Emplotment as Epic in Archaeological Writing: The Site Monograph as Narrative

To emplot a narrative as epic is to present a story of vast scope and multiple plots as a legitimate member of a tradition of other such stories. This article argues that emplotment as epic is the broadest of three levels of plot in archaeological writings. At that level, the site monograph emerges as a characteristically archaeological form of narrative, fundamental to archaeology as a discipline and a source of chronic anxiety for archaeologists. The ‘stories’ told in site monographs are epic in length, diversity of materials covered and multiplicity of themes, plots and authors. Indeed, the more complexities of that sort the better, since those are features that help to emplot the work as good archaeology

Highly-parallelized simulation of a pixelated LArTPC on a GPU

The rapid development of general-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU) is allowing the implementation of highly-parallelized Monte Carlo simulation chains for particle physics experiments. This technique is particularly suitable for the simulation of a pixelated charge readout for time projection chambers, given the large number of channels that this technology employs. Here we present the first implementation of a full microphysical simulator of a liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) equipped with light readout and pixelated charge readout, developed for the DUNE Near Detector. The software is implemented with an end-to-end set of GPU-optimized algorithms. The algorithms have been written in Python and translated into CUDA kernels using Numba, a just-in-time compiler for a subset of Python and NumPy instructions. The GPU implementation achieves a speed up of four orders of magnitude compared with the equivalent CPU version. The simulation of the current induced on 10^3 pixels takes around 1 ms on the GPU, compared with approximately 10 s on the CPU. The results of the simulation are compared against data from a pixel-readout LArTPC prototype

Die Postulate von Koch und ie Luftverschumtzung

In 1891, the pathologistKoch postulated that injecting a pathogen into a plant (an animal, etc.) must result in damage identical to that caused by the same one under field conditions. This postulate has to be valid also for research on all aspects of air pollution and its “environment”: air pollutants applied to healthy plants during an experiment must cause the same damage as they do under field conditions. This postulate, however, has not been considered in research concerning air pollution and its effects on plants. Therefore, in part contradictory results may be found today in the voluminous literature on this problem. On the basis of visible symptoms of injury to plants it has been possible to establish grades of sensitivity of tree species to air pollution. Daily and annual mean values of air pollutants for certain areas were obtained; foliar analyses aimed at finding out about particular air-borne harmful substances helped—but regardless of all, there is no clear perception about the nature of air pollution. The authors presents a comprehensive literature review. At the same time they also point out that the “air pollution environment” is a many-layered system which is dependent on other facts, too, especially in regard to potential injuries to plants. The major harmful substances and their chemical compounds are discussed including the sphere of the plant cell, and biochemical questions. Research now not only has to consider parts of the problem (e. g. effects of mean levels of a certain damaging agent), but must rather focus on the problem in its entirety with all its ramifications. It is not sufficient to investigate just the physiological effects of air pollutants on tree growth; the effort to perceive the “air pollution environment”, too, has to be included as being equally important