The early Cycladic settlement at Dhaskalio, Keros: preliminary report of the 2008 excavation season

The 2008 excavations on the small island of Dhaskalio opposite Dhaskalio Kavos on the Cycladic island of Keros are reviewed. An account is given of the survey, recording many walls of the early Bronze Age, and of the excavations, continued from the 2007 season. Excavations at the summit of Dhaskalio revealed a substantial building 16 m long and 4 m wide, within which was discovered the ‘Dhaskalio hoard’ comprising a chisel, an axe-adze, and a shaft-hole axe of copper or bronze. Study of the pottery reveals continuity, within which a sequence of three phases within the Early Cycladic II and III periods can be established. Excavations were continued and concluded within the Special Deposit at Kavos South with the recovery of many more special but fragmentary materials including marble vessels and figurines. Specialist studies for the geomorphology, geology, petrology, ceramic petrology, metallurgy and environmental aspects (botanical and faunal remains, phytoliths) are in progress. No more fieldwork is planned prior to final publication of the 2006 to 2008 seasons

On ‘Organized Crime’ in the illicit antiquities trade: moving beyond the definitional debate

The extent to which ‘organized crime’ is involved in illicit antiquities trafficking is unknown and frequently debated. This paper explores the significance and scale of the illicit antiquities trade as a unique transnational criminal phenomenon that is often said to be perpetrated by and exhibit traits of so-called ‘organized crime.’ The definitional debate behind the term ‘organized crime’ is considered as a potential problem impeding our understanding of its existence or extent in illicit antiquities trafficking, and a basic progression-based model is then suggested as a new tool to move beyond the definitional debate for future research that may help to elucidate the actors, processes and criminal dynamics taking place within the illicit antiquities trade from source to market. The paper concludes that researchers should focus not on the question of whether organized criminals- particularly in a traditionally conceived, mafia-type stereotypical sense- are involved in the illicit antiquities trade, but instead on the structure and progression of antiquities trafficking itself that embody both organized and criminal dynamics

How Bob Laughlin Tamed the Giant Graviton from Taub-NUT space

In this paper we show how two dimensional electron systems can be modeled by strings interacting with D-branes. The dualities of string theory allow several descriptions of the system. These include descriptions in terms of solitons in the near horizon D6-brane theory, non-commutative gauge theory on a D2-brane, the Matrix Theory of D0-branes and finally as a giant graviton in M-theory. The soliton can be described as a D2-brane with an incompressible fluid of D0-branes and charged string-ends moving on it. Including an NS5 brane in the system allows for the existence of an edge with the characteristic massless chiral edge states of the Quantum Hall system.Comment: 26 pages, 4 figures, discussions adde

Quality traceability for user-centric context-aware systems in intelligent environments

Context-awareness is an important component of modern software systems. For example, in Ambient Assisted Living (AAL), the concept of context-awareness empowers users by reducing their dependence on others. Due to this role in healthcare, such systems need to be reliable and usable by their intended users. Our research addresses the development, testing and validation of context-aware systems in an emerging field which currently lacks sufficient systems engineering processes and disciplines. One specific issue being that developers often focus on delivering a system that works at some level, rather than engineering a system that meets a specified set of system requirements and their corresponding qualities. Our research aims to contribute towards improving the delivery of system quality by tracing, developing and linking systems development data for requirements, contexts including sensors, test cases and their results, and user validation tests and their results. We refer to this approach as the “quality traceability of context-aware systems”. In order to support the developer, the quality traceability of context-aware systems introduces a systems development approach tailored to context-aware systems in intelligent environments, an automated system testing tool and system validation process. We have implemented a case study to inform the research. The case study is in healthcare and based on an AAL system used to remotely monitor and manage, in real time, an individual prone to depressive symptoms

