No description available.

<p> The archaeological site of K&uuml;ltepe (ancient Kanesh), located in south-central Anatolia, in the present-day Republic of Turkey, was the capital city of a native Anatolian kingdom during the early Middle Bronze Age (20^th - late 18^th c. BC). Uninterrupted archaeological excavations at the site since 1948 by the Turkish Historical Society under the directorship of the late Prof. Tahsin &Ouml;zg&uuml;&ccedil; have revealed wide exposures of densely settled residential neighborhoods at the foot of a high citadel mound with palaces and temples. Archaeological evidence from the site indicates a millennium-long settlement sequence of the Early Bronze Age (EBA), predating the Level II settlement, during which a demographic explosion occurred at the site. Circumstantial evidence from Anatolia contemporary with the poorly understood levels of the EBA and direct archaeological and textual evidence from the Level II and Ib settlements of the MBA demonstrate a complex history of immigration to Kanesh. By the turn of the 2^nd millennium BC, at least five languages, namely Neshili (Hittite), Luwian, Hattian, Hurrian, and Old Assyrian were spoken in this city, as can be understood on the basis of prosopographic data. The three centuries, during which the city existed as the largest known urban site in central Anatolia, were times of political turmoil, characterized by the formation of territorial states on the Anatolian plateau, which culminated in the establishment of the Old Hittite Kingdom that was born at Kanesh. </p><p> K&uuml;ltepe/Kanesh is widely known beyond the academic circles of Ancient Near Eastern and Anatolian archaeology as an Old Assyrian Trade Colony due to the 22,500 cuneiform texts in the Old Assyrian language found in the private family archives of merchants in the residential quarters of the lower town. On the basis of these texts, the excavated areas of the lower town have been regarded as a colonial settlement (Karum) established outside the citadel walls and scholarship on Kane has been structured by colonial frameworks. Moreover, due to certain organizational principles of the Old Assyrian trade operations, which resemble free market economy, the historical evidence from Kanesh has received a great deal of attention from economic historians. On various occasions, the case of Kanesh has been cited as an ancient example of capitalism, colonialism, and World Systems that resulted in underdevelopment in Anatolia. Since the excavators' research agenda has targeted areas that bear a higher potential to yield cuneiform texts, this well-investigated mercantile district of the city has remained like an island isolated from its past and its surroundings. As such, the case of Kane represents a prime example of "the tyranny of the text" in the archaeology of Anatolia and calls for alternative perspectives beyond the straight-jacketing colonial paradigms. In recent years, the new campaign of excavations under the directorship of Prof. Fikri Kulakoglu have begun to embrace interdisciplinary and integrative research agendas, which sets a promising direction for K&uuml;ltepe studies. </p><p> In this dissertation, I place the native communities of prehistoric Anatolia at the center of my inquiries and investigate the questions of residential mobility and cultural pluralism at K&uuml;ltepe within a long-term, local perspective in relationship to the process of urbanization in the region. I use the methodological approaches of history-from-below and text-aided archaeology to counteract the interpretative biases of colonial frameworks and reconstruct a diachronic framework for demographic mobility at Kanesh in relationship to its political history. Guided by concepts borrowed from archaeology of communities that focus on the study of human interaction in face-to-face societies in light of analogies to the ethnographic record of Anatolia, I attempt to identify social, economic, and cultural distinctions of individuals and households at Kane based on the diversity of its archaeological remains, beyond a restricted notion of ethnicity. I propose a systematic research model for the reconstruction of household biographies and investigate the utility of the funerary remains from the site for demographic assessments. And finally, I present the results of the strontium and stable light isotope analyses I conducted on human tooth samples from K&uuml;ltepe graves encountered during the 2006-2010 excavation seasons, in light of which I identify local individuals, immigrants, and mixed households, and make preliminary observations on the sources of diversity in paleodiet.</p>

The research contained in the following dissertation spans a diverse range of scientific scholarship, including; chemometrics for integrated sensing and processing (ISP), near infrared and acoustic resonance spectrometry for analyte quantification and classification, and an ISP acoustic sensor as an alternative to conventional acoustic spectrometry. These topics may at first seem disjointed; however, closer inspection reveals that chemometrics, spectrometry, and sensors taken together form the umbrella under which applied spectrometry and analytical chemistry fall. The inclusion of each of these three serves to paint the complete portrait of the role of applied spectrometry for the advancement of process analytical technology. To illustrate the totality of this portrait, this research seeks to introduce and substantiate three key claims. (1) When applicable, optical spectrometry and acoustic spectrometry are preferred alternatives to slower and more invasive methods of analysis. (2) Chemometrics can be implemented directly into the physical design of spectrometers, thus sparing the need for computationally demanding post-collection multivariate analyses. (3) Using this principle, ISP sensors can be developed specifically for use in highly applied situations, making possible automatic analyte quantification or classification without the computational burden and extensive data analysis typically associated with conventional spectrometry. More concisely, these three claims can be stated as follows: spectrometry has a broad range of uses, chemometrics for ISP makes spectrometry more efficient, and for all analytical problems with a spectrometric solution, an ISP sensor, specifically tailored to the needs of the experiment, can more effectively solve the same analytical problem.

