Coastal hunter-gatherers and social evolution: marginal or central?

General accounts of global trends in world prehistory are dominated by narratives of conquest on land: scavenging and hunting of land mammals, migration over land bridges and colonisation of new continents, gathering of plants, domestication, cultivation, and ultimately sustained population growth founded on agricultural surplus. Marine and aquatic resources fit uneasily into this sequence of social and economic development, and societies strongly dependent on them have often been regarded as relatively late in the sequence, geographically marginal or anomalous. We consider the biases and preconceptions of the ethnographic and archaeological records that have contributed to this view of marginality and examine some current issues focusing on the role of marine resources at the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition of northwest Europe. We suggest that pre-existing conventions should be critically re-examined, that coastlines may have played a more significant, widespread and persistent role as zones of attraction for human dispersal, population growth and social interaction than is commonly recognised, and that this has been obscured by hunter-gatherer and farmer stereotypes of prehistoric economies

BowScribe: Supporting the violinist's performance model

Musicians often learn about their vision of a piece through practicing it and listening to recordings. However, this does not always free the player to develop his or her own interpretation of the piece, especially when technique is lacking. We have developed software, the BowScribe markup language, that supports a violinist in creating a ``performance model'' of a piece currently beyond his or her playing skills, by allowing the player fine control over tempo, volume, and articulation, including playing of chords, at a level of expressiveness and flexibility that is significantly beyond the MIDI playback modes of popular music notation software. BowScribe has been used by the first author (who was trained as a prfessional violinist) to create a model of the entire Bach Chaconne (edited by Glamian), a long and demanding piece of music for solo violin that has many phrases that span groups of chords as well as melodic passages. The markup language specified chords to be rolled in two classic ways, as well as a wide variety of other strokes, including greater volume for individual notes in long slurs and small but essential variations in tempo

Our History Clips: Collaborating for the Common Good

This case study reveals how middle school social studies teachers within a professional development program are encouraging their students to use multiple disciplinary literacies to create Our History Clips as they also work toward developing a classroom community of engaged student citizens

A Qualitative Study to Explore the Help Seeking Views Relating to Depression Among Older Black Caribbean Adults Living in the UK

Rationale: Worldwide, literature has documented a rise in number among the older adult population, and a high prevalence of depression within this group. In the UK, rates of mental health problems within Black and minority groups are thought to be higher than in the white population. Mental health service providers need to understand the experiences and beliefs that underlie help seeking behaviour in order to deliver effective, culturally appropriate and accessible services; however, literature suggests these beliefs have rarely been explored within older adults from ethnic minority groups. Aims: Research specifically on help seeking among Black Caribbean people is limited. Therefore, this study will explore the personal experiences, meanings, and contexts that underlie help seeking in relation to self-defined depression among the UK’s older Black Caribbean adults, both now and when younger. In addition, the study aims to explore some of the barriers experienced by participants, if any when considering seeking help from mental health services for depression. Method: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 8 UK Black Caribbean participants, aged between 65-79 years. Transcripts were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis principles. Findings: Three master themes emerged from analysis: 1) “If you don’t know, you don’t seek help” 2) “….I was depressed…I knew I was depressed” and 3) “You have to decide”: Attitudes to help seeking and mental health service use. A description of these Master themes and ten related subordinate themes are discussed. Conclusion: The findings revealed how participants past personal experiences of coping with depression including migratory histories, cultural and religious views and personal relationships influenced help seeking views and preferred coping methods for depression. In addition, several issues were discovered to influence decision-making on whether to seek help or not from mental health services for depression. Findings from this study could be considered to inform the delivery of mental health services and be transferred into policy

Efficient detection of a CW signal with a linear frequency drift

An efficient method is presented for the detection of a continuous wave (CW) signal with a frequency drift that is linear in time. Signals of this type occur in transmissions between any two locations that are accelerating relative to one another, e.g., transmissions from the Voyager spacecraft. We assume that both the frequency and the drift are unknown. We also assume that the signal is weak compared to the Gaussian noise. The signal is partitioned into subsequences whose discrete Fourier transforms provide a sequence of instantaneous spectra at equal time intervals. These spectra are then accumulated with a shift that is proportional to time. When the shift is equal to the frequency drift, the signal to noise ratio increases and detection occurs. Here, we show how to compute these accumulations for many shifts in an efficient manner using a variety of Fast Fourier Transformations (FFT). Computing time is proportional to L log L where L is the length of the time series