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Geoarchaeological research captures dimensions of the past at an unprecedented level of detail and multiple spatial and temporal scales. The record of the past held by soils and sediments is an archive for past environments, climate change, resource use, settlement lifeways, and societal development and resilience over time. When the McDonald Institute was established at Cambridge, geoarchaeology was one of the priority fields for a new research and teaching environment. An opportunity to develop the legacy of Charles McBurney was bestowed upon Charles French, whose ‘geoarchaeology in action’ approach has had an enormous impact in advancing knowledge, principles and practices across academic, teaching and professional sectors. Many journeys that began at Cambridge have since proliferated into dozens of inspired geoarchaeologies worldwide. This volume presents research and reflection from across the globe by colleagues in tribute to Charly, under whose leadership the Charles McBurney Laboratory became a beacon of geoarchaeology.

Haloamination (or called aminohalogenation) upon the C-C unsaturated bonds is an important amino functionalization, which can introduce the halogen atoms accompanying with the amino groups into the substrate backbones in a tandem manner. Over the past two decades, it has drawn increasing attention due to its versatile applications. In this review, we will mainly focus on the synthetic strategies anchoring the intermolecular haloamination reactions achieved in the past few years. Limited by the length of the context, the intramolecular haloamination and the applications of the vicinal haloamines will not be involved.

Background: The Yagi-Uda antenna is a highly directive antenna used widely in many applications including pulsed Doppler radars to study the dynamics of the atmosphere. Yagi antennas configured in planar array configurations in phased array radars to achieve high peak powers to probe the atmosphere from troposphere. In this paper, a two-element Yagi-Uda antenna design is presented to investigate the ionospheric irregularities from the Gadanki Ionospheric Radar Interferometer. A new approach devised for the first time to design the two element, wide beam width tilted Yagi antenna, where folded dipole acts as active driver element and reflector as parasitic element. Methods: Several design techniques have been studied and new approach has been employed in designing the antenna and simulations have been carriedout and optimized the performance at 30 MHz with 14o tilt towards geometric north from vertical (zenith) direction for the maximum back scattered echo gain. Based on the design antenna has been fabricated and the system performance has been evaluated. Detailed validation methods have been listed to validate the parameters like reflection coefficient, gain, bandwidth and front-to-back ratio. Results: The antenna is designed and simulated results with 4NEC2 provided the optimized parameters before fabrication. The measured results indicate that the antenna has a gain of 5.65dBi and a reflection coefficient of -30 dB and these results are in close agreement with the simulation results. The band width obtained is about 2MHz is very good for the ionospheric remote sensing applications. The peak power handling capability upto 1kW shows the reliable system design for continuous and long term use of the system. Conclusion: Two element wide beam width 14o tilted Yagi-Uda antenna at 30MHz has been designed, simulated and optimized. Realized system performance validated to use for ionospheric radar remote sensing application. Details of the test methodologies are explained and the same have been executed to characterize the performance of the fabricated antenna with simulation results by measuring reflection coefficient, gain, radiation pattern. All the measured results have very close agreement with the simulation results and satisfy the design requirements to fit into 30 MHz radar antenna array for dedicated ionospheric probing. In future, we intended to carry out the radiation pattern simulation of the 20x8 phased array antennas to describe the overall radiation pattern.

Additional file 1: Figure S1. Secondary or tertiary case? Potential to mis-specify the infector when the primary case results in multiple secondary cases (left). The green circle represents the primary case, the blue circle a contact who did not become a case, and orange circles represent contacts who subsequently became cases. Incorrectly identifying two secondary cases as a secondary and tertiary case (right; that is, an intermediate step infector in a close co-contact) would result in a biased estimate of the serial interval. Figure S2. Secondary case or common source? Potential to mis-specify the infector when both the primary case and the case in a recorded contact are acquired from a common unidentified source (ie community transmission). The green circle represents the primary case, the blue circle a contact who did not become a case, and orange circles represent contacts of a case who subsequently became cases. Figure S3. Relationship between serial interval, incubation period and time of infection relative to symptom onset of the infector. Symptom onset is indicated with an ‘X’. Table S1. Impact of each data cleaning step on number of records. Table S2. Impact of restricting data according to the number of secondary cases per primary case.

Additional file 1.

Adverse temporal trends in human semen quality and cryptorchidism in infants have been associated with exposure to environmental chemicals (ECs) during development. Here we report that a population of breeding dogs exhibit a 26 year (1988-2014) decline in sperm quality and a concurrent increased incidence of cryptorchidism in male offspring (1995-2014). A decline in the number of males born relative to the number of females was also observed. ECs, including diethylhexyl phthalate (DEHP) and polychlorinated biphenyl 153 (PCB153), were detected in adult dog testes and commercial dog foods at concentrations reported to perturb reproductive function in other species. Testicular concentrations of DEHP and PCB153 perturbed sperm viability, motility and DNA integrity in vitro but did not affect LH stimulated testosterone secretion from adult testis explants. The direct effects of chemicals on sperm may therefore contribute to the decline in canine semen quality that parallels that reported in the human.

As time advances in our perceived real world, existing information is preserved and new information is added to history. All the information that may ever be encoded in history must be about some fundamental, unique, atemporal and pre-physical structure: the bare world. Scientists invent model worlds to efficiently explain aspects of the real world. This paper explores the features of and relationships between the bare, real, and model worlds. Time -- past, present and future -- is naturally explained. Both quantum uncertainty and state reduction are needed for time to progress, since unpredictable new information must be added to history. Deterministic evolution preserves existing information. Finite, but steadily increasing, information about the bare world is jointly encoded in equally uncertain spacetime geometry and quantum matter. Because geometry holds no information independent of matter, there is no need to quantize gravity. At the origin of time, information goes to zero and geometry and matter fade away., Comment: 27 pages, editorial improvements

The topic of thin films is an area of increasing importance in materials science, electrical engineering and applied solid state physics; with both research and industrial applications in microelectronics, computer manufacturing, and physical devices. Advanced, high-performance computers, high-definition TV, broadband imaging systems, flat-panel displays, robotic systems, and medical electronics and diagnostics are a few examples of the miniaturized device technologies that depend on the utilization of thin film materials. This book presents an in-depth overview of the novel developments made by the scientific leaders in the area of modern dielectric films for advanced microelectronic applications. It contains clear, concise explanations of material science of dielectric films and their problem for device operation, including high-k, low-k, medium-k dielectric films and also specific features and requirements for dielectric films used in the packaging technology. A broad range of related topics are covered, from physical principles to design, fabrication, characterization, and applications of novel dielectric films.

Antennas with rectifiers, "rectennas", have been proposed for high efficiency conversion of solar energy and high efficiencies have been demonstrated for quasimonochromatic microwaves. Antennas receiving black body radiation may be modelled as a pair of resistors at the black body temperature, each supplying electrical noise power. Extraction of that power from a load as heat is feasible at the same limiting efficiencies as solar thermal converters. Rectennas, relying on rectification of the broadband electrical noise, appear to have lower efficiency limits due to the unavailability of a design for the Carnot conversion of the noise from a hot resistor., 3rd World Conference on Photovoltaic Energy Conversion; Osaka