Early Indonesian Commerce and the Origins of Srivijaya.

The origins of the famous maritime empire of Srivijaya in south-eastern Sumatra, a name first recorded in 671, belong to the history of early Indonesian commerce. In the third century A.D. Ko-ying, situated on that coast and the chief trading kingdom in western Indonesia, was not on the ship, ink route between India and China, but in the fifth century, when southern China depended on overseas trade for luxury imports, voyages from Indonesia to China had become habitual. By about A.D. 500 Sumatran pine resin and benzoin were known to southern Chinese writers as Po-ssu resins, not as Laufer thought because they came from a south East Asian country transcribed as Po-ssu but because they were regarded as 'Persian-type' substitutes for frankincense and myrrh and part of the 'Persian' trade in western Asian produce, which came is western Indonesia to China. The evidence suggests that Indonesian ships, operating from south-eastern Sumatra, had obtained a major share in carrying this merchandise and that, in the fifth sixth centuries when the first tributary missions came from Indonesian kingdoms to China, the lending commercial kingdom on this coast was Kan-t'o-li. Thus Srivijaya cae to the fore on the coast whose inhabitants had pioneered Sino-Indonesian trade. To protect the commercial interests which it inherited from the past Srivijaya was compelled to forestall the first signs of competition from ports on the Straits of Malacca. It did so before the end of the seventh century by dominating the Straits with its fleet. One of the main themes of the subsequent 500 years of Srivijayan history is the attempt to compel, with diminishing success, foreign merchants and seamen to conform to a system of maritime communications which had been created by a trading situation older than Sriivijaya itself

A scanning probe-based pick-and-place procedure for assembly of integrated quantum optical hybrid devices

Integrated quantum optical hybrid devices consist of fundamental constituents such as single emitters and tailored photonic nanostructures. A reliable fabrication method requires the controlled deposition of active nanoparticles on arbitrary nanostructures with highest precision. Here, we describe an easily adaptable technique that employs picking and placing of nanoparticles with an atomic force microscope combined with a confocal setup. In this way, both the topography and the optical response can be monitored simultaneously before and after the assembly. The technique can be applied to arbitrary particles. Here, we focus on nanodiamonds containing single nitrogen vacancy centers, which are particularly interesting for quantum optical experiments on the single photon and single emitter level.Comment: The following article has been submitted to Review of Scientific Instruments. After it is published, it will be found at http://rsi.aip.org

Breeding of CMS-F1-Hybrids in \u3cem\u3eLolium Perenne\u3c/em\u3e With Improved Nitrogen Use Efficiency

The environmental pollution by nitrogen losses from dairy farms can be reduced by improving the nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) of grass varieties. The main goal is to develop varieties with a better nitrogen utilisation. These low input varieties can produce acceptable yields at a low level of N-fertilisation. High input varieties express their high yield potential only at high N-supply. These varieties are less preferable, because N- losses increase at higher levels of nitrogen application. The breeding of CMS-F1-Hybrids can be a successful strategy for developing varieties with a higher NUE. In F1-Hybrid varieties higher heterosis effects can be achieved than in populations or synthetic varieties

Enhancement of the Zero Phonon Line emission from a Single NV-Center in a Nanodiamond via Coupling to a Photonic Crystal Cavity

Using a nanomanipulation technique a nanodiamond with a single nitrogen vacancy center is placed directly on the surface of a gallium phosphide photonic crystal cavity. A Purcell-enhancement of the fluorescence emission at the zero phonon line (ZPL) by a factor of 12.1 is observed. The ZPL coupling is a first crucial step towards future diamond-based integrated quantum optical devices