Contending with animal bones (Editorial)

[FIRST PARAGRAPH] This issue has been assembled in order to focus on some of the current directions in animal remains research. Since serious study of ancient animal remains began in the nineteenth century, this field and its specific areas of inquiry have evolved and diversified, and this collection of papers highlights that diversity, by including contributions that address issues from excavation and field recording methods and preservational conditions, to the use of bone for understanding past animal populations, as well as bones as proxy indicators for human activities. This volume is not meant only for the attention of the faunal remains specialist, and only a couple of these papers have actually been contributed by "archaeozoologists". Rather we hope to demonstrate the importance of faunal remains studies, on a par with lithic or pottery research. It should be acknowledged that animal bones do not relate simply to the “economic” aspects of a culture but to all areas of the life world

The art of being human : a project for general philosophy of science

Throughout the medieval and modern periods, in various sacred and secular guises, the unification of all forms of knowledge under the rubric of ‘science’ has been taken as the prerogative of humanity as a species. However, as our sense of species privilege has been called increasingly into question, so too has the very salience of ‘humanity’ and ‘science’ as general categories, let alone ones that might bear some essential relationship to each other. After showing how the ascendant Stanford School in the philosophy of science has contributed to this joint demystification of ‘humanity’ and ‘science’, I proceed on a more positive note to a conceptual framework for making sense of science as the art of being human. My understanding of ‘science’ is indebted to the red thread that runs from Christian theology through the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment to the Humboldtian revival of the university as the site for the synthesis of knowledge as the culmination of self-development. Especially salient to this idea is science‘s epistemic capacity to manage modality (i.e. to determine the conditions under which possibilities can be actualised) and its political capacity to organize humanity into projects of universal concern. However, the challenge facing such an ideal in the twentyfirst century is that the predicate ‘human’ may be projected in three quite distinct ways, governed by what I call ‘ecological’, ‘biomedical’ and ‘cybernetic’ interests. Which one of these future humanities would claim today’s humans as proper ancestors and could these futures co-habit the same world thus become two important questions that general philosophy of science will need to address in the coming years

The late time evolution of Gamma-Ray Bursts: ending hyperaccretion and producing flares

We consider the properties of a hyperaccretion model for gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) at the late time when the mass supply rate is expected to decrease with time. We point out that the region in the vicinity of the accretor and the accretor itself can play an important role in determining the rate and time behavior of the accretion and ultimately the energy output. Motivated by numerical simulations and theoretical results, we conjecture that the energy release can be repeatedly stopped and then restarted by the magnetic flux accumulated around the accretor. We propose that the episode or episodes when the accretion resumes correspond to X-ray flares discovered recently in a number of GRBs.Comment: to appear in MNRAS Letters, revised versio

Supplanting crystallography or supplementing microscopy? A combined approach to the study of an enveloped virus

The recent advances in the resolution obtained by single-particle reconstructions from cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) have led to an increase in studies that combine X-ray crystallographic results with those of electron microscopy (EM). Here, such a combination is described in the determination of the structure of an enveloped animal virus, Semliki Forest virus, at 9 Å resolution. The issues of model bias in determination of the structure, the definition of resolution in a single-particle reconstruction, the effect of the correction of the contrast-transfer function on the structure determined and the use of a high-resolution structure of a subunit in the interpretation of the structure of the complex are addressed

Artificial atmosphere control system

Two-gas control system has been developed which uses existing hardware. Three systems are used for control, monitoring, and safety backup. Pure oxygen will be supplied to maintain safe pressure level should something go wrong

The genealogy of judgement: towards a deep history of academic freedom

The classical conception of academic freedom associated with Wilhelm von Humboldt and the rise of the modern university has a quite specific cultural foundation that centres on the controversial mental faculty of 'judgement'. This article traces the roots of 'judgement' back to the Protestant Reformation, through its heyday as the signature feature of German idealism, and to its gradual loss of salience as both a philosophical and a psychological concept. This trajectory has been accompanied by a general shrinking in the scope of academic freedom from the promulgation of world-views to the offering of expert opinion

Numerical simulations of the seasonal/latitudinal variations of atomic oxygen and nitric oxide in the lower thermosphere and mesosphere

A 2-Dimensional zonally-averaged thermospheric model and the global University College London (UCL) thermospheric model have been used to investigate the seasonal, solar activity and geomagnetic variation of atomic oxygen and nitric oxide. The 2-dimensional model includes detailed oxygen and nitrogen chemistry, with appropriate completion of the energy equation, by adding the thermal infrared cooling by O and NO. This solution includes solar and auroral production of odd nitrogen compounds and metastable species. This model has been used for three investigations; firstly, to study the interactions between atmospheric dynamics and minor species transport and density; secondly, to examine the seasonal variations of atomic oxygen and nitric oxide within the upper mesosphere and thermosphere and their response to solar and geomagnetic activity variations; thirdly, to study the factor of 7 to 8 peak nitric oxide density increase as solar F sub 10.7 cm flux increases from 70 to 240 reported from the Solar Mesospheric Explorer. Auroral production of NO is shown to be the dominant source at high latitudes, generating peak NO densities a factor of 10 greater than typical number densities at low latitudes. At low latitudes, the predicted variation of the peak NO density, near 110 km, with the solar F sub 10.7 cm flux is rather smaller than is observed. This is most likely due to an overestimate of the soft X-ray flux at low solar activity, for times of extremely low support number, as occurred in June 1986. As observed on pressure levels, the variation of O density is small. The global circulation during solstice and periods of elevated geomagnetic activity causes depletion of O in regions of upwelling, and enhancements in regions of downwelling

MOTOR CARRIER REGULATION AND ITS IMPACT ON SERVICE: AN ANALYSIS OF TEXAS FRESH FRUIT AND VEGETABLE SHIPPERS

Crop Production/Industries, Public Economics,