No description available.

Within recent years, numerous fields of engineering, like mechanics, optics and electronics, have been influenced and revolutionised by the technique of microand nano-structuring. For example, special optical elements for beam shaping, surface structures for the reduction of friction or modern "lab on chip" devices have been produced. Within this thesis a universal system has been developed facilitating the production of such structured surfaces with dimensions down to 500 nm. This system is not only capable of structuring surfaces by means of lithographic processes; it further allows the inspection of surfaces by scanning their topography. To realise such a system, two different technologies have been evaluated: Scanning Near-field Optical Lithography (SNOL), a very sophisticated technique which uses a thin fibre tip to expose a photo resist-covered surface, and confocal scanning technology. Here, the confocal scanning is accomplished using an adapted optical component, the optical pickup unit (OPU), from a gaming console, which turned out to be the most suitable and cost-efficient solution for the realisation of this system. Several test series have been carried out during this work, to verify the performance of the confocal system, both to structure photo resist surfaces and to characterise unknown surfaces. This present work will show the ability of the developed system to produce structures down to the sub-micron range and to characterise unknown surfaces with sub- micron precision. Various patterns have been written into photo resistcoated substrates to structure their surface. Beginning with diffractive optical elements (DOE) for beam shaping, followed by Dammann gratings for twodimensional beam shaping and optical gratings for light guidance as well as producing technical surfaces imitating the properties of sharkskin or simple micromechanical structures, the developed confocal system has shown itself to be flexible and widely-applicable. IV During the development of the confocal system, a strong need for a beam profiling system analysing the light beam diverging from the OPU, was recognised. Due to the fact that no commercially available system was capable of characterising beam sizes within the range of the diffraction limit, a novel method for beam profiling was invented. This method makes use of the fibre tips already applied within the SNOL system, producing tomographical scans of the beam spot.

<p> In the wake of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, America was reeling on multiple fronts. While experiencing a collective wave of bereavement, Americans struggled to understand a phenomenon that they had been uniquely shielded from&mdash;that of holy war or the Islamic variant, <i>jihad.</i> Demonizing the enemy was a defensive reaction in the aftermath of 9/11, but cultural projections of "us versus them" fuel terrorist mindsets increasing the likelihood of further conflicts. </p><p> While it is typically assumed that holy war emerges in monotheism, the dissertation argues the custom arises in the polytheistic ancient Near East where indigenous ideologies view deities foremost as warriors. The Babylonian <i> Enuma Elish</i> is an exemplar of polytheistic <i>divine warrior </i> mythologies expressing cultural ideals about warfare as an existential struggle for order over chaos, equated to life over death. The earliest generation of deities fights to the death in epic battles that result in the creation of the cosmos and the human race. The work of humans is to toil for the gods, most particularly in warfare, as earthly conflicts have lethal cosmic consequences. </p><p> The human world of ancient warfare was saturated in the supernatural. Divination determined war strategies and warrior kings were viewed as divinely selected. Immanent deities lived in temple cultic statues carried to the battlefield where they actively adjudicated disputes through war. Warfare is ongoing because polarization between "good and evil" is perpetual. These indigenous customs migrated into monotheistic holy war. While single God religion influences ideas about holy war, polytheistic customs and rites remain surprisingly intact and can be detected in the 9/11 attacks. </p><p> This dissertation engages an interdisciplinary approach that includes mythological studies, depth psychology, religious studies, cultural-military history, archeology, political science, interviews with suicide killers, and field research in the Middle East. </p><p> The dissertation's findings alter concepts about modern <i>jihad, </i> positing that its central tenets are rooted in polytheistic customs and rituals. To the modern mind, the connection between religion and warfare is often viewed as pathological. From the perspective of human history, invoking deities to legitimize warfare is normative and typical.</p>

The microwave near-field detection technique is of interest to many researchers for characterizing materials because of its high sensitivity. It is based on sensing buried objects by producing an evanescent field.The advantage of evanescent fields is their capability to interrogate electrically small objects. In the past, near-field probes have been designed to sense magnetic materials. For dielectric materials, a near-field probe that senses the permittivity of the materials is important. This work presents a novel design of a near-field probe that generates a dominant electric eld. The probe is an electrically small dipole measuring approximately 0.07?? in length operating at 216.3 MHz. The antenna is matched to a 50??? system using two chip inductors distributed symmetrically on the dipole. The numerical and measurement results show that the proposed design is highly sensitive and capable of sensing subsurface object. The proposed design is compact, lightweight and applicable for microwave applications.