Structure and Mass of a Young Globular Cluster in NGC 6946

Using the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 on board the Hubble Space Telescope, we have imaged a luminous young star cluster in the nearby spiral galaxy NGC 6946. The cluster has an absolute visual magnitude M(V)=-13.2, comparable to the brightest young `super-star clusters' in the Antennae merger galaxy. UBV colors indicate an age of about 15 Myr. The cluster has a compact core (core radius = 1.3 pc), surrounded by an extended envelope. We estimate that the effective radius (Reff) = 13 pc, but this number is uncertain because the outer parts of the cluster profile gradually merge with the general field. Combined with population synthesis models, the luminosity and age of the cluster imply a mass of 8.2x10^5 Msun for a Salpeter IMF extending down to 0.1 Msun, or 5.5x10^5 Msun if the IMF is log-normal below 0.4 Msun. Depending on model assumptions, the central density of the cluster is between 5300 Msun pc^-3 and 17000 Msun pc^-3, comparable to other high-density star forming regions. We also estimate a dynamical mass for the cluster, using high-dispersion spectra from the HIRES spectrograph on the Keck I telescope. The velocity dispersion is 10.0 +/- 2.7 km/s, implying a total cluster mass within 65 pc of (1.7 +/- 0.9) x 10^6 Msun. Comparing the dynamical mass with the mass estimates based on the photometry and population synthesis models, the mass-to-light ratio is at least as high as for a Salpeter IMF extending down to 0.1 Msun, although a turn-over in the IMF at 0.4 Msun is still possible within the errors. The cluster will presumably remain bound, evolving into a globular cluster-like object.Comment: 33 pages, including 10 figures and 3 tables. Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa

The cultural capitalists: notes on the ongoing reconfiguration of trafficking culture in Asia

Most analysis of the international flows of the illicit art market has described a global situation in which a postcolonial legacy of acquisition and collection exploits cultural heritage by pulling it westwards towards major international trade nodes in the USA and Europe. As the locus of consumptive global economic power shifts, however, these traditional flows are pulled in other directions: notably for the present commentary, towards and within Asia

A proposal for a new type of thin-film field-emission display by edge breakdown of MIS structure

A new type of field emission display(FED) based on an edge-enhance electron emission from metal-insulator-semiconductor (MIS) thin film structure is proposed. The electrons produced by an avalanche breakdown in the semiconductor near the edge of a top metal electrode are initially injected to the thin film of an insulator with a negative electron affinity (NEA), and then are injected into vacuum in proximity to the top electrode edge. The condition for the deep-depletition breakdown near the edge of the top metal electrode is analytically found in terms of ratio of the insulator thickness to the maximum (breakdown) width of the semiconductor depletition region: this ratio should be less than 2/(3 \pi - 2) = 0.27. The influence of a neighboring metal electrode and an electrode thickness on this condition are analyzed. Different practical schemes of the proposed display with a special reference to M/CaF_2/Si structure are considered.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figure

Interspecific competition and vertical niche partitioning in Fiji’s forest birds

Charles Darwin proposed his ‘principle of divergence’ to account for changes in traits that could promote speciation and coexistence of diverse forms through occupation of different niches to reduce interspecific competition. We explore interspecific foraging behaviour overlap in Fiji’s forest birds, and address two main questions: (1) Is there vertical stratification of foraging behavior? and (2) Is there evidence of interspecific competition driving the differences in foraging behaviour? We explore these questions across three foraging guilds, nectarivores (three species), insectivores (two species), and omnivores (two species), and find vertical portioning of foraging in each group. To investigate the effect of interspecific competition, we compared foraging heights of the Orange-breasted Myzomela (Myzomela jugularis) honeyeater on Viti Levu Island (where it coexists with two other honeyeater species) and Leleuvia Island (no other honeyeater species). On the main island Viti Levu, we found evidence for vertical niche partitioning within each foraging guild. On Leleuvia, with the ‘one-species only foraging guild’, Orange-breasted Myzomela occupied broader vertical foraging niche than on Viti Levu with two other competitor honeyeater species. This result supports the idea that vertical foraging height can be shaped by interspecific competition. The findings of this study support Darwin’s principle of divergence in Fiji’s forest birds for every foraging guild measured and adds to our understanding of the significance of interspecific competition and niche divergence for patterns of ecological speciation on islands