1,482 research outputs found
Reduced intensity of bone fat exploitation correlates with increased potential access to dairy fats in early Neolithic Europe
Important nutritional resources can be acquired by breaking bone shafts to access
marrow, whereas heavy comminution and boiling of cancellous bone is required to extract
bone grease. Since labour and fuel costs of these processes differ considerably, the relative
intensities of these activities provide a possible proxy for nutritional stress or elevated fat
requirements in the context of an overall subsistence strategy. We investigated faunal material
from eleven early Neolithic sites in central Europe for bone fracture and fragmentation patterns
to ascertain the intensity of bone marrow and grease exploitation. These data indicate that
bone grease processing was practised rarely if at all during the early Neolithic, likely made
unnecessary by ample access to crop carbohydrates. Bone marrow was exploited at all sites,
but with varying intensity that exhibited a significant negative correlation with the proportion of
milk-producing domestic ruminants. This observation is consistent with the hypothesis that
fats obtained from dairy products reduced requirements for intensive marrow exploitation
Entanglement without nonlocality
We consider the characterization of entanglement from the perspective of a
Heisenberg formalism. We derive an original two-party generalized separability
criteria, and from this describe a novel physical understanding of
entanglement. We find that entanglement may be considered as fundamentally a
local effect, and therefore as a separable computational resource from
nonlocality. We show how entanglement differs from correlation physically, and
explore the implications of this new conception of entanglement for the notion
of classicality. We find that this understanding of entanglement extends
naturally to multipartite cases.Comment: 9 pages. Expanded introduction and sections on physical entanglement
and localit
Inferential mistakes in population proxies: A response to Torfing's "Neolithic population and summed probability distribution of 14Cdates"
In his paper "Neolithic population and summed probability distribution of 14C-dates" Torfing opposes the widely held principle originally proposed by Rick (1987) that variation through time in the amount of archaeological material discovered in a region will reflect variation in the size of that local human population. His argument illustrates a persistent divide in archaeology between analytical and descriptive approaches when using proxies for past population size. We critically evaluate the numerous inferential mistakes he makes, showing that his conclusion is unjustified
Information and The Brukner-Zeilinger Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics: A Critical Investigation
In Brukner and Zeilinger's interpretation of quantum mechanics, information
is introduced as the most fundamental notion and the finiteness of information
is considered as an essential feature of quantum systems. They also define a
new measure of information which is inherently different from the Shannon
information and try to show that the latter is not useful in defining the
information content in a quantum object.
Here, we show that there are serious problems in their approach which make
their efforts unsatisfactory. The finiteness of information does not explain
how objective results appear in experiments and what an instantaneous change in
the so-called information vector (or catalog of knowledge) really means during
the measurement. On the other hand, Brukner and Zeilinger's definition of a new
measure of information may lose its significance, when the spin measurement of
an elementary system is treated realistically. Hence, the sum of the individual
measures of information may not be a conserved value in real experiments.Comment: 20 pages, two figures, last version. Section 4 is replaced by a new
argument. Other sections are improved. An appendix and new references are
adde
Reduced intensity of bone fat exploitation correlates with increased potential access to dairy fats in early Neolithic Europe
This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via the DOI in this record.Important nutritional resources can be acquired by breaking bone shafts to access marrow, whereas heavy comminution and boiling of cancellous bone is required to extract bone grease. Since labour and fuel costs of these processes differ considerably, the relative intensities of these activities provide a possible proxy for nutritional stress or elevated fat requirements in the context of an overall subsistence strategy. We investigated faunal material from eleven early Neolithic sites in central Europe for bone fracture and fragmentation patterns to ascertain the intensity of bone marrow and grease exploitation. These data indicate that bone grease processing was practised rarely if at all during the early Neolithic, likely made unnecessary by ample access to crop carbohydrates. Bone marrow was exploited at all sites, but with varying intensity that exhibited a significant negative correlation with the proportion of milk-producing domestic ruminants. This observation is consistent with the hypothesis that fats obtained from dairy products reduced requirements for intensive marrow exploitation.This work was supported by the European Research Council (ERC Advanced Grant ERC324202)
Association of plasma uric acid with ischaemic heart disease and blood pressure: mendelian randomisation analysis of two large cohorts
Objectives: To assess the associations between both uric acid levels and hyperuricaemia, with ischaemic heart disease and blood pressure, and to explore the potentially confounding role of body mass index.
Design: Mendelian randomisation analysis, using variation at specific genes (SLC2A9 (rs7442295) as an instrument for uric acid; and FTO (rs9939609), MC4R (rs17782313), and TMEM18 (rs6548238) for body mass index).
Setting: Two large, prospective cohort studies in Denmark.
Participants: We measured levels of uric acid and related covariables in 58 072 participants from the Copenhagen General Population Study and 10 602 from the Copenhagen City Heart Study, comprising 4890 and 2282 cases of ischaemic heart disease, respectively.
Main outcome: Blood pressure and prospectively assessed ischaemic heart disease.
Results: Estimates confirmed known observational associations between plasma uric acid and hyperuricaemia with risk of ischaemic heart disease and diastolic and systolic blood pressure. However, when using genotypic instruments for uric acid and hyperuricaemia, we saw no evidence for causal associations between uric acid, ischaemic heart disease, and blood pressure. We used genetic instruments to investigate body mass index as a potentially confounding factor in observational associations, and saw a causal effect on uric acid levels. Every four unit increase of body mass index saw a rise in uric acid of 0.03 mmol/L (95% confidence interval 0.02 to 0.04), and an increase in risk of hyperuricaemia of 7.5% (3.9% to 11.1%).
Conclusion: By contrast with observational findings, there is no strong evidence for causal associations between uric acid and ischaemic heart disease or blood pressure. However, evidence supports a causal effect between body mass index and uric acid level and hyperuricaemia. This finding strongly suggests body mass index as a confounder in observational associations, and suggests a role for elevated body mass index or obesity in the development of uric acid related conditions
Control of polarization and mode mapping of small volume high Q micropillars
We show that the polarization of the emission of a single quantum dot embedded within a microcavity pillar of elliptical cross section can be completely controlled and even switched between two orthogonal linear polarizations by changing the coupling of the dot emission with the polarized photonic modes. We also measure the spatial profle of the emission of a series of pillars with
different ellipticities and show that the results can be well described by simple theoretical modeling
of the modes of an infinite length elliptical cylinder
Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen correlations of Dirac particles - quantum field theory approach
We calculate correlation function in the Einstein--Podolsky--Rosen type of
experiment with massive relativistic Dirac particles in the framework of the
quantum field theory formalism. We perform our calculations for states which
are physically interesting and transforms covariantly under the full Lorentz
group action, i.e. for pseudoscalar and vector state.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures. Published versio
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