Gestión del patrimonio arqueológico subacuático y costero en los mares de Israel (I)

The Maritime cultural heritage of Israel reflects important chapters in the history of humanity, including the Neolithic revolution and the beginning of agriculture, the emergence of the first empires and the foundation of the three monotheistic religions. Erosion due to sea level rise and human activity is destroying important coastal and underwater archaeological sites. Low levels in the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea exposed many archaeological remains, which are threatened by erosion, treasure hunting and coastal development. Without intensive rescue and protection activities, the valuable cultural maritime heritage will vanish within a few decades. Legal and operational tools are currently applied in order to assure integrated coastal zone management, to control coastal development and to protect the marine cultural resources. Among these are the Antiquities Law, the Planning and Building Law, the Nature and Parks Law and the Law for the Protection of the Coastal Environment. Coastal and underwater sites are mapped and monitored, protected coastal and underwater sites are declared and rescue surveys are carried out in the endangered sites. A national risk assessment document of the coastal and underwater heritage and detailed preservation and protection plans have been prepared. Pilot projects for protecting and preserving the sea walls of Ashkelon, Apollonia and Akko were completed and several damaged harbors in the Sea of Galilee were reconstructed.El patrimonio marítimo cultural de Israel representa un importante capítulo en la historia de la Humanidad, incluyendo la Revolución Neolítica y los inicios de la agricultura, la aparición de los primeros imperios y la fundación de las tres religiones monoteístas. La erosión debida a la subida del nivel del mar y la actividad humana están destruyendo importantes yacimientos arqueológicos costeros y submarinos. La bajada del nivel en el Mar de Galilea y en el Mar Muerto ha expuesto muchos restos arqueológicos amenazados por la erosion, los expoliadores y el desarrollo litoral. Sin un intenso control y sin actividades protectoras se perderá el valioso patrimonio cultural marítimo en pocas décadas. Las herramientas jurídicas y operativas actualmente se están aplicando para proteger la gestión integrada de zonas costeras, para controlar el desarrollo litoral y proteger los recursos culturales marítimos. Entre estas disposiciones se encuentran la Ley de Antigüedades, la Ley de Planificación y Construcción, la Ley de Naturaleza y Parques, y la Ley para la Protección del Medio Ambiente Costero. Los yacimientos litorales y submarinos están cartografiados y supervisados, los protegidos están declarados y las actuaciones de rescate se están produciendo en los yacimientos más amenazados. Se ha elaborado un documento nacional relativo a los riesgos sobre el patrimonio litoral y subacuático, y se han detallado planes para su protección y conservación. Se han culminado los proyectos pilotos para la recuperación de las murallas marítimas de Ascalon, Apolonia y Acco, y varios puertos dañados en el Mar de Galilea se han restaurado

Gestión del patrimonio arqueológico subacuático y costero en los mares de Israel (II): los yacimientos litorales en riesgo

The two articles titled Management of the underwater and coastal archaeological heritage in Israel's seas – parts A and B aim at presenting the diversity, nature and significance of an important cultural resource at risk, namely the underwater and coastal archaeological sites of Israel. Part I introduces the typology of the sites on the Mediterranean coast and the inland seas (The Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea). Part II presents the main endangered sites along the Mediterranean coast of Israel, their archaeological and historical significance, the risks they are facing and the measures that have to be taken in order to ensure their long term preservation.Los dos artículos presentados con el título “Gestión del patrimonio arqueológico subacuático y costero en los mares de Israel” apuntan a la diversidad, naturaleza y trascendencia de un importante recurso cultural en riesgo, concretamente los yacimientos arqueológicos submarinos y costeros de Israel. En la primera parte introducíamos la tipología de los asentamientos sobre la costa mediterránea y los mares interiores (el Mar de Galilea y el Mar Muerto). Esta segunda parte presenta los yacimientos más amenazados a lo largo de las costas israelíes del Mediterráneo, su histórica y arqueológica importancia, los riesgos a los que se enfrentan y las medias que deben ser tomadas con objeto de asegurar su preservación a largo plazo

RGB-D datasets using microsoft kinect or similar sensors: a survey

RGB-D data has turned out to be a very useful representation of an indoor scene for solving fundamental computer vision problems. It takes the advantages of the color image that provides appearance information of an object and also the depth image that is immune to the variations in color, illumination, rotation angle and scale. With the invention of the low-cost Microsoft Kinect sensor, which was initially used for gaming and later became a popular device for computer vision, high quality RGB-D data can be acquired easily. In recent years, more and more RGB-D image/video datasets dedicated to various applications have become available, which are of great importance to benchmark the state-of-the-art. In this paper, we systematically survey popular RGB-D datasets for different applications including object recognition, scene classification, hand gesture recognition, 3D-simultaneous localization and mapping, and pose estimation. We provide the insights into the characteristics of each important dataset, and compare the popularity and the difficulty of those datasets. Overall, the main goal of this survey is to give a comprehensive description about the available RGB-D datasets and thus to guide researchers in the selection of suitable datasets for evaluating their algorithms

