Light at the end of the tunnel: the way megalithic art was viewed and experienced

This paper explores how megalithic art may have been viewed during a period when Neolithic monuments were in use as repositories for the dead. The group of monuments discussed are primarily passage graves which were being constructed within many of the core areas of Neolithic Atlantic Europe. Although dates for the construction of this tradition are sometimes early, the majority of monuments with megalithic art fall essentially within the Middle to Late Neolithic. The art, usually in the form of pecked abstract designs appears to be strategically placed within the inner part of the passage and the chamber. Given its position was this art restricted to an elite and was there a conscious decision to hide some art and make it exclusively for the dead? In order to discuss these points further, this chapter will study in depth the location and subjectivity of art that has been carved and pecked on three passage graves in Anglesey and NW England. I suggest that an encoded grammar was in operation when these and other passage grave monuments with megalithic art were in use.V tem poglavju raziskujemo, kakšen je bil pogled na megalitsko umetnost v obdobju, ko so neolitske spomenike uporabljali kot grobnice. Skupina spomenikov, o kateri razpravljamo, so predvsem ‘grobovi v hodnikih’, ki so pogosti v osrednjih področjih neolitske atlantske Evrope. Čeprav so nekateri datumi gradnje zgodnji, sodi večina spomenikov megalitske umetnosti v čas od srednjega do poznega neolitika. Zdi se, da je umetnost, običajno gre za izklesane abstraktne vzorce, strateško razporejena v notranjem delu hodnika in v osrednji grobni komori. Glede na položaj se lahko vprašamo, ali je bila ta umetnost omejena le na elito in, ali je obstajala zavestna odločitev skriti del umetnosti in jo nameniti izključno umrlim. V nadaljevanju bomo detajlneje preučili lokacijo in subjektivnost umetnosti, ki je bila vklesana in vgravirana v treh ‘grobovih v hodnikih’ v Angleseyju in severozahodni Angliji. Domnevamo, da so v času, ko so uporabljali te in druge megalitske spomenike, operirali s kodirano gramatiko

Travels to the Côa Valley. Discovering a lost gallery of stone age art

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Evaluation of patient perception towards dynamic health data sharing using blockchain based digital consent with the Dovetail digital consent application : a cross sectional exploratory study

Background New patient-centric integrated care models are enabled by the capability to exchange the patient’s data amongst stakeholders, who each specialise in different aspects of the patient’s care. This requires a robust, trusted and flexible mechanism for patients to offer consent to share their data. Furthermore, new IT technologies make it easier to give patients more control over their data, including the right to revoke consent. These characteristics challenge the traditional paper-based, single-organisation-led consent process. The Dovetail digital consent application uses a mobile application and blockchain based infrastructure to offer this capability, as part of a pilot allowing patients to have their data shared amongst digital tools, empowering patients to manage their condition within an integrated care setting. Objective To evaluate patient perceptions towards existing consent processes, and the Dovetail blockchain based digital consent application as a means to manage data sharing in the context of diabetes care. Method Patients with diabetes at a General Practitioner practice were recruited. Data were collected using focus groups and questionnaires. Thematic analysis of the focus group transcripts and descriptive statistics of the questionnaires was performed. Results There was a lack of understanding of existing consent processes in place, and many patients did not have any recollection of having previously given consent. The digital consent application received favourable feedback, with patients recognising the value of the capability offered by the application. Patients overwhelmingly favoured the digital consent application over existing practice. Conclusions Digital consent was received favourably, with patients recognising that it addresses the main limitations of the current process. Feedback on potential improvements was received. Future work includes confirmation of results in a broader demographic sample and across multiple conditions

Quantifying and reducing researcher subjectivity in the generation of climate indices from documentary sources

The generation of index-based series of meteorological phenomena, derived from narrative descriptions of weather and climate in historical documentary sources, is a common method to reconstruct past climatic variability. This study is the first to explicitly examine the degree of inter-rater variability in producing such series, a potential source of bias in index-based analyses. Two teams of raters were asked to produce a five-category annual rainfall index series for the same dataset, consisting of transcribed narrative descriptions of meteorological variability for 11 &lsquo;rain-years&rsquo; in nineteenth-century Lesotho, originally collected by Nash and Grab (2010). One group of raters (n = 71) comprised of students studying for postgraduate qualifications in climatology or a related discipline; the second group (n = 6) consisted of professional meteorologists and historical climatologists working in southern Africa. Inter-rater reliability was high for both groups, at r = 0.99 for the student raters and r = 0.94 for the professional raters, although ratings provided by the student group disproportionately averaged to the central value (0: normal/seasonal rains) where variability was high. Back-calculation of intraclass correlation using the Spearman-Brown prediction formula showed that a target reliability of 0.9 could be obtained with as few as eight student raters, and four professional raters. This number reduced to two when examining a subset of the professional group (n = 4) who had previously published historical climatology papers on southern Africa. We therefore conclude that variability between researchers should be considered minimal where index-based climate reconstructions are generated by trained historical climatologists working in groups of two or more.</p