The painting and the tree : Simbolism in the Upper Palaeolithic : A tribute to a great Basque Scholar

En este artículo exploro las variaciones en el valor simbólico del arte del Paleolítico en Europa Occidental. Tomando mi inspiración de la demostración establecida por Jesus Altuna de la compleja relación que existe entre las frecuencias animales en el arte y los huesos de animales, resumo diversos estudios basados en el análisis del arte y de los huesos de animales de Parpalló, en Valencia. Demuestro que la relación entre el arte y los huesos es más compleja y que varía regionalmente en toda la Europa occidental. En Parpalló, la relación varió en el tiempo y el principal cambio en esa relación se corresponde con un cambio en el patrón de importancia de las plaquetas en la misma región que parece sugerir que el principal cambio se debió a la modificación que los arqueológos reconocen entre las industrias del Solutrense y del Magdaleniense. Esto sugiere que los cambios en la industria de la piedra realmente también pudieran corresponderse con el cambio en aspectos más exhaustivos de la cultura

Las brumas de duda histórica y geográfica: El indio desconocido, la Casa de Derechos Humanos de Punta Arenas y la interpretación del patrimonio cultural

El artículo analiza la política del patrimonio cultural mediante algunas ideas sobre las relaciones entre los productores del patrimonio y su cultura, y entre los consumidores del patrimonio y la suya. Es necesario diferenciar entre los herederos de una cultura -primeros habitantes de un país- junto con lo que representa el patrimonio para ellos, y los forasteros -colonos o turistas- con respecto a la misma cultura y patrimonio. Finalmente, se hace una distinción entre dos tipos de materialidad que tienen importancia patrimonial: P1) las construidas con motivo de crear patrimonio (como estatuas); y P2) cosas construidas por casualidad (como restos de edificios históricos). Estas ideas se desarrollan aquí observando los intereses de distintos grupos relacionados con el “Indio Desconocido”, y la Casa de Los Derechos Humanos de Punta Arenas, donde es deseable que se desarrollen interpretaciones de los sitios para distinguir los intereses de los distintos grupos

Rewriting the History of the Native Mounted Police in Queensland

The Archaeology of the Native Mounted Police in Queensland project, jointly led by Nulungu research fellow Dr Lynley Wallis, is a long-overdue exploration into the nature of frontier invasion. Several of our team members have worked in Queensland for many decades and, in every Aboriginal community in which we’ve worked, stories are told about the ‘killing times’ or the ‘war’, as community members call the period when the Native Mounted Police (NMP, also referred to as the ‘Native Police’) were operating. Many community members have asked us over the years to record their stories about the massacres that took place, or have shown us places associated with the police camps or the massacre sites, and often told us that they would like to know more about what happened. These requests eventually led to the archaeologists on this project coming together, talking with key Aboriginal people and communities, and developing a research project to address their interests — the project described in this paper is the result.https://researchonline.nd.edu.au/nulungu_insights/1000/thumbnail.jp

On some fundamental results about higher-rank graphs and their C*-algebras

Results of Fowler and Sims show that every k-graph is completely determined by its k-coloured skeleton and collection of commuting squares. Here we give an explicit description of the k-graph associated to a given skeleton and collection of squares and show that two k-graphs are isomorphic if and only if there is an isomorphism of their skeletons which preserves commuting squares. We use this to prove directly that each k-graph {\Lambda} is isomorphic to the quotient of the path category of its skeleton by the equivalence relation determined by the commuting squares, and show that this extends to a homeomorphism of infinite-path spaces when the k-graph is row finite with no sources. We conclude with a short direct proof of the characterisation, originally due to Robertson and Sims, of simplicity of the C*-algebra of a row-finite k-graph with no sources.Comment: 21 pages, two pictures prepared using TiK

Protective role of Kv7 channels in oxygen and glucose deprivation-induced damage in rat caudate brain slices

