Delta Memories

In this volume Constantin Iordachi and Kirstof Van Assche take an interdisciplinary look at the history, policy, and culture of the development and politics of the Danube Delta.

Memory is a constructed system of references, in equilibrium, of feeling and rationality. Comparing ancient and contemporary mechanisms for the preservation of memories and the building of a common cultural, political and social memory, this volume aims to reveal the nature of memory, and explores the attitudes of ancient societies towards the creation of a memory to be handed down in words, pictures, and mental constructs. Since the multiple natures of memory involve every human activity, physical and intellectual, this volume promotes analyses and considerations about memory by focusing on various different cultural activities and productions of ancient Near Eastern societies, from artistic and visual documents to epigraphic evidence, and by considering archaeological data. The chapters of this volume analyse the value and function of memory within the ancient Near Eastern and Egyptian societies, combining archaeological, textual and iconographical evidence following a progression from the analysis of the creation and preservation of both single and multiple memories, to the material culture (things and objects) that shed light on the impact of memory on individuals and community.

This book analyzes the influence of memory on social conflict as well as the role of ethnicity in state formation and governance in Nigeria. It examines the nexus between the Nigerian civil war and the conflict in the oil rich Niger Delta against the background of memory and ethnicization of the state.

Live Souls presents 250 of the photos that Alec Wainman took in the middle of the Spanish Civil War, along with his personal story of his time as a volunteer member of the British Medical Unit. Until the present only a small number of photos have appeared in a few histories, where they have been valued for their insight into the troubled period. After much research by Serge Alternes, the entire corpus of the photos was discovered - in excellent condition. Alternes has added a useful introduction, captions to the photos, a time line, as well as an overview of the international implications of the civil war from a contemporary perspective. Alec's photographs and story bring revolutionary history to life, offering a complement to what George Orwell described in Homage to Catalonia and what the volunteer medical teams achieved with Drs. Norman Bethune and Reginald Saxton. Alec's humanitarian ideal as an apolitical Quaker persuaded him to volunteer in August 1936 at the outbreak of the war to defend the ideals of liberty. His lens reflects his compassion for the citizens, volunteers and the civil war itself. The story and photographs keep the souls of the Spanish citizens and volunteers alive.

This unique combination craft and gift book celebrates girlfriend power--the special bond women share with their closest companions. Here are gifts friends can give to each other or make together to mark a birthday, anniversary, a baby's birth, a housewarming, to lift spirits or share quiet times. Intimate girl-talk anecdotes, inspiring quotes, and countless ideas for being a good friend are interspersed between designer-quality projects featuring decoupage, calligraphy, collage, beading, and more. Make a Feel Good Sugar Cookies treat, a Not Just for Hats Box, Very Relaxed Bath Salts, Quartz Necklace and Earring Set, a Kindred Spirits Scrapbook, gift wrap and cards, and share your love of crafting and good friends when you plan a Girls' Night In crafting party.

Cost models are an essential part of database systems, as they are the basis of query performance optimization. Based on predictions made by cost models, the fastest query execution plan can be chosen and executed or algorithms can be tuned and optimised. In-memory databases shifts the focus from disk to main memory accesses and CPU costs, compared to disk based systems where input and output costs dominate the overall costs and other processing costs are often neglected. However, modelling memory accesses is fundamentally different and common models do not apply anymore. This work presents a detailed parameter evaluation for the plan operators scan with equality selection, scan with range selection, positional lookup and insert in in-memory column stores. Based on this evaluation, a cost model based on cache misses for estimating the runtime of the considered plan operators using different data structures is developed. Considered are uncompressed columns, bit compressed and dictionary encoded columns with sorted and unsorted dictionaries. Furthermore, tree indices on the columns and dictionaries are discussed. Finally, partitioned columns consisting of one partition with a sorted and one with an unsorted dictionary are investigated. New values are inserted in the unsorted dictionary partition and moved periodically by a merge process to the sorted partition. An efficient attribute merge algorithm is described, supporting the update performance required to run enterprise applications on read-optimised databases. Further, a memory traffic based cost model for the merge process is provided.