1,142 research outputs found
Thermoluminescence dating of objects and materials from the South Pacific region
A general account is given of the results of the thermoluminescence dating of objects and materials from sites in Oceania. These include potsherds from Mailu Island off the southcoast of Papua New Guinea, volcanic ash layers from near Mt Hagen in the Western Highlands of the same country, and fire hearths from ancient Aboriginal habitations at Lake Mungo, New South Wales. The differences between these results and corresponding radiocarbon ages are briefly discussed
Fast directional continuous spherical wavelet transform algorithms
We describe the construction of a spherical wavelet analysis through the
inverse stereographic projection of the Euclidean planar wavelet framework,
introduced originally by Antoine and Vandergheynst and developed further by
Wiaux et al. Fast algorithms for performing the directional continuous wavelet
analysis on the unit sphere are presented. The fast directional algorithm,
based on the fast spherical convolution algorithm developed by Wandelt and
Gorski, provides a saving of O(sqrt(Npix)) over a direct quadrature
implementation for Npix pixels on the sphere, and allows one to perform a
directional spherical wavelet analysis of a 10^6 pixel map on a personal
computer.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, replaced to match version accepted by IEEE
Trans. Sig. Pro
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Mindfulness in the military: Improving mental fitness in the UK Armed Forces using next generation team mindfulness training
Individual mindfulness meditation is only one of several means to enhance mindfulness throughout the Armed Forces. Due to its self-help connotations, meditation by itself may be perceived as less universally appealing in the military, where dedication, service, and self-sacrifice are important values. Therefore, we recommend that the military should consider mindfulness as a ‘team activity’, training teams to systematically anticipate and respond unitedly to stressful situations by learning to be ‘mindful as a team’. This means fostering a team culture in which every team member is encouraged to consistently notice the needs and reactions of others especially in the face of stress, and creating collaborative solutions to all aspects of demanding challenges, intellectual as well as emotional. This helps teams to become collectively responsible for consistent performance under pressure, leave no individual alone in their battle with their own thoughts and feelings when stressed, and thus benefit from every team members’ full capacity to face complex threats collectively. In addition, we recommend that only formally trained psychotherapeutic counsellors should deliver individual-focused mindfulness meditation initiatives. Prolonged periods of quiet contemplation (eg. sitting in silence for 20 minutes or longer), common in ‘traditional’, individual-focused mindfulness meditation programmes such as Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) may unearth latent trauma in unexpected ways, and military populations could be particularly vulnerable in this regard
The discovery and preliminary thermoluminescence dating of two Aboriginal cave shelters in the Selwyn Ranges, Queensland
Two apparently undisturbed cave shelters near Selwyn in the Selwyn Ranges in Queensland were discovered by one of us (G.G.) during 1977. The first of these, referred to as Site 1 is located at Lat. 21°23'; Long. 140°32'. The second referred to as Site 2, is located approximately lO km SE of the first. Rock paintings were present in both shelters but were not recorded in detail
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Creating a Different Kind of Innovator: Using health communication theory in entrepreneurship education to foster behavior change among entrepreneurship students in sub-Saharan Africa
There is a broad scholarly consensus that entrepreneurship can be taught and that entrepreneurship education benefits societies (Charney & Libecap, 2003). However, technical entrepreneurship education interventions are still the norm in the West (Alberti & Poli, 2005), and especially in sub-Saharan Africa (North, 2002; Ladzani & van Vuuren, 2002). In this study, we argue that entrepreneurship education in sub-Saharan Africa follows a special pattern, and that health communication theory can inform improvements in enterprise training in the African context because of its particular effectiveness in inducing behavior change where environmental norms would normally constrain the development of such new behavior. The overall goal of the present paper is threefold; to contribute to the understudied domain of entrepreneurship education theory for economic development, to inform more effective enterprise training interventions in sub-Saharan Africa, and to foster the generation of more entrepreneurs capable of contributing to wealth generation in this region
