Field Notes from the Odyssey: The Fabulous Ethnography of Aiolie, Aiaie, and Ogygie

Odysseus’ ethnographic digressions in books 9-12 of the Odyssey—the so-called Apologue—have served as the premier paradigm for mythic and actual ethnography from Herodotus through Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus, and more particularly, for the ‘I-witnessing approach’ of ethnography. Among the peoples and lands and styles of thinking he encountered (Odyssey 1.3), the hero also became acquainted with several islands. As microcosms of larger societies, islands furnish ‘master metaphors’ and models with which to think about culture. In this article I discuss three islands from the Apologue in the chronological order of Odysseus’ travels. They are inseparable from their geography and the personality and ‘life style’ of their inhabitants, as will be seen; these islands adumbrate the moral and gendered mythic cartography of Archaic Greece.Odysseus’ ethnographic digressions in books 9-12 of the Odyssey—the so-called Apologue—have served as the premier paradigm for mythic and actual ethnography from Herodotus through Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus, and more particularly, for the ‘I-witnessing approach’ of ethnography. Among the peoples and lands and styles of thinking he encountered (Odyssey 1.3), the hero also became acquainted with several islands. As microcosms of larger societies, islands furnish ‘master metaphors’ and models with which to think about culture. In this article I discuss three islands from the Apologue in the chronological order of Odysseus’ travels. They are inseparable from their geography and the personality and ‘life style’ of their inhabitants, as will be seen; these islands adumbrate the moral and gendered mythic cartography of Archaic Greece.Odysseus’ ethnographic digressions in books 9-12 of the Odyssey—the so-called Apologue—have served as the premier paradigm for mythic and actual ethnography from Herodotus through Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus, and more particularly, for the ‘I-witnessing approach’ of ethnography. Among the peoples and lands and styles of thinking he encountered (Odyssey 1.3), the hero also became acquainted with several islands. As microcosms of larger societies, islands furnish ‘master metaphors’ and models with which to think about culture. In this article I discuss three islands from the Apologue in the chronological order of Odysseus’ travels. They are inseparable from their geography and the personality and ‘life style’ of their inhabitants, as will be seen; these islands adumbrate the moral and gendered mythic cartography of Archaic Greece

Geometric flows in Horava-Lifshitz gravity

We consider instanton solutions of Euclidean Horava-Lifshitz gravity in four dimensions satisfying the detailed balance condition. They are described by geometric flows in three dimensions driven by certain combinations of the Cotton and Ricci tensors as well as the cosmological-constant term. The deformation curvature terms can have competing behavior leading to a variety of fixed points. The instantons interpolate between any two fixed points, which are vacua of topologically massive gravity with Lambda > 0, and their action is finite. Special emphasis is placed on configurations with SU(2) isometry associated with homogeneous but generally non-isotropic Bianchi IX model geometries. In this case, the combined Ricci-Cotton flow reduces to an autonomous system of ordinary differential equations whose properties are studied in detail for different couplings. The occurrence and stability of isotropic and anisotropic fixed points are investigated analytically and some exact solutions are obtained. The corresponding instantons are classified and they are all globally R x S^3 and complete spaces. Generalizations to higher-dimensional gravities are also briefly discussed.Comment: 67 pages, 16 figures; more solutions found, 1 extra figure, 1 more reference added in v2; minor typos corrected in v3 (to appear in JHEP); an acknowledgement added in v

Development of an antenna system for a relay-based wireless network. Simulation and measurement of antenna systems for relay-based wireless network, covering the backhaul and access links and applying beam forming technology.

