Emergence of monopoly-Copper exchange networks during the Late Bronze Age in the western and central Balkans.

In this paper we present the first results of an interdisciplinary research project focused on Late Bronze Age metallurgy in the western and central Balkans. The comprehensive chemical and lead isotope analysis, and a strict consideration of archaeological criteria, has provided a deeper insight into supra regional metal exchange networks between the 14th and 9th century BC in this part of Europe. Particularly interesting and surprising are results regarding the provenance of raw materials for copper production, which have a chemical composition and lead isotope ratios that closely correspond to ore deposits in the southern Alps (North Italy). Based on the examination of 57 objects of different functions, chronology and distribution, it becomes apparent that copper from the southern Alps was almost an omnipresent raw material in the territories of the western and central Balkans with only a few finds from North Macedonia to indicate alternative sources. The analyses demonstrate that the reuse of fahlore-based copper is attested for the first time in the regions under study. The remarkable fact that other archaeological parameters do not indicate such an intensive connection between the Balkan area and Northern Italy raises a number of questions. The sustained and long-lasting networks of raw material procurement stand in contrast to the expected cultural interaction between metal producing and metal consuming prehistoric societies. The results of this work also highlight the currently underestimated role of the southern Alps as one of the main copper producing areas in Bronze Age Europe, and demonstrate for the first time that the region of western and central Balkans was one of the major recipients.

Compressed sensing for reduced hardware footprint in medical ultrasound.

In this work, a compressed sensing method to reduce hardware complexity of ultrasound imaging systems is proposed and experimentally verified. We provide clinical evaluation of the method with a possible high compression rates (up to 64 RF signals compressed into a single channel on receive) which uses elastic net estimation for decoding stage. This allows a reduction in size and power consumption of the front-end electronics with only a minor loss in image quality. We demonstrate an 8-fold receive channel count reduction with a 3.16 dB and 3.64 dB mean absolute error for gallbladder and kidney images, respectively, as well as 7.4% increase in the contrast-to-noise ratio for kidney images and 0.1% loss in the contrast-to noise ratio for gallbladder images, on average. The proposed method may enable a fully portable ultrasonic device with virtually no loss in image quality as compared to a full size clinical scanner to be constructed.

Jozef Stefan and the dissolution-diffusion phenomena--not only a historical note.

In a series of papers published from 1871 to 1889, Jozef (Josef) Stefan dealt with several diffusion processes, including also multicomponent systems. In his last paper on diffusion, which appeared in 1889, he studied the dissolution-diffusion process with a moving interface, and gave an analytical solution to this problem. However, Stefan's dissolution-diffusion analysis is not mentioned in literature, and its existence seems to be unknown in scientific community. The present paper summarizes the main Stefan ideas on dissolution of solids governed by diffusion of solute in the adjacent solvent phase thus making his results accessible to wider scientific circles.