Evolution of the far-infrared luminosity functions in the Spitzer Wide-area Infrared Extragalactic Legacy Survey
We present new observational determination of the evolution of the rest-frame
70 and 160 micron and total infrared (TIR) galaxy luminosity functions (LFs)
using 70 micron data from the Spitzer Wide-area Infrared Extragalactic Legacy
Survey (SWIRE). The LFs were constructed for sources with spectroscopic
redshifts only in the XMM-LSS and Lockman Hole fields from the SWIRE
photometric redshift catalogue. The 70 micron and TIR LFs were constructed in
the redshift range 0<z<1.2 and the 160 micron LF was constructed in the
redshift range 0<z<0.5 using a parametric Bayesian and the vmax methods. We
assume in our models, that the faint-end power-law index of the LF does not
evolve with redshifts. We find the the double power-law model is a better
representation of the IR LF than the more commonly used power-law and Gaussian
model. We model the evolution of the FIR LFs as a function of redshift where
where the characteristic luminosity, evolve as
\propto(1+z)^{\alpha_\textsc{l}}. The rest-frame 70 micron LF shows a strong
luminosity evolution out to z=1.2 with alpha_l=3.41^{+0.18}_{-0.25}. The
rest-frame 160 micron LF also showed rapid luminosity evolution with
alpha_l=5.53^{+0.28}_{-0.23} out to z=0.5. The rate of evolution in luminosity
is consistent with values estimated from previous studies using data from IRAS,
ISO and Spitzer. The TIR LF evolves in luminosity with
alpha_l=3.82^{+0.28}_{-0.16} which is in agreement with previous results from
Spitzer 24 micron which find strong luminosity evolution. By integrating the LF
we calculated the co-moving IR luminosity density out to z=1.2, which confirm
the rapid evolution in number density of LIRGs and ULIRGs which contribute
~68^{+10}_{-07} % to the co-moving star formation rate density at z=1.2. Our
results based on 70 micron data confirms that the bulk of the star formation at
z=1 takes place in dust obscured objects.Comment: 17 pages, 14 figure
First Observational Tests of Eternal Inflation: Analysis Methods and WMAP 7-Year Results
In the picture of eternal inflation, our observable universe resides inside a
single bubble nucleated from an inflating false vacuum. Many of the theories
giving rise to eternal inflation predict that we have causal access to
collisions with other bubble universes, providing an opportunity to confront
these theories with observation. We present the results from the first
observational search for the effects of bubble collisions, using cosmic
microwave background data from the WMAP satellite. Our search targets a generic
set of properties associated with a bubble collision spacetime, which we
describe in detail. We use a modular algorithm that is designed to avoid a
posteriori selection effects, automatically picking out the most promising
signals, performing a search for causal boundaries, and conducting a full
Bayesian parameter estimation and model selection analysis. We outline each
component of this algorithm, describing its response to simulated CMB skies
with and without bubble collisions. Comparing the results for simulated bubble
collisions to the results from an analysis of the WMAP 7-year data, we rule out
bubble collisions over a range of parameter space. Our model selection results
based on WMAP 7-year data do not warrant augmenting LCDM with bubble
collisions. Data from the Planck satellite can be used to more definitively
test the bubble collision hypothesis.Comment: Companion to arXiv:1012.1995. 41 pages, 23 figures. v2: replaced with
version accepted by PRD. Significant extensions to the Bayesian pipeline to
do the full-sky non-Gaussian source detection problem (previously restricted
to patches). Note that this has changed the normalization of evidence values
reported previously, as full-sky priors are now employed, but the conclusions
remain unchange
Oceanic distribution of inorganic germanium relative to silicon: Germanium discrimination by diatoms
