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Writing «systems»: Literacy and the transmission of writing in nonadministrative contexts
A wide range of document types have been preserved written in the undeciphered scripts of the Aegean and Cyprus (Cretan Hieroglyphic, Linear A and Cypro-Minoan), with inscriptions appearing on a variety of media and object types. Some of these inscriptions are assumed to relate to centralised administrative structures, especially those on particular types of clay objects such as tablets and seals/sealings. This paper, however, will deal with the question of literacy existing outside of any centralised administrative sphere. Within an administrative context, we may envisage writing as an economic or bureaucratic tool, controlled to some extent through training in the structure and conventions of the script. Outside of such a context, however, we face the question of how and why writing is proliferated: Who is using it and how do they know how to do it? Do they have access to any kind of training? How standardised is the script they use? The Aegean and Cyprus provide us with some important parallels and differences. On Crete in particular, the concept of administrative writing, whether in seals and sealing practices or in centralised record-keeping, was probably always part of the story. The context in which the deciphered Linear B writing system was adapted from still undeciphered Linear A had a tangible effect on the type and composition of the new script, which was developed alongside administrative influence. Unlike its descendant Linear B, however, we must also remember that Linear A is well attested in non-administrative or ‘private’ contexts, raising the question of whether individuals writing outside the administrative sphere were using the same model of script as the centralised administrations. On Cyprus, we must envisage a completely different context for script adoption. Although the need for writing was probably stimulated by economic development, and although the Late Bronze Age Cypriot script(s) was/were related to the Aegean ones, there is no evidence for Cypriot writing existing within a closely controlled and centralised administrative system. Instead we find a vast array of inscribed objects from a wide variety of contexts, many of which look decidedly non-administrative. It may be no accident that, alongside this diversity in attested written forms, there continues a longstanding scholarly debate concerning the number of writing systems in existence in Late Bronze Age Cyprus. Difficulties in reconstructing the size and composition of the script(s) in use may correspond to real variation (as opposed to standardisation) in the written repertoire. An investigation of these factors has the potential to stimulate new debate on what we mean by ‘writing’, and what we are doing when we try to reconstruct an undeciphered writing ‘system’
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Distinguishing between Cypriot scripts: Steps towards establishing a methodology
The surviving Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age inscriptions from Cyprus, usually labelled ‘Cypro-Minoan’ and numbering more than 200,¹ are almost certainly written in more than one script. It was É . Masson who first laid out this theory in detail, proposing that different groups of inscriptions be labelled by a numerical classification: CM1, CM2 and CM3.² Each of these groups was suggested to represent a different script with a different repertoire of signs. CM2 and CM3 were special terms referring to a limited number of texts, with CM2 designating three clay tablets with long inscriptions found at Enkomi, and CM3 designating all of the Cypriot epigraphic material from Ugarit (modern northern Syria); CM1, however, has little by way of coherence except in that it has been used to refer to all the other inscriptions that do not fall into the other two groups.³ Olivier further added a fourth group, CM0, to designate the obviously distinct script in which one of the earliest known Cypriot texts, an inscription from Enkomi dated probably to LCI, was written.⁴ If we accept these designations, then it is necessary to refer to Cypro-Minoan scripts in the plural.British AcademyThis is the accepted manuscript version. It will be embargoed until 12 months after publication. The final version is available from De Gruyter at http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/kadm.2014.53.issue-1-2/kadmos-2014-0007/kadmos-2014-0007.xml?format=INT
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Linear A and Linear B: Structural and contextual concerns
