Harina de otro costal : género y cambios tecnológicos en la producción de harina en la Galilea romana

L'estudi de la Palestina romana s'ha centrat en general en els processos polítics i religiosos, de vegades utilitzant materials arqueològics. No obstant, la tecnologia de la producció de farina pràcticament s'ha ignorat. En períodes anteriors aquesta tasca domèstica era realitzada només per les dones, però les noves tecnologies del període romà, que dugueren a la substitució del molí manual per instruments més complexos de mòlta, es van estendre pels centres urbans de Galilea (tot i que no es coneixen en els petits pobles) i implicaren l'aparició de formes de mòlta comercial controlades pels homes. Aquest canvi beneficià en cert sentit a les dones però, al mateix temps, provocà l'aparició d'imatges negatives femenines, cosa que tindria les seves conseqüències a llarg termini.El estudio de la Palestina romana se ha centrado generalmente en los procesos políticos y religiosos, usando en ocasiones materiales arqueológicos. Sin embargo, prácticamente se ha ignorado la tecnología de la producción de harina. En períodos anteriores esa tarea doméstica era realizada únicamente por las mujeres, pero las nuevas tecnologías del período romano, que llevaron a la sustitución del molino de mano por instrumentos más complejos de molienda, se extendieron por los centros urbanos de Galilea (aunque no se conocen en los poblados pequeños) e implicaron la aparición de formas de molienda comercial controlada por hombres. Este cambio benefició en cierto sentido a las mujeres aunque, al mismo tiempo, provocó la aparición de imágenes femeninas negativas que habría de tener consecuencias a largo plazo.The study of Roman Palestine usually focuses on political and religious developments and often draws upon archaeological materials. The technology involved in flour production, however, has been virtually ignored. That household task was performed entirely by women in the preceding periods. But new technologies of the Roman period-with machine milling replacing hand grinding-spread to the urban centres of Galilee (but not the smaller settlements) and involved a shift to commercial milling controlled by males. This shift was beneficial for women in some ways but also gave rise to negative views about women that were to have long-term consequences

The Complexity of Welfare Maximization in Congestion Games

We investigate issues of complexity related to welfare maximization in congestion games. In particular, we provide a full classification of complexity results for the problem of finding a minimum cost solution to a congestion game, under the model of Rosenthal. We consider both network and general congestion games, and we examine several variants of the problem concerning the structure of the game and the properties of its associated cost functions. Many of these problem variants turn out to be NP-hard, and some are hard to approximate to within any finite factor, unless P = NP. We also identify several versions of the problem that are solvable in polynomial time.United States. Dept. of Energy (Grant Number: DE-AC52-07NA27344)Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (Grant Number: LLNL-JRNL-410585)United States. Office of Naval Research (Grant Number: N000141110056

Advisors of the age of reason: The periodical essays of Steele, Addison, Johnson, and Goldsmith

The periodical essay of the eighteenth century invited men of the Age of Reason to pour into it their talent and thought; it was a form in which they could make their points briefly and effectively; it was flexible, and was eventually familiar enough to be well-received. The form itself reflected the common-sense practicality, restraint and moderation that the periodical writers were advocating

Network flow problems and congestion games : complexity and approximation results

This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Operations Research Center, 2006.Includes bibliographical references (p. 155-164).(cont.) We first address the complexity of finding an optimal minimum cost solution to a congestion game. We consider both network and general congestion games, and we examine several variants of the problem concerning the structure of the game and its associated cost functions. Many of the problem variants are NP-hard, though we do identify several versions of the games that are solvable in polynomial time. We then investigate existence and the price of anarchy of pure Nash equilibria in k-splittable congestion games with linear costs. A k-splittable congestion game is one in which each player may split its flow on at most k different paths. We identify conditions for the existence of equilibria by providing a series of potential functions. For the price of anarchy, we show an asymptotic lower bound of 2.4 for unweighted k-splittable congestion games and 2.401 for weighted k-splittable congestion games, and an upper bound of 2.618 in both cases.In this thesis we examine four network flow problems arising in the study of transportation, communication, and water networks. The first of these problems is the Integer Equal Flow problem, a network flow variant in which some arcs are restricted to carry equal amounts of flow. Our main contribution is that this problem is not approximable within a factor of 2n(1-epsilon]), for any fixed [epsilon] > 0, where n is the number of nodes in the graph. We extend this result to a number of variants on the size and structure of the arc sets. We next study the Pup Matching problem, a truck routing problem where two commodities ('pups') traversing an arc together in the network incur the arc cost only once. We propose a tighter integer programming formulation for this problem, and we address practical problems that arise with implementing such integer programming solutions. Additionally, we provide approximation and exact algorithms for special cases of the problem where the number of pups is fixed or the total cost in the network is bounded. Our final two problems are on the topic of congestion games, which were introduced in the area of communications networks.by Carol Meyers.Ph.D