Seventeen inorganic germanium and silicon concentration profiles collected from the Atlantic, southwest Pacific, and Southern oceans are presented. A plot of germanium concentration versus silicon concentration produced a near-linear line with a slope of 0.760 × 10−6 (±0.004) and an intercept of 1.27 (±0.24) pmol L−1 (r2 = 0.993, p < 0.001). When the germanium-to-silicon ratios (Ge/Si) were plotted versus depth and/or silicon concentrations, higher values are observed in surface waters (low in silicon) and decreased with depth (high in silicon). Germanium-to-silicon ratios in diatoms (0.608–1.03 × 10−6) and coupled seawater samples (0.471–7.46 × 10−6) collected from the Southern Ocean are also presented and show clear evidence for Ge/Si fractionation between the water and opal phases. Using a 10 box model (based on PANDORA), Ge/Si fractionation was modeled using three assumptions: (1) no fractionation, (2) fractionation using a constant distribution coefficient (KD) between the water and solid phase, and (3) fractionation simulated using Michaelis-Menten uptake kinetics for germanium and silicon via the silicon uptake system. Model runs indicated that only Ge/Si fractionation based on differences in the Michaelis-Menten uptake kinetics for germanium and silicon can adequately describe the data. The model output using this fractionation process produced a near linear line with a slope of 0.76 × 10−6 and an intercept of 0.92 (±0.28) pmol L−1, thus reflecting the oceanic data set. This result indicates that Ge/Si fractionation in the global ocean occurs as a result of subtle differences in the uptake of germanium and silicon via diatoms in surface waters
Galactic conformity and central/satellite quenching, from the satellite profiles of M* galaxies at 0.4 < z < 1.9 in the UKIDSS UDS
We explore the redshift evolution of a curious correlation between the star formation properties of central galaxies and their satellites (‘galactic conformity') at intermediate to high redshift (0.4 9.7, around central galaxies at the characteristic Schechter function mass, M ∼ M*. We fit the radial profiles of satellite number densities with simple power laws, finding slopes in the range −1.1 to −1.4 for mass-selected satellites, and −1.3 to −1.6 for passive satellites. We confirm the tendency for passive satellites to be preferentially located around passive central galaxies at 3σ significance and show that it exists to at least z ∼ 2. Meanwhile, the quenched fraction of satellites around star-forming galaxies is consistent with field galaxies of equal stellar masses. We find no convincing evidence for a redshift-dependent evolution of these trends. One simple interpretation of these results is that only passive central galaxies occupy an environment that is capable of independently shutting off star formation in satellite galaxies. By examining the satellites of higher stellar mass star-forming galaxies (log(M*/M⊙) > 11), we conclude that the origin of galactic conformity is unlikely to be exclusively due to the host dark matter halo mass. A halo-mass-independent correlation could be established by either formation bias or a more physical connection between central and satellite star formation histories. For the latter, we argue that a star formation (or active galactic nucleus) related outburst event from the central galaxy could establish a hot halo environment which is then capable of quenching both central and satellite galaxie
Major mergers are not significant drivers of star formation or morphological transformation around the epoch of peak cosmic star formation
We investigate the contribution of major mergers (mass ratios > 1:5) to stellar mass growth and morphological transformations around the epoch of peak cosmic star formation (z ~ 2). We visually classify a complete sample of massive (M > 1010M_) galaxies at this epoch, drawn from the CANDELS survey, into late-type galaxies, major mergers, spheroids and disturbed spheroids which show morphological disturbances. Given recent simulation work, which indicates that recent (<0.3-0.4 Gyr) major-merger remnants exhibit clear tidal features in such images, we use the fraction of disturbed spheroids to probe the role of major mergers in driving morphological transformations. The percentage of blue spheroids (i.e. with ongoing star formation) that show morphological disturbances is only 21 +- 4 per cent, indicating that major mergers are not the dominant mechanism for spheroid creation at z ~ 2 - other processes, such as minor mergers or cold accretion are likely to be the main drivers of this process. We also use the rest-frame U-band luminosity as a proxy for star formation to show that only a small fraction of the star formation budget (~3 per cent) is triggered by major mergers. Taken together, our results show that major mergers are not significant drivers of galaxy evolution at z ~ 2
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