Testing iPad in the field: use of a relational database in garbological research

Recording thousands of entries during field research poses a challenge to any field researcher. Contemporary handheld computers offer affordable solutions, which can resolve this challenge. In this paper, we test the iPad tablet computer and FileMaker Go database to conduct garbological research carried out in West Bohemia (Czech Republic). Garbological research based on the collection of data about human waste requires not only efficient tools for recording a vast number of individual garbage items on the spot but also integration of multiple analytical levels in a database. Our research was aimed at household waste to illuminate consumption patterns and mobility of humans and things in contemporary Central European settings. The iPad was used to collect textual and visual data and integrate these in a relational database. We describe our methodology and experience with this kind of technology. The iPad and FileMaker Go proved to be well suited to challenging field conditions in the landfill, data collection was efficient and reliable, the database was flexible because its basic features could be modified in the field, and one could even examine preliminary trends in the data using charts in FileMaker Go. The proposed hardware and software is less efficient for the collection of precise spatial data, preparation of accurate drawings, and for projects in remote areas without good access to an electrical grid

Life of the Non-Living: Nationalization, Language and the Narrative of “Revival” in Modern Hebrew Literary Discourse

This dissertation critically examines the question of language revival in late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Hebrew literature. Focusing on major texts that participate in the political and aesthetic endeavor of reviving Hebrew as an exclusive national language, this study traces the narrative of revival and explores the changes and iterations it underwent in the course of several decades, from the 1890s to the early 1920s. Informed by a wide range of critical literary theory, I analyze the primary tropes used to articulate the process whereby Hebrew came to inhabit new discursive roles. Building on close readings of canonical texts by authors ranging from Ahad Ha’am and Mikha Yosef Berdichevsky to Hayim Nahman Bialik, Rachel Katznelson, and Yosef Hayim Brenner, I argue that while modern Hebrew literature largely rejected the philological assumption that Hebrew was a dead language, it nevertheless produced a discourse around the notion of “revival,” in a manner that deferred the possibility of perceiving Hebrew as fully living. My readings show that while many of these texts contemplate linguistic transformation in terms of revitalization or birth, the national mission of language revival is in fact entwined with mourning, and ultimately produces the object of revival as neither dead nor fully alive. Dwelling on the ambivalence and suspension of that moment, and examining a range of nuances in its articulation, I explore the roles that Hebrew language and literature play in nationalization, Zionism, and the constitution of a new Hebrew subjectivity

Advanced Approaches to High Intensity Laser-Driven Ion Acceleration

Since the pioneering work that was carried out 10 years ago, the generation of highly energetic ion beams from laser-plasma interactions has been investigated in much detail in the regime of target normal sheath acceleration (TNSA). Creation of ion beams with small longitudinal and transverse emittance and energies extending up to tens of MeV fueled visions of compact, laser-driven ion sources for applications such as ion beam therapy of tumors or fast ignition inertial confinement fusion. However, new pathways are of crucial importance to push the current limits of laser-generated ion beams further towards parameters necessary for those applications. The presented PhD work was intended to develop and explore advanced approaches to high intensity laser-driven ion acceleration that reach beyond TNSA. In this spirit, ion acceleration from two novel target systems was investigated, namely mass-limited microspheres and nm-thin, free-standing diamond-like carbon (DLC) foils. Using such ultrathin foils, a new regime of ion acceleration was found where the laser transfers energy to all electrons located within the focal volume. While for TNSA the accelerating electric field is stationary and ion acceleration is spatially separated from laser absorption into electrons, now a localized longitudinal field enhancement is present that co-propagates with the ions as the accompanying laser pulse pushes the electrons forward. Unprecedented maximum ion energies were obtained, reaching beyond 0.5 GeV for carbon C$^{6+}$ and thus exceeding previous TNSA results by about one order of magnitude. When changing the laser polarization to circular, electron heating and expansion were shown to be efficiently suppressed, resulting for the first time in a phase-stable acceleration that is dominated by the laser radiation pressure which led to the observation of a peaked C$^{6+}$ spectrum. Compared to quasi-monoenergetic ion beam generation within the TNSA regime, a more than 40 times increase in conversion efficiency was achieved. The possibility to manipulate the shape of the ion acceleration front was successfully demonstrated by use of a spherically curved target surface. Finally, the last part of the presented work is devoted to accomplishments in laser development

The Embers of Allah: cosmologies, knowledge, and relations in the mountains of central Bosnia

