Lihme kirkes romanske tårn

Lihme kirke i Vestsalling har længe påkaldt sig arkitekturhistorikernes interesse. Dels på grund af sin byggeteknik og den umiskendeligt engelsk-normanniske indflydelse, der særlig spores i nordportalens udformning, men mest på grund af det store og ejendommeligt udformede romanske vesttårn, hvoraf nu kun underdelen står tilbage

Middelalderlige tagværker, særlig på Sjælland

For over 40 år siden publicerede Elna Møller sin artikel i Aarbøger for nordisk Oldkyndighed og Historie med titlen »Romanske tagkonstruktioner«. Med udgangspunkt i sit arbejde som redaktør for Danmarks Kirker og med hovedvægten lagt på de syd- ogsønderjyske landsbykirkers tagværker behandler hun som den første systematisk de middelalderlige og særligt de romanske tagværkstyper. Artiklen har undertitlen »En foreløbig meddelelse«, men der skulle gå mange år inden interessen for tagværkerne igen for alvor blev vagt

Leveraging Factored Action Spaces for Off-Policy Evaluation

Off-policy evaluation (OPE) aims to estimate the benefit of following a counterfactual sequence of actions, given data collected from executed sequences. However, existing OPE estimators often exhibit high bias and high variance in problems involving large, combinatorial action spaces. We investigate how to mitigate this issue using factored action spaces i.e. expressing each action as a combination of independent sub-actions from smaller action spaces. This approach facilitates a finer-grained analysis of how actions differ in their effects. In this work, we propose a new family of "decomposed" importance sampling (IS) estimators based on factored action spaces. Given certain assumptions on the underlying problem structure, we prove that the decomposed IS estimators have less variance than their original non-decomposed versions, while preserving the property of zero bias. Through simulations, we empirically verify our theoretical results, probing the validity of various assumptions. Provided with a technique that can derive the action space factorisation for a given problem, our work shows that OPE can be improved "for free" by utilising this inherent problem structure.Comment: Main paper: 8 pages, 7 figures. Appendix: 30 pages, 17 figures. Accepted at ICML 2023 Workshop on Counterfactuals in Minds and Machines, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA. Camera ready versio

Plasma equol concentration is not associated with breast cancer and fibrocystic breast conditions among women in Shanghai, China

Equol (a bacterial metabolite of the soy isoflavone daidzein) is produced by 30% to 50% of humans and may be associated with health outcomes. We hypothesized that plasma equol would be inversely associated with risks of fibrocystic breast conditions (FBC) and breast cancer (BC). Plasma from women in a breast self-examination trial in Shanghai with BC (n = 269) or FBC (n = 443), and age-matched controls (n = 1027) was analyzed for isoflavones. Equol was grouped into categories (= 45 nmol/L) and, among women with daidzein >= 20 nmol/L, the log(10) equol:daidzein ratio was grouped into tertiles. Where available, non-cancerous tissue (NCT) adjacent to the carcinomas from women with BC were classified as non-proliferative or proliferative (n = 130 and 172, respectively). The lesions from women with FBC were similarly classified (n = 99 and 92, respectively). Odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated across equol categories and tertiles of log(10) equol:daidzein ratio. Equol categories were not associated with FBC or BC >.05). For log(10) equol:daidzein, compared to controls there were positive associations in the mid tertile for proliferative FBC (OR 2.06, 95% CI 1.08-3.93), BC with proliferative NCT (OR 2.95, 95% CI 1.37-6.35), and all BC regardless of histology (OR 2.37, 95% CI 1.43-3.95). However, trends in ORs with increasing plasma equol values or equol:daidzein ratios were not observed (P >.05). The results of this study do not provide evidence that equol plays a role in the etiology of these breast conditions. However, further work is needed to confirm or refute this conclusion. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Peer reviewe

Baggrund for rekonstruktion af ovnene i 1987: Konstruktion, teknik og materiale

Background for the reconstruction of the kilns in 1987. Construction, technology and materials By Birgit Als Hansen and Morten Aaman Sørensen In the space of a few years, three medieval pottery kilns were discovered and excavated in Jutland. The kilns appear to be of varying construction, representing three types not previously found in this country. This inspired the excavators and a small group of kiln enthusiasts to try a reconstruction and subsequent firing of all three kilns. The reconstruction of the kiln from Hellum afforded few problems. The preserved substructure indicated a simple round, updraft kiln, where the floor was supported by a central pillar with radiating clay bars. A type well known all over Europe from ancient times to our day, and in our case very similar to a kiln from Torksey in Lincolnshire (fig. 1). The kiln from Barmer was constructed differently. What was left under ground level looked like a hip bath, with stoke hole and fire chamber in the lower part, and a slightly sloping floor for the pots in the upper part, where an opening at the rear was presumably used for stacking the pottery, and during the firing as a vent for the exhaust. The two chambers were separated by a fire screen in the shape of three solid pillars – very much like kilns found in France and Germany (fig. 2). No traces of the upper parts of the kiln remained in Barmer, but a row of small holes with charred wood in the sidewalls indicated a barrow vault moulded on a wooden structure. In Kragelund, only the front part of the kiln was preserved. The stoke hole, with a flue on either side of a raised platform, indicated a type of kiln found in the Netherlands, France and Germany. None of these kilns offered much information about the structure above ground level, except possibly one of a series of kilns from Brunssum (fig. 3), where the foremost part of a domed roof seemed to have rested on the front part of the platform. A reconstruction along these lines seemed a permissible experiment

Bistrup Teglværk: Arkæologiske undersøgelser af en middelalderlig teglværkstomt ved Roskilde

I 1874 blev der indbragt et brudstykke af en gulvflise af brændt ler til Oldnordisk Museum. Sandt at sige var der ikke tale om nogen smuk udstillingsgenstand. Flisestumpen havde ganske vist ornamentik og glasur på overfladen, men den var både vind og skæv og er sikkert med det samme blevet dømt til henlæggelse på magasin. Ingen var dog på daværende tidspunkt i tvivl om, at det drejede sig om en fejlbrændt flise fra en lokalitet, der nok var værd at se nøjere på, dette fremgår tydeligt af protokolindførelsen, hvor fundstedet for flisestykket omtales således: »Det er opsamlet på Bistrupgaards saakaldte Teglværksmark (ved Roskildefjord), paa et Sted, hvor der opgraves en stor Mængde Brokker og Brændtlers-Sager«