Distinguishing between Cypriot scripts: Steps towards establishing a methodology

The surviving Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age inscriptions from Cyprus, usually labelled ‘Cypro-Minoan’ and numbering more than 200,¹ are almost certainly written in more than one script. It was É . Masson who first laid out this theory in detail, proposing that different groups of inscriptions be labelled by a numerical classification: CM1, CM2 and CM3.² Each of these groups was suggested to represent a different script with a different repertoire of signs. CM2 and CM3 were special terms referring to a limited number of texts, with CM2 designating three clay tablets with long inscriptions found at Enkomi, and CM3 designating all of the Cypriot epigraphic material from Ugarit (modern northern Syria); CM1, however, has little by way of coherence except in that it has been used to refer to all the other inscriptions that do not fall into the other two groups.³ Olivier further added a fourth group, CM0, to designate the obviously distinct script in which one of the earliest known Cypriot texts, an inscription from Enkomi dated probably to LCI, was written.⁴ If we accept these designations, then it is necessary to refer to Cypro-Minoan scripts in the plural.British AcademyThis is the accepted manuscript version. It will be embargoed until 12 months after publication. The final version is available from De Gruyter at http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/kadm.2014.53.issue-1-2/kadmos-2014-0007/kadmos-2014-0007.xml?format=INT

Writing «systems»: Literacy and the transmission of writing in nonadministrative contexts

A wide range of document types have been preserved written in the undeciphered scripts of the Aegean and Cyprus (Cretan Hieroglyphic, Linear A and Cypro-Minoan), with inscriptions appearing on a variety of media and object types. Some of these inscriptions are assumed to relate to centralised administrative structures, especially those on particular types of clay objects such as tablets and seals/sealings. This paper, however, will deal with the question of literacy existing outside of any centralised administrative sphere. Within an administrative context, we may envisage writing as an economic or bureaucratic tool, controlled to some extent through training in the structure and conventions of the script. Outside of such a context, however, we face the question of how and why writing is proliferated: Who is using it and how do they know how to do it? Do they have access to any kind of training? How standardised is the script they use? The Aegean and Cyprus provide us with some important parallels and differences. On Crete in particular, the concept of administrative writing, whether in seals and sealing practices or in centralised record-keeping, was probably always part of the story. The context in which the deciphered Linear B writing system was adapted from still undeciphered Linear A had a tangible effect on the type and composition of the new script, which was developed alongside administrative influence. Unlike its descendant Linear B, however, we must also remember that Linear A is well attested in non-administrative or ‘private’ contexts, raising the question of whether individuals writing outside the administrative sphere were using the same model of script as the centralised administrations. On Cyprus, we must envisage a completely different context for script adoption. Although the need for writing was probably stimulated by economic development, and although the Late Bronze Age Cypriot script(s) was/were related to the Aegean ones, there is no evidence for Cypriot writing existing within a closely controlled and centralised administrative system. Instead we find a vast array of inscribed objects from a wide variety of contexts, many of which look decidedly non-administrative. It may be no accident that, alongside this diversity in attested written forms, there continues a longstanding scholarly debate concerning the number of writing systems in existence in Late Bronze Age Cyprus. Difficulties in reconstructing the size and composition of the script(s) in use may correspond to real variation (as opposed to standardisation) in the written repertoire. An investigation of these factors has the potential to stimulate new debate on what we mean by ‘writing’, and what we are doing when we try to reconstruct an undeciphered writing ‘system’

Ecological homogenization of urban USA

A visually apparent but scientifically untested outcome of land-use change is homogenization across urban areas, where neighborhoods in different parts of the country have similar patterns of roads, residential lots, commercial areas, and aquatic features. We hypothesize that this homogenization extends to ecological structure and also to ecosystem functions such as carbon dynamics and microclimate, with continental-scale implications. Further, we suggest that understanding urban homogenization will provide the basis for understanding the impacts of urban land-use change from local to continental scales. Here, we show how multi-scale, multidisciplinary datasets from six metropolitan areas that cover the major climatic regions of the US (Phoenix, AZ; Miami, FL; Baltimore, MD; Boston, MA; Minneapolis-St Paul, MN; and Los Angeles, CA) can be used to determine how household and neighborhood characteristics correlate with land-management practices, land-cover composition, and landscape structure and ecosystem functions at local, regional, and continental scales. © The Ecological Society of America

Convergent Surface Water Distributions in U.S. Cities

Earth's surface is rapidly urbanizing, resulting in dramatic changes in the abundance, distribution and character of surface water features in urban landscapes. However, the scope and consequences of surface water redistribution at broad spatial scales are not well understood. We hypothesized that urbanization would lead to convergent surface water abundance and distribution: in other words, cities will gain or lose water such that they become more similar to each other than are their surrounding natural landscapes. Using a database of more than 1 million water bodies and 1 million km of streams, we compared the surface water of 100 US cities with their surrounding undeveloped land. We evaluated differences in areal (A WB) and numeric densities (N WB) of water bodies (lakes, wetlands, and so on), the morphological characteristics of water bodies (size), and the density (D C) of surface flow channels (that is, streams and rivers). The variance of urban A WB, N WB, and D C across the 100 MSAs decreased, by 89, 25, and 71%, respectively, compared to undeveloped land. These data show that many cities are surface water poor relative to undeveloped land; however, in drier landscapes urbanization increases the occurrence of surface water. This convergence pattern strengthened with development intensity, such that high intensity urban development had an areal water body density 98% less than undeveloped lands. Urbanization appears to drive the convergence of hydrological features across the US, such that surface water distributions of cities are more similar to each other than to their surrounding landscapes. © 2014 The Author(s)

