15,275 research outputs found

    Calibration of the Radiocarbon Time Scale for the Southern Hemisphere: AD 1850-950

    No full text
    We have conducted a series of radiocarbon measurements on decadal samples of dendrochronologically dated wood from both hemispheres, spanning 1000 years (McCormac et al. 1998; Hogg et al. this issue). Using the data presented in Hogg et al., we show that during the period AD 950-1850 the 14C offset between the hemispheres is not constant, but varies periodically (~130 yr periodicity) with amplitudes varying between 1 and 10‰ (i.e. 8-80 yr), with a consequent effect on the 14C calibration of material from the Southern Hemisphere. A large increase in the offset occurs between AD 1245 and 1355. In this paper, we present a Southern Hemisphere high-precision calibration data set (SHCal02) that comprises measurements from New Zealand, Chile, and South Africa. This data, and a new value of 41 ± 14 yr for correction of the IntCal98 data for the period outside the range given here, is proposed for use in calibrating Southern Hemisphere 14C dates

    High-precision radiocarbon measurements of contemporaneous tree-ring wood from the British Isles and New Zealand: AD 1850-950.

    No full text
    The University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand and The Queen's University of Belfast, Northern Ireland radiocarbon dating laboratories have undertaken a series of high-precision measurements on decadal samples of dendrochronologically dated oak (Quercus petraea) from Great Britain and cedar (Libocedrus bidwillii) and silver pine (Lagarostrobos colensoi) from New Zealand. The results show an average hemispheric offset over the 900 yr of measurement of 40±13 yr. This value is not constant but varies with a periodicity of about 130 yr. The Northern Hemisphere measurements confirm the validity of the Pearson et al. (1986) calibration dataset

    Evidence for late polynesian colonization of New Zealand: University of Waikato radiocarbon measurements

    No full text
    We present radiocarbon determinations for 271 New Zealand archaeological samples measured at the University of Waikato Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory between 1975 and 1995. A discard protocol is applied to the series and the list culled to winnow the acceptable dates from those that may incorporate error. None of the 221 acceptable ¹⁴C determinations older than 600 BP (in the case of terrestrial samples) or 930 BP (in the case of marine and estuarine shell) extends beyond cal AD 1250. This conclusion supports the short chronology model of New Zealand prehistory presented by Anderson (1991)

    Link stability estimation based on link connectivity changes in mobile ad-hoc networks

    No full text
    Dear Wang, Re: Link Stability Estimation Based on Link Connectivity Changes in Mobile Ad-hoc Networks I have not been able to assess if this is an author version peer-reviewed or is it an author version non peer reviewed. Could you please clarify this so I can proceed to add your paper to Spiral. Spiral digital repository only accept peer-reviewed papers. 30/11/12 author has confirmed peer reviewe

    A wiggle-match date for Polynesian settlement of New Zealand

    No full text
    Dating initial colonisation and environmental impacts by Polynesians in New Zealand is controversial. A key horizon is provided by the Kaharoa Tephra, deposited from an eruption of Mt Tarawera, because just underneath this layer are the first signs of forest clearance which imply human settlement. The authors used a log of celery pine from within Kaharoa deposits to derive a new precise date for the eruption via "wiggle-matching" – matching the radiocarbon dates of a sequence of samples from the log with the Southern Hemisphere calibration curve. The date obtained was 1314 ± 12 AD (2σ error), and the first environmental impacts and human occupation are argued to have occurred in the previous 50 years, i.e. in the late 13th – early 14th centuries AD. This date is contemporary with earliest settlement dates determined from archaeological sites in the New Zealand archipelago

    Investigating the Interhemisphere 14C Offset in the 1st Millennium AD and Assessment of Laboratory Bias and Calibration Errors

