8,343 research outputs found
Contending with animal bones (Editorial)
[FIRST PARAGRAPH] This issue has been assembled in order to focus on some of the current directions in animal remains research. Since serious study of ancient animal remains began in the nineteenth century, this field and its specific areas of inquiry have evolved and diversified, and this collection of papers highlights that diversity, by including contributions that address issues from excavation and field recording methods and preservational conditions, to the use of bone for understanding past animal populations, as well as bones as proxy indicators for human activities. This volume is not meant only for the attention of the faunal remains specialist, and only a couple of these papers have actually been contributed by "archaeozoologists". Rather we hope to demonstrate the importance of faunal remains studies, on a par with lithic or pottery research. It should be acknowledged that animal bones do not relate simply to the âeconomicâ aspects of a culture but to all areas of the life world
The art of being human : a project for general philosophy of science
Throughout the medieval and modern periods, in various sacred and secular guises, the unification of all forms of knowledge under the rubric of âscienceâ has been taken as the prerogative of humanity as a species. However, as our sense of species privilege has been called increasingly into question, so too has the very salience of âhumanityâ and âscienceâ as general categories, let alone ones that might bear some essential relationship to each other. After showing how the ascendant Stanford School in the philosophy of science has contributed to this joint demystification of âhumanityâ and âscienceâ, I proceed on a more positive note to a conceptual framework for making sense of science as the art of being human. My understanding of âscienceâ is indebted to the red thread that runs from Christian theology through the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment to the Humboldtian revival of the university as the site for the synthesis of knowledge as the culmination of self-development. Especially salient to this idea is scienceâs epistemic capacity to manage modality (i.e. to determine the conditions under which possibilities can be actualised) and its political capacity to organize humanity into projects of universal concern. However, the challenge facing such an ideal in the twentyfirst century is that the predicate âhumanâ may be projected in three quite distinct ways, governed by what I call âecologicalâ, âbiomedicalâ and âcyberneticâ interests. Which one of these future humanities would claim todayâs humans as proper ancestors and could these futures co-habit the same world thus become two important questions that general philosophy of science will need to address in the coming years
A Connection between Submillimeter Continuum Flux and Separation in Young Binaries
We have made sensitive 800-micron continuum observations of low-mass,
pre-main sequence (PMS) binary stars with projected separations less than 25 AU
in Taurus-Auriga to study disks in the young binary environment. We did not
detect any of the observed binaries, with typical 3-sigma upper limits of about
30 mJy. Combining our observations with previous 1300-micron observations of
PMS Taurus binaries by Beckwith et al. (1990) and others, we find that the
submillimeter fluxes from binaries with projected separations between 1 AU and
50 AU are significantly lower than fluxes from binaries with projected
separations > 50 AU. The submillimeter fluxes from the wider binaries are
consistent with those of PMS single stars. This may indicate lower disk surface
densities and masses in the close binaries. Alternatively, dynamical clearing
of gaps by close binaries is marginally sufficient to lower their submillimeter
fluxes to the observed levels, even without reduction of surface densities
elsewhere in the disks.Comment: 12 pages, uuencoded compressed postscript with figures; Wisconsin
Astrophysics 526; to appear in ApJ Letter
Domestication as innovation : the entanglement of techniques, technology and chance in the domestication of cereal crops
The origins of agriculture involved pathways of domestication in which human behaviours and plant genetic adaptations were entangled. These changes resulted in consequences that were unintended at the start of the process. This paper highlights some of the key innovations in human behaviours, such as soil preparation, harvesting and threshing, and how these were coupled with genetic âinnovationsâ within plant populations. We identify a number of âtrapsâ for early cultivators, including the needs for extra labour expenditure on crop-processing and soil fertility maintenance, but also linked gains in terms of potential crop yields. Compilations of quantitative data across a few different crops for the traits of nonshattering and seed size are discussed in terms of the apparently slow process of domestication, and parallels and differences between different regional pathways are identified. We highlight the need to bridge the gap between a Neolithic archaeobotanical focus on domestication and a focus of later periods on crop-processing activities and labour organization. In addition, archaeobotanical data provide a basis for rethinking previous assumptions about how plant genetic data should be related to the origins of agriculture and we contrast two alternative hypotheses: gradual evolution with low selection pressure versus metastable equilibrium that prolonged the persistence of âsemi-domesticatedâ populations. Our revised understanding of the innovations involved in plant domestication highlight the need for new approaches to collecting, modelling and integrating genetic data and archaeobotanical evidence
Evolving the Anthropocene: linking multi-level selection with long-term socialâecological change
To what degree is cultural multi-level selection responsible for the rise of environmentally transformative human behaviors? And vice versa? From the clearing of vegetation using fire to the emergence of agriculture and beyond, human societies have increasingly sustained themselves through practices that enhance environmental productivity through ecosystem engineering. At the same time, human societies have increased in scale and complexity from mobile bands of hunter-gatherers to telecoupled world systems. We propose that these long-term changes are coupled through positive feedbacks among social and environmental changes, coevolved primarily through selection acting at the group level and above, and that this can be tested by combining archeological evidence with mechanistic experiments using an agent-based virtual laboratory (ABVL) approach. A more robust understanding of whether and how cultural multi-level selection couples human social change with environmental transformation may help in addressing the long-term sustainability challenges of the Anthropocene
The discomforting rise of ' public geographies': a 'public' conversation.