Of all the Aegean writing systems, Linear B is by far the best known and understood: it has the largest number of inscriptions, a signary whose repertoire we can reconstruct with a high degree of accuracy, well secured sign values for the majority of signs and a well understood underlying language, Greek. Of the other scripts of this group, only the Cypriot Syllabic script of the 1st millennium BC compares, since it can be read and its inscriptions largely understood (the majority also written in Greek), while the others (Cretan Hieroglyphic, Linear A and Cypro-Minoan) remain ill-understood. Even so, there remain some gaps in our knowledge of the Linear B writing system and its development, and it is some of these lacunae that form the basis for the present investigation
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From Linear B to Linear A: The problem of the backward projection of sound values
Detection of an intranight optical hard-lag with colour variability in blazar PKS 0735+178
Blazars are a highly variable subclass of active galactic nuclei that have been observed to vary significantly during a single night. This intranight variability remains a debated phenomenon, with various mechanisms proposed to explain the behaviour including jet energy density evolution or system geometric changes. We present the results of an intranight optical monitoring campaign of four blazars: TXS 0506+056, OJ287, PKS 0735+178, and OJ248 using the Carlos Sánchez Telescope. We detect significant but colourless behaviour in OJ287 and both bluer- and redder-when-brighter colour trends in PKS 0735+178. Additionally, the g band shows a lag of ~ 10 min with respect to the r, i, zs bands for PKS 0735+178 on 2023 January 17. This unexpected hard lag in PKS 0735+178 is not in accordance with the standard synchrotron shock cooling model (which would predict a soft lag) and instead suggests the variability may be a result of changes in the jet’s electron energy density distribution, with energy injection from Fermi acceleration processes into a post-shocked medium
Lack of trust in maternal support is associated with negative interpretations of ambiguous maternal behavior
Attachment theory assumes that children who lack trust in maternal availability for support are more inclined to interpret maternal behavior in congruence with their expectation that mother will remain unavailable for support. To provide the first test of this assumption, early adolescents (9-13 years old) were asked to assess whether ambiguous interactions with mother should be interpreted in a positive or a negative way. In our sample (n = 322), results showed that early adolescents' lack of trust in their mother's availability for support was related to more negative interpretations of maternal behavior. The associations remained significant after controlling for depressive mood. The importance of these findings for our understanding of attachment theory, attachment stability, and clinical practice are discussed
Convergent Surface Water Distributions in U.S. Cities
Earth's surface is rapidly urbanizing, resulting in dramatic changes in the abundance, distribution and character of surface water features in urban landscapes. However, the scope and consequences of surface water redistribution at broad spatial scales are not well understood. We hypothesized that urbanization would lead to convergent surface water abundance and distribution: in other words, cities will gain or lose water such that they become more similar to each other than are their surrounding natural landscapes. Using a database of more than 1 million water bodies and 1 million km of streams, we compared the surface water of 100 US cities with their surrounding undeveloped land. We evaluated differences in areal (A WB) and numeric densities (N WB) of water bodies (lakes, wetlands, and so on), the morphological characteristics of water bodies (size), and the density (D C) of surface flow channels (that is, streams and rivers). The variance of urban A WB, N WB, and D C across the 100 MSAs decreased, by 89, 25, and 71%, respectively, compared to undeveloped land. These data show that many cities are surface water poor relative to undeveloped land; however, in drier landscapes urbanization increases the occurrence of surface water. This convergence pattern strengthened with development intensity, such that high intensity urban development had an areal water body density 98% less than undeveloped lands. Urbanization appears to drive the convergence of hydrological features across the US, such that surface water distributions of cities are more similar to each other than to their surrounding landscapes. © 2014 The Author(s)
Assessing the homogenization of urban land management with an application to US residential lawn care.