    No full text
    Past measurements of the radiocarbon interhemispheric offset have been restricted to relatively young samples because of a lack of older dendrochronologically secure Southern Hemisphere tree-ring chronologies. The Southern Hemisphere calibration data set SHCal04 earlier than AD 950 utilizes a variable interhemispheric offset derived from measured 2nd millennium AD Southern Hemisphere/Northern Hemisphere sample pairs with the assumption of stable Holocene ocean/ atmosphere interactions. This study extends the range of measured interhemispheric offset values with 20 decadal New Zealand kauri and Irish oak sample pairs from 3 selected time intervals in the 1st millennium AD and is part of a larger program to obtain high-precision Southern Hemisphere 14C data continuously back to 200 BC. We found an average interhemispheric offset of 35 ± 6 yr, which although consistent with previously published 2nd millennium AD measurements, is lower than the offset of 55–58 yr utilized in SHCal04. We concur with McCormac et al. (2008) that the IntCal04 measurement for AD 775 may indeed be slightly too old but also suggest the McCormac results appear excessively young for the interval AD 755–785. In addition, we raise the issue of laboratory bias and calibration errors, and encourage all laboratories to check their consistency with appropriate calibration curves and invest more effort into improving the accuracy of those curves

    Revised calendar date for the Taupo eruption derived by ¹⁴C wiggle-matching using a New Zealand kauri ¹⁴C calibration data set

    No full text
    Taupo volcano in central North Island, New Zealand, is the most frequently active and productive rhyolite volcano on Earth. Its latest explosive activity about 1800 years ago generated the spectacular Taupo eruption, the most violent eruption known in the world in the last 5000 years. We present here a new accurate and precise eruption date of AD 232 ± 5 (1718 ± 5 cal. BP) for the Taupo event. This date was derived by wiggle-matching 25 high-precision ¹⁴C dates from decadal samples of Phyllocladus trichomanoides from the Pureora buried forest near Lake Taupo against the high-precision, first-millennium AD subfossil Agathis australis (kauri) calibration data set constructed by the Waikato Radiocarbon Laboratory. It shows that postulated dates for the eruption estimated previously from Greenland ice-core records (AD 181 ± 2) and putative historical records of unusual atmospheric phenomena in ancient Rome and China (c. AD 186) are both untenable. However, although their conclusion of a zero north–south ¹⁴C offset is erroneous, and their data exhibit a laboratory bias of about 38 years (too young), Sparks et al. (Sparks RJ, Melhuish WH, McKee JWA, Ogden J, Palmer JG and Molloy BPJ (1995) ¹⁴C calibration in the Southern Hemisphere and the date of the last Taupo eruption: Evidence from tree-ring sequences. Radiocarbon 37: 155–163) correctly utilized the Northern Hemisphere calibration curve of Stuiver and Becker (Stuiver M and Becker B (1993) High-precision decadal calibration of the radiocarbon timescale, AD 1950–6000 BC. Radiocarbon 35: 35–65) to obtain an accurate wiggle-match date for the eruption identical to ours but less precise (AD 232 ± 15). Our results demonstrate that high-agreement levels, indicated by either agreement indices or χ² data, obtained from a ¹⁴C wiggle-match do not necessarily mean that age models are accurate. We also show that laboratory bias, if suspected, can be mitigated by applying the reservoir offset function with an appropriate error value (e.g. 0 ± 40 years). Ages for eruptives such as Taupo tephra that are based upon individual ¹⁴C dates should be considered as approximate only, and confined ideally to short-lived material (e.g. seeds, leaves, small branches or the outer rings of larger trees)

    Cerebral atrophy in mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer disease: rates and acceleration.