The proliferation of modern wireless networks increases demand for high capacity and throughput in order to provide faster, more robust, efficient and broadband services to end users. Mobile WiMAX and LTE are examples of such networks in which for some cases they have exposed limited connectivity due to harsh environment. Relay stations are preferred to overcome problems of weak or no access for such network devices, that are placed in specific positions to maintain high quality of data transfer at low cost and provide the required connectivity anywhere anytime. These stations should be equipped with an antenna system capable of establishing communication between base station (backhaul link) and end users (access link). This thesis focuses on the design and development of a new antenna system that is suitable for a relay-based wireless network. Planar geometries of microstrip patch antennas are utilized. The antenna system comprises two antenna modules: a new design of a single antenna for access link and a new design of an antenna array for backhaul link realization. Both antenna specifications are compatible with the IEEE802.16j protocol standard. Hence, relay station should be capable of pointing its radiation pattern to the base station antenna, thus to achieve the desired radiation pattern of the relay station, a new beam-forming module is proposed, designed and developed to generate the proper radiation pattern. The beam-forming module incorporating digital phase shifters and attenuator chips is fabricated and tested. The optimization process using the Least Mean Square (LMS) algorithm is considered in this study to assign the proper phase and amplitude that is necessary to each radiation element excitation current, to produce the desired steered radiation pattern. A comprehensive study on the coupling effects for several relative positions between two new backhaul and access link antenna elements is performed. Two new antenna configurations for coupling reduction are tested and the simulated and measured results in terms of antenna radiation performances were compared and commented

Combined use of weather forecasting and satellite remote sensing information for fire risk, fire and fire impact monitoring

The restoration of fire-affected forest areas needs to be combined with their future protection from renewed catastrophic fires, such as those that occurred in Greece during the 2007 summer season. The present work demonstrates that the use of various sources of satellite data in conjunction with weather forecast information is capable of providing valuable information for the characterization of fire danger with the purpose of protecting the Greek national forest areas. This study shows that favourable meteorological conditions have contributed to the fire outbreak during the days of the unusually damaging fires in Peloponnese as well as Euboia (modern Greek: Evia) at the end of August 2007. During those days, Greece was located between an extended high pressure system in Central Europe and a low pressure system in the Middle East. Their combination resulted in strong north-northeasterly winds in the Aegean Sea. As a consequence, strong winds were also observed in the regions of Evia and Peloponnese, especially in mountainous areas. The analysis of satellite images showing smoke emitted from the fires corroborates the results from the weather forecasts. A further analysis using the Fraction of Absorbed Photosyntetically Active Radiation (FAPAR) as an indicator of active vegetation shows the extent of the destruction caused by the fire. The position of the burned areas coincides with that of the active fires detected in the earlier satellite image. Using the annual maximum FAPAR as an indicator of regional vegetation density, it was found that only regions with relatively high FAPAR were burned

Ricci flows and expansion in axion-dilaton cosmology

We study renormalization-group flows by deforming a class of conformal sigma-models. We consider overall scale factor perturbation of Einstein spaces as well as more general anisotropic deformations of three-spheres. At leading order in alpha, renormalization-group equations turn out to be Ricci flows. In the three-sphere background, the latter is the Halphen system, which is exactly solvable in terms of modular forms. We also analyze time-dependent deformations of these systems supplemented with an extra time coordinate and time-dependent dilaton. In some regimes time evolution is identified with renormalization-group flow and time coordinate can appear as Liouville field. The resulting space-time interpretation is that of a homogeneous isotropic Friedmann-Robertson-Walker universe in axion-dilaton cosmology. We find as general behaviour the superposition of a big-bang (polynomial) expansion with a finite number of oscillations at early times. Any initial anisotropy disappears during the evolution.Comment: 22 page

Coupling Measurements of an Antenna System Suitable for Relay-Aided WiMAX Network

YesIn this paper two novel antennas, suitable for access and backhaul links, are designed, fabricated and tested for a Relay Station in a WiMAX wireless network. A single modi¯ed E-shaped patch antenna is described, presenting 10 dB gain over 12.4% bandwidth. This antenna element is used for the design of a 4 £ 4 planar array which provides experimental gain of 21.2 dB. The antenna system on the Relay Station operates at 3.4 GHz and includes one single antenna element for access link realization and an antenna array for the backhaul link realization. These antennas are installed in two con¯guration arrangements and tested in terms of their radiation performances and coupling e®ects. The simulated and measured results are quite satisfactory and in good agreement at which the maximum coupling between the access and backhaul antennas is found below ¡25 dB for all tested cases