A study of activity at Neolithic causewayed enclosures within the British Isles

Since the first explorations of causewayed enclosures, archaeologists have attempted to define these early Neolithic monuments in relation to territorial patterns, pottery typologies, and ultimately though the concept of structured deposition. While these concepts have been important in advancing our knowledge of causewayed enclosures, the interpretations of the material from the enclosures ditch segments and other areas of these sites have failed to take into account the importance of how objects and materials came to be at the sites, were produced and used there, preceding deposition. This thesis argues that activities at enclosures should not be categorically separated from the everyday activities of those who visited the enclosures. I argue that by looking in detail at the spatial and temporal distribution of objects in association with chronology that the practical activities people engaged in at enclosures have been overshadowed by interpretations stressing the ritual nature of structured deposits. These activities had a direct relationship with enclosures and local landscapes. This argues that perhaps more deposits within causewayed enclosures were the result of everyday activities which occurred while people gathered at these sites and not necessarily the result of a ‘ritual’ act. A re-interpretation of the detail from nine causewayed enclosures within three ‘regions’ of the British Isles (East Anglia, Sussex and Wessex) will be examined. It will be shown that this theoretical approach to activity goes beyond the deposition of objects and also includes enclosure construction, object modification such as flint knapping, animal butchery, and the use of pottery and wood. On a micro scale this indicates that each community who constructed an enclosure deposited objects in a unique and ‘personal’ manner which was acceptable within their defined social system. On a macro scale, this indicates that although all British causewayed enclosures seem to ‘function’ in the same way, the individual sites were constructed, modified and used in distinctive ways. Some enclosures seem to have existed quite independently from their neighbours while other enclosures within close proximity to each other had a specialised role to play. These specialised roles indicate that some enclosures may have been constructed and used by groups who primarily came to them in order to carry out a specific set of activities which were then defined through deposition.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

The quest for the Cabibbo Kobayashi Maskawa Matrix

A piece of the Standard Model presently undergoing intense experimental scrutiny is the Cabibbo Kobayashi Maskawa matrix. Several different measurements are planned to enrich the spectrum of experimental constraints and thus provide one of the most stringent tests of Standard Model validity. The success of this program is closely related to theoretical progress in evaluating QCD matrix elements in a non-perturbative regime, as we need to extract fundamental quark properties from observations on decays involving hadrons. This interplay between experimental and theoretical progress will be illustrated in the context of the present knowledge of the magnitudes of the quark mixing parameters $| V_{cb}|$ and $| V_{ub}|$.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figure, contributed paper to BEAUTY 200

Complementing the European earth observation and geographic information body of knowledge with a business‐oriented perspective

A body of knowledge (BoK) is an inventory of knowledge or concepts of a domain that serves as a reference vocabulary for various purposes, such as the development of curricula, the preparation of job descriptions, and the description of occupational profiles. To fulfill its purpose, a BoK needs to be up‐to‐date and ideally widely accepted by academia as well as the private and public sectors. This article presents the initiative taken in the Earth observation and geographic information (EO*GI) domain to provide a current, comprehensive education‐ and business‐oriented EO*GI BoK called EO4GEO BoK. In particular, an approach to strengthen the business‐oriented perspective in the EO4GEO BoK is presented. This approach is based on the analysis of professional tasks and the mapping of these tasks to concepts and skills contained in the BoK. A critical reflection of the proposed approach that is based on the experiences gained during a workshop complements this article

Is the Universe Inflating? Dark Energy and the Future of the Universe

We consider the fate of the observable universe in the light of the discovery of a dark energy component to the cosmic energy budget. We extend results for a cosmological constant to a general dark energy component and examine the constraints on phenomena that may prevent the eternal acceleration of our patch of the universe. We find that the period of accelerated cosmic expansion has not lasted long enough for observations to confirm that we are undergoing inflation; such an observation will be possible when the dark energy density has risen to between 90% and 95% of the critical. The best we can do is make cosmological observations in order to verify the continued presence of dark energy to some high redshift. Having done that, the only possibility that could spoil the conclusion that we are inflating would be the existence of a disturbance (the surface of a true vacuum bubble, for example) that is moving toward us with sufficiently high velocity, but is too far away to be currently observable. Such a disturbance would have to move toward us with speed greater than about 0.8c in order to spoil the late-time inflation of our patch of the universe and yet avoid being detectable.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figure

Large Extra Dimensions and Cosmological Problems

We consider a variant of the brane-world model in which the universe is the direct product of a Friedmann, Robertson-Walker (FRW) space and a compact hyperbolic manifold of dimension $d\geq2$. Cosmology in this space is particularly interesting. The dynamical evolution of the space-time leads to the injection of a large entropy into the observable (FRW) universe. The exponential dependence of surface area on distance in hyperbolic geometry makes this initial entropy very large, even if the CHM has relatively small diameter (in fundamental units). This provides an attractive reformulation of the cosmological entropy problem, in which the large entropy is a consequence of the topology, though we would argue that a final solution of the entropy problem requires a dynamical explanation of the topology of spacetime. Nevertheless, it is reassuring that this entropy can be achieved within the holographic limit if the ordinary FRW space is also a compact hyperbolic manifold. In addition, the very large statistical averaging inherent in the collapse of the initial entropy onto the brane acts to smooth out initial inhomogeneities. This smoothing is then sufficient to account for the current homogeneity of the universe. With only mild fine-tuning, the current flatness of the universe can also then be understood. Finally, recent brane-world approaches to the hierarchy problem can be readily realized within this framework.Comment: 15 pages, 1 figure. Revised and corrected discussions of the entropy problem. New references adde

