Craig Rhos-y-felin: A Welsh bluestone megalith quarry for Stonehenge

The long-distance transport of the bluestones from south Wales to Stonehenge is one of the most remarkable achievements of Neolithic societies in north-west Europe. Where precisely these stones were quarried, when they were extracted and how they were transported has long been a subject of speculation, experiment and controversy. The discovery of a megalithic bluestone quarry at Craig Rhos-y-felin in 2011 marked a turning point in this research. Subsequent excavations have provided details of the quarrying process along with direct dating evidence for the extraction of bluestone monoliths at this location, demonstrating both Neolithic and Early Bronze Age activity

Great earthquakes in low strain rate continental interiors: An example from SE Kazakhstan

The Lepsy fault of the northern Tien Shan, SE Kazakhstan, extends E-W 120 km from the high mountains of the Dzhungarian Ala-tau, a subrange of the northern Tien Shan, into the low-lying Kazakh platform. It is an example of an active structure that connects a more rapidly deforming mountain region with an apparently stable continental region and follows a known Palaeozoic structure. Field-based and satellite observations reveal an ∼10 m vertical offset exceptionally preserved along the entire length of the fault. Geomorphic analysis and age control from radiocarbon and optically stimulated luminescence dating methods indicate that the scarp formed in the Holocene and was generated by at least two substantial earthquakes. The most recent event, dated to sometime after ∼400 years B.P., is likely to have ruptured the entire ∼120 km fault length in a Mw 7.5–8.2 earthquake. The Lepsy fault kinematics were characterized using digital elevation models and high-resolution satellite imagery, which indicate that the predominant sense of motion is reverse right lateral with a fault strike, dip, and slip vector azimuth of ∼110∘, 50∘S, and 317–343∘, respectively, which is consistent with predominant N-S shortening related to the India-Eurasia collision. In light of these observations, and because the activity of the Lepsy fault would have been hard to ascertain if it had not ruptured in the recent past, we note that the absence of known active faults within low-relief and low strain rate continental interiors does not always imply an absence of seismic hazard

Terrace reconstruction and long profile projection: a case study from the Solent river system near Southampton, England

River terrace sequences are important frameworks for archaeological evidence and as such it is important to produce robust correlations between what are often fragmentary remnants of ancient terraces. This paper examines both conceptual and practical issues related to such correlations, using a case study from the eastern part of the former Solent River system near Southampton, England. In this region two recent terrace schemes have been constructed using different data to describe the terrace deposits: one based mainly on terrace surfaces; the other on gravel thicknesses, often not recording the terrace surface itself. The utility of each of these types of data in terrace correlation is discussed in relation to the complexity of the record, the probability of post-depositional alteration of surface sediments and comparison of straight-line projections with modern river long profiles. Correlation using age estimates is also discussed, in relation to optically-stimulated luminescence dating of sand lenses within terrace gravels in this region during the PASHCC project. It is concluded that the need for replication at single sites means that this approach has limited use for correlative purposes, although dating of sediments is important for understanding wider landscape evolution and patterns of human occupation

Open and Hidden Charm Production in 920 GeV Proton-Nucleus Collisions

The HERA-B collaboration has studied the production of charmonium and open charm states in collisions of 920 GeV protons with wire targets of different materials. The acceptance of the HERA-B spectrometer covers negative values of xF up to xF=-0.3 and a broad range in transverse momentum from 0.0 to 4.8 GeV/c. The studies presented in this paper include J/psi differential distributions and the suppression of J/psi production in nuclear media. Furthermore, production cross sections and cross section ratios for open charm mesons are discussed.Comment: 5 pages, 9 figures, to be published in the proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Hyperons, Charm & Beauty Hadrons (BEACH04), Chicago, IL, June 27 - July 3, 200

Inclusive V0V^0 Production Cross Sections from 920 GeV Fixed Target Proton-Nucleus Collisions

Inclusive differential cross sections $d\sigma_{pA}/dx_F$ and $d\sigma_{pA}/dp_t^2$ for the production of \kzeros, \lambdazero, and \antilambda particles are measured at HERA in proton-induced reactions on C, Al, Ti, and W targets. The incident beam energy is 920 GeV, corresponding to $\sqrt {s} = 41.6$ GeV in the proton-nucleon system. The ratios of differential cross sections \rklpa and \rllpa are measured to be $6.2\pm 0.5$ and $0.66\pm 0.07$, respectively, for \xf $\approx-0.06$. No significant dependence upon the target material is observed. Within errors, the slopes of the transverse momentum distributions $d\sigma_{pA}/dp_t^2$ also show no significant dependence upon the target material. The dependence of the extrapolated total cross sections $\sigma_{pA}$ on the atomic mass $A$ of the target material is discussed, and the deduced cross sections per nucleon $\sigma_{pN}$ are compared with results obtained at other energies.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figures, 5 table

AXES at TRECVid 2011

Abstract The AXES project participated in the interactive known-item search task (KIS) and the interactive instance search task (INS) for TRECVid 2011. We used the same system architecture and a nearly identical user interface for both the KIS and INS tasks. Both systems made use of text search on ASR, visual concept detectors, and visual similarity search. The user experiments were carried out with media professionals and media students at the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, with media professionals performing the KIS task and media students participating in the INS task. This paper describes the results and findings of our experiments