Making the Invisible Visible

The Bronze Age settlement of Papadiokampos is located in the coastal plain west of the Trachilos peninsula near Siteia in eastern Crete. It was discovered by Chrysa Sofianou of the 24th Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities of the Greek Ministry of Culture and is the focus of her ongoing research program. Assistance in mapping the Late Minoan harbor town has been provided by the Publication Team of the Institute for Aegean Prehistory Study Center for East Crete. Topographical mapp..

Minoan Archaeology

More than 100 years ago Sir Arthur Evans' spade made the first cut into the earth above the now well-known Palace at Knossos. His research at the Kephala hill as well as contemporary fieldwork at further sites on Crete saw the birth of a new discipline: Minoan Archaeology. Since these beginnings in the first decades of the 20th century, the investigation of Bronze Age Crete has experienced fundamental progress. The impressive wealth of new data relating to the sites and material culture of this Bronze Age society and its impact beyond the island's shores, the refinement of its chronology, the constant development of hermeneutical approaches to social, religious or political issues, and new methods and instruments employed for the exploration and conservation of the archaeological remains have shaped the dynamic trajectory of this discipline for more than a century. In March 2011 - exactly 111 years after the beginning of Evans' work at Knossos - a conference on Minoan Archaeology took place at Heidelberg with the aim to outline current trends and prospects of this scientific field, by setting up an open dialogue between renowned scholars and the young generation of researchers. The present volume brings together most of the papers presented during the conference. They are subsumed under six chapters highlighting current key issues in the study of Bronze Age Crete with a pronounced focus on the broad subject of society

Minoan Archaeology

More than 100 years ago Sir Arthur Evans' spade made the first cut into the earth above the now well-known Palace at Knossos. His research at the Kephala hill as well as contemporary fieldwork at further sites on Crete saw the birth of a new discipline: Minoan Archaeology. Since these beginnings in the first decades of the 20th century, the investigation of Bronze Age Crete has experienced fundamental progress. The impressive wealth of new data relating to the sites and material culture of this Bronze Age society and its impact beyond the island's shores, the refinement of its chronology, the constant development of hermeneutical approaches to social, religious or political issues, and new methods and instruments employed for the exploration and conservation of the archaeological remains have shaped the dynamic trajectory of this discipline for more than a century. In March 2011 - exactly 111 years after the beginning of Evans' work at Knossos - a conference on Minoan Archaeology took place at Heidelberg with the aim to outline current trends and prospects of this scientific field, by setting up an open dialogue between renowned scholars and the young generation of researchers. The present volume brings together most of the papers presented during the conference. They are subsumed under six chapters highlighting current key issues in the study of Bronze Age Crete with a pronounced focus on the broad subject of society

Coronal Heating as Determined by the Solar Flare Frequency Distribution Obtained by Aggregating Case Studies

Flare frequency distributions represent a key approach to addressing one of the largest problems in solar and stellar physics: determining the mechanism that counter-intuitively heats coronae to temperatures that are orders of magnitude hotter than the corresponding photospheres. It is widely accepted that the magnetic field is responsible for the heating, but there are two competing mechanisms that could explain it: nanoflares or Alfv\'en waves. To date, neither can be directly observed. Nanoflares are, by definition, extremely small, but their aggregate energy release could represent a substantial heating mechanism, presuming they are sufficiently abundant. One way to test this presumption is via the flare frequency distribution, which describes how often flares of various energies occur. If the slope of the power law fitting the flare frequency distribution is above a critical threshold, $\alpha=2$ as established in prior literature, then there should be a sufficient abundance of nanoflares to explain coronal heating. We performed $>$600 case studies of solar flares, made possible by an unprecedented number of data analysts via three semesters of an undergraduate physics laboratory course. This allowed us to include two crucial, but nontrivial, analysis methods: pre-flare baseline subtraction and computation of the flare energy, which requires determining flare start and stop times. We aggregated the results of these analyses into a statistical study to determine that $\alpha = 1.63 \pm 0.03$. This is below the critical threshold, suggesting that Alfv\'en waves are an important driver of coronal heating.Comment: 1,002 authors, 14 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables, published by The Astrophysical Journal on 2023-05-09, volume 948, page 7

Pancreatic surgery outcomes: multicentre prospective snapshot study in 67 countries

Background: Pancreatic surgery remains associated with high morbidity rates. Although postoperative mortality appears to have improved with specialization, the outcomes reported in the literature reflect the activity of highly specialized centres. The aim of this study was to evaluate the outcomes following pancreatic surgery worldwide.Methods: This was an international, prospective, multicentre, cross-sectional snapshot study of consecutive patients undergoing pancreatic operations worldwide in a 3-month interval in 2021. The primary outcome was postoperative mortality within 90 days of surgery. Multivariable logistic regression was used to explore relationships with Human Development Index (HDI) and other parameters.Results: A total of 4223 patients from 67 countries were analysed. A complication of any severity was detected in 68.7 percent of patients (2901 of 4223). Major complication rates (Clavien-Dindo grade at least IIIa) were 24, 18, and 27 percent, and mortality rates were 10, 5, and 5 per cent in low-to-middle-, high-, and very high-HDI countries respectively. The 90-day postoperative mortality rate was 5.4 per cent (229 of 4223) overall, but was significantly higher in the low-to-middle-HDI group (adjusted OR 2.88, 95 per cent c.i. 1.80 to 4.48). The overall failure-to-rescue rate was 21 percent; however, it was 41 per cent in low-to-middle-compared with 19 per cent in very high-HDI countries.Conclusion: Excess mortality in low-to-middle-HDI countries could be attributable to failure to rescue of patients from severe complications. The authors call for a collaborative response from international and regional associations of pancreatic surgeons to address management related to death from postoperative complications to tackle the global disparities in the outcomes of pancreatic surgery (NCT04652271; ISRCTN95140761)