Tajikistan

Nearly a decade after a civil war ravaged the Republic of Tajikistan, the country is still suffering the effects of contamination from landmines and explosive remnants of war. Although the country has never produced or exported anti-personnel mines, Soviet and Uzbek forces emplaced them along most of its borders. Tajikistan is also the only State Party to the Ottawa Convention to declare APMs stockpiled in its territory by a non-State Party; Russian Ministry of Defense units deployed in Tajikistan control approximately 18,200 mines. All of these issues contribute to a crippling mine problem for one of the poorest countries in the world

Past plant use in Jordan as revealed by archaeological and ethnoarchaeological phytolith signatures

Ninety-six phytolith samples were analysed from seven archaeological sites ranging from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic to the Classical period and from two ethnoarchaeological sites in Jordan. The aims were to test the possibility of detecting past irrigation with the methodology outlined by Madella et al. (2009) and Jenkins et al. (Chapter 21, this volume) and to study the contextual and temporal variation of plant use in Jordan. We utilised a water availability index using the proportion of phytolith types and ordination statistical methods to explore the similarities between the phytolith assemblages. The result of applying the irrigation methodology was promising, with contexts from water channels showing the greatest indication of water availability. Changes in plant use through time were also apparent with regard to phytolith densities and taxonomy. Date palm was identified in the Pottery Neolithic, providing one of the earliest records for this taxon in Jordan. This study shows the potential of both the water availability index and the value of inter-site comparison of phytolith assemblages

Where are the cereals? Contribution of phytolith analysis to the study of subsistence economy at the Trypillia site Maidanetske (ca. 3900-3650 BCE),central Ukraine

Phytolith analysis has been applied in one of the extraordinary Trypillia “mega-site” in central Ukraine. The site Maidanetske, dated to ca. 3900–3650 BCE, is composed of ca. 3000 houses, which were built of earth-based architecture. As these mega-sites were extremely large, their relatively short duration and their population dynamics are under debate. In this study, the focus is set on the detection of daily household activities, including cereal processing. Archaeological contexts have been sampled for phytoliths inside and outside houses, including daub fragments, grinding stones, vessels, floor surfaces and a pit filling. Phytolith records from layers above and below the archaeological contexts were also analysed. The results indicate that cereal by-products such as chaff from pooid cereals, were in use for specific purposes like daub tempering for house building. Thus cereals were a relevant part of the site subsistence economy despite the scarce preservation of archaeobotanical macro-remains. While chaff and straw suggest on-site processing of cereals, the location of processing is unclear. Since house floors and cultural layers are poorer in chaff phytoliths than expected, the future analysis of other special buildings for instance might help to detect specialised areas of processing apart from houses. Besides cereals thephytolith record attests also the presence of wild grasses with probable indication of steppe grassland components.Further investigation of soil sequences outside the site and comparison with modern reference material in future will help to assess the development of the grassland vegetation through time

Oceanus.

v. 39, no. 1 (1996

Oceanus.

v. 45, no. 3 (2007

Single-shot pixel super-resolution phase imaging by wavefront separation approach

We propose a novel approach for lensless single-shot phase retrieval, which provides pixel super-resolution phase imaging. The approach is based on a computational separation of carrying and object wavefronts. The imaging task is to reconstruct the object wavefront, while the carrying wavefront corrects the discrepancies between the computational model and physical elements of an optical system. To reconstruct the carrying wavefront, we do two preliminary tests as system calibration without an object. Essential for phase retrieval noise is suppressed by a combination of sparse- and deep learning-based filters. Robustness to discrepancies in computational models and pixel super-resolution of the proposed approach are shown in simulations and physical experiments. We report an experimental computational super-resolution of 2µm, which is 3.45× smaller than the resolution following from the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem for the used camera pixel size of 3.45µm. For phase bio-imaging, we provide Buccal Epithelial Cells reconstructed with a quality close to the quality of a digital holographic system with a 40× magnification objective. Furthermore, the single-shot advantage provides a possibility to record dynamic scenes, where the frame rate is limited only by the used camera. We provide amplitude-phase video clip of a moving alive single-celled eukaryote.publishedVersionPeer reviewe