scholarly journals Monumental landscapes of the Holocene humid period in Northern Arabia: The mustatil phenomenon

The Holocene ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (12) ◽  
pp. 1767-1779 ◽  
Author(s):  
Huw S Groucutt ◽  
Paul S Breeze ◽  
Maria Guagnin ◽  
Mathew Stewart ◽  
Nick Drake ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Arid Region ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Arabian Peninsula ◽  
Radiocarbon Date ◽  
Faunal Remains ◽  
Monumental Architecture ◽  
The World ◽  
Humid Period ◽  
Stone Structures

Between 10 and six thousand years ago the Arabian Peninsula saw the most recent of the ‘Green Arabia’ periods, when increased rainfall transformed this generally arid region. The transition to the Neolithic in Arabia occurred during this period of climatic amelioration. Various forms of stone structures are abundant in northern Arabia, and it has been speculated that some of these dated to the Neolithic, but there has been little research on their character and chronology. Here we report a study of 104 ‘mustatil’ stone structures from the southern margins of the Nefud Desert in northern Arabia. We provide the first chronometric age estimate for this type of structure – a radiocarbon date of ca. 5000 BC – and describe their landscape positions, architecture and associated material culture and faunal remains. The structure we have dated is the oldest large-scale stone structure known from the Arabian Peninsula. The mustatil phenomenon represents a remarkable development of monumental architecture, as hundreds of these structures were built in northwest Arabia. This ‘monumental landscape’ represents one of the earliest large-scale forms of monumental stone structure construction anywhere in the world. Further research is needed to understand the function of these structures, but we hypothesise that they were related to rituals in the context of the adoption of pastoralism and resulting territoriality in the challenging environments of northern Arabia.

The Prehistory of Hawai‘i

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick V. Kirch
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Environmental Gradients ◽  
Hawaiian Islands ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Cultural Variation ◽  
Sociopolitical Complexity ◽  
Monumental Architecture ◽  
Specialized Production ◽  
The World ◽  
Divine Kingship

The Hawaiian Islands are the most isolated inhabited archipelago in the world. Initially colonized around A.D. 1000, the environmental gradients of rainfall and island-age have influenced subsequent cultural variation and differentiation in the islands. Settlements are typically dispersed hamlets and integrated within agricultural facilities such as irrigated pondfields and dryland field systems. Populations were politically organized in idealized pie-shaped units or ahupua`a that typically encompass a cross-section of island resources. Material culture , including fishhooks, stone tools, and religious temples, is broadly similar within these units, but there is also much evidence for elite control of specialized production in some areas. The Hawaiian Islands are the archetypal chiefdom society, although based on changes in demography, monumental architecture (heiau) and royal centers, intensive agriculture, and divine kingship, the population had likely crossed the threshold of sociopolitical complexity to that of an archaic state prior to the arrival of Europeans in 1778.

TO THE QUESTION OF RESPONSIBILITY FOR TORTURE IN THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-106
Author(s):  
ASTEMIR ZHURTOV ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Russian Federation ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Human Life ◽  
International Standards ◽  
World Community ◽  
The World ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Protection Of Human Rights ◽  
The Russian Federation

Cruel and inhumane acts that harm human life and health, as well as humiliate the dignity, are prohibited in most countries of the world, and Russia is no exception in this issue. The article presents an analysis of the institution of responsibility for torture in the Russian Federation. The author comes to the conclusion that the current criminal law of Russia superficially and fragmentally regulates liability for torture, in connection with which the author formulated the proposals to define such act as an independent crime. In the frame of modern globalization, the world community pays special attention to the protection of human rights, in connection with which large-scale international standards have been created a long time ago. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international acts enshrine prohibitions of cruel and inhumane acts that harm human life and health, as well as degrade the dignity.Considering the historical experience of the past, these standards focus on the prohibition of any kind of torture, regardless of the purpose of their implementation.

