The Scheldt Valley Commercial Activity Zone: 350 Hectares of the Gallo-Roman Landscape

Britannia ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 41-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raphaël Clotuche

ABSTRACTThe research undertaken on the Scheldt Valley Commercial Activity Zone was the frst large-scale excavation in the Valenciennes region (northern France), permitting an insight into the organization of a large territory. It has yielded a great wealth of data on land use and settlement and it forms a key point of reference for any future research within the region for each of the studied periods. The article discusses the characteristics of the occupation of the territory, allowing the development of new models for the occupation, structure, and management of the land and the institution of settlements and their related material culture. It argues for a Roman-indigenous land cadaster, until now not observed for this part of Roman France. The different enclosures and their internal organization are described (buildings, wells, ponds, an artisanal zone, a road system, and a burial zone), showing the persistence of numerous protohistoric sites into Roman times, which is explained by the continuity of the agricultural system and a voluntary integration into a Roman administration. The Onnaing-Scheldt Valley demonstrates the importance of large-scale excavations for the understanding of land use.

Author(s):  
Sigrún Dögg Eddudóttir ◽  
Eva Svensson ◽  
Stefan Nilsson ◽  
Anneli Ekblom ◽  
Karl-Johan Lindholm ◽  
...  

AbstractShielings are the historically known form of transhumance in Scandinavia, where livestock were moved from the farmstead to sites in the outlands for summer grazing. Pollen analysis has provided a valuable insight into the history of shielings. This paper presents a vegetation reconstruction and archaeological survey from the shieling Kårebolssätern in northern Värmland, western Sweden, a renovated shieling that is still operating today. The first evidence of human activities in the area near Kårebolssätern are Hordeum- and Cannabis-type pollen grains occurring from ca. 100 bc. Further signs of human impact are charcoal and sporadic occurrences of apophyte pollen from ca. ad 250 and pollen indicating opening of the canopy ca. ad 570, probably a result of modification of the forest for grazing. A decrease in land use is seen between ad 1000 and 1250, possibly in response to a shift in emphasis towards large scale commodity production in the outlands. Emphasis on bloomery iron production and pitfall hunting may have caused a shift from agrarian shieling activity. The clearest changes in the pollen assemblage indicating grazing and cultivation occur from the mid-thirteenth century, coinciding with wetter climate at the beginning of the Little Ice Age. The earliest occurrences of anthropochores in the record predate those of other shieling sites in Sweden. The pollen analysis reveals evidence of land use that predates the results of the archaeological survey. The study highlights how pollen analysis can reveal vegetation changes where early archaeological remains are obscure.


Water ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 266 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yadu Pokhrel ◽  
Mateo Burbano ◽  
Jacob Roush ◽  
Hyunwoo Kang ◽  
Venkataramana Sridhar ◽  
...  

The ongoing and proposed construction of large-scale hydropower dams in the Mekong river basin is a subject of intense debate and growing international concern due to the unprecedented and potentially irreversible impacts these dams are likely to have on the hydrological, agricultural, and ecological systems across the basin. Studies have shown that some of the dams built in the tributaries and the main stem of the upper Mekong have already caused basin-wide impacts by altering the magnitude and seasonality of flows, blocking sediment transport, affecting fisheries and livelihoods of downstream inhabitants, and changing the flood pulse to the Tonle Sap Lake. There are hundreds of additional dams planned for the near future that would result in further changes, potentially causing permanent damage to the highly productive agricultural systems and fisheries, as well as the riverine and floodplain ecosystems. Several studies have examined the potential impacts of existing and planned dams but the integrated effects of the dams when combined with the adverse hydrologic consequences of climate change remain largely unknown. Here, we provide a detailed review of the existing literature on the changes in climate, land use, and dam construction and the resulting impacts on hydrological, agricultural, and ecological systems across the Mekong. The review provides a basis to better understand the effects of climate change and accelerating human water management activities on the coupled hydrological-agricultural-ecological systems, and identifies existing challenges to study the region’s Water, Energy, and Food (WEF) nexus with emphasis on the influence of future dams and projected climate change. In the last section, we synthesize the results and highlight the urgent need to develop integrated models to holistically study the coupled natural-human systems across the basin that account for the impacts of climate change and water infrastructure development. This review provides a framework for future research in the Mekong, including studies that integrate hydrological, agricultural, and ecological modeling systems.