Lack of trust in maternal support is associated with negative interpretations of ambiguous maternal behavior

Attachment theory assumes that children who lack trust in maternal availability for support are more inclined to interpret maternal behavior in congruence with their expectation that mother will remain unavailable for support. To provide the first test of this assumption, early adolescents (9-13 years old) were asked to assess whether ambiguous interactions with mother should be interpreted in a positive or a negative way. In our sample (n = 322), results showed that early adolescents' lack of trust in their mother's availability for support was related to more negative interpretations of maternal behavior. The associations remained significant after controlling for depressive mood. The importance of these findings for our understanding of attachment theory, attachment stability, and clinical practice are discussed

Linear A and Linear B: Structural and contextual concerns

Of all the Aegean writing systems, Linear B is by far the best known and understood: it has the largest number of inscriptions, a signary whose repertoire we can reconstruct with a high degree of accuracy, well secured sign values for the majority of signs and a well understood underlying language, Greek. Of the other scripts of this group, only the Cypriot Syllabic script of the 1st millennium BC compares, since it can be read and its inscriptions largely understood (the majority also written in Greek), while the others (Cretan Hieroglyphic, Linear A and Cypro-Minoan) remain ill-understood. Even so, there remain some gaps in our knowledge of the Linear B writing system and its development, and it is some of these lacunae that form the basis for the present investigation

Assessing the homogenization of urban land management with an application to US residential lawn care.

Changes in land use, land cover, and land management present some of the greatest potential global environmental challenges of the 21st century. Urbanization, one of the principal drivers of these transformations, is commonly thought to be generating land changes that are increasingly similar. An implication of this multiscale homogenization hypothesis is that the ecosystem structure and function and human behaviors associated with urbanization should be more similar in certain kinds of urbanized locations across biogeophysical gradients than across urbanization gradients in places with similar biogeophysical characteristics. This paper introduces an analytical framework for testing this hypothesis, and applies the framework to the case of residential lawn care. This set of land management behaviors are often assumed--not demonstrated--to exhibit homogeneity. Multivariate analyses are conducted on telephone survey responses from a geographically stratified random sample of homeowners (n = 9,480), equally distributed across six US metropolitan areas. Two behaviors are examined: lawn fertilizing and irrigating. Limited support for strong homogenization is found at two scales (i.e., multi- and single-city; 2 of 36 cases), but significant support is found for homogenization at only one scale (22 cases) or at neither scale (12 cases). These results suggest that US lawn care behaviors are more differentiated in practice than in theory. Thus, even if the biophysical outcomes of urbanization are homogenizing, managing the associated sustainability implications may require a multiscale, differentiated approach because the underlying social practices appear relatively varied. The analytical approach introduced here should also be productive for other facets of urban-ecological homogenization

Measurement of the inclusive and dijet cross-sections of b-jets in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the ATLAS detector

The inclusive and dijet production cross-sections have been measured for jets containing b-hadrons (b-jets) in proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of sqrt(s) = 7 TeV, using the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The measurements use data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 34 pb^-1. The b-jets are identified using either a lifetime-based method, where secondary decay vertices of b-hadrons in jets are reconstructed using information from the tracking detectors, or a muon-based method where the presence of a muon is used to identify semileptonic decays of b-hadrons inside jets. The inclusive b-jet cross-section is measured as a function of transverse momentum in the range 20 < pT < 400 GeV and rapidity in the range |y| < 2.1. The bbbar-dijet cross-section is measured as a function of the dijet invariant mass in the range 110 < m_jj < 760 GeV, the azimuthal angle difference between the two jets and the angular variable chi in two dijet mass regions. The results are compared with next-to-leading-order QCD predictions. Good agreement is observed between the measured cross-sections and the predictions obtained using POWHEG + Pythia. MC@NLO + Herwig shows good agreement with the measured bbbar-dijet cross-section. However, it does not reproduce the measured inclusive cross-section well, particularly for central b-jets with large transverse momenta.Comment: 10 pages plus author list (21 pages total), 8 figures, 1 table, final version published in European Physical Journal

Observation of associated near-side and away-side long-range correlations in √sNN=5.02 TeV proton-lead collisions with the ATLAS detector

Two-particle correlations in relative azimuthal angle (Δϕ) and pseudorapidity (Δη) are measured in √sNN=5.02  TeV p+Pb collisions using the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The measurements are performed using approximately 1  μb-1 of data as a function of transverse momentum (pT) and the transverse energy (ΣETPb) summed over 3.1<η<4.9 in the direction of the Pb beam. The correlation function, constructed from charged particles, exhibits a long-range (2<|Δη|<5) “near-side” (Δϕ∼0) correlation that grows rapidly with increasing ΣETPb. A long-range “away-side” (Δϕ∼π) correlation, obtained by subtracting the expected contributions from recoiling dijets and other sources estimated using events with small ΣETPb, is found to match the near-side correlation in magnitude, shape (in Δη and Δϕ) and ΣETPb dependence. The resultant Δϕ correlation is approximately symmetric about π/2, and is consistent with a dominant cos⁡2Δϕ modulation for all ΣETPb ranges and particle pT