Legal issues in clouds: towards a risk inventory.

Cloud computing technologies have reached a high level of development, yet a number of obstacles still exist that must be overcome before widespread commercial adoption can become a reality. In a cloud environment, end users requesting services and cloud providers negotiate service-level agreements (SLAs) that provide explicit statements of all expectations and obligations of the participants. If cloud computing is to experience widespread commercial adoption, then incorporating risk assessment techniques is essential during SLA negotiation and service operation. This article focuses on the legal issues surrounding risk assessment in cloud computing. Specifically, it analyses risk regarding data protection and security, and presents the requirements of an inherent risk inventory. The usefulness of such a risk inventory is described in the context of the OPTIMIS project

Ireland: Submerged Prehistoric Sites and Landscapes

Evidence of Ireland's drowned landscapes and settlements presently comprises 50 sites spread across the entire island. These comprise mainly intertidal find spots or small collections of flint artefacts. A handful of fully subtidal sites are known, generally from nearshore regions and consisting, with one exception, of isolated single finds. Evidence of organic remains is also sparse, with the exception of Mesolithic and Neolithic wooden fish traps buried in estuarine sediments under Dublin. The relatively small number of sites is probably due to lack of research as much as taphonomic issues, and thus the current evidence hints at the potential archaeological record which may be found underwater. Such evidence could contribute to knowledge of the coastal adaptations and seafaring abilities of Ireland's earliest inhabitants. Nonetheless, taphonomic considerations, specifically relating to Ireland's history of glaciation, sea-level change and also modern oceanographic conditions likely limit the preservation of submerged landscapes and their associated archaeology. Realistically, the Irish shelf is likely characterised by pockets of preservation, which makes detection and study of submerged landscapes difficult but not impossible. A range of potential routes of investigation are identifiable, including site-scale archaeological survey, landscape-scale seabed mapping, archival research and community engagement

Influence of handaxe size and shape on cutting efficiency: a large-scale experiment and morphometric analysis

Handaxes represent one of the most temporally enduring and geographically widespread of Palaeolithic artifacts and thus comprised a key technological strategy of many hominin populations. Archaeologically observable variation in the size (i.e., mass) and shape properties of handaxes has been frequently noted. It is logical to ask whether some of this variability may have had functional implications. Here, we report the results of a large-scale (n = 500 handaxes) experiment designed to examine the influence of variation in handaxe size and shape on cutting efficiency rates during a laboratory task. We used a comprehensive dataset of morphometric (size-adjusted) shape variables and statistical methods (including multivariate methods) to address this issue. Our first set of analyses focused on handaxe mass/size variability. This analysis demonstrated that, at a broad-scale level of variation, handaxe mass may have been free to vary independently of functional (cutting) efficiency. Our analysis also, however, identified that there will be a task-specific threshold in terms of functional effectiveness at the lower end of handaxe mass variation. This implies that hominins may have targeted design forms to meet minimal (task-specific) thresholds, and may also have managed handaxe reduction and discard in respect to such factors. Our second set of analyses focused on handaxe shape variability. This analysis also indicated that considerable variation in handaxe shape may occur independently of any strong effect on cutting efficiency. We discuss how these results have several implications for considerations of handaxe variation in the archaeological record. At a general level, our results demonstrate that variability within and between handaxe assemblages in terms of their size and shape properties will not necessarily have had immediate or strong impact on their effectiveness when used for cutting, and that such variability may have been related to factors other than functional issues

Modeling the Past: The Paleoethnological Evidence

This chapter considers the earliest Paleolithic, Oldowan (Mode 1), and Acheulean (Mode 2) cultures of the Old Continent and the traces left by the earliest hominids since their departure from Africa. According to the most recent archaeological data, they seem to have followed two main dispersal routes across the Arabian Peninsula toward the Levant, to the north, and the Indian subcontinent, to the east. According to recent discoveries at Dmanisi in the Caucasus, the first Paleolithic settlement of Europe is dated to some 1.75 Myr ago, which indicates that the first “out of Africa” took place at least slightly before this date. The data available for Western Europe show that the first Paleolithic sites can be attributed to the period slightly before 1.0 Myr ago. The first well-defined “structural remains” so far discovered in Europe are those of Isernia La Pineta in Southern Italy, where a semicircular artificial platform made of stone boulders and animal bones has been excavated. The first hand-thrown hunting weapons come from the site of Scho¨ningen in north Germany, where the first occurrence of wooden spears, more than 2 m long, has been recorded from a site attributed to some 0.37 Myr ago. Slightly later began the regular control of fire. Although most of the archaeological finds of these ages consist of chipped stone artifacts, indications of art seem to be already present in the Acheulean of Africa and the Indian subcontinent

Cardiac vagal tone as a predictor of defensiveness, openness, and self-regulatory style

Cardiac Vagal Tone (CVT) has been shown to predict a number of important emotional and behavioral outcomes. Although CVT has been proposed as an index of emotion regulation (Porges et al., 1994), little research to date has sought to explore the link between CVT and broader conceptual variables relating to personality and self-regulation. The present study measured CVT (using respiratory sinus arrhythmia) across five-minute baseline, suppression, and recovery periods in participants (n = 102) who had previously completed a short form of the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale and the Openness to Experience subscale of the NEO-PI. Response latencies for Ideal and Ought self-guides (Higgins, 1997) were collected in order to assess the relationship between self-regulatory style and CVT. Defensiveness, non-Openness, and increased Ought-self accessibility were hypothesized to predict reduced CVT, and reduced capacity to suppress of CVT. Data revealed that participants suppressed CVT during a serial counting task, and higher CVT was predicted by lower social anxiety scores. Defensiveness predicted generally lower mean CVT scores across conditions, but no difference in the degree of change for CVT from baseline to suppression, or suppression to recovery. The relationship between defensiveness and mean CVT levels was moderated by gender, with defensiveness predicting significant differences in CVT for men only (higher defensiveness correlating to lower CVT). Neither Openness nor self-guide accessibility was related to CVT levels, and defensiveness did not moderate the relationship between CVT and Openness. Supplemental analyses suggest that behavioral inhibition scores (BIS) may interact with gender in predicting CVT, with low-BIS men exhibiting higher CVT than high-BIS men, and low- and high-BIS women showing an inverted (but non-significant) pattern. The results imply that CVT may be a more conceptually distinct variable than had been predicted, but also raise questions about the nature of defensiveness for men and women, and the validity of self-report personality measures

L'histoire de la reconnaissance des burins en silex et de la découverte de leur fonction en tant qu'outils pendant le Paléolithique supérieur

Movius Hallam L. L'histoire de la reconnaissance des burins en silex et de la découverte de leur fonction en tant qu'outils pendant le Paléolithique supérieur. In: Bulletin de la Société préhistorique française. Études et travaux, tome 63, n°1, 1966. pp. 50-65