Ischemic stroke can cause striatal dopamine efflux that contributes to cell death. Since Kv7 potassium channels regulate dopamine release, we investigated the effects of their pharmacological modulation on dopamine efflux, measured by fast cyclic voltammetry (FCV), and neurotoxicity, in Wistar rat caudate brain slices undergoing oxygen and glucose deprivation (OGD). The Kv7 activators retigabine and ICA27243 delayed the onset, and decreased the peak level of dopamine efflux induced by OGD; and also decreased OGD-induced damage measured by 2,3,5-triphenyltetrazolium chloride (TTC) staining. Retigabine also reduced OGD-induced necrotic cell death evaluated by lactate dehydrogenase activity assay. The Kv7 blocker linopirdine increased OGD-evoked dopamine efflux and OGD-induced damage, and attenuated the effects of retigabine. Quantitative-PCR experiments showed that OGD caused an ~ 6-fold decrease in Kv7.2 transcript, while levels of mRNAs encoding for other Kv7 subunits were unaffected; western blot experiments showed a parallel reduction in Kv7.2 protein levels. Retigabine also decreased the peak level of dopamine efflux induced by L-glutamate, and attenuated the loss of TTC staining induced by the excitotoxin. These results suggest a role for Kv7.2 in modulating ischemia-evoked caudate damage

Functional effects of polymorphisms on glucocorticoid receptor modulation of human anxiogenic substance-P gene promoter activity in primary amygdala neurones

This work was funded by The BBSRC (BB/D004659/1) the Wellcome Trust (080980/Z/06/Z) and the Medical Research Council (G0701003). Colin Hay was funded by the Chief Scientist Office, Scotland. Scott Davidson was funded by a BBSRC strategic studentship (BBS/S/2005/12001). Philip Cowie was funded by the Scottish Universities Life Sciences Alliance (SULCA).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

The rate of thermal dissociation of direnzyl

1) The most recent work on the pyrolysis of dibenzyl suggested that a thermal equilibrium:- PhCH₂CH₂Ph == 2 PhCH₂- was set up as a preliminary to decomposition. The aim of this research was to test this idea by heating mixtures of PhCH₂CH₂Ph (M.W. 182) and PhCD₂CD₂Ph (M.W. 186) and following mass spectrometrically the growth of PhCH₂CH₂Ph (M.W. 184) formed by radical recombination. 2) A four stage synthesis of deuterated dibenzyl was developed and used to prepare dibenzyl of 95% isotopic purity with the composition:- PhCD₂CD₂Ph, 81%; PhCD₂CDHPh, 18 %; PhCDHCDHPh, 1%. PhCH₂CD₂Ph was synthesized by the same sequence of reactions. 3) In order to provide the necessary experimental equipment, the following items have been developed and constructed and descriptions of them are given in this Thesis:- a) a 2 litre reaction vessel with an electronically controlled furnace was arranged with a gas circulating system feeding the inlet of a mass spectrometer; b) an existing mass spectrometer was extensively modified in order to give resolution of 1 in 200:- i) the spectrometer tube was stiffened and accurately re-aligned; ii) the ion collector unit was made detachable and its construction improved; iii) a new ion source was designed and built to the required high accuracy; iv) a new scanning unit was built for variation of the magnetic field. 4) The rate of formation of PhCH₂CD₂Ph was followed in mixtures of PhCH₂CD₂Ph and PhCD₂CD₂Ph at pressures of 0.08 to 0.66 mm. in the reaction vessel, and at pressure up to 142 mm. in sealed tubes, using temperatures between 400° and 500°C. Data were also obtained on the rate of decomposition of PhCH₂CH₂Ph alone in similar systems. 5) The rate of radical exchange was found to be first order, independent of surface and of pressure of added A, N₂, D₂, and O₂. The decomposition reaction was shown to be 1.5 order at low pressures, and tended to first order at high pressures. At lower pressures it was much slower than the radical exchange. 6) A rate equation for radical exchange in terms of the rate of dissociation of dibenzyl, making due allowance for the simultaneous decomposition of dibenzyl has been developed and applied in the lower pressure region where exchange was of major importance. It gives:- kf sec⁻¹ = 10 ¹⁴.⁰³ exp -6000/RT 7) The energy of activation in 6) has been identified with D(PhCH₂-CD₂Ph) in dibenzyl. This value has been discussed in relation to current data on the heat of formation of the benzyl radical and bond dissociation energies in benzyl compounds, notably D(PhCH₂-H) in toluene. 8) The energy of activation for the decomposition was found to be 47 kcal and the nature and proportions of the reaction products were established and compared with previous work. The proportions of side-chain deuterated toluenes formed were consistent with a deuterium isotope effect of 2 or less, and with toluene being made by the abstraction of hydrogen from the central carbon atoms of dibenzyl by benzyl radicals. Benzyl radicals were also shown to react with deuterium to form toluene