Professional Challenges to Women as Educators and as Mothers

This article explores the dynamic between the professional roles of women working in early childhood education and their maternal skills and identities. This dynamic reveals a blurring of the boundaries between motherhood and career, which have similar requirements to provide protection, care, and concern. This study sheds light on the perspectives of mothers working in early childhood education regarding their personal and professional lives. It highlights not only the conflicts raised and prices paid by the women and their children but also the extent to which female educators bring their profession home with them, including their theoretical and practical knowledge. These women continue to act as educators at home, but the demands on them are multiplied in the private sphere, where they are also mothers. Moreover, the demands they place on their children can also be influenced by the private domain, making this relationship complex and conflictual. Oftentimes, the private life and children of a female educator are seen as significant aspects of the “business card” she is expected to present to the world in order to gain respect in her professional life. Specifically, this article explores how female educators who are also mothers experience the relationships existing between the professional and personal realms

Conversion of tumors into autologous vaccines by intratumoral injection of alpha-Gal glycolipids that induce anti-Gal/alpha-Gal epitope interaction

Anti-Gal is the most abundant antibody in humans, constituting 1% of immunoglobulins. Anti-Gal binds specifically alpha-gal epitopes (Galalpha1-3Galbeta1-4GlcNAc-R). Immunogenicity of autologous tumor associated antigens (TAA) is greatly increased by manipulating tumor cells to express alpha-gal epitopes and bind anti-Gal. Glycolipids with alphagal epitopes (alpha-gal glycolipids) injected into tumors insert into the tumor cell membrane. Anti-Gal binding to the multiple alpha-gal epitopes de novo presented on the tumor cells results in targeting of these cells to APC via the interaction between the Fc portion of the bound anti-Gal and Fcgamma; receptors on APC. The APC process and present immunogenic TAA peptides and thus, effectively activate tumor specific CD4+ helper T cells and CD8+ cytotoxic T cells which destroy tumor cells in micrometastases. The induced immune response is potent enough to overcome immunosuppression by Treg cells. A phase I clinical trial indicated that alpha-gal glycolipid treatment has no adverse effects. In addition to achieving destruction of micrometastases in cancer patients with advance disease, alpha-gal glycolipid treatment may be effective as neo-adjuvant immunotherapy. Injection of alpha-gal glycolipids into primary tumors few weeks prior to resection can induce a protective immune response capable of destroying micrometastases expressing autologous TAA, long after primary tumor resection

Neural circuits mediating aversive olfactory conditioning in Drosophila

For all animals it is highly advantageous to associate an environmental sensory stimulus with a reinforcing experience. During associative learning, the neural representation of the sensory stimulus (conditioned stimulus; CS) converges in time and location with that of the reinforcer (unconditioned stimulus; US). The CS is then affiliated with a predictive value, altering the animal’s response towards it in following exposures. In my PhD thesis I made use of olfactory aversive conditioning in Drosophila to ask where these two different stimuli are represented and how they are processed in the nervous system to allow association. In the first part of my thesis, I investigated the presentation of the odor stimulus (CS) and its underlying neuronal pathway. CS-US association is possible even when the US is presented after the physical sensory stimulus is gone ('trace conditioning'). I compared such association of temporally non-overlapping stimuli to learning of overlapping stimuli ('delay conditioning'). I found that flies associate an odor trace with electric shock reinforcement even when they were separated with a 15 s gap. Memories after trace and delay conditioning have striking similarities: both reached the same asymptotic learning level, although at different rates, and both memories have similar decay kinetics and highly correlated generalization profiles across odors. Altogether, these results point at a common odor percept which is probably kept in the nervous system throughout and following odor presentation. In search of the physiological correlate of the odor trace, we used in vivo calcium imaging to characterize the odor-evoked activity of the olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs) in the antennal lobe (in collaboration with Alja Luedke, Konstanz University). After the offset of odor presentation, ORNs showed odor-specific response patterns that lasted for a few seconds and were fundamentally different from the response patterns during odor stimulation. Weak correlation between the behavioral odor generalization profile in trace conditioning and the physiological odor similarity profiles in the antennal lobe suggest that the odor trace used for associative learning may be encoded downstream of the ORNs. In the second part of the thesis I investigated the presentation of different aversive stimuli (USs) and their underlying neuronal pathways. I established an odor-temperature conditioning assay, comparable to the commonly used odor-shock conditioning, and compared the neural pathways mediating both memory types. I described a specific sensory pathway for increased temperature as an aversive reinforcement: the thermal sensors AC neurons, expressing dTrpA1 receptors. Despite the separate sensory pathways for odor-temperature and odor-shock conditioning, both converge to one central pathway: the dopamine neurons, generally signaling reinforcement in the fly brain. Although a common population of dopamine neurons mediates both reinforcement types, the population mediating temperature reinforcement is smaller, and probably included within the population of dopamine neurons mediating shock reinforcement. I conclude that dopamine neurons integrate different noxious signals into a general aversive reinforcement pathway. Altogether, my results contribute to our understanding of aversive olfactory conditioning, demonstrating previously undescribed behavioral abilities of flies and their neuronal representations