Archaeology and Celtic Myth: Some Points of Comparison and Convergence

This article arises from a plenary invitation to compare myth and archaeology in the context of Celtic-speaking cultures. Approaches to myth in this context have undergone significant reassessment in the light of revisionist approaches to definitions of ‘native’ culture and ‘Celtic’ identity. These reassessments have implications for comparisons that are made between archaeological evidence and narratives, or elements thereof, that are arguably identifiable as mythic. New approaches to data in both subject areas affect roles that have long been played by myth in public reception of archaeological discoveries and in supporting cultural identities. Past approaches to such comparisons inspire caution, even scepticism, but some critical use of myth as an idea can be seen as productive – for example, in questioning conservative interpretations of textual or material data

A breakthrough curve analysis of unstable density-driven flow and transport in homogenous porous media

2000 FLORIDA AVE NW, WASHINGTON, USA, DC, 2000

KAPEX RAFOS float data report 1997-1999 part B : float trajectories at 750 m in the Benguela Current

Thirty-two RAFOS floats were launched at the depth of intermediate water, near 750 m, in the Benguela Current along 30S and its extension along 7W. The floats were tracked acoustically for two years during 1997–1999. Seven floats looped in three Agulhas Current rings, which drifted west northwestward at a mean velocity of around 5 cm/sec. Floats not in Agulhas rings tended to drift westward at around 2 cm/sec in the latitude band 22S–35S. North of 22S three floats drifted eastward. This report describes the float trajectories and summarizes the main results. These are the first subsurface long-term Lagrangian data in the Benguela Current.Funding was provided by the National Science Foundation under Grant Nos. OCE-9528574 and OCE-0236654

The Effect of cold-chain re-introduction on the molecular integrity of rocuronium bromide

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Fnc74HliOt37xUpPyKEWwSMqHW5-sNi-/view?usp=sharinghttps://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1cmCcrZEfrPhL1J0pt4py-9qhYXnOlHn9?usp=sharinghttps://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1_RCPybSRd1j9iE0G4y8G7Al7ECn74bLy?usp=sharin

Data-Driven Abstraction-Based Control Synthesis

This paper studies formal synthesis of controllers for continuous-spacesystems with unknown dynamics to satisfy requirements expressed as lineartemporal logic formulas. Formal abstraction-based synthesis schemes rely on aprecise mathematical model of the system to build a finite abstract model,which is then used to design a controller. The abstraction-based schemes arenot applicable when the dynamics of the system are unknown. We propose adata-driven approach that computes the growth bound of the system using afinite number of trajectories. The growth bound together with the sampledtrajectories are then used to construct the abstraction and synthesise acontroller. Our approach casts the computation of the growth bound as a robust convexoptimisation program (RCP). Since the unknown dynamics appear in theoptimisation, we formulate a scenario convex program (SCP) corresponding to theRCP using a finite number of sampled trajectories. We establish a samplecomplexity result that gives a lower bound for the number of sampledtrajectories to guarantee the correctness of the growth bound computed from theSCP with a given confidence. We also provide a sample complexity result for thesatisfaction of the specification on the system in closed loop with thedesigned controller for a given confidence. Our results are founded onestimating a bound on the Lipschitz constant of the system and provideguarantees on satisfaction of both finite and infinite-horizon specifications.We show that our data-driven approach can be readily used as a model-freeabstraction refinement scheme by modifying the formulation of the growth boundand providing similar sample complexity results. The performance of ourapproach is shown on three case studies.<br