The difficult, divisive and disruptive heritage of the Queensland Native Mounted Police

The colonial history of nineteenth-century Queensland was arguably dominated by the actions of the Native Mounted Police, Australia’s most punitive native policing force. The centrality of the Native Mounted Police to the sustained economic success of Queensland for over half a century, and their widespread, devastating effects on Aboriginal societies across the colony, have left a complex legacy. For non-Indigenous Queenslanders, a process of obscuring the Native Mounted Police began perhaps as soon as a detachment was removed from an area, reflected today in the minimisation of the Native Mounted Police in official histories and their omission from non-Indigenous heritage lists. In contrast, the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Database preserves several elements of frontier conflict and Native Mounted Police presence, giving rise to parallel state-level narratives, neither of which map directly onto local and regional memory. This highlights potential issues for formal processes of truth-telling relating to frontier conflict that have recently been initiated by the Queensland and Federal Governments. Of particular concern is the form that such a process might adopt. Drawing on a 4-year project to document the workings of the Queensland Native Mounted Police through archival, archaeological and oral historical sources, we suggest that this conflicted and conflictual heritage can best be bridged through empathetic truth-telling, using Rothberg’s notion of the implicated subject to consider contemporary contexts of responsibility and connect present-day Queenslanders with this difficult, divisive and disruptive past

Salt Lakes and Aboriginal Settlement: A case study at Lake Carey, southeast Western Australia

This thesis documented and attempted to explain and predict the distribution of Aboriginal archaeological sites at Lake Carey, an intermittent salt lake (or saline playa) south of Laverton in southeast Western Australia. Although situated in the arid zone and usually dry, torrential rain in the region causes floods that fill Lake Carey at least once a decade, and probably has done so for all of the Holocene. Five study areas containing 230 artefact scatters and 18 quarries were selected to sample the pronounced geomorphological and environmental differences between the western shore, the eastern shore and the islands on the lake. The distinctive landforms and their associated vegetation communities were classified into seven landscape units and then the distribution of sites and artefacts was analysed in terms of these. An association index statistic was used to measure the propensity for sites to occur within landscape units and identify uncommon sites. Analysis of artefact lithologies indicated that the lake was a barrier to movement and the islands did not serve as stepping stones for people crossing the lake. But the claypans on the lake margin probably served as a corridor for travel around the lake following rains. Few clear associations could be demonstrated between archaeological material and the distribution of drinking water, foods, medicinal plants or stone for tools. Exploitation of waterbirds and their breeding colonies was the most likely resource attracting Aboriginal occupation. The archaeological evidence argued against large aggregations of people to harvest this resource, instead suggesting visits by small transient groups which moved clockwise around the lake. Models of Aboriginal settlement and subsistence were developed as working hypotheses to be tested by future research. The models are based on the distribution and availability of resources, principally potable water and waterbirds, and envisage that the lake and the islands were visited frequently in the months after floods. A predictive model for site occurrence was developed and a framework for assessing site significance, which will be important tools for heritage management at Lake Carey

Axe-making and Axe Distribution from Two Quarries in East Australia

This study is about axe making at two quarries. I have derived a model based on formal economic theory for explaining the transfer of axes into a distribution system. There are three major kinds of axe output from quarries: (1) Axes for local use. (2) Axes for non-local exchange. (3) Axes traded for gain. I argue that these outputs can be differentiated by their distribution, together with: (1) The exchange potential of a good, which is established by symmetry in the shape of an axe and enables the axe to be recognised and accepted by others in an exchange transaction. (2) Value-adding economic decisions in axe making, which can be established by measuring efficiency in the control of production. This gives an advantage to axe producers at some quarries. Axe trade for gain would incorporate symmetrical axes, efficient production and a non-local distribution pattern. My predictions for the two quarries, one at Gulong and one at Warren are initially derived from distribution patterns. The output at Gulgong was predicted to be trade-driven in that the axes would be symmetrically shaped for exchange, and axe making would be a value-adding economic activity within which efficient knapping actions controlled axe making. In contrast, output at Warren (Little Mount quarry) was predicted not to be based on trade for gain. The axes would not be symmetrical in shape and would not be manufactured by efficient means. The potential of the quarries to supply axes for exchange and trade for gain is evaluated by, the selection and extraction of raw material, the process of shaping preforms, and the toolkits used in manufacture at the quarries