On the eve of Islam: archaeological evidence from Eastern Arabia

What was the archaeological context of the rise of Islam in Arabia? The author uses new work from Eastern Arabia to show that the advent of Islam coincided with the decline of the Sasanian hegemony and one of Arabia's least affluent periods in 3500 years of history

The History and Philosophy of Radical Black Theology

Our\u27s is an age of theological controversy. Even within the Christian ranks, the milieu of theological controversy has resulted in much theological confusion and misunderstanding. There seems to be an ever-deeping concern, in theological circles, which emphasizes that the individual must know what he believes and why he believes what he does. Along with this emphasis has come the idea that the individual has a right to believe what he wishes to believe as he does; without any infringement upon his person or his theology. No where is this idea more clearly advocated than in the area of radical Black Theology

Are cost models useful for telecoms regulators in developing countries?

Worldwide privatization of the telecommunications industry, and the introduction of competition in the sector, together with the ever-increasing rate of technological advance in telecommunications, raise new and critical challenges for regulation. Fo matters of pricing, universal service obligations, and the like, one question to be answered is this: What is the efficient cost of providing the service to a certain area or type of customer? As developing countries build up their capacity to regulate their privatized infrastructure monopolies, cost models are likely to prove increasingly important in answering this question. Cost models deliver a number of benefits to a regulator willing to apply them, but they also ask for something in advance: information. Without information, the question cannot be answered. The authors introduce cost models and establish their applicability when different degrees of information are available to the regulator. They do no by running a cost model with different sets of actual data form Argentina's second largest city, and comparing results. Reliable, detailed information is generally scarce in developing countries. The authors establish the minimum information requirements for a regulator implementing a cost proxy model approach, showing that this data constraint need not be that binding.ICT Policy and Strategies,Decentralization,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Business Environment,ICT Policy and Strategies,Environmental Economics&Policies,Geographical Information Systems,Economic Theory&Research,Educational Technology and Distance Education

Fulayj: a late Sasanian fort on the Arabian coast

Archaeological evidence for a Sasanian presence in the ‘Uman region of Eastern Arabia is sparse. Recent excavations at the site of Fulayj in Oman have, however, revealed it to be a Late Sasanian fort, the only securely dated example in Arabia, or indeed on the western shores of the Indian Ocean more generally. AMS dating supports the ceramic chronology proposed for the site, demonstrating occupation until the Islamisation of South-eastern Arabia in the early seventh century AD, and also briefly into the very Early Islamic period. Fulayj fort provides new insights into Sasanian military activities during this crucial period of Arabian history

DO INDUSTRIAL CLASSIFICATIONS NEED RE-INVENTINg? AN ANALYSIS OF THE RELEVANCE OF THE U.S. SIC SYSTEM FOR PRODUCTIVITY RESEARCH

Two separate empirical investigations into the conceptual structure underlying the U.S. SIC were undertaken. Government industry specialists and industry classification experts reviewed individual4-digit U.S. SICs and judgmentally determined if these industries had been constructed by grouping similar production processes, or, alternatively, by grouping similar markets. Independently, an algorithm derived from the diversification index developed by Gollop and Monahan (1991) was used to measure the heterogeneity of establishment production functions, by 4-digit industry, using the Census Longitudinal Research Database file. The two reviews yielded broadly similar results: Only about one fifth of US. industries have been designed to be approximately consistent with aggregation conditions derived from production theory

Shape relaxation of epitaxial mesa for finite-size strain-engineering

Silicon-Germanium (Si$_{1-x}$Ge$_x$) layers are commonly used as stressors in the gate of MOSFET devices. They are expected to introduce a beneficial stress in the drift and channel regions to enhance the electron mobility. When reducing the gate lateral size, one of the major issues is the stress relaxation which results in a significant decrease in the electron mobility. We report a new morphological evolution of a strained epitaxial SiGe nanolayer on a silicon gate (mesa) driven by strain inhomogeneity due to finite-size effects. Unlike the self-induced instability of strained films, this evolution arises here due to the elastic inhomogeneity originating from the free frontiers. We analyze the growth dynamics within the thermodynamic surface diffusion framework accounting for elasticity and capillarity, the former being solved in two dimensions thanks to the Airy formalism. The resulting dynamical equation is solved with a decomposition on eigenmodes, and reveals different developments depending upon the mesa geometric parameters. Mass transfer occurs towards the relaxed areas and creates a beading at the nanolayers free surface with either a W or V shape as a function of time and geometry. The evolution is then controlled by the proportions of the structure as well as its scale.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure

Ancient agriculture in Southeast Arabia: A three thousand year record of runoff farming from central Oman (Rustaq)

Runoff farming is a key hydro-agricultural strategy that has proven efficient in arid areas. Research in Arabia on the function, development, maintenance, durability and abandonment of this technology is scarce. A multiproxy investigation (cartography, sedimentology, pedology, geochemistry, paleo-ecology and chronology) was conducted on a recently abandoned terraced area in Rustaq, Northern Oman. The aim was to characterize the formation, function and management of this runoff system and the driving factors behind its success. Cycles of cultivation were identified during the Iron Age II/III periods (specifically 750–450 BCE), the Early Pre-Islamic Period (PIR) (specifically 350–200 BCE), the Early and Middle Islamic periods (specifically 8–10th C CE, 13th-14th C CE) and the late Islamic period (specifically 17th C CE and later). This expansion and perenniality was possible thanks to: 1- available water (local to micro-regional orogenic precipitation despite a regional aridification during these periods); 2- suitable soils (weathered geological outcrops, probable aeolian /dust particles); 3- a system of production combining crops and husbandry; 4- a progressive increase in agricultural specialization (crops grown and techniques) in parallel with a diversification in hydraulic technology. These results are to some degree in accordance with known phases of settlement intensification and economic growth, but also reveal the persistence of small-scale rural livelihoods during periods of harsh conditions for which archaeological traces are very scarce

Effective recruitment of participants to a phase I study using the internet and publicity releases through charities and patient organisations: analysis of the adaptive study of IL-2 dose on regulatory T cells in type 1 diabetes (DILT1D).

A barrier to the successful development of new disease treatments is the timely recruitment of participants to experimental medicine studies that are primarily designed to investigate biological mechanisms rather than evaluate clinical efficacy. The aim of this study was to analyse the performance of three recruitment sources and the effect of publicity events during the Adaptive study of IL-2 dose on regulatory T cells in type 1 diabetes (DILT1D).This work is funded by the JDRF (9-2011-253), the Wellcome Trust (091157) and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement number 241447 (NAIMIT). The Cambridge Institute for Medical Research (CIMR) is in receipt of a Wellcome Trust Strategic Award (100140).This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from BMC via http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13063-015-0583-

Socioeconomic Indicators and the Risk of Acute Coronary Heart Disease Events: Comparison of Population-Based Data from the United States and Finland

We wished to determine whether a gradient of association of low socioeconomic status with incidence of coronary heart disease was present in two population-based cohorts, one from United States the other from Finland