“These Shall Come from Far”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristina Bross
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
New England ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Global Network ◽  
The World ◽  
Basket Maker

Chapter 3 analyzes English claims to a central role in a global network of indigenous and English people connected by faith around the world, claims made manifest in Of the Conversion of Five Thousand Nine Hundred Indians on the Island of Formosa, a 1650 publication by Baptist minister Henry Jessey, printed by radical bookseller Hannah Allen. It reports on Dutch missions in Taiwan, comparing them with evangelism efforts in New England. The coda considers the experiences of an Algonquian woman who is unnamed in Jessey’s tract but is identified as a basket maker, speculating on the meaning she may have encoded in her basket designs. Though we cannot “read” them directly, the fact that she made them, coupled with the provocative arguments offered by recent scholars about Native material culture in the colonial period, enables us to reconsider the print archive in which she appears.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Fearn
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Literature ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Valuable Resource ◽  
The World

The introduction sets the following discussions in their scholarly context, with particular attention to other contemporary approaches to lyric both within Classics and in comparative literature and critical theory, as well as to art-historical approaches. Literary approaches to lyric deixis are brought together with art-historical and other literary approaches to visuality, subjectivity, and ecphrasis. Pindar’s immersion in a world of material culture and attention to the world as perceived visually fosters a special poetic creativity. The upshot is a poetics of referentiality, according to which Pindar’s consumers are invited to consider the distance between their own situatedness and the worlds being creatively referred to, through the complex mediation of poetic voices. The sensibilities, attitudes, and experiences being constructed also contribute to a new understanding of the importance of lyric as a culturally valuable resource in fifth-century Greece.

The Opera and the Omnibus: Material Culture, Urbanism and Boieldieu's La dame blanche

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-114
Author(s):  
Nicole Vilkner
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Business Model ◽  
Public Transportation ◽  
Reception History ◽  
Transportation Systems ◽  
Mass Transportation ◽  
Musical Work ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

AbstractIn the summer of 1828, the Entreprise générale des Dames Blanches launched a fleet of white omnibuses onto the streets of Paris. These public transportation vehicles were named and fashioned after Boieldieu's opéra comique La dame blanche (1825): their rear doors were decorated with scenes of Scotland, their flanks painted with gesturing opera characters, and their mechanical horns trumpeted fanfares through the streets. The omnibuses offered one of the first mass transportation systems in the world and were an innovation that transformed urban circulation. During their thirty years of circulation, the omnibuses also had a profound effect on the reception history of Boieldieu's opera. When the omnibuses improved the quality of working- and middle-class life, bourgeois Parisians applauded the vehicles’ egalitarian business model, and Boieldieu's opera became unexpectedly entwined in the populist rhetoric surrounding the omnibus. Viewing opera through the lens of the Dames Blanches, Parisians conflated the sounds of opera and street, as demonstrated by Charles Valentin Alkan's piano piece Les omnibus, Op. 2 (1829), which combines operatic idioms and horn calls. Through these examples and others, this study examines the complex ways that material culture affects the dissemination and reception of a musical work.

scholarly journals A Large-Scale COVID-19 Twitter Chatter Dataset for Open Scientific Research—An International Collaboration

Epidemiologia ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-324
Author(s):  
Juan M. Banda ◽  
Ramya Tekumalla ◽  
Guanyu Wang ◽  
Jingyuan Yu ◽  
Tuo Liu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Additional Data ◽  
Open Data ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
Research Groups ◽  
The World ◽  
Data Source

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread worldwide, an unprecedented amount of open data is being generated for medical, genetics, and epidemiological research. The unparalleled rate at which many research groups around the world are releasing data and publications on the ongoing pandemic is allowing other scientists to learn from local experiences and data generated on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, there is a need to integrate additional data sources that map and measure the role of social dynamics of such a unique worldwide event in biomedical, biological, and epidemiological analyses. For this purpose, we present a large-scale curated dataset of over 1.12 billion tweets, growing daily, related to COVID-19 chatter generated from 1 January 2020 to 27 June 2021 at the time of writing. This data source provides a freely available additional data source for researchers worldwide to conduct a wide and diverse number of research projects, such as epidemiological analyses, emotional and mental responses to social distancing measures, the identification of sources of misinformation, stratified measurement of sentiment towards the pandemic in near real time, among many others.

scholarly journals From “the Moon Is Rounder Abroad” to “Bravo, My Country”: How China Misperceives the World

2021 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 112-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haifeng Huang
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
The Moon ◽  
Foreign Countries ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Global Affairs ◽  
Chinese Public

AbstractFor a long time, since China’s opening to the outside world in the late 1970s, admiration for foreign socioeconomic prosperity and quality of life characterized much of the Chinese society, which contributed to dissatisfaction with the country’s development and government and a large-scale exodus of students and emigrants to foreign countries. More recently, however, overestimating China’s standing and popularity in the world has become a more conspicuous feature of Chinese public opinion and the social backdrop of the country’s overreach in global affairs in the last few years. This essay discusses the effects of these misperceptions about the world, their potential sources, and the outcomes of correcting misperceptions. It concludes that while the world should get China right and not misinterpret China’s intentions and actions, China should also get the world right and have a more balanced understanding of its relationship with the world.