Historical-Theological Models of Pilgrimage as a resource for Faith Tourism

Pilgrimage is often seen as a physical journey to a sacred destination fixed by custom, destination-centred and broadly penitential in tone. The work of anthropologists in the last century broadened definitions to consider pilgrimage, across a range of faiths, in terms of a journey of transition and formation of identity. More recent historical scholarship has critiqued the longer development of our idea of pilgrimage, as well as its theological structures and markers. This diachronic approach to pilgrimage has also considered its origins with respect to early Christian conceptions of the life of the Christian in society and found resonances for patterns of lay pilgrimage in early monastic ideas. Such historical-theological dimension of research into pilgrimage provides a useful platform from which we can interrogate the idea of ‘faith tourism’ or ‘pilgrimage tourism’. Many people of faith visit particular churches and holy sites to invoke their historic dimensions as well as to see what is presently on such sites. Visitors seek to re-enact historical narratives in the performance of certain pilgrimages and liturgies associated with them. Historical studies of theology thus may identify narratives that drive choices of action in pilgrimage. An historical reflection on pilgrimage may also be productive in widening definitions of pilgrimage for future development and may offer ideas for development of resources for the traveller

The Enigma of the Picts

The Picts are the first chapter in Scottish history. Indeed, they arereally more of a foreword or a preface: for it is only with their merger withthe kingdom of S£Q.ui of Dalriada (in Argyllshire) in 843 A.D. that we have akingdom called 'Scotland' for the first time. The language and customs ofthese S£.Q.1tl (Irish migrants from around the fifth century A.D. or earlier)came to dominate the culture of the new kingdom, at the expense of that of thePicts and it is with the decline of the Picts that 'Scot'tish history begins.Nonetheless many elements of Pictish culture must have gone into the makingof Scottish civilisation. But there is much disagreement as to what Pictishcivilisation was really like. This 'enigma' of the Picts (as I will call it), thecontroversy and unanswered questions surrounding the identity of theseprevious occupants of Scotland, have a compelling and fascinating quality, foracademics as much as for the general reader. So I suppose I had best begin bystating that I am a scholar behind whom stretches a long and noble tradition offailure! Many scholars have set out to solve the enigma of the Picts, somegreat names among them, but there is still little agreement. It would certainlybe vain of me to suppose that I will do any better in attempting to resolve theproblems

Communication and commerce along the western sealanes 400-800 AD

This dissertation will examine evidence for communication and commerce between western Britain, Scotland, Ireland', their Continental and British neighbours, and the Mediterranean, in the period 400-800 AD. Parts of the terrain and subject of this enquiry have been covered in earlier, well-known studies by Heinrich Zimmer, Kuno Meyer and Joseph Vendryes, all of whom explored the evidence for 'direct' travel between Ireland and Gaul in this period, and by 0. G. S. Crawford and E. G. Bowen, who examined the early medieval evidence in wide-ranging studies of what they termed the 'western seaways'. Their sources and methods have figured more recently in studies of the 'Irish Sea Culture-Province' hypothesis4 and, most significantly, of the contacts indicated by imported ceramics identified on western British and Irish sites since the 1940s. Despite the considerable literature arising from these previous researches, however, a separate historical study integrating archaeological and textual sources to answer the basic question of who was coming and going from the western shores of Britain and Ireland in the period 400-800 AD, and by what means, is lacking. It has to a large degree been taken for granted that maritime exchange would have constantly flourished along the western seaboard, to be invoked whenever an explanation was required for the movement of ideas or objects between regions. The studies of Zimmer and Bowen, in particular, sought to identify communication models as the background to theses concerning the spread of culture to and from early medieval Britain and Ireland. Other investigations have discussed aspects of the subject with reference to Zimmer, sometimes adding new material in the case of Crawford, James and Thomas, but in other cases, such as studies by Boissonade, Vendryes and Lewis, chiefly repeating the core of references assembled by Zimmer. Accordingly, the desire of the cultural theorists to imagine constant trading links as a background to cultural exchange has been carried over into studies of economic history where, for example, Zimmer's 'Wine trade' model, a theory particular to his thesis of the spread of classical culture to Ireland, has cast a misleading spell over most subsequent studies, both historical and archaeological, and has deflected any questioning of the causal relationship between commerce and the travels of cultural practitioners such as scholars who travel on trading ships. In some cases, for example where monastic links may be involved in the formation of commercial links, possibly crucial relationships are obscured