The Roman coins. In: Cook, Martin, Lawson, John A and McLaren, Dawn, 'Excavations and Interventions in and around Cramond Roman Fort and Annexe, 1976 to 1990'. Scottish Archaeology Internet Report 74

Cramond Roman Fort has been the focus of archaeological interest since the publication of John Wood’s history of the parish in the late 18th century, with a floruit of activity in the latter half of the 20th century. Playing an important part in this volume of work have been the excavations led by the late Mr Charlie Hoy (d 1991), an Edinburgh amateur archaeologist working principally with the Edinburgh Archaeological Field Society and latterly on his own. His excavations have recovered a wide range of evidence from the Mesolithic through the Roman and medieval periods up to the post-medieval development of Cramond House Estate. Hoy’s investigations have been hugely important to our understanding of the Roman fort’s associated annexe/extramural settlement, in particular providing new evidence for its origins in the Antonine period, and for Severan occupation, as well as uncovering a multi-phased road and associated wooden structures. In addition, the artefact assemblage further adds to the corpus from the site and includes an internationally significant sword pendant belonging to a beneficiarius (beneficiarii were troops on special service for the provincial governor) that demonstrates the presence of German troops at the fort, and perhaps hints at the presence of the emperor himself

Coins and jettons. In: Caldwell, David H and Stell, Geoffrey P, Achanduin Castle, Lismore, Argyll: an account of the excavations by Dennis Turner, 1970–5'. Scottish Archaeology Internet Report 73

Excavations were undertaken at Achanduin Castle, Lismore, Argyll (NGR: NM 8043 3927), over six seasons from 1970 to 1975 under the direction of the late Dennis John Turner (1932–2013), henceforward referred to as DJT. Partly funded by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and with tools and equipment loaned by RCAHMS (now Historic Environment Scotland), the work was carried out in support of the RCAHMS’s programme of survey in the Lorn district of Argyll. Its purpose was to examine an apparently little-altered but much-ruined example of a castle of enclosure ascribable to a small but identifiably distinct group of rectangular, or near rectangular, courtyard castles. DJT concluded that it was built c 1295–1310 by the MacDougalls, and only later passed to the bishops of Argyll. The authors add their own observations on the excavations in a separate section. They note tenuous evidence for a pre-castle phase. The bulk of the report focuses on the erection and occupation of the castle, followed by abandonment, post-medieval occupation, collapse/demolition and recent times

The coins. In: Dalland, M. 'Discovering the King’s Wall: Excavations at 144–166 Cowgate, Edinburgh'. Scottish Archaeology Internet Report 69

This report details the discovery of a late medieval building and the remains of extensive walls running along the north side of Cowgate, excavated in advance of a housing development. The wall remains were dated to the late 14th century and are believed to have been part of Edinburgh’s early town defences. Edinburgh’s medieval town wall is referred to as the ‘King’s wall’ and is linked to a James II charter of 1450. However, there are references to the King’s wall in property documents as early as 1427, indicating that a town wall had been built prior to the charter of 1450. The remains uncovered at Cowgate are likely to be part of this early town wall. Previously the line of the King’s wall was thought to have been located approximately halfway up the slope between Cowgate and the High Street. In view of the new discoveries a revised line is proposed that runs further south along the north side of Cowgate. The clay-bonded stone building was constructed up against the north side of the wall, probably in the late 15th century. It may have been an animal shed, possibly a stable that was the only medieval stone building erected in this area along Cowgate, leaving most of the site as open wasteland as described in late medieval documents. It was replaced by more substantial mortared buildings at the beginning of the 17th century

Self-Optimisation of Automated Continuous Reactors

The optimisation of problematic reaction steps in the synthesis of a drug compound is crucial for pharmaceutical process development. In recent traditions, this has carried out using design of experiments (DoE), which shows the key reaction variables and provides optimum reaction conditions. The process can require a lot of experiments and be time and resource consuming. The speed of optimisation experiments can be increased by using automated platforms complete with online analysis, which carry out reactions and acquire analytical samples without any human intervention. If these experiments can be carried out in continuous reactors then they will benefit from faster kinetics, enhanced heat and mass transfer, improved safety and higher productivity over their batch counterparts. An automated self-optimising flow reactor combines a continuous reactor with online analysis and feedback loop. The feedback loop contains full computerised control and monitoring of all equipment as well as a minimising algorithm, which will use the results from the online analysis to predict new optimum conditions. The technique has been shown to optimise the synthesis of small organic compounds but has, so far, yet to be widely used in pharmaceutical process development. This thesis has improved self-optimising technologies in order to make it a useful technique in pharmaceutical process development. First, the final bond forming step in the synthesis of an active pharmaceutical ingredient was optimised for yield. Studies were primarily carried out on a model compound in order to establish the correct reactor setup before transferring to the active compound, which found an optimum yield of 89%. The work also provided mechanistic evidence for generation of impurities. Next, response surface models were successfully fitted to the data obtained from a branch and fit algorithm optimisation of a Claisen-Schmidt condensation. In depth statistical calculations show how DoE models can be generated from self-optimisation data with good fit and predictability (R2 > 0.95, Q2 > 0.90), and with the aid of commercial DoE software. Further work developed the use of direct mass spectrometry (MS) as the online analytical method. The short method times and real-time analysis of MS allowed a steady state detection function to be built, followed by a linear calibration model of all the species in the amidation of a methyl ester. The reaction was optimised for yield using branch and fit algorithm, and DoE, with excellent agreement between the two techniques in both optimum conditions and responses. Finally, changes were made to the optimisation program to reduce the amount of material required for automated optimisations. Reaction pulses of sub-reactor volumes were pumped through the reactor, dispersed in a continuous phase of miscible solvent. Residence time distribution experiments were carried out to characterise the dispersion of the reactor and calculate the minimum reactor pulse volume. Optimisations were primarily carried out using pattern search algorithm and a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm, the latter of which generated a three target function optimum, reducing the amount of waste by 81%. Overall this work has shown how self-optimisation can be a valuable tool for pharmaceutical process development. The existing technique has been improved by demonstrating its use in the synthesis of pharmaceutical compounds, combining it with existing DoE techniques, adding new forms of online analysis, and reducing the amount of material required to deliver a multi-target optimum