2015 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Galbreath

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to empirically explore the extent to which women are advancing in the wine industry, and whether there are conditions which help facilitate their advancement. There is a perception that women are making great strides in the wine industry. However, this perception is largely anecdotal. Design/methodology/approach – All wineries in Australia are examined in each year for the years 2007 to 2013. By relying on a leading wine industry database, women in CEO, winemaker, viticulturist and marketing roles are examined. Findings – With the exception of the marketing role, women are under-represented relative to predicted representation rates. Regarding regional differences, there is no consistent pattern with respect to where women representation in the roles is higher. The findings also suggest that where there is a woman CEO, women are more likely to be represented in winemaker, viticulturist and marketing roles. Research limitations/implications – The study represents Australian wine regions and should not be taken as a general population sample. The representation rates of women in top roles in other wine firms around the world may vary, which could lead to results different than those found in this study. Practical implications – For firms and policy makers interested in increasing the representation rates of women in the wine industry, the results of this study offer some insight into where current rates stand, and what might be underlying these representation rates. This is expected to facilitate debate around the means and mechanisms through which to increase the representation of women in the wine industry. Originality/value – This is the first known large-scale study to examine the representation rates of women in top roles in the wine industry; therefore, it offers both new insights and avenues for future research.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (10) ◽  
pp. 419 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shah ◽  
Crosswell ◽  
Metcalfe ◽  
Carlin ◽  
Morrison ◽  
...  

Rapid urban expansion and increased human activities have led to the progressive deterioration of many marine ecosystems. The diverse microbial communities that inhabit these ecosystems are believed to influence large-scale geochemical processes and, as such, analyzing their composition and functional metabolism can be a means to assessing an ecosystem’s resilience to physical and chemical perturbations, or at the very least provide baseline information and insight into future research needs. Here we show the utilization of organic and inorganic contaminant screening coupled with metabolomics and bacterial 16S rRNA gene sequencing to assess the microbial community structure of marine sediments and their functional metabolic output. The sediments collected from Moreton Bay (Queensland, Australia) contained low levels of organic and inorganic contaminants, typically below guideline levels. The sequencing dataset suggest that sulfur and nitrite reduction, dehalogenation, ammonia oxidation, and xylan degradation were the major metabolic functions. The community metabolites suggest a level of functional homogeneity down the 40-cm core depth sampled, with sediment habitat identified as a significant driver for metabolic differences. The communities present in river and sandy channel samples were found to be the most active, with the river habitats likely to be dominated by photoheterotrophs that utilized carbohydrates, fatty acids and alcohols as well as reduce nitrates to release atmospheric nitrogen and oxidize sulfur. Bioturbated mud habitats showed overlapping faunal activity between riverine and sandy ecosystems. Nitrogen-fixing bacteria and lignin-degrading bacteria were most abundant in the sandy channel and bioturbated mud, respectively. The use of omics-based approaches provide greater insight into the functional metabolism of these impacted habitats, extending beyond discrete monitoring to encompassing whole community profiling that represents true phenotypical outputs. Ongoing omics-based monitoring that focuses on more targeted pathway analyses is recommended in order to quantify the flux changes within these systems and establish variations from these baseline measurements.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holly Nel ◽  

<p>Twenty rivers have been estimated previously to account for almost 70% of global plastic emissions to the marine environment. Of these, the Ganges River was second only to the Yangtze River. Yet, scale and complexity of the Ganges River network make assessing microplastic contamination along the watercourse, including the attribution of suspected pollution sources challenging. Here we analyse post-monsoon spatial variation of microplastics along a 2500km length of the Ganges. River sediments and surface water were sampled during Nov/Dec 2019 at 81 locations that covered a variety of hydrological conditions, morphological attributes and land-use categories (e.g., downstream of large urban areas, rural areas with agriculture, major tributaries). Sediment samples were collected from the riverbank (waterline) and stored in glass jars while 100L water samples were filtered on-site through a 63µm sieve. Plastic particles between 63 and 5000µm were extracted by means of density separation followed by organic matter digestion with Fenton reagent. Extracts were subsequently stained with Nile red to improve detection of ambiguous particles. Physical and chemical properties such as shape, size, and polymer type where characterised using Fluorescence microscopy, Confocal Raman, and FT-IR imaging to understand differences along the river continuum. Our findings were analysed in relation to other key water quality parameters, various land-use descriptors and hydrogeomorphological characteristics, which allowed us to better understand the main drivers of microplastic transport and fate. Our survey results reveal an increasing downstream trend in sediment microplastic concentrations. The existence of distinct microplastic pollution hotspots in areas of high population density as well as areas of high cultural and spiritual relevance are detected. Interestingly, longitudinal concentration profiles in sediment and surface water samples do not match, hinting at differences in source attributions as well as transport, accumulation and long-term storage mechanisms, which is especially important in light of the variations seen in microplastic shape and size distribution patterns. Our results can be used as a springboard for future research assessing local microplastic contamination and aid in the refinement of medium and large-scale models estimating microplastic export.</p>