High-performance computing for electric grid planning and operations

Abstract not provide

Remembrances of Steve Ellmann, Still Present

In Memoriam: Steven Ellman

Nominalization and Alternations in Biomedical Language

Background: This paper presents data on alternations in the argument structure of common domain-specific verbs and their associated verbal nominalizations in the PennBioIE corpus. Alternation is the term in theoretical linguistics for variations in the surface syntactic form of verbs, e.g. the different forms of stimulate in FSH stimulates follicular development and follicular development is stimulated by FSH. The data is used to assess the implications of alternations for biomedical text mining systems and to test the fit of the sublanguage model to biomedical texts. Methodology/Principal Findings: We examined 1,872 tokens of the ten most common domain-specific verbs or their zerorelated nouns in the PennBioIE corpus and labelled them for the presence or absence of three alternations. We then annotated the arguments of 746 tokens of the nominalizations related to these verbs and counted alternations related to the presence or absence of arguments and to the syntactic position of non-absent arguments. We found that alternations are quite common both for verbs and for nominalizations. We also found a previously undescribed alternation involving an adjectival present participle. Conclusions/Significance: We found that even in this semantically restricted domain, alternations are quite common, and alternations involving nominalizations are exceptionally diverse. Nonetheless, the sublanguage model applies to biomedica

Genome-wide association and HLA fine-mapping studies identify risk loci and genetic pathways underlying allergic rhinitis

Allergic rhinitis is the most common clinical presentation of allergy, affecting 400 million people worldwide, with increasing incidence in westernized countries1,2. To elucidate the genetic architecture and understand the underlying disease mechanisms, we carried out a meta-analysis of allergic rhinitis in 59,762 cases and 152,358 controls of European ancestry and identified a total of 41 risk loci for allergic rhinitis, including 20 loci not previously associated with allergic rhinitis, which were confirmed in a replication phase of 60,720 cases and 618,527 controls. Functional annotation implicated genes involved in various immune pathways, and fine mapping of the HLA region suggested amino acid variants important for antigen binding. We further performed genome-wide association study (GWAS) analyses of allergic sensitization against inhalant allergens and nonallergic rhinitis, which suggested shared genetic mechanisms across rhinitis-related traits. Future studies of the identified loci and genes might identify novel targets for treatment and prevention of allergic rhinitis

LSST: from Science Drivers to Reference Design and Anticipated Data Products

(Abridged) We describe here the most ambitious survey currently planned in the optical, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). A vast array of science will be enabled by a single wide-deep-fast sky survey, and LSST will have unique survey capability in the faint time domain. The LSST design is driven by four main science themes: probing dark energy and dark matter, taking an inventory of the Solar System, exploring the transient optical sky, and mapping the Milky Way. LSST will be a wide-field ground-based system sited at Cerro Pach\'{o}n in northern Chile. The telescope will have an 8.4 m (6.5 m effective) primary mirror, a 9.6 deg$^2$ field of view, and a 3.2 Gigapixel camera. The standard observing sequence will consist of pairs of 15-second exposures in a given field, with two such visits in each pointing in a given night. With these repeats, the LSST system is capable of imaging about 10,000 square degrees of sky in a single filter in three nights. The typical 5$\sigma$ point-source depth in a single visit in $r$ will be $\sim 24.5$ (AB). The project is in the construction phase and will begin regular survey operations by 2022. The survey area will be contained within 30,000 deg$^2$ with $\delta<+34.5^\circ$, and will be imaged multiple times in six bands, $ugrizy$, covering the wavelength range 320--1050 nm. About 90\% of the observing time will be devoted to a deep-wide-fast survey mode which will uniformly observe a 18,000 deg$^2$ region about 800 times (summed over all six bands) during the anticipated 10 years of operations, and yield a coadded map to $r\sim27.5$. The remaining 10\% of the observing time will be allocated to projects such as a Very Deep and Fast time domain survey. The goal is to make LSST data products, including a relational database of about 32 trillion observations of 40 billion objects, available to the public and scientists around the world.Comment: 57 pages, 32 color figures, version with high-resolution figures available from https://www.lsst.org/overvie