufficiency

This study examines the effects of gender identity on sense of safety on a college campus. Data was collected through an online survey sent out to students at the University of New Hampshire. Students answered nominal and ordinal questions about their gender identity, as well as Likert-scale questions regarding opinions on safety while walking on campus. The results of the survey showed correlation between gender identity and sense of safety while walking alone at night, however, the survey showed no correlation between gender identity and sense of safety while walking at night with a friend. Collecting data from a larger and more representative sample would improve findings on students, specifically those who identify as transgender and non-conforming

Quasars and Galactic Nuclei,a Half-Century Agitated Story

I recall how the discovery of quasars occurred more than forty years ago, and the strong debates marking out their story. It led to the discovery of Massive Black Holes, which are now known to be present in almost all galaxies, and it opened on a coherent physical model and on a new vision of galaxy evolution.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures, talk given at the Albert Einstein Century International Conference, held in Paris, France, July 18-22, 2005, submitted to publication in AIP, Eds J.-M. Alimi and A. Fuzfa, replaced to add few references and to correct a mistak

What happened to Kemosh?

What happened to Kemosh in the era after Moab’s loss of political independence? The present article first argues that this question is of interest to scholarship on the Hebrew Bible because Kemosh and Yhwh were initially twinlike: both were patron deities of Iron Age Levantine kingdoms and shared various similarities of profile. As such, comparing the postnational history of Kemosh and Yhwh can help to isolate the historical and intellectual events without which Yhwh would presumably have developed along similar lines to Kemosh. This article next argues that both deities underwent »the Greek interpretation« by becoming identified with their equivalent in the Greek pantheon. But unlike Kemosh, Yhwh’s evolution included a counterbalancing force, i.e. inscripturation. Because prophetic oracles and regional stories about Kemosh were never gathered into an authoritative corpus, Kemosh became the Greek god Ares, without remainder

Accretion and emission processes in AGN

The UV-X continuum, the X-ray spectral features, and the variability in these bands provide powerful tools for studying the innermost regions of AGNs from which we gain an insight into the accretion process. In this chapter the discussion focusses on luminous AGN, i.e. Seyfert galaxies and quasars. The standard accretion disk model (a stationary geometrically thin disk) is described, and vertically averaged solutions for the radial structure are given. The emission of the standard disk is discussed using different approximations, and it is compared to the observations. This leads to the conclusion that more complex models are required, such as the irradiated disk and the disk-corona models. The advantage of this last model is that it explains the overall UV-X spectral distribution. In the framework of these disk models, the profile, intensity, and variability properties of the X-ray iron line can be explained by reprocessing at the surface of the cold disk very close to the black hole (the "relativistic disk model"). An alternative possibility is discussed, where the UV-X continuum is produced by a quasi-spherical distribution of dense clouds surrounded by (or embedded in) a hot medium. In such a model the iron line profile could be due to Comptonization instead of relativistic effects.Comment: 55 pages, 29 figures, Lectures given at GH Advanced Lectures on the Starburst-AGN Connection, INAOE, June 2000, eds. D. Kunth, I. Aretxag