Cognitive and bodily selves: how do they interact following brain lesion?

Dualism has long distinguished between the mental and the body experiences. Probing the structure and organisation of the self traditionally calls for a distinction between these two sides of the self coin. It is far beyond the scope of this chapter to address these philosophical issues, and our starting point will be the simple distinction between reflective processes involved in the elaboration of body image, self awareness and self-recognition (i.e. ‘the self’) and the sensori-motor dialogues involved in action control, reactions and automatisms (i.e. ‘the body’ schema). This oversimplification does not take into account the complex interactions taking place between these two levels of description, but our initial aim will be to distinguish between them, before addressing the question of their interactions. Cognitive and sensori-motor processes have frequently been distinguished (review: Rossetti and Revonsuo 2000), and it may be proposed that a similar dissociation can be put forward, a priori, between a central representation of self and a bodily representation corresponding to body schema (Figure 1)

Airline Schedule Recovery after Airport Closures: Empirical Evidence Since September 11th

Since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, repeated airport closures due to potential security breaches have imposed substantial costs on travelers, airlines, and government agencies in terms of flight delays and cancellations. Using data from the year following September 11th, this study examines how airlines recover flight schedules upon reopening of airports that have been closed for security reasons. As such, this is the first study to examine service quality during irregular operations. Our results indicate that while outcomes of flights scheduled during airport closures are difficult to explain, a variety of factors, including potential revenue per flight and logistical variables such as flight distance, seating capacity and shutdown severity, significantly predict outcomes of flights scheduled after airports reopen. Given the likelihood of continued security-related airport closings, understanding the factors that determine schedule recovery is potentially important.

Does School Choice Increase School Quality?

Federal No Child Left Behind' legislation, which enables students of low-performing schools to exercise public school choice, exemplies a widespread belief that competing for students will spur public schools to higher achievement. We investigate how the introduction of school choice in North Carolina, via a dramatic increase in the number of charter schools across the state, affects the performance of traditional public schools on statewide tests. We find test score gains from competition that are robust to a variety of specifications. The introduction of charter school competition causes an approximate one percent increase in the score, which constitutes about one quarter of the average yearly growth.

An Investigation into the Determinants of Flight Cancellations

This paper uses Bureau of Transportation data on 35 million domestic flights between 1995 and 2001 to investigate the determinants of flight cancellations. This paper is novel in two regards since it focuses exclusively on flight cancellations and it explores the service quality and flight revenue relationship. We find that carriers have some control over the occurrence of flight cancellations given that cancellations are significantly less likely on Thursday, Friday, and Sunday and for the last flight of day. There is some evidence that links cancellations with revenue

The left ventral premotor cortex is involved in hand shaping for intransitive gestures: evidence from a two-person imitation experiment

The ventral premotor cortex (PMv) is involved in grasping and object manipulation, while the dorsal premotor cortex (PMd) has been suggested to play a role in reaching and action selection. These areas have also been associated with action imitation, but their relative roles in different types of action imitation are unclear. We examined the role of the left PMv and PMd in meaningful and meaningless action imitation by using repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS). Participants imitated meaningful and meaningless actions performed by a confederate actor while both individuals were motion-tracked. rTMS was applied over the left PMv, left PMd or a vertex control site during action observation or imitation. Digit velocity was significantly greater following stimulation over the PMv during imitation compared with stimulation over the PMv during observation, regardless of action meaning. Similar effects were not observed over the PMd or vertex. In addition, stimulation over the PMv increased finger movement speed in a (non-imitative) finger–thumb opposition task. We suggest that claims regarding the role of the PMv in object-directed hand shaping may stem from the prevalence of object-directed designs in motor control research. Our results indicate that the PMv may have a broader role in ‘target-directed’ hand shaping, whereby different areas of the hand are considered targets to act upon during intransitive gesturing