The Worked Stone Finds from Barrow T5:Burrington Combe

Barrow T5 was originally excavated by the University of Bristol Speleological Society during the 1920s. This work was unsatisfactory and the site was reexcavated, this time carefully and completely by H. Taylor, between 1949 and 1957. No final report was reproduced. This paper gives the background to the work and gives details of the non-flint worked stone implements, almost all of Old Red Sandstone (Portishead Formation) recovered from the site. The finds include polishers and one broken mould which indicates metalworking at the site, or nearby, and two crude knives, one of sandstone and one of limestone

Rapid Karst Development in an English Quartzitic Sandstone

 Na izdankih Fellskih peščenjakov v pokrajini Northumberland v Angliji, se pojavlja več kraških oblik, med njimi tudi jame. Kraške oblike so nastale v holocenu, saj je bilo območje v Devenzijski hladni dobi pokrito z ledenikom. Predvidevamo, da je nastanek teh oblik povezan z incepcijo tektonske dejavnosti in hitro arenizacijo (selektivnim preperevanjem vlažnih) kamnitih površin. V članku razpravljamo tudi o omejenosti splošno sprejetih definicij termina kras. Many karst features, including caves, have been found in the outcrop of the Fell Sandstone in Northumberland, England. These features are Holocene in age, since the area was glaciated during the Devensian cold stage. It is suggested that tectonic inception and selective arenisation of rock faces that remain damp are responsible for these karst features. The limitations of textbook definitions of the term karst are discussed

The Aveline's Hole 9 Cranium: A Partial Solution to a Long Standing Enigma

Aveline's Hole is both one of the best-known sites with early human skeletal material in Britain and one of the most problematic in its history. First discovered and explored at the close of the 18th century, it yielded an estimated burial count of at least fifty individuals. Twentieth century work suggested a Late Upper Palaeolithic date for the material, in a context that might be called Creswellian. A recent dating programme places the human remains into the early Holocene and confirms the site as a Mesolithic cemetery in all senses of that word. Though a number of partial studies of the material have been published, no full description was attempted or published prior to the destruction of much of the collection in 1940. Recently one of us published a full study of the site history and a description and analysis of the surviving material. However, that study did note the small number of intact but undated crania that have been attributed to the site at various times. This study looks at one of these, denoted as AH9 and never previously described, in the aftermath of direct radiocarbon dating. Both direct dating and indirect analyses indicate that it is highly unlikely that this skull was part of the Mesolithic assemblage from this site."The work of CM was made possible by grants from the Canada Council and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The dating of the specimen was funded by a grant through NERC’s ORADS programme."https://www.ubss.org.uk/resources/proceedings/vol25/UBSS_Proc_25_3_275-294.pd

The impact of training non-physician clinicians in Malawi on maternal and perinatal mortality : a cluster randomised controlled evaluation of the enhancing training and appropriate technologies for mothers and babies in Africa (ETATMBA) project

Background: Maternal mortality in much of sub-Saharan Africa is very high whereas there has been a steady decline in over the past 60 years in Europe. Perinatal mortality is 12 times higher than maternal mortality accounting for about 7 million neonatal deaths; many of these in sub-Saharan countries. Many of these deaths are preventable. Countries, like Malawi, do not have the resources nor highly trained medical specialists using complex technologies within their healthcare system. Much of the burden falls on healthcare staff other than doctors including non-physician clinicians (NPCs) such as clinical officers, midwives and community health-workers. The aim of this trial is to evaluate a project which is training NPCs as advanced leaders by providing them with skills and knowledge in advanced neonatal and obstetric care. Training that will hopefully be cascaded to their colleagues (other NPCs, midwives, nurses). Methods/design: This is a cluster randomised controlled trial with the unit of randomisation being the 14 districts of central and northern Malawi (one large district was divided into two giving an overall total of 15). Eight districts will be randomly allocated the intervention. Within these eight districts 50 NPCs will be selected and will be enrolled on the training programme (the intervention). Primary outcome will be maternal and perinatal (defined as until discharge from health facility) mortality. Data will be harvested from all facilities in both intervention and control districts for the lifetime of the project (3–4 years) and comparisons made. In addition a process evaluation using both quantitative and qualitative (e.g. interviews) will be undertaken to evaluate the intervention implementation. Discussion: Education and training of NPCs is a key to improving healthcare for mothers and babies in countries like Malawi. Some of the challenges faced are discussed as are the potential limitations. It is hoped that the findings from this trial will lead to a sustainable improvement in healthcare and workforce development and training. Trial registration: ISRCTN6329415

Advancing national animal health and welfare policy

The University College Dublin (UCD) School of Veterinary Medicine has a broad research agenda covering areas such as veterinary public health, epidemiology and national disease control, herd health management, drug delivery, pharmacology, parasitology, and One Health research. We work with national and international collaborators and, with the support of Zoetis, have a longstanding “UCD Squared” partnership with the University of California-Davis, which has established an ambitious program of research, drawing on expertise from a diverse community of veterinary and medical scientists and clinicians.Unusual, not sure if it can be called Journal Article or should be under another type perhap

Avelines's Hole: An Unexpected Twist in the Tale

Aveline’s Hole is the largest known Early Mesolithic cemetery in Britain, previously thought to have no evidence for subsequent burial activity. Thus, it came as some surprise when the results of a recent ancient human DNA study found that, of four individuals from the site yielding genomic data, two showed high levels of ancestry from Early Neolithic Aegean farmers. Radiocarbon dating confirmed that these two individuals were indeed British Early Neolithic in date, while the other two had the expected ‘Western Hunter-Gatherer’ ancestry genomic signatures, with the two groups separated in time by nearly five millennia. Moreover, the two Neolithic samples were both crania, while the two Mesolithic samples were long bones. Given the absence of Neolithic dates in the previous sizeable dating programme combined with the difficult history of the collection, i.e., the WWII bombing of its Bristol repository, this raised the question of whether the crania might in fact be from another site. As we show in this paper, a very strong case can be made that the crania do in fact originate from Aveline’s Hole. Additional radiocarbon dating (14 in total, including the above mentioned four) suggests that about half the cranial elements from the site fall within the Early Neolithic, though there is still no evidence for the deposition of post-cranial remains at this time, nor is there any burial evidence in the long intervening period between the Early Mesolithic and the Early Neolithic. Intriguingly, craniometric analyses of legacy data including three crania lost in the bombing suggest that one, Aveline’s Hole ‘A’, may be Upper Palaeolithicin date. As part of this re-investigation of the human remains from the site, we present new stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analyses that differ significantly from those originally reported for the Early Mesolithic, with the new results more in keeping with other isotopic data for this period. We also present new stable carbon and nitrogen isotope results on human remains from the nearby Early Mesolithic sites of Badger Hole and Greylake, and report new Early Mesolithic radiocarbon dates and isotopic data from Cannington Park Quarry. Clear isotopic differences between the Early Mesolithic and the Neolithic remains can be seen, but these are argued to relate primarily to shifts in the underlying ecological baselines, rather than to differences in types of foods consumed (with the caveat that terrestrial wild and domesticated foods will be isotopically similar). The genetic data are summarised, giving evidence not only of the ancestry of Mesolithic and Neolithic individuals from Aveline’s Hole, but also suggesting something of their physical appearance. The degree of population replacement now indicated by ancient DNA suggests that there was a substantial migration of farmers into Britain at the start of the Neolithic. This new information demonstrates the archaeological importance of Aveline's Hole for both the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods."Funding for nine of the new radiocarbon dates from Aveline’s Hole reported here was provided by NERC’s NRCF programme (NF/2016/2/16). The ancient DNA study was funded by the Wellcome Trust (100713/Z/12/Z), as were three new radiocarbon dates from Aveline’s Hole. The isotopic analysis of the Badger Hole human remains was funded as part of a NERC studentship (NE/K500987/1)."https://www.ubss.org.uk/resources/proceedings/vol28/UBSS_Proc_28_1_9-63.pd

