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Since 2008, the artist Melanie Gilligan has been investigating how the techniques of machinic capitalism have intensified in the face of digital environments. This is expounded upon in three video works in particular. Crisis in the Credit System (2008) raises the question of how the market, controlled by an “invisible hand”, functions as the milieu of an economic subject. Popular Unrest (2010) shows how algorithms intervene in the reproduction of life and, in doing so, not only govern subjects, but interpret their infra- and supraindividual data traces as an environment. In The Common Sense (2014), society regulates itself through a decentralized but omnipresent affective network created by environmentally distributed technologies. In this paper I want to ask what kind of power-formation is sketched by Melanie Gilligan, especially since the focus of all three works is put on the control of environmental factors. In order to achieve this, I will follow what Foucault developed in his lectures on The Birth of Biopolitics. The power-formation he calls governmentality does not aim at the production of subjects (as disciplinary techniques), but rather at the control over their milieus or environments. I want to show that this is a central aspect of the power formation, that is implicated in the diegetic universes of Gilligan’s films. Additionally I discuss more recent contributions to the question of machinic control: Erich Hörl’s concept of environmentalization, Antointette Rouvroy’s term algorithmic governmentality, Gerald Raunig’s latest thoughts about the dividuum and machinic capitalism, as well as Maurizio Lazzarato who has taken up Deleuze’s and Guattari’s thoughts about asignifying semiotics. By successively working through Gilligan’s three works, I conclude that the way Gilligan conceives of different formations of control may be analyzed as allegories of historical and technological processes of governmentality, that reach from the 18th century’s milieu of the market to today’s digital milieus.

Solid earth 13(12), 1859-1905 (2022). doi:10.5194/se-13-1859-2022 Published by Copernicus Publ., Göttingen

This article tries to offer a new perspective on parchment, mainly with regard to animals whose skins were, and sometimes still are, used to manufacture this writing material. A short outline of the manufacturing process serves as a basis and is complemented by a similarly short history of development and usage. Subsequently, some calculations, which should not be taken too seriously, may illustrate the huge number of animals that had to be slaughtered to produce enough parchment for all the codices in the older collections of our libraries. The second main topic is the animals who served as the main source for parchment during the German Middle Ages, namely sheep, goats and cattle. Therefore aspects of zooarchaeology and agricultural history are brought up here as well. Dieser Artikel unternimmt den Versuch, das Thema Pergament um einige Blickwinkel zu erweitern, die hauptsächlich die Tiere betreffen, aus deren Häuten dieser Beschreibstoff hergestellt wird bzw. wurde. Ein kurzer Abriss zum Herstellungsprozess dient dabei als Grundlage, die um eine ebenso knappe historische Entwicklungs- und Nutzungsgeschichte ergänzt wird. Anschließend werden einige nicht allzu ernst gemeinte quantitative Zahlenspielereien präsentiert, um die schiere Zahl der geschlachteten Tiere zu zeigen, die für die in den Altbeständen befindlichen Pergamentcodices notwendig gewesen sein müssten. Der zweite Hauptpunkt des Artikels ergänzt einige archäozoologische und agrarhistorische Aspekte zu den wichtigsten pergamentliefernden Tieren, also zu Schafen, Ziegen und Rindern, im deutschen Mittelalter. Peer Reviewed

The method of exclusion identifies patterns of distributions of behaviours and/or artefact forms among different groups, where these patterns are deemed unlikely to arise from purely genetic and/or ecological factors. The presence of such patterns is often used to establish whether a species is cultural or not—i.e. whether a species uses social learning or not. Researchers using or describing this method have often pointed out that the method cannot pinpoint which specific type(s) of social learning resulted in the observed patterns. However, the literature continues to contain such inferences. In a new attempt to warn against these logically unwarranted conclusions, we illustrate this error using a novel approach. We use an individual-based model, focused on wild ape cultural patterns—as these patterns are the best-known cases of animal culture and as they also contain the most frequent usage of the unwarranted inference for specific social learning mechanisms. We built a model that contained agents unable to copy specifics of behavioural or artefact forms beyond their individual reach (which we define as “copying”). We did so, as some of the previous inference claims related to social learning mechanisms revolve around copying defined in this way. The results of our model however show that non-copying social learning can already reproduce the defining—even iconic—features of observed ape cultural patterns detected by the method of exclusion. This shows, using a novel model approach, that copying processes are not necessary to produce the cultural patterns that are sometimes still used in an attempt to identify copying processes. Additionally, our model could fully control for both environmental and genetic factors (impossible in real life) and thus offers a new validity check for the method of exclusion as related to general cultural claims—a check that the method passed. Our model also led to new and additional findings, which we likewise discuss. European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant Agreement No 714658; STONECULT project).