This thesis is a study of living Islam and Muslims’ lifeworlds in the margins of the postsocialist world, in the mountains of central Bosnia. Its main scope is an analysis of the scales of relatedness and the domains of knowledge traditions that assemble Muslims’ lifeworlds as tangible, coherent and meaningful social forms. In doing so, the thesis draws inspiration from the Barthian anthropology of knowledge to shed light on ‘what a person employs to interpret and act on the world’. A knowledge tradition, here understood as a local cosmology, is a product of multiple persons and relations that create the context in which knowledge and bodies of knowledge are produced and sustained. Therefore, I argue that it is a knowledge tradition that informs a ‘meaningful agency’ in the flow of everyday sociality and that continues to be Islam in the Bosnian mountains. In particular, I suggest that Muslim life in the mountains is lived along four complementary meaningful contexts, that is relatedness, spatiality, temporality and ritual. Relatedness embraces multifaceted processes of ‘living together’ that (re)fabricate, relate and extend Muslim persons through sharing of substances, memories, identity and divinity (chapters 3 and 4). The flow of everyday sociality between persons who ‘live in proximity’ is tapestried from day-to-day forms of exchange such as hospitality, intimacy and mutuality between neighbours, and enacted within two overlapping spheres, that is immediate (komšiluk) and extended neighbourhood (mahala) (chapters 5 and 6). The lifeworlds of Muslims as well as the flow of the everyday in the mountains are orchestrated and punctuated by particular rhythms embracing multiple forms of time reckoning and calendars, and orchestrating various agricultural and religious activities and practices (chapter 7). Ritual is a mode of appropriation of personal or communal good luck, fortune, blessing and well-being (chapters 6, 7 and 8), and cuts across the spheres of intimacy and proximity and embraces Muslims’ lifeworlds, well-being of the house, the land and the persons with the sacred landscape and divinity. Throughout the thesis I argue that our research in the post-Yugoslav regions needs to take into account local knowledge traditions as a serious matter of concern, and situate the war atrocities or postsocialist transformations within the larger analytical scales entwining cultural continuities and historicities with social, political and economic breakdowns. In doing so, I show that the ways Bosnian Muslims value and conceive of being a Muslim are primarily focused on cultural creativity, knowledge, morality and domains that inform, shape and (re)create their lifeworlds and cosmologies, and through which Bosnian Muslims exchange, communicate, validate and understand their religious experiences and imagination in the context of turbulent social, economic and political transformations

Admiral Samuel F. Du Pont, the Navy Department, and the Attack on Charleston, April 1863

Gloom overshadowed the Union in the early spring of 1863. The military situation, particularly In the eastern theater, seemed hopeless. In December the Army of the Potomac had suffered a severe defeat at Fredericksburg, and, at least for the immediate future, there were no indications that it was ready to redeem itself. As Allan Nevins has noted in his multivolume study of the war, many in the North believed at this time that the valor, dash, and tenacity of the South ... combined with high military leadership, might yet possibly produce a deadlock-which would mean Confederate success.

Muslim circulations and networks in West Asia: ethnographic perspectives on transregional connectivity

This article explores the concept of West Asia in relationship to recent work in the global history of Islam that points toward the existence of transregional arenas of historic significance that incorporate many of Asia’s Muslim societies. Recent anthropological work has also brought attention to the dynamic nature of the relations and cultural connections between peoples living in regions that once formed part of expansive arenas of interaction yet were divided by imperial and national boundaries, as well as the ideological conflicts of the Cold War. Against this political and historical context, we deploy West Asia as a geographical scale that brings to light interconnected forms of life that have been silenced by traditional area studies scholarship. We compare our field work experiences with two different networks made-up of Muslims that span different axis of Muslim Asia. We argue that “West Asia” brings attention to influential connections, communities, and circulations that both bear the imprint of deeper pasts as well as the influence of emergent and shifting transregional dynamics in the present. Furthermore, by emphasizing connective dynamics that move beyond the rather conventional focus on east–west relationships, the category West Asia also encourages scholarship to highlight multiple yet hitherto little explored inter-Asian north–south connections

Utilizing Excess Resources in Training Neural Networks

In this work, we suggest Kernel Filtering Linear Overparameterization (KFLO), where a linear cascade of filtering layers is used during training to improve network performance in test time. We implement this cascade in a kernel filtering fashion, which prevents the trained architecture from becoming unnecessarily deeper. This also allows using our approach with almost any network architecture and let combining the filtering layers into a single layer in test time. Thus, our approach does not add computational complexity during inference. We demonstrate the advantage of KFLO on various network models and datasets in supervised learning.Comment: Accepted to ICIP 2022. Code available at https://github.com/AmitHenig/KFL

Polycrisis : prompts for an emerging worldview

Taking the realms of business, finance and economic history by storm, polycrisis captures the complexity of an increasingly uncertain world in a state of flux and transition. Proponents of the polycrisis model, such as prominent economic historian and Financial Times contributing editor Adam Tooze, propose polycrisis as a marker of our age, capturing overlapping and interconnected crises beyond cause and effect. In his article, the authors offer some prompts for considering the usefulness and limitations of polycrisis for the anthropological toolkit. The authors cautiously welcome the polycrisis trope as a multidimensional means to account for the consequences of interrelated crises in an unprecedented era.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Paper as a serious method of concern

Comment on Hull, Matthew. 2012. Government of paper: The materiality of bureaucracy in urban Pakistan. Berkeley: University of California Press