In this innovative and provocative intervention, the authors explore the burgeoning âpublic turnâ visible across the social sciences to espouse the need to radically challenge and reshape dominant and orthodox visions of âthe academyâ, academic life, and the role and purpose of the academic
Alignments of the Dominant Galaxies in Poor Clusters
We have examined the orientations of brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs) in
poor MKW and AWM clusters and find that, like their counterparts in richer
Abell clusters, poor cluster BCGs exhibit a strong propensity to be aligned
with the principal axes of their host clusters as well as the surrounding
distribution of nearby (< 20/h Mpc) Abell clusters. The processes responsible
for dominant galaxy alignments are therefore independent of cluster richness.
We argue that these alignments most likely arise from anisotropic infall of
material into clusters along large-scale filaments.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure
The Connection between Submillimeter Continuum Flux and Binary Separation in Young Binaries: Evidence of Interaction between Stars and Disks
We present 800 micron continuum photometry of pre-main-sequence binary stars
with projected separations a_p < 150 AU in the Sco-Oph star-forming region.
Combining our observations with published 1300 micron photometry, we find that
binaries in Sco-Oph with 1 < a_p < 50--100 AU have lower submillimeter fluxes
than wider binaries or single stars, as previously found for Taurus- Auriga
binaries. The wide binaries and single stars have indistinguishable
submillimeter flux distributions. Thus, binary companions with separations less
than 50--100 AU significantly influence the nature of associated disks.
We have explored the hypothesis that the reduction in submillimeter flux is
the result of gaps cleared in disks by companions. Gap clearing produces the
qualitative dependence of submillimeter flux on binary separation, and a simple
model suggests that large gaps in disks with surface densities typical of
wide-binary or single-star disks can reduce submillimeter fluxes to levels
consistent with the observed limits. This model shows that the present
submillimeter flux upper limits do not necessarily imply a large reduction in
disk surface densities.
Two-thirds of the young binaries were detected by IRAS, showing that most
binaries have circumstellar disks. These fluxes place lower limits of 10^{-5}
M_sun on circumstellar disk masses. The submillimeter fluxes place upper limits
of 0.005 M_sun on circumbinary disk masses. Thus massive circumbinary disks are
rare among binaries with separations between a few AU and 100 AU. Circumbinary
disks are found around some close binaries.Comment: ApJ in press (Feb. 10, 1996). LaTeX, 35 pages, uses AASTeX macros.
Complete PostScript version with figures available from
http://www.astro.wisc.edu/prints/prints.html or by e-mail request to
[email protected]
The power of heartbeats through the lens of Îč Orionis
O star asteroseismology is a relatively new field which has not been able to gain significant traction due in large part to the lack of known pulsators in addition to the relatively sparse number of frequencies detected in those pulsators. This is likely due to a combination of factors, chief among them long frequencies, on the order of days, and weak amplitudes (â 1 mmag and below). Fortunately, through the discovery of the most massive heartbeat system Îč Orionis and it's corresponding tidally induced oscillations with BRITE-Constellation there exists a new avenue with which to explore O star asteroseismology. In this paper we will give a prescription for using tidally induced oscillations to do asteroseismic analysis on O stars and present a list of candidate systems for this analysis within the BRITE sample
The measurement of low pay in the UK labour force survey
Consideration of the National Minimum Wage requires estimates of the distribution of hourly pay. The UK Labour Force Survey (LFS) is a key source of such estimates. The approach most frequently adopted by researchers has been to measure hourly earnings from several questions on pay and hours. The Office for National Statistics is now applying a new approach, based on an alternative more direct measurement introduced in March 1999. These two measures do not produce identical values and this paper investigates sources of discrepancies and concludes that the new variable is more accurate. The difficulty with using the new variable is that it is only available on a subset of respondents. An approach is developed in which missing values of the new variable are replaced by imputed values. The assumptions underlying this imputation approach and results of applying it to LFS data are presented. The relation to weighting approaches is also discussed
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