Abstract This article proposes new readings and interpretative suggestions to Greek and Coptic administrative documents from early Islamic Egypt (7th-8th century).

Abstract New edition of a short Christian hymn preserved on papyrus.

Marine radiaxial fibrous calcites are common pore-filling carbonate fabrics in Palaeozoic and Mesozoic carbonates, yet recent analogues are scarce. Although ancient marine radiaxial fibrous calcites are often considered a cement phase and used for palaeoenvironmental interpretations, their origin (primary precipitation versus diagenetic alteration of a pre-existing fabric) and their specific formation processes remain ambiguous. This may be related to insufficient information from a few recent analogues and limitations of traditional methods in investigating ancient radiaxial fibrous calcites. This study documents a Holocene occurrence of marine pore-filling radiaxial fibrous Mg calcites and focuses on their origin, formation processes and implications for ancient analogues. The radiaxial fibrous Mg calcites examined in this study share morphological and mineralogical similarities with numerous ancient marine radiaxial fibrous calcites with a Mg calcite precursor. Based on petrological and geochemical data, the radiaxial fibrous Mg calcites are interpreted as secondary porewater products formed during early burial alteration of micritic Mg calcite precursor cement. These findings provide implications for, at least in part, ancient marine radiaxial fibrous calcites in the context of the formation process and mechanism and are relevant for palaeoceanographic and palaeoenvironmental interpretations based on the presence of this carbonate phase.

Organosulfur compounds (OSCs) in sedimentary rocks are considered to have formed primarily by abiotic incorporation of inorganic sulfur species into biogenetic functionalized molecules during early diagenesis, thus preserving carbon skeletons of appropriate biomolecules. OSCs could be characterized at a molecular level by Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (FT-ICR-MS) even when they are small in amounts and large in molecular weights. Herein, to reveal the palaeoecological and palaeoenvironmental information that OSCs have recorded but might not be contained in other biomarkers, OSCs’ composition in solvent extracts of rocks with different geological histories were determined utilizing FT-ICR-MS. The analyzed natural laboratories are the marine Schöneck, Dynow and Posidonia formations and the lacustrine Wealden Formation which are in the late diagenetic or early catagenetic stages. The prevailing iron-deficient sulfidic depositional settings of the marine Posidonia and Schöneck formations are reflected by abundant OSCs bearing up to three sulfur atoms. The high ratios of reduced relative to oxidized forms (Sz versus SzOx) further illustrate the restricted presence of oxidants at the oxic-anoxic interfaces. The high average oxygen numbers of S1Ox compounds and the exclusive presence of nitrogenous OSCs (SzNy and SzNyOx) found in the marine rock extracts document the high abundances of polyoxygenated compounds and proteinaceous moieties in marine organisms that can be sulfurized. In contrast, the lacustrine organisms contain abundant sulfurizable aliphatic moieties. The observed prominent enrichment of Sz and SzOx compounds containing 40, 35, 30, 25 carbon atoms are associated with the selective and efficient preservation of polyfunctionalized biomolecules via sulfurization, such as C40 carotenoids, C35 bacteriohopanepolyols, C30 unsaturated tetracyclic polyprenoid alcohols, or C25 or C30 highly branched isoprenoid (HBI) polyenes. The strong enrichment of sulfurized C35 bacteriohopanepolyols can be developed as an indicator of the low levels of oxygen exposure prior to sulfurization, which occur only in the Dynow and Schöneck formations. The prominent enrichment of sulfurized carotenoids is generally associated with high primary productivity. While the strongly enriched sulfurized HBI polyenes in the Upper Schöneck Formation is indicative for diatom blooms, the precursors of C30 pentacyclic polyprenoid organosulfur compounds are more abundant in fresh/brackish water algae.

The Shunt-LDO regulator has been integrated in the ATLAS and the CMS pixel detector RD53 front-end chip to implement the serial powering scheme which both experiments have chosen as the baseline option for the HL-LHC upgrade. The performance of the integrated regulators has been characterized and specific design challenges have been identified which are related to layout parasitics and shallow trench isolation (STI) stress effects. In addition the functionality of circuits which address crucial system level aspects like the protection against overvoltage/overload has been verified.