Changes in land use, land cover, and land management present some of the greatest potential global environmental challenges of the 21st century. Urbanization, one of the principal drivers of these transformations, is commonly thought to be generating land changes that are increasingly similar. An implication of this multiscale homogenization hypothesis is that the ecosystem structure and function and human behaviors associated with urbanization should be more similar in certain kinds of urbanized locations across biogeophysical gradients than across urbanization gradients in places with similar biogeophysical characteristics. This paper introduces an analytical framework for testing this hypothesis, and applies the framework to the case of residential lawn care. This set of land management behaviors are often assumed--not demonstrated--to exhibit homogeneity. Multivariate analyses are conducted on telephone survey responses from a geographically stratified random sample of homeowners (n = 9,480), equally distributed across six US metropolitan areas. Two behaviors are examined: lawn fertilizing and irrigating. Limited support for strong homogenization is found at two scales (i.e., multi- and single-city; 2 of 36 cases), but significant support is found for homogenization at only one scale (22 cases) or at neither scale (12 cases). These results suggest that US lawn care behaviors are more differentiated in practice than in theory. Thus, even if the biophysical outcomes of urbanization are homogenizing, managing the associated sustainability implications may require a multiscale, differentiated approach because the underlying social practices appear relatively varied. The analytical approach introduced here should also be productive for other facets of urban-ecological homogenization
Level of daily physical activity in individuals with COPD compared with healthy controls
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Persons with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), performing some level of regular physical activity, have a lower risk of both COPD-related hospital admissions and mortality. COPD patients of all stages seem to benefit from exercise training programs, thereby improving with respect to both exercise tolerance and symptoms of dyspnea and fatigue. Physical inactivity, which becomes more severe with increasing age, is a point of concern in healthy older adults. COPD might worsen this scenario, but it is unclear to what degree. This literature review aims to present the extent of the impact of COPD on objectively-measured daily physical activity (DPA). The focus is on the extent of the impact that COPD has on duration, intensity, and counts of DPA, as well as whether the severity of the disease has an additional influence on DPA.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>A literature review was performed in the databases PubMed [MEDLINE], Picarta, PEDRO, ISI Web of Knowledge and Google scholar. After screening, 11 studies were identified as being relevant for comparison between COPD patients and healthy controls with respect to duration, intensity, and counts of DPA. Four more studies were found to be relevant to address the subject of the influence the severity of the disease may have on DPA. The average percentage of DPA of COPD patients vs. healthy control subjects for duration was 57%, for intensity 75%, and for activity counts 56%. Correlations of DPA and severity of the disease were low and/or not significant.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>From the results of this review, it appears that patients with COPD have a significantly reduced duration, intensity, and counts of DPA when compared to healthy control subjects. The intensity of DPA seems to be less affected by COPD than duration and counts. Judging from the results, it seems that severity of COPD is not strongly correlated with level of DPA. Future research should focus in more detail on the relation between COPD and duration, intensity, and counts of DPA, as well as the effect of disease severity on DPA, so that these relations become more understandable.</p
Assessing the pathogenicity of RYR1 variants in malignant hyperthermia
Background: Missense variants in the ryanodine receptor 1 gene (RYR1) are associated with malignant hyperthermia but only a minority of these have met criteria for use in predictive DNA diagnosis. We examined the utility of a simplified method of segregation analysis and a functional assay for determining the pathogenicity of recurrent RYR1 variants associated with malignant hyperthermia. Methods: We identified previously uncharacterised RYR1 variants found in 4 or more malignant hyperthermia families and conducted simplified segregation analyses. An efficient cloning and mutagenesis strategy was used to express ryanodine receptor protein containing one of six RYR1 variants in HEK293 cells. Caffeine-induced calcium release, measured using a fluorescent calcium indicator, was compared in cells expressing each variant to that in cells expressing wild type ryanodine receptor protein. Results: We identified 43 malignant hyperthermia families carrying one of the six RYR1 variants. There was segregation of genotype with the malignant hyperthermia susceptibility phenotype in families carrying the p.E3104K and p.D3986E variants but the number of informative meioses limited the statistical significance of the associations. HEK293 functional assays demonstrated an increased sensitivity of RyR1 channels containing the p.R2336H, p.R2355W, p.E3104K, p.G3990V and p.V4849I compared to wild type but cells expressing p.D3986E had a similar caffeine sensitivity to cells expressing wild type RyR1. Conclusions: Segregation analysis is of limited value in assessing pathogenicity of RYR1 variants in malignant hyperthermia. Functional analyses in HEK293 cells provided evidence to support the use of p.R2336H, p.R2355W, p.E3104K, p.G3990V and p.V4849I for diagnostic purposes but not p.D3986E
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