Anglo-Saxon bling — a warrior king’s Golden Helmet

In 2009, a metal detectorist discovered a hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver in a field in Staffordshire. Hence, it quickly became known as ‘The Staffordshire Hoard’. It was, and remains, the biggest collection of Anglo-Saxon gold (4 kg) and silver (1.7 kg) ever discovered and comprised of more than 4000 fragments that equated to over 600 discrete objects and larger pieces. The Staffordshire Hoard is co-owned by Birmingham and Stoke-on-Trent City Councils and is cared for on behalf of the nation by Birmingham Museums Trust and The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery. Over the intervening years, most of the larger and recognisably important pieces have now been identified and catalogued. We now also know an exceptional amount about their probable methods of manufacture, artistic styles, date, and function. This paper focuses on what is now known to be one of the most fragmented yet magnificent of its objects, a Helmet that has been declared as being ‘fit for a king’, but which was found scattered into well over 1000 disparate fragments. Fragments that are now considered to make up around one-third of the Hoard’s total of finds and compose this single high-status Golden Helmet. Too damaged and incomplete to be re-joined or displayed in a form that delivers to the casual observer a true sense of the majesty of the original. Thus, the museums responsible for the collection commissioned an experimental reconstruction project to create two of the helmets for display in their shared Hoard collections.

Economic Interdependence, Globalization, and Peaceful Change

The world is characterized by unprecedented levels of economic interdependence, intensified by globalization. It is also an era when the incidence of interstate warfare has declined markedly (Human Security Report Project 2009; Pinker 2011). To the casual observer, the link between these two trends may seem obvious. Demonstrating a more robust relationship between economic interdependence and peaceful change has proved challenging, however—fraught with problems such as how best to define and measure the two concepts. This chapter first examines the principal traditions that theorize the relationship between economic interdependence and peaceful change. It then reviews the challenges that have faced scholars who have sought through large-N studies to demonstrate a statistically significant association between these concepts. Problems in conceptualizing the independent and dependent variables cast doubt on the validity of the conclusions of many studies. They also fail to capture the complexities of the new interdependence associated with globalization.

Knowledge Geometry in Phenomenon Perception and Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) pervades industry, entertainment, transportation, finance, and health. It seems to be in a kind of golden age, but today AI is based on the strength of techniques that bear little relation to the thought mechanism. Contemporary techniques of machine learning, deep learning and case-based reasoning seem to be occupied with delivering functional and optimized solutions, leaving aside the core reasons of why such solutions work. This paper, in turn, proposes a theoretical study of perception, a key issue for knowledge acquisition and intelligence construction. Its main concern is the formal representation of a perceived phenomenon by a casual observer and its relationship with machine intelligence. This work is based on recently proposed geometric theory, and represents an approach that is able to describe the inuence of scope, development paradigms, matching process and ground truth on phenomenon perception. As a result, it enumerates the perception variables and describes the implications for AI.

Stretched Earlobe Piercings Negatively Impact Casual Observer Perceptions

Patients with stretched earlobes seek reconstruction to mitigate social stigma. To date, there have been no studies measuring the impact of stretched earlobe piercings on casual observer perceptions. One-hundred seventy-three casual observers were enrolled via public-access web sites. Participants were randomly shown frontal and profile views of six subjects with stretched earlobe piercings and four controls. Participants evaluated photos for first impressions using a survey containing choices regarding personal attributes. Latent class analysis was performed to categorize observer ratings. Analysis of variance (ANOVA), bootstrap analysis, and permutations testing were used to evaluate the relationship between perceived attractiveness, success, and approachability scoring and stretched earlobe status. Latent class analysis categorized responses into three classes: positive, negative, and neutral. Patients with stretched earlobe piercings were significantly less likely to be classified as positive by observers without body modifications (i.e., tattoos and piercings) in comparison to control photos (30.9 and 40.1%, p = 0.007) and more likely to be classified as negative (38.5 and 28.1%, p = 0.002). These changes were abolished when photos were evaluated by observers with body modifications (p > 0.05). ANOVA revealed that stretched earlobe piercings and observer body modification status have a significant effect on rated approachability (F [1,1726] = 4.08, p = 0.04) and successfulness (F[1,1726] = 9.67, p = 0.002; F [1,1726] = 70.33, p < 0.0005). No significance was found for rated attractiveness (p > 0.05). Patients with stretched earlobe piercings were more likely to be classified as having negative affect display and being less approachable and successful compared with controls when evaluated by observers without body modifications. This effect was abolished when photos were evaluated by observers with body modifications. These findings validate patient motivations for seeking stretched earlobe repair.