    No full text
    OBJECTIVE: To quantify the regional and global cerebral atrophy rates and assess acceleration rates in healthy controls, subjects with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and subjects with mild Alzheimer disease (AD). METHODS: Using 0-, 6-, 12-, 18-, 24-, and 36-month MRI scans of controls and subjects with MCI and AD from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) database, we calculated volume change of whole brain, hippocampus, and ventricles between all pairs of scans using the boundary shift integral. RESULTS: We found no evidence of acceleration in whole-brain atrophy rates in any group. There was evidence that hippocampal atrophy rates in MCI subjects accelerate by 0.22%/year2 on average (p = 0.037). There was evidence of acceleration in rates of ventricular enlargement in subjects with MCI (p = 0.001) and AD (p < 0.001), with rates estimated to increase by 0.27 mL/year2 (95% confidence interval 0.12, 0.43) and 0.88 mL/year2 (95% confidence interval 0.47, 1.29), respectively. A post hoc analysis suggested that the acceleration of hippocampal loss in MCI subjects was mainly driven by the MCI subjects that were observed to progress to clinical AD within 3 years of baseline, with this group showing hippocampal atrophy rate acceleration of 0.50%/year2 (p = 0.003). CONCLUSIONS: The small acceleration rates suggest a long period of transition to the pathologic losses seen in clinical AD. The acceleration in hippocampal atrophy rates in MCI subjects in the ADNI seems to be driven by those MCI subjects who concurrently progressed to a clinical diagnosis of AD

    A Fair and Secure Cluster Formation Process for Ad Hoc Networks

    No full text
    An efficient approach for organizing large ad hoc networks is to divide the nodes into multiple clusters and designate, for each cluster, a clusterhead which is responsible for holding intercluster control information. The role of a clusterhead entails rights and duties. On the one hand, it has a dominant position in front of the others because it manages the connectivity and has access to other node¿s sensitive information. But on the other hand, the clusterhead role also has some associated costs. Hence, in order to prevent malicious nodes from taking control of the group in a fraudulent way and avoid selfish attacks from suitable nodes, the clusterhead needs to be elected in a secure way. In this paper we present a novel solution that guarantees the clusterhead is elected in a cheat-proof manner

    Energy efficiency in ad-hoc wireless networks

    No full text
    In ad-hoc wireless networks, nodes are typically battery-powered, therefore energy limitations are among the critical constraints in ad-hoc wireless networks' development. The approaches investigated in this thesis to achieve energy efficient performance in wireless networks can be grouped into three main categories. 1. Each wireless network node has four energy consumption states: transmitting, receiving, listening and sleeping states. The power consumed in the listening state is less than the power consumed in the transmitting and receiving states, but significantly greater than that in the sleeping state. Energy efficiency is achieved if as many nodes as possible are put into the sleeping states. 2) Since energy is consumed for transmission nonlinearly in terms of the transmission range, transmission range adjustment is another energy saving approach. In this work, the optimal transmission range is derived and applied to achieve energy efficient performance in a number of scenerios. 3) Since energy can be saved properly arranging the communication algorithms, network topology management or network routing is the third approach which can be utilised in combination with the above two approaches. In this work, Geographical Adaptive Fidelity (GAF) algorithms, clustering algorithms and Geographic Routing (GR) algorithms are all utilised to reduce the energy consumption of wireless networks, such as Sensor Networks and Vehicular Networks. These three approaches are used in this work to reduce the energy consumption of wireless networks. With the GAF algorithm. We derived the optimal transmission range and optimal grid size in both linear and rectangular networks and as a result we show how the network energy consumptions can be reduced and how the network lifetime can be prolonged. With Geographic Routing algorithms the author proposed the Optimal Range Forward (ORF) algorithm and Optimal Forward with Energy Balance (OFEB) algorithm to reduce the energy consumption and to prolong the network lifetime. The results show that compared to the traditional GR algorithms (Most Forward within Radius, Nearest Forward Progress), the network lifetime is prolonged. Other approaches have also been considered to improve the networks's energy efficient operation utilising Genetic Algorithms to find the optimal size of the grid or cluster. Furthermore realistic physical layer models, Rayleigh fading and LogNormal fading, are considered in evaluating energy efficiency in a realistic network environment
    corecore