scholarly journals SARS-CoV-2 vaccines strategies: a comprehensive review of phase 3 candidates

npj Vaccines ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikolaos C. Kyriakidis ◽  
Andrés López-Cortés ◽  
Eduardo Vásconez González ◽  
Alejandra Barreto Grimaldos ◽  
Esteban Ortiz Prado
Keyword(s):  
Neutralizing Antibodies ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Vaccine Development ◽  
Rna Virus ◽  
Protein S ◽  
Effective Vaccine ◽  
Phase 3 ◽  
Vaccine Candidates ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
The World

AbstractThe new SARS-CoV-2 virus is an RNA virus that belongs to the Coronaviridae family and causes COVID-19 disease. The newly sequenced virus appears to originate in China and rapidly spread throughout the world, becoming a pandemic that, until January 5th, 2021, has caused more than 1,866,000 deaths. Hence, laboratories worldwide are developing an effective vaccine against this disease, which will be essential to reduce morbidity and mortality. Currently, there more than 64 vaccine candidates, most of them aiming to induce neutralizing antibodies against the spike protein (S). These antibodies will prevent uptake through the human ACE-2 receptor, thereby limiting viral entrance. Different vaccine platforms are being used for vaccine development, each one presenting several advantages and disadvantages. Thus far, thirteen vaccine candidates are being tested in Phase 3 clinical trials; therefore, it is closer to receiving approval or authorization for large-scale immunizations.

scholarly journals Development of a Radar Reflector Kit for Older Adults to Use to Signal Their Location and Needs in a Large-Scale Earthquake Disaster

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (10) ◽  
pp. 1883
Author(s):  
Yuma Morisaki ◽  
Makoto Fujiu ◽  
Ryoichi Furuta ◽  
Junichi Takayama
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Synthetic Aperture Radar ◽  
Satellite Imagery ◽  
Disaster Response ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Synthetic Aperture ◽  
Earthquake Disaster ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
The World ◽  
Vulnerable People

In Japan, older adults account for the highest proportion of the population of any country in the world. When large-scale earthquake disasters strike, large numbers of casualties are known to particularly occur among seniors. Many are physically or mentally vulnerable and require assistance during the different phases of disaster response, including rescue, evacuation, and living in an evacuation center. However, the growing number of older adults has made it difficult, after a disaster, to quickly gather information on their locations and assess their needs. The authors are developing a proposal to enable vulnerable people to signal their location and needs in the aftermath of a disaster to response teams by deploying radar reflectors that can be detected in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite imagery. The purpose of this study was to develop a radar reflector kit that seniors could easily assemble in order to make this proposal feasible in practice. Three versions of the reflector were tested for detectability, and a sample of older adults was asked to assemble the kits and provide feedback regarding problems they encountered and regarding their interest in using the reflectors in the event of a large-scale disaster.

scholarly journals Contracting in land and natural resources: a tale of exclusion

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-153
Author(s):  
Federica Violi
Keyword(s):  
Natural Resources ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Sustainable Development Goals ◽  
Host Countries ◽  
Developmental Needs ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The World ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
Short Essay ◽  
Public Environment

By browsing the website of Land Matrix, one can measure the extent of land-related large-scale investments in natural resources (LRINRs) and place it on the world map. At the time of writing, the extent of these investments covers an area equal to the surfaces of Spain and Portugal together – or, for football fans, around 60 million football pitches. These investment operations have often been saluted as instrumental to achieve the developmental needs of host countries and as the necessary private counterpart to state (and interstate) efforts aimed at (sustainable) development goals. Yet, the realities on the ground offer a scenario characterised by severe instances of displacement of indigenous or local communities and environmental disruptions. The starting point of this short essay is that these ‘externalities’ are generated through the legal construct enabling the implementation of these investment operations. As such, this contribution lies neatly in the line of research set forth in the excellent books of Kinnari Bhatt and Jennifer Lander, from the perspective of both the development culture shaping these investment operations and the private–public environment in which these are situated. The essay tries and dialogues with both components, while focusing at a metalevel on the theoretical shifts potentially geared to turn a ‘tale of exclusion’ into a ‘tale of inclusion’.

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