Although household archaeology has been around for a number of years now, it has been slow to truly catch on as a way to learn something about the people of ancient Israel as a whole. Many archaeologists historically were only interested in the monumental architecture like: “palatial and storage complexes, cultic complexes, cemeteries, and fortification systems” (Hardin 2011:12). Archaeologists have realized that studying the basic housing and activity areas of the people that inhabit cities and the outlying areas lead them to have a greater understanding of what is really happening on a day-to-day basis. Understanding what is happening in a small family’s daily life provides information about how the society as a whole might be working. While household archaeology can be studied anywhere by essentially the same methods that will be used in this thesis, my focus will be on the Iron Age II of the southern Levant.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Due to their ability to simultaneously reduce fuel consumption and NOx emissions, Controlled Auto Ignition (CAI) and HCCI combustion processes have been extensively researched over the last decade and adopted on prototype gasoline engines. These combustion processes were initially achieved on conventional two-stroke ported gasoline engines, but there have been significantly fewer studies carried out on the CAI combustion in two-stroke engines. This is primarily due to the inherent problems associated with conventional two-stroke engine intake and exhaust ports. Meanwhile, engine downsizing has been actively researched and developed as an effective means to improve the vehicle’s fuel economy. This is achieved by operating the engine at higher load regions of lower fuel consumption and by reducing the number of cylinders. However, aggressive downsizing of the current 4-stroke gasoline engine is limited by the knocking combustion and high peak cylinder pressure. As an alternative approach to engine downsizing, boosted two-stroke operation is being researched. In this thesis, it has been shown that the CAI combustion in the two-stroke cycle could be readily achieved at part-load conditions with significant reductions in CO and uHC emissions when compared to typical SI combustion in a single cylinder gasoline direct injection camless engine. In addition, extensive engine experiments have been performed to determine the optimum boosting for minimum fuel consumption during the two-stroke operation. In order to minimise the air short-circuiting rate, the intake and exhaust valve timings were varied and optimised. It is shown that the lean operation under boosted condition can extend the range of CAI combustion and increase combustion and thermal efficiencies as well as producing much lower CO and HC emissions. By means of the cycle-resolved in-cylinder measurements and heat release analysis, the improvement in combustion and thermal efficiencies were attributed to the improved in-cylinder mixture, optimised autoignition, and combustion phases. Finally, in view of the increased use of ethanol in gasoline engines, E15 and E85 were used and their effect on engine performance, fuel economy and exhaust emissions were investigated.

Realistic four-dimensional model building from string theory has been a focus of the string theory community ever since its inception. Toroidal orientifold constructions have emerged as a technically simple class of candidate models. Novel ingredients, such as background fluxes, have been discovered and intensely studied over the past few years. They allow for a (partial) solution of several long standing problems associated with model building in this framework. In this thesis, I summarize progress that has been made in toroidal orientifold constructions in type IIA string theory.This includes a detailed discussion of moduli stabilization and (non-) supersymmetric AdS and Minkowski vacua. Furthermore I commence a systematic study of generalized NSNS, i.e., metric and non-geometric, fluxes. The emergence of novel D-terms is presented in detail. While most of the discussion applies to generic orientifolds of T⁶, most features are exemplified by and studied in terms of a certain orientifold of T⁶/ℤ₄ owing to its somewhat richer structure compared to simpler models studied before. It is also briefly reported on efforts of finding de Sitter vacua and inflation in this class of models. / text

No description available.

It was Woodrow Wilson who played the dominant role in the Council of Four. With his dedication to the vague, often contradictory Fourteen Points, and with the power of the office of President of the United States supporting him, he determined the very nature of the treaty. Wilson's use, and misuse, of his influence over his colleagues makes him responsible for much of the final form of the Treaty of Versailles.

No description available.