THE NECESSITY FOR PARENTS TO WATCH ANIMATED CARTOONS WITH CHILDREN AGED SEVEN TO ELEVEN YEARS

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to establish the necessity for parents to watch televised animated cartoons with children aged seven to eleven years.Methodology: The study used a descriptive survey method to collect information through casual interviews and self-administered questionnaires.Results: The study found out that the amount of time children spend watching animated cartoons on television can make them retract from social interactions with visitors, parents or other siblings when the television is on. Animated cartoons have an impact on children in respect to acquired or "borrowed" language and dressing styles and attitudes towards role types. These relations may be imperceptible to the casual observer but data show that the best (Kim Possible, Ben 10 and American Dragon) cartoon characters are idols, image ideals and role models to children in Nairobi, yet both the two cartoon characters are not representative of children they interact with every day. This study found that it is prudent animated cartoons affect the perceptions and attitudes that are being reinforced in children and the implication of this on how they construct their worldview and self-worth.Unique contribution to theory, practice and policy: Parents should be concerned and watch animated cartoons with children because animated cartoons have become an institution through which society is using to bring up children and use to teach values. Media practitioners should air animated cartoons that have no violence or bad morals but are still popular with children. The government should set policies governing the content in animated cartoons aired by the media houses

The Palace of the Lord of the Sevenfold World

Chapter 16 offered a portal into a different reality or perceptual plane and, for those privileged, a means to inhabit, at least momentarily, this hyperreality. That is not to say that everyone who beheld such spaces need be convinced or overawed. Indeed, the casual observer or outsider might only see a crowd milling around a large building. Yet if one were allowed- or physically, cognitively and ritually compelled- to enter into the implied realities of the microcosm of the ayvān, you as viewer or ritual participant were afforded, or perhaps confronted with, depending on the degree to which one identified with the regime, a stunning view of the cosmos and the Iranian king’s place within it.

Transformations in Minority Religious Leadership

This paper discusses three religious communities in Northern Iraq that are characterized by the shared fate of having been targeted by the 2014 “Islamic State” (IS) offensive. These events dramatically brought home the vulnerability of these communities in post-Saddam Iraq; but the precarious status of these groups was already painfully visible even to the most casual observer prior to theISonslaught. In this paper, I trace the rather different trajectories of these—initially broadly comparable—minority groups, with a focus on the changing articulation and legitimation of religious leadership. I do so by pointing out some of the longer-term tendencies among these groups, while treating religious leadership in terms of patronage.

Nimrod

Each fall from 1984 to 2007 a group of Lutheran pastors in Texas gathered at the ranch of another pastor to hunt white-tailed deer during the opening week of the annual hunting season. Called “Nimrod” after the ancient Babylonian king identified in the Bible as “a mighty hunter before the Lord” (Genesis 10:9), also an acronym for “November Invitational Ministerial Recreational Outdoor Diversion,” the event provided opportunities for recreation and fellowship for active and retired clergy, centered around the hunt. To the casual observer hunting is not an immediately obvious pastime to bring Christian ministers together. This ethnographic study examines the place of hunting within Christian theology and explores how the annual deer hunting retreat in fact created an ideal opportunity for clergy to escape from the social constraints of their professional lives while engaging in the deeply meaningful practice of harvesting wild game.

Status of water pollution in relation to industrialization in Rajasthan

India is a large and densely populated country; its economy is largely agricultural. Making the best use of the country’s manpower has always posed a challenge. Industrialization could become a dominant component of the economy and displace agriculture. Traditional livelihoods of occupational groups are threatened by the practice of disposing untreated industrial waste into rivers and bodies of water. These uncontrolled disposals impact local natural resources with negative long-term effects. Industrialization is the development of intellectual and financial trade that changes a predominantly rustic culture into a modern one. Many industrial units discharge wastewater locally without treatment. Many industries directly discharged their waste into lakes, rivers and ocean. Water contamination impacts the environment. Pesticides, chemical, waste oil and heavy metals are regularly transported into their waters. Humans and other living organisms can accumulate heavy metals from industrial discharges in their tissues. Industrial waste may be reactive, corrosive, flammable, or toxic. When untreated sewage is emptied into rivers, it causes diseases like typhoid, dysentery and cholera. Natural elements and plant supplements like nitrate and phosphates stimulate growth of algae on the water surface. The algae reduce the oxygen in the water and cause eutrophication. It is harmful to the water ecosystem. In Rajasthan proper, there are a number of sites bordering rivers and lakes where the pace of industrialization has proceeded far beyond the ability of regulators to establish and enforce meaningful limits on the amount of point source pollution permitted to the various industrial complexes, which include cement, chemical, fertilizer, textile, mining, quarrying, dyeing and printing facilities. The scale of the problem is obvious to the casual observer, but actual documentation of the total impact remains to be done.