The supernatural characters and powers of sacred trees in the Holy Land

This article surveys the beliefs concerning the supernatural characteristics and powers of sacred trees in Israel; it is based on a field study as well as a survey of the literature and includes 118 interviews with Muslims and Druze. Both the Muslims and Druze in this study attribute supernatural dimensions to sacred trees which are directly related to ancient, deep-rooted pagan traditions. The Muslims attribute similar divine powers to sacred trees as they do to the graves of their saints; the graves and the trees are both considered to be the abode of the soul of a saint which is the source of their miraculous powers. Any violation of a sacred tree would be strictly punished while leaving the opportunity for atonement and forgiveness. The Druze, who believe in the transmigration of souls, have similar traditions concerning sacred trees but with a different religious background. In polytheistic religions the sacred grove/forest is a centre of the community's official worship; any violation of the trees is regarded as a threat to the well being of the community. Punishments may thus be collective. In the monotheistic world (including Christianity, Islam and Druze) the pagan worship of trees was converted into the worship/adoration of saints/prophets; it is not a part of the official religion but rather a personal act and the punishments are exerted only on the violating individual

Diving into the vertical dimension of elasmobranch movement ecology

This is the final version. Available on open access from the American Association for the Advancement of Science via the DOI in this recordData and materials availability: Processed data and code used in the analysis are accessible from the Zenodo Repository: 10.5281/zenodo.6885455Knowledge of the three-dimensional movement patterns of elasmobranchs is vital to understand their ecological roles and exposure to anthropogenic pressures. To date, comparative studies among species at global scales have mostly focused on horizontal movements. Our study addresses the knowledge gap of vertical movements by compiling the first global synthesis of vertical habitat use by elasmobranchs from data obtained by deployment of 989 biotelemetry tags on 38 elasmobranch species. Elasmobranchs displayed high intra- and interspecific variability in vertical movement patterns. Substantial vertical overlap was observed for many epipelagic elasmobranchs, indicating an increased likelihood to display spatial overlap, biologically interact, and share similar risk to anthropogenic threats that vary on a vertical gradient. We highlight the critical next steps toward incorporating vertical movement into global management and monitoring strategies for elasmobranchs, emphasizing the need to address geographic and taxonomic biases in deployments and to concurrently consider both horizontal and vertical movements.Bertarelli FoundationResearch EnglandMoore FoundationPackard FoundationInstituto Politecnico NacionalDarwin InitiativeGeorgia AquariumRolex Awards for EnterpriseWhitley Fund for Natur

Nation, College, Wartime: Archaeology at a WWI Student Army Training Corps Camp at New Hampshire College

During World War I, the U.S. War Department contracted with 157 universities to form the National Army Training Detachments whose mission was to train college-age draftees in 66 critical army trades (subsequently the Student Army Training Corps). This program is an overlooked part of First World War history and has received little to no archaeological inquiry. This paper investigates the New Hampshire College camp. Working between documentary and archaeological materials, this paper explores how the interrelated duties of educational institutions, businesses, government, and individuals merged with an American wartime imagined community here but also how in their lived experiences of the camp, people materialized the complications of balancing citizenship, difference, duty, and nation. The social lives of the lower-rank men who inhabited these camps, the composite communities formed at them, and the impact of the government’s assertion of control over institutions of higher education all carry material ramifications that deserve further investigation

Austrian Debates on Utility Measurement from Menger to Hayek

This paper examines how some of the main exponents of the Austrian school of economics addressed the issues related to the measurability of utility. The first part is devoted to the period before World War I. During this period, Menger and Wieser treated de facto utilities as if they were measurable and could be expressed as multiples of a utility unit, B\uf6hm-Bawerk and the young Schumpeter defended explicitly the measurability of utility, while, in contrast to these views, \u10cuhel and Mises argued that utilities cannot be measured but only ranked. After World War I, the ordinal view became the dominant one among Austrian economists but they admitted that individuals are not only able to rank the utility of goods (as in the ordinal approach), but are also capable of ranking differences of utility. The second part of the paper reconstructs the interwar discussions on the ranking of utility differences, focusing on the contributions of Sch\uf6nfeld, Rosenstein-Rodan, Morgenstern and Alt. The paper concludes by illustrating Hayek\u2019s ordinal view of utility