Excavation and Survey in the Jabbul Plain, Western Syria: The Umm el-Marra Project 1996-1997

The 1996 and 1997 seasons of the Hopkins-Amsterdam project in the Jabbul plain, western Syria, have generated new results on Bronze Age urbanism at Tell Umm el- Marra and elucidated longer-term settlement patterns in the Jabbul region. Excavation results have documented the foundation of Umm el-Marra as a regional center in the Early Bronze Age, provided new data on a period of decentralization in Middle Bronze I, and supplied evidence of the regeneration of urbanism in MB II. Faunal and archaeobotanical analysis broaden our understanding of these developments, attesting to an economy overwhelmingly dependent on the steppe environment, with an emphasis on large-scale onager hunting in MB II. Finally, a regional survey provides data on long-term demographic and socioeconomic trends, furnishing an expansive time range and spatial context for our under- standing of developmental patterns in the region. The survey results supply new information on the limits of the Uruk expansion, cycles of Bronze Age urbanization, changing patterns of steppe exploitation, and demo- graphic and agricultural extensification in the Byzantine and Early Islamic periods

First order hyperbolic formalism for Numerical Relativity

The causal structure of Einstein's evolution equations is considered. We show that in general they can be written as a first order system of balance laws for any choice of slicing or shift. We also show how certain terms in the evolution equations, that can lead to numerical inaccuracies, can be eliminated by using the Hamiltonian constraint. Furthermore, we show that the entire system is hyperbolic when the time coordinate is chosen in an invariant algebraic way, and for any fixed choice of the shift. This is achieved by using the momentum constraints in such as way that no additional space or time derivatives of the equations need to be computed. The slicings that allow hyperbolicity in this formulation belong to a large class, including harmonic, maximal, and many others that have been commonly used in numerical relativity. We provide details of some of the advanced numerical methods that this formulation of the equations allows, and we also discuss certain advantages that a hyperbolic formulation provides when treating boundary conditions.Comment: To appear in Phys. Rev.

The great ephemeral tattooed skin

The skin is always and already a series of planes which signify race, gender, age and such. Tattooing creates a new surface of potential significance upon the body. Tattooing can call into question concepts of volition in reference to the power to inscribe and define one’s subjectivity through one’s own skin, and the social defining of the subject. Skin is the involution or event between subject and object, will and cultural inscription, the social and the self. Feminism, particularly corporeal feminists, have attempted to think ways in which the female flesh may be recognized and self-defined without risking essentialism through reification of the meaning of ‘woman’s body’. Thinking the tattooed female body thus resonates with some of the risks and benefits feminism has found in theorizing a marginalized body. Using Deleuze, Guattari, Lyotard and other major influences on corporeal feminists this article explores ways in which significance is sought in skin and possible configurations of skin and world which challenge the desire to read the flesh as a legible incarnation of subjectivity

Conceptual Analysis of Electron Transpiration Cooling for the Leading Edges of Hypersonic Vehicles

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/140441/1/6.2014-2674.pd

An Inka Offering at Yayno (North Highlands, Peru): Objects, Subjects and Gifts in the Ancient Andes

While Marcel Mauss's landmark essay on The Gift has been vital in social anthropology, inspiring a vast and influential secondary literature, the gift has been much less prominent in archaeological interpretation. This study considers evidence for an ancient Andean gift economy, a system of reciprocal exchanges focused on making people and ensuring group social relations, rather than accumulating wealth/capital. Excavations at Yayno (north highlands, Ancash, Peru) revealed two features dating to the time of the Inkas: 1) a slab-lined cist burial; and 2) an offering deposit containing abundant long-distance trade and sumptuary items. Besides its mountaintop location, the burial's intrusive character and foreign items indicate that the offerings were made to propitiate the place, ruins and their divine aspect. This essay studies the reciprocal acts that led to the offerings, comparing them to gifting patterns in Inka human sacrifices known as capac hucha. The key actors in the exchange were children, divinities, Inka bureaucrats, local leaders and state subjects

Hierarchy of Temporal Responses of Multivariate Self-Excited Epidemic Processes

We present the first exact analysis of some of the temporal properties of multivariate self-excited Hawkes conditional Poisson processes, which constitute powerful representations of a large variety of systems with bursty events, for which past activity triggers future activity. The term "multivariate" refers to the property that events come in different types, with possibly different intra- and inter-triggering abilities. We develop the general formalism of the multivariate generating moment function for the cumulative number of first-generation and of all generation events triggered by a given mother event (the "shock") as a function of the current time $t$. This corresponds to studying the response function of the process. A variety of different systems have been analyzed. In particular, for systems in which triggering between events of different types proceeds through a one-dimension directed or symmetric chain of influence in type space, we report a novel hierarchy of intermediate asymptotic power law decays $\sim 1/t^{1-(m+1)\theta}$ of the rate of triggered events as a function of the distance $m$ of the events to the initial shock in the type space, where $0 < \theta <1$ for the relevant long-memory processes characterizing many natural and social systems. The richness of the generated time dynamics comes from the cascades of intermediate events of possibly different kinds, unfolding via a kind of inter-breeding genealogy.Comment: 40 pages, 8 figure

What is 'Open'? An Economic Analysis of Open Institutions

By examining several different types of open institutions including open source software, open science, open square and (open) urban planning, this paper presents a general analysis of open institutional structure that is complementary to traditional proprietary mode. We argue that open institutions, in whatever forms, are essentially about decentralized production of a collective good (or “commons”) that relies on voluntary collaboration of highly variable human-related input. In addition to providing a general definition of open institutional structure, we submit there are two necessary conditions for open institutions. The first is the integration of consumers into production. The second condition is that the efficiency gain from “production” commons is the objective and the tragedy of anticommons becomes a serious problem. In this sense, open institutions represent a positive approach toward externality and uncertainty

The use of magical plants by curanderos in the Ecuador highlands

Although the use of plants for treating supernaturally caused illnesses (e.g., soul loss, evil wind, witchcraft) has been documented in the Ecuador highlands, so-called magical plants have received much less focused attention than plants used for treating naturalistic disorders. Drawing on interviews done in 2002 and 2003 with 116 curanderos residing in the Ecuador highlands, this paper examines the characteristics of plants identified as magical, how they are used, and how the study of magical plants provides insights into the mindscape of residents of the highlands