This thesis will focus on spherical near-field antenna measurements and the methods developed or modified for the work of this thesis to estimate the uncertainty in a particular far-field radiation pattern. We will discuss the need for error assessment in spherical near-field antenna measurements. A procedure will be proposed that, in an automated fashion, can be used to determine the overall uncertainty in the measured far-field radiation pattern of a particular antenna. This overall uncertainty will be the result of a combination of several known sources of error common to SNF measurements. This procedure will consist of several standard SNF measurements, some newly developed tests, and several stages of post-processing of the measured data. The automated procedure will be tested on four antennas of various operating frequencies and directivities to verify its functionality. Finally, total uncertainty data will be presented to the reader in several formats.

This thesis concerns the development of simple, compact scanning optical microscopes which can obtain confocal and interference images. The effects of feeding the reflected signal back into the laser cavity of a confocal microscope are investigated and exploited. Monomode optical fibres are used to perform the spatial filtering required for confocal microscopy and, later, as the source of reference beams for interferometry. The theory describing the basic operation of the microscopes is developed. The optical systems are modelled using scalar diffraction theory and the effects of optical feedback into the laser cavity are described, with the practical implications emphasised. A fully reciprocal arrangement of the microscope is developed, in which a single mode optical fibre both launches the signal towards the object and then collects the reflected signal. The fibre is shown to exhibit the spatial filtering properties required for the source and detector in a confocal microscope. It is shown that a semiconductor laser can be used as a detector of the amplitude of the object signal. This is first demonstrated by directing the microscope signal back into the laser cavity and measuring the variation of the optical intensity in the cavity itself. Comparable results are obtained when the variation of the junction voltage across the cavity is measured. It is also shown that the optical fibre is redundant in this system, since the lasing mode of the cavity itself is sufficiently small to adequately spatially filter the reflected signal. When a Helium-Neon laser is used as the source of illumination the effect of the feedback on the laser is seen to be very different, resulting in interferometry. It is shown that high frequency modulation techniques can be used to obtain both confocal images and surface profiles from the same system. This is first demonstrated using an optical feedback scheme in which the modulation of the optical path length of the object beam is controlled electrooptically. In an alternative scheme the images are obtained by calculation, rather than by using a control loop system. In this case the modulation is achieved mechanically. The theoretical limits for the resolutions of the systems described are discussed. It is shown that the lateral resolution of the surface profile systems is inherently non-linear with feature height. Finally, a semiconductor laser based microscope is developed which can obtain confocal images and surface profiles independently. The dependence of the wavelength on the injection current is exploited as a convenient means of introducing a phase shift into the feedback signal by which profilometry can be achieved. All the systems are described theoretically and demonstrated experimentally.

What certainty is there for personal survival after death? Five key authors, critically analysed in this thesis, think that OB/ND experiences offer such assurances. Most OB/ND events follow severe clinical crises profoundly embarrassing cerebral function. At the nadir of brain function, invariably resulting in unconsciousness, authors aver that the escape of soul (Sabom), mind, or free consciousness (Moody, Ring, Grey, Fenwick), in providing glimpses of heaven, offers proof of immortality. I disagree. The semantic content of early-phase ND experiences reveals dream-like bizarreness and illogicality, consistent with de-activation of critical cortical controls. Conversely, late-phase experiences, tinged with 'moral' compulsions about earthly responsibilities, herald the progressive intrusion of conscious-awareness into that subconscious mentation. These experiences, abruptly terminating as conscious-awareness erupts, are transient - as demonstrated by narrative word counts - indicating origins from reawakening, not moribund, brains. My argument is underpinned by these latter crucial observations. Pain, intruding into ND phenomenology, is another occurrence hardly consistent with an escape of mind or 'free consciousness' into the hereafter. "Tunnel" phenomenology, a rapid movement from darkness into heavenly brightness, involves a retrospective synthesis of vestibular-generated rotation/accelerations, and a progressively enlarging and engulfing light, signalling re-establishment of an effective circulation to associative visual centres. The content of ND experiences, as with dreams, involves the temporo-parietal cortex. OB experiences derive from central vestibular activity (superior and inferior parietal lobules) in dormant, recumbent patients. Allied aberrations of allocentric space create bodily reduplications and sensed invisible presences. Thus, OB do not warrant "mystical" interpretations. The spiritual overtones accorded OB/ND experiences by authors are inconsistent with classical (Judaeo-Christian) accounts of divine disclosure. The eschatology adumbrated in published texts implies immortality, and seriously fails to embrace a preferred resurrectional eschatology as professed credally. I therefore conclude that OB/ND phenomenology, rather than offering alleged glimpses of eternity, reflects living, not dead, brains re-awakening to full conscious-awareness from antecedent metabolic insults.