ADHD Remission is linked to better neurophysiological error detection and attention-vigilance processes

Background: The processes underlying persistence and remission of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are poorly understood. We aimed to examine whether cognitive and neurophysiological impairments on a performance monitoring task distinguish between ADHD persisters and remitters. Methods: On average six years after initial assessment, 110 adolescents and young adults with childhood ADHD (87 persisters, 23 remitters) and 169 age-matched controls were compared on cognitive-performance measures and event-related potentials (ERPs) of conflict monitoring (N2) and error processing (ERN, Pe) from an arrow flanker task with low- and high-conflict conditions. ADHD outcome was examined with parent-reported symptoms and functional impairment measures using a categorical (DSM-IV) and a dimensional approach. Results: ADHD persisters were impaired compared to controls on all cognitive-performance and ERP measures (all p<0.05). ADHD remitters differed from persisters, and were indistinguishable from controls, on the number of congruent (low-conflict) errors, reaction time variability (RTV), ERN and Pe (all p≤0.05). Remitters did not differ significantly from the other groups on incongruent (high-conflict) errors, mean reaction time and N2. In dimensional analyses on all participants with childhood ADHD, ADHD symptoms and functional impairment at follow up were significantly correlated with congruent errors, RTV and Pe (r=0.19-0.23, p≤0.05). Conclusions: Cognitive and neurophysiological measures of attention-vigilance and error detection distinguished ADHD remitters from persisters. These results extend our previous findings with other tasks (Cheung et al. 2015), and indicate that such measures are markers of remission and candidates for the development of non-pharmacological interventions

Failure of JoAnne's Global Fit to the Wilson Coefficients in Rare B Decays: A Left-Right Model Example

In the Standard Model and many of its extensions, it is well known that all of the observables associated with the rare decays $b\to s\gamma$ and $b\to s\ell^+\ell^-$ can be expressed in terms of the three Wilson coefficients, $C_{7L,9L,10L}(\mu \sim m_b)$, together with several universal kinematic functions. In particular it has been shown that the numerical values of these coefficients can be uniquely extracted by a three parameter global fit to data obtainable at future $B$-factories given sufficient integrated luminosity. In this paper we examine if such global fits are also sensitive to new operators beyond those which correspond to the above coefficients, i.e., whether is it possible that new operators can be of sufficient importance for the three parameter fit to fail and for this to be experimentally observable. Using the Left-Right Symmetric Model as an example of a scenario with an extended operator basis, we demonstrate via Monte Carlo techniques that such a possibility can indeed be realized. In some sense this potential failure of the global fit approach can actually be one of its greatest successes in identifying the existence of new physics.Comment: 30 pages, 6 figure

Determination of the Michel Parameters and the tau Neutrino Helicity in tau Decay

Using the CLEO II detector at the $e^+e^-$ storage ring CESR, we have determined the Michel parameters $\rho$, $\xi$, and $\delta$ in $\tau^\mp \to l^\mp\nu\bar{\nu}$ decay as well as the tau neutrino helicity parameter $h_{\nu_\tau}$ in $\tau^\mp \to \pi^\mp\pi^0\nu$ decay. From a data sample of $3.02\times 10^6$ tau pairs produced at $\sqrt{s}=10.6 GeV$, using events of the topology $e^+e^- \to \tau^+\tau^- \to (l^\pm\nu\bar{\nu}) (\pi^\mp\pi^0\nu)$ and $e^+e^- \to \tau^+\tau^- \to (\pi^\pm\pi^0\bar{\nu}) (\pi^\mp\pi^0\nu)$, and the determined sign of $h_{\nu_\tau}$, the combined result of the three samples is: $\rho = 0.747\pm 0.010\pm 0.006$, $\xi = 1.007\pm 0.040\pm 0.015$, $\xi\delta = 0.745\pm 0.026\pm 0.009$, and $h_{\nu_\tau} = -0.995\pm 0.010\pm 0.003$. The results are in agreement with the Standard Model V-A interaction.Comment: 18 page postscript file, postscript file also available through http://w4.lns.cornell.edu/public/CLN

Measurement of Br(D0→K−π+)Br(D^{0}\to K^{-}\pi^{+}) using Partila Reconstruction of Bˉ→D∗+Xℓ−νˉ\bar{B}\to D^{*+}X\ell^{-}\bar{\nu}

We present a measurement of the absolute branching fraction for $D^0 -> K^- pi^+$ using the reconstruction of the decay chain $Bbar -> D^{*+} X l^- nubar$, $D^{*+} -> D^0 pi^+$ where only the lepton and the low-momentum pion from the $D^{*+}$ are detected. With data collected by the CLEO II detector at the Cornell Electron Storage Ring, we have determined $Br(D^0 -> K^- pi^+)= [3.81 +- 0.15(stat.) +- 0.16(syst.)]$.Comment: 10 page postscript file, postscript file also available through http://w4.lns.cornell.edu/public/CLN