The development of runic writing (the early Germanic alphabetic script) and the practice of inscribing runes on stone are difficult to trace, particularly as rune-stone inscriptions are rarely found in original and/or datable contexts. The discovery of several inscribed sandstone fragments at the grave field at Svingerud, Norway, with associated radiocarbon dates of 50 BC–AD 275, now provide the earliest known context for a runestone. An unusual mixture of runes and other markings are revealed as the fragments are reconstructed into a single standing stone, suggesting multiple episodes of inscription and providing insight into early runic writing practices in Iron Age Scandinavia.

In Northwestern Mexico, the Miocene basins that disrupted the Sierra Madre Occidental Province are filled with sandstones and conglomerates (the Báucarit Formation) cemented mainly by zeolites of the heulandite-clinoptilolite group. Few volcanic tuffs are intercalated in the sediments for which four different groups of samples have been defined. These groups correspond to a gradation in the alteration of the glassy matrix. Group 1 is characterized by the preservation of the glassy matrix and the presence of disseminated patches of clay minerals with a continuous variation between aluminous Al-montmoril-lonite and ferric smectite end-members. Heulandite-group zeolites and opal C-T are also present. Group 2 is characterized by a nearly complete replacement of volcanic glass by a more homogeneous Al-montmorillonite. In some samples, heulandite-group zeolites are present as clusters on clay minerals. The primary vitroclastic texture is generally preserved and relict glass is present in small amounts. In group 3, the secondary assemblage is dominated by heulandite-group zeolite crystals as pseudomorphs of shards and pumiceous fragments. Discrete illite is present in all samples. Textures are exceptionally well-preserved. Group 4 is characterized by the presence of heulandite and clay minerals in which the Mg-Fe smectite end-member is more magnesian than in other groups. The original texture is not preserved.

The following are deduced from the mass-balance calculations: the alteration of the tuffs leads to a strong Mg- and Ca- and, to a lesser degree, Fe-enrichment, and to Na and K depletion. Zeolites account for Ca-enrichment and clay minerals are host for Fe and Mg. As a consequence, alteration may have occurred under open system conditions and the most likely source for the high Ca and Mg gains is a fluid circulating through the underlying volcaniclastic sediments and underlying mid-Tertiary volcanics of the bimodal (basaltic-rhyolitic) sequence. However, those fluids may have been rather dilute and weakly alkaline.

As estimated temperatures are between 85 and 125°C and as there is only a low burial, it is proposed that hot fluids are responsible for the alteration of volcanic glass. A decrease with time in the initial permeability of the tuffs is consistent with the observed evolution of the changing Al-smectite toward a more magnesian composition.

Mathematical models of polyelectrolyte gels are often simplified by assuming the gel is electrically neutral. The rationale behind this assumption is that the thickness of the electric double layer (EDL) at the free surface of the gel is small compared to the size of the gel. Hence, the thin-EDL limit is taken, in which the thickness of the EDL is set to zero. Despite the widespread use of the thin-EDL limit, the solutions in the EDL are rarely computed and shown to match to the solutions for the electrically neutral bulk. The aims of this paper are to study the structure of the EDL and establish the validity of the thin-EDL limit. The model for the gel accounts for phase separation, which gives rise to diffuse interfaces with a thickness described by the Kuhn length. We show that the solutions in the EDL can only be asymptotically matched to the solutions for an electrically neutral bulk, in general, when the Debye length is much smaller than the Kuhn length. If the Debye length is similar to or larger than the Kuhn length, then phase separation can be initiated in the EDL. This phase separation spreads into the bulk of the gel and gives rise to electrically charged layers with different degrees of swelling. Thus, the thin-EDL limit and the assumption of electroneutrality only generally apply when the Debye length is much smaller than the Kuhn length.

The well-known energy dissipation anomaly in the inviscid limit, related to velocity singularities according to Onsager, still needs to be demonstrated by numerical experiments. The present work contributes to this topic through high-resolution numerical simulations of the inviscid three-dimensional Taylor–Green vortex problem using a novel high-order discontinuous Galerkin discretisation approach for the incompressible Euler equations. The main methodological ingredient is the use of a discretisation scheme with inbuilt dissipation mechanisms, as opposed to discretely energy-conserving schemes, which – by construction – rule out the occurrence of anomalous dissipation. We investigate effective spatial resolution up to $8192^3$ (defined based on the $2{\rm \pi}$-periodic box) and make the interesting phenomenological observation that the kinetic energy evolution does not tend towards exact energy conservation for increasing spatial resolution of the numerical scheme, but that the sequence of discrete solutions seemingly converges to a solution with non-zero kinetic energy dissipation rate. Taking the fine-resolution simulation as a reference, we measure grid-convergence with a relative $L^2$-error of $0.27\,\%$ for the temporal evolution of the kinetic energy and $3.52\,\%$ for the kinetic energy dissipation rate against the dissipative fine-resolution simulation. The present work raises the question of whether such results can be seen as a numerical confirmation of the famous energy dissipation anomaly. Due to the relation between anomalous energy dissipation and the occurrence of singularities for the incompressible Euler equations according to Onsager's conjecture, we elaborate on an indirect approach for the identification of finite-time singularities that relies on energy arguments.

Identification of societal activities associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection may provide an evidence base for implementing preventive measures. Here, we investigated potential determinants for infection in Denmark in a situation where society was only partially open. We conducted a national matched case-control study. Cases were recent RT-PCR test-positives, while controls, individually matched on age, sex and residence, had not previously tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. Questions concerned person contact and community exposures. Telephone interviews were performed over a 7-day period in December 2020. We included 300 cases and 317 controls and determined odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) by conditional logistical regression with adjustment for household size and country of origin. Contact (OR 4.9, 95% CI 2.4–10) and close contact (OR 13, 95% CI 6.7–25) with a person with a known SARS-CoV-2 infection were main determinants. Contact most often took place in the household or work place. Community determinants included events with singing (OR 2.1, 95% CI 1.1–4.1), attending fitness centres (OR 1.8, 95% CI 1.1–2.8) and consumption of alcohol in a bar (OR 10, 95% CI 1.5–65). Other community exposures appeared not to be associated with infection, these included shopping at supermarkets, travel by public transport, dining at restaurants and private social events with few participants. Overall, the restrictions in place at the time of the study appeared to be sufficient to reduce transmission of disease in the public space, which instead largely took place following direct exposures to people with known SARS-CoV-2 infections.

Gravitational waves from coalescing neutron stars encode information about nuclear matter at extreme densities, inaccessible by laboratory experiments. The late inspiral is influenced by the presence of tides, which depend on the neutron star equation of state. Neutron star mergers are expected to often produce rapidly rotating remnant neutron stars that emit gravitational waves. These will provide clues to the extremely hot post-merger environment. This signature of nuclear matter in gravitational waves contains most information in the 2–4 kHz frequency band, which is outside of the most sensitive band of current detectors. We present the design concept and science case for a Neutron Star Extreme Matter Observatory (NEMO): a gravitational-wave interferometer optimised to study nuclear physics with merging neutron stars. The concept uses high-circulating laser power, quantum squeezing, and a detector topology specifically designed to achieve the high-frequency sensitivity necessary to probe nuclear matter using gravitational waves. Above 1 kHz, the proposed strain sensitivity is comparable to full third-generation detectors at a fraction of the cost. Such sensitivity changes expected event rates for detection of post-merger remnants from approximately one per few decades with two A+ detectors to a few per year and potentially allow for the first gravitational-wave observations of supernovae, isolated neutron stars, and other exotica.

By examining how a Dutch firm in Lisbon operated two Portuguese tobacