Need, Merit or Self-Interest - What Determines the Allocation of Aid?

Previous studies into aid allocation have concluded that foreign aid is allocated not only according to development needs but also according to donor self-interest. We revisit this topic and allow for donor as well as recipient specific effects in our analysis. Our results indicate that roughly half of the predicted value of aid is determined by donor specific effects. Of the remaining variation, recipient need accounts for 36 percent and donor selfinterest or about 16 percent. This suggests that the previous literature has overstated the importance of donor self-interest. However, bilateral donors seem to place little importance on recipient merit. Recipient merit, measured by growth, democracy and human rights, accounts for only two percent of predicted aid.

The Socio-Economic Relations of Warfare and the Military Mortality Crises of the Thirty Years' War

Michael Flinn wrote that the Thirty Years' War, fought in central Europe between 1618 and 1648, "remains the classic study of the military causation of mortality crises".' Despite these words, the Thirty Years' War has rarely been studied from this perspective. In what follows, I seek to explain the enormous demographic loss experienced during the War. In doing so, I find that the socio-economic relations of warfare and, in particular, the nature of civil-military relations during the War form a key element of the explanation. The wider import of this paper is therefore that the new approach to the history of mortality, in which the contributions of social action and personal behaviour to mortality changes have been investigated and highlighted, is one which promises a significantly deeper and more successful account of the military mortality crises which punctuated the past and continue to afflict the present

Applied Models and Indices vs. High-Resolution, Observed Data: Detailed Fracture and Fragmentation Analyses for the Investigation of Skeletal Part Abundance Patterns

Reproduced with permission of the publisher. Copyright © 2004 Prometheus Press/Palaeontological Network Foundation.This is the published version of an article published in the Journal of Taphonomy 2(3), pp.167-184The history and development of skeletal part abundance studies is briefly discussed. Two principal strands of this sub-discipline are the application of indices of food utility and bone mineral density to the interpretation of skeletal part abundance patterns. Both food utility and bone mineral density indices are derived from modern observations, underwritten by uniformitarian assumptions, and are used to model behavioural and taphonomic patterns in the selection and survival of bone elements. The application of such models is critiqued. It is argued that, whilst such models remain extremely valuable, they will always suffer from equifinality with regard to end interpretations. The solution to this problem does not lie in improving these models, or the data they derive from, though this may be desirable, but in the more time-consuming option of improving the resolution of archaeologically observed data. Several ways of doing this are briefly discussed. One of these options, fracture and fragmentation analysis, is outlined in detail. Sample applications of such an approach are presented and discussed. These include the use of fracture and fragmentation analysis to identify specific practices that can severely skew skeletal part abundances, such as bone grease rendering, and the identification of levels of pre-depositional and post-depositional fracturing within the taphonomic history of bone assemblages

Large mammal bones and bird bones

Reproduced with permission of the publisher. Copyright © 2004 The Society for Medieval Archaeology and authors

Comparing levels of subsistence stress amongst Norse settlers in Iceland and Greenland using levels of bone fat exploitation as an indicator

Reproduced with permission of the publisher. Copyright © Oxbow Books and the Association for Environmental Archaeology 2003.The background to the Icelandic and Greenlandic sites under investigation is outlined and prior work on the Norse economies of the two islands is discussed. The importance of fat in the diet and the use of levels of bone marrow and grease exploitation as an indicator of subsistence stress are explained. The methodology for establishing levels of bone fat exploitation is outlined. This methodology involves the detailed study of fragmentation levels of different types of bone, study of bone fracture types and many other taphonomic indicators. The results of the study are described and discussed. On Greenland, the Norse inhabitants exploited almost all available fat from land mammal bones, leaving only the ribs. lt is argued that this indicates a severe level of subsistence stress amongst the Greenlanders that is most likely related to a seasonal dearth in resources. On lceland, whilst a certain amount of bone marrow is almost certainly exploited, the settlers appear to almost totally ignore the potential to exploit bone grease. This is likely to be indicative of a much more healthy subsistence economy than on Greenland. These results are discussed in relation to differing climate, availability of good soil, fishing practices and seasonal rounds

Identifying dietary stress in marginal environments: bone fats, optimal foraging theory and the seasonal round

Reproduced with permission of the publisher. Copyright © Oxbow Books and the individual authors, 2004The importance of fat in the diet is outlined and the importance of bones as a reliable source of fat is explained. Different patterns of bone marrow and grease exploitation are discussed with particular reference to marginal environments and how levels of exploitation will be related to levels of dietary stress. The possible role of Optimal Foraging Theory in addressing this issue is outlined and adaptations of Marginal Value Theorem and Diet Breadth specific to bone fat exploitation are put forward and described. The methodologies for studying patterns of bone fat exploitation within archaeological assemblages are outlined and four example applications relating to Norse and Pale-Eskimo Greenland, Norse Iceland and Middle Neolithic Gotland are used to illustrate what these methods can show. These case studies are discussed with specific reference to identifying dietary stress in marginal environments and the role of seasonality to this issue

Bone fracture and within-bone nutrients: an experimentally based method for investigating levels of marrow extraction

Reproduced with permission of the publisher. Copyright © 2002 McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research

Publishing Archaeological Experiments: a quick guide for the uninitiated

Reproduced with permission of the publisher. © 2005 SEA Hradec Králové and EXARC. Full details of the journal EuroREA are available at: http://www.eurorea.net/issues.htm

BMP signals: Mediated by stroma or thymocytes?

This is an invited comment on the paper by Hager-Theodorides AL, et al. Cell Cycle 2014; 13:324–33; PMID:24240189; http://dx.doi.org/10.4161/cc.27118 which is published in the same journa