Machines ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (11) ◽  
pp. 281
Author(s):  
Michal Matějásko ◽  
Martin Brablc ◽  
Martin Appel ◽  
Robert Grepl

In large-scale manufacturing and assembly applications, especially when trying to automate most steps, implementing quality control as early in the process as possible is the key to prevent expenses later. We deal mainly with the production of DC motor powered fuel pumps, which are commonly used in the automotive industry. The goal of this paper is to present a newly developed technique for non-invasive fault detection of a DC motor’s direction of rotation using a stray magnetic field out of the motor chassis. The results presented in this paper show that it is possible to detect faults even on low-power motors while the algorithm is kept as simple as possible to allow for large-scale deployment on a production line. It also gives new insight into the behavior of the stray magnetic field of electric motors, which may benefit other applications and future research.


2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-82
Author(s):  
Soumi Paul ◽  
Paola Peretti ◽  
Saroj Kumar Datta

Building customer relationships and customer equity is the prime concern in today’s business decisions. The emergence of internet, especially social media like Facebook and Twitter, changed traditional marketing thought to a great extent. The importance of customer orientation is reflected in the axiom, “The customer is the king”. A good number of organizations are engaging customers in their new product development activities via social media platforms. Co-creation, a new perspective in which customers are active co-creators of the products they buy and use, is currently challenging the traditional paradigm. The concept of co-creation involving the customer’s knowledge, creativity and judgment to generate value is considered not only an upcoming trend that introduces new products or services but also fitting their need and increasing value for money. Knowledge and innovation are inseparable. Knowledge management competencies and capacities are essential to any organization that aspires to be distinguished and innovative. The present work is an attempt to identify the change in value creation procedure along with one area of business, where co-creation can return significant dividends. It is on extending the brand or brand category through brand extension or line extension. This article, through an in depth literature review analysis, identifies the changes in every perspective of this paradigm shift and it presents a conceptual model of company-customer-brand-based co-creation activity via social media. The main objective is offering an agenda for future research of this emerging trend and ensuring the way to move from theory to practice. The paper acts as a proposal; it allows the organization to go for this change in a large scale and obtain early feedback on the idea presented. 


Author(s):  
Xu Pei-Zhen ◽  
Lu Yong-Geng ◽  
Cao Xi-Min

Background: Over the past few years, the subsynchronous oscillation (SSO) caused by the grid-connected wind farm had a bad influence on the stable operation of the system and has now become a bottleneck factor restricting the efficient utilization of wind power. How to mitigate and suppress the phenomenon of SSO of wind farms has become the focus of power system research. Methods: This paper first analyzes the SSO of different types of wind turbines, including squirrelcage induction generator based wind turbine (SCIG-WT), permanent magnet synchronous generator- based wind turbine (PMSG-WT), and doubly-fed induction generator based wind turbine (DFIG-WT). Then, the mechanisms of different types of SSO are proposed with the aim to better understand SSO in large-scale wind integrated power systems, and the main analytical methods suitable for studying the SSO of wind farms are summarized. Results: On the basis of results, using additional damping control suppression methods to solve SSO caused by the flexible power transmission devices and the wind turbine converter is recommended. Conclusion: The current development direction of the SSO of large-scale wind farm grid-connected systems is summarized and the current challenges and recommendations for future research and development are discussed.


2016 ◽  
pp. rtw062 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentin H. Klaus ◽  
Deborah Schäfer ◽  
Till Kleinebecker ◽  
Markus Fischer ◽  
Daniel Prati ◽  
...  

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