Editorial

Dear Colleagues and Friends, Recent times have brought considerable change for the Association for Coroplastic Studies. An important part of this change is the launch of Les Carnets de l’ACoSt, the new online journal of the Association, whose first issue I am pleased to introduce in my capacity as Editor-in-Chief chosen by the ACoSt Governance. The new periodical is meant both to replace and continue the Newsletter. As its predecessor, Les Carnets de l’ACoSt will be published on a biannual ba..

Editorial

Dear Colleagues and Friends, Recent times have brought considerable change for the Association for Coroplastic Studies. An important part of this change is the launch of Les Carnets de l’ACoSt, the new online journal of the Association, whose first issue I am pleased to introduce in my capacity as Editor-in-Chief chosen by the ACoSt Governance. The new periodical is meant both to replace and continue the Newsletter. As its predecessor, Les Carnets de l’ACoSt will be published on a biannual ba..

COROPLASTIC PRODUCTION IN EARLY IRON AGE CRETE: SOME TECHNICAL ASPECTS

The paper briefly summarizes the previous research on the manufacturing techniques of Cretan coroplastic objects of the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age. In this context, the importance of studies examining the production process of terracotta figures, figurines, reliefs, etc. for the understanding of Cretan material culture is underscored. Subsequently, the manufacturing techniques of a presumably local workshop of the Protogeometric period are discussed drawing on the examples of a fragment from a large wheelmade figure and an interesting group of anthropomorphic vases from the small open-air sanctuary of Kako Plaï on the Anavlochos ridge in Eastern Crete

A User-Guided Bayesian Framework for Ensemble Feature Selection in Life Science Applications (UBayFS)

Feature selection represents a measure to reduce the complexity of high-dimensional datasets and gain insights into the systematic variation in the data. This aspect is of specific importance in domains that rely on model interpretability, such as life sciences. We propose UBayFS, an ensemble feature selection technique embedded in a Bayesian statistical framework. Our approach considers two sources of information: data and domain knowledge. We build a meta-model from an ensemble of elementary feature selectors and aggregate this information in a multinomial likelihood. The user guides UBayFS by weighting features and penalizing specific feature blocks or combinations, implemented via a Dirichlet-type prior distribution and a regularization term. In a quantitative evaluation, we demonstrate that our framework (a) allows for a balanced trade-off between user knowledge and data observations, and (b) achieves competitive performance with state-of-the-art methods

Un seminario bilaterale italo-tedesco sulla coroplastica cretese

Si è tenuto a Catania, dal 19 al 21 settembre del 2013, il seminario bilaterale italo-tedesco, dal titolo Pilina Eidolia. New Perspectives in Cretan Coroplastic Studies (13th–7th century B.C.), organizzato da Antonella Pautasso (IBAM-CNR) e da Oliver Pilz (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz), patrocinato dal Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR) e dalla Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). Il seminario, inteso come occasione di incontro e di riflessione, ha avuto come tema specifico la coroplastica cretese dalla tarda Età del Bronzo all’Arcaismo, periodo questo che rappresenta una fase fondamentale di cambiamento culturale nell’isola. Nel corso di questo passaggio cruciale, che abbraccia i secoli compresi tra il collasso del mondo minoico-miceneo e il momento della formazione della polis, profonde modifiche investono la struttura degli insediamenti, i costumi funerari e l’ambito rituale. L’incontro di studio è stato l’occasione, per studiosi italiani e tedeschi impegnati da anni in attività di scavo e di studio a Creta, di presentare e discutere con i colleghi i risultati preliminari di ricerche tutt’ora in corso

Presentazione

Sono raccolti in questo volume i contributi presentati nel corso del seminario bilaterale italo-tedesco «Πήλινα ειδώλια. New perspectives in Cretan Coroplastic Studies (13th-7th cent. B.C.)», organizzato da Antonella Pautasso (IBAM-CNR) e Oliver Pilz (Johannes Gutenberg Universität, Mainz), patrocinato dal CNR e dalla Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) e tenutosi a Catania dal 19 al 21 settembre 2013

The "Lake of Olympia": geoarchaeological evidence of a lake environment in the vicinity of ancient Olympia (western Peloponnese, Greece)

Our results yield evidence of a large lake environment that existed near the ancient site of Olympia which was so far unknown. The limnic sequence reveals considerable changes in the ecological conditions over time, based on Direct Push sensing, sedimentary and micropalaeontological analyses. Radiocarbon data show that the “Lake of Olympia“ existed from the 8th/7th millennium BC until, at least, the 1st century AD. The existence of the “Lake of Olympia” next to the cult site of Olympia has considerable historical, archaeological and geographical implications (e.g., as waterway or water supplier)

A database accelerator for energy-efficient query processing and optimization

Data processing on a continuously growing amount of information and the increasing power restrictions have become an ubiquitous challenge in our world today. Besides parallel computing, a promising approach to improve the energy efficiency of current systems is to integrate specialized hardware. This paper presents a Tensilica RISC processor extended with an instruction set to accelerate basic database operators frequently used in modern database systems. The core was taped out in a 28 nm SLP CMOS technology and allows energy-efficient query processing as well as query optimization by applying selectivity estimation techniques. Our chip measurements show an 1000x energy improvement on selected database operators compared to state-of-the-art systems

Left Ventricular Hypertrabeculation Is Not Associated With Cardiovascular Morbity or Mortality: Insights From the Eurocmr Registry

Aim: Left ventricular non-compaction (LVNC) is perceived as a rare high-risk cardiomyopathy characterized by excess left ventricular (LV) trabeculation. However, there is increasing evidence contesting the clinical significance of LV hyper-trabeculation and the existence of LVNC as a distinct cardiomyopathy. The aim of this study is to assess the association of LV trabeculation extent with cardiovascular morbidity and all-cause mortality in patients undergoing clinical cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) scans across 57 European centers from the EuroCMR registry. Methods and Results: We studied 822 randomly selected cases from the EuroCMR registry. Image acquisition was according to international guidelines. We manually segmented images for LV chamber quantification and measurement of LV trabeculation (as per Petersen criteria). We report the association between LV trabeculation extent and important cardiovascular morbidities (stroke, atrial fibrillation, heart failure) and all-cause mortality prospectively recorded over 404 ± 82 days of follow-up. Maximal non-compaction to compaction ratio (NC/C) was mean (standard deviation) 1.81 ± 0.67, from these, 17% were above the threshold for hyper-trabeculation (NC/C > 2.3). LV trabeculation extent was not associated with increased risk of the defined outcomes (morbidities, mortality, LV CMR indices) in the whole cohort, or in sub-analyses of individuals without ischaemic heart disease, or those with NC/C > 2.3. Conclusion: Among 882 patients undergoing clinical CMR, excess LV trabeculation was not associated with a range of important cardiovascular morbidities or all-cause mortality over ~12 months of prospective follow-up. These findings suggest that LV hyper-trabeculation alone is not an indicator for worse cardiovascular prognosis