Wheels of Fire IV. Star Formation and the Neutral Interstellar Medium in the Ring Galaxy AM0644-741

We combine data from the ATNF and the SEST to investigate the neutral ISM in AM0644-741, a large and robustly star-forming ring galaxy. The galaxy's ISM is concentrated in the 42-kpc diameter starburst ring, but appears dominated by atomic gas, with a global molecular fraction (f_mol) of only 7.9%. Apart from the starburst peak, the gas ring is stable against the growth of gravitational instabilities (Q_gas=2-7). Including stars lowers Q overall, but not enough to make Q<1 everywhere. The ring's global star formation efficiency (SFE) appears somewhat elevated, but varies around the ring by more than an order of magnitude, peaking where star formation is most intense. AM0644-741's star formation law is peculiar: HI follows a Schmidt law while H2 is uncorrelated with SFR/area. Photodissociation models yield low volume densities in the ring, particularly in the starburst quadrant (n~2 cm^-3), implying a warm neutral medium dominated ISM. At the same time, the ring's pressure and ambient far-ultraviolet radiation field lead to the expectation of a predominantly molecular ISM. We argue that the ring's peculiar star formation law, n, SFE, and f_mol result from the ISM's >100 Myr confinement time in the starburst ring, which enhances the destructive effects of embedded massive stars and supernovae. As a result, the ring's molecular ISM becomes dominated by small clouds where star formation is most intense, causing H2 to be underestimated by 12CO line fluxes: in effect X(CO) >> X(Gal) despite the ring's solar metallicity. The observed large HI component is primarily a low density photodissociation product, i.e., a tracer rather than a precursor of massive star formation. Such an "over-cooked" ISM may be a general characteristic of evolved starburst ring galaxies.Comment: 41 pages, 7 tables, 18 eps figure

Care in a time of austerity: the electronic monitoring of homecare workers' time

Austerity places intense pressures on labour costs in paid care. In the UK, electronic monitoring technology has been introduced to record (and materially reduce) the working time and wages of homecare workers. Based on empirical findings, we show that, in a 'time of austerity', care is reductively constructed as a consumption of time. Service users are constructed as needy, greedy, time-consumers and homecare workers as resource-wasting time-takers. We point to austerity as a temporal ideology aimed at persuading populations that individual deprivation in the present moment, self-sacrifice and the suppression of personal need in the here and now is a necessary requirement to underpin a more secure national future. Accordingly, women in low-waged care work are required to eschew a rights bearing, present-tense identity and are assumed willing to suppress their entitlements to lawful wages as a sacrifice to the future. By transforming our understandings of 'care' into those of 'time consumption', and by emphasizing the virtue of present-tense deprivation, a politics of austerity appears to justify time-monitoring in care provision and the rationing of homecare workers' pay

M dwarfs: effective temperatures, radii and metallicities

We empirically determine effective temperatures and bolometric luminosities for a large sample of nearby M dwarfs, for which high accuracy optical and infrared photometry is available. We introduce a new technique which exploits the flux ratio in different bands as a proxy of both effective temperature and metallicity. Our temperature scale for late type dwarfs extends well below 3000 K (almost to the brown dwarf limit) and is supported by interferometric angular diameter measurements above 3000 K. Our metallicities are in excellent agreement (usually within 0.2 dex) with recent determinations via independent techniques. A subsample of cool M dwarfs with metallicity estimates based on hotter Hipparcos common proper-motion companions indicates our metallicities are also reliable below 3000 K, a temperature range unexplored until now. The high quality of our data allow us to identify a striking feature in the bolometric luminosity versus temperature plane, around the transition from K to M dwarfs. We have compared our sample of stars with theoretical models and conclude that this transition is due to an increase in the radii of the M dwarfs, a feature which is not reproduced by theoretical models.Comment: 26 pages, 14 figures. Accepted by MNRAS. Landscape table available online at http://users.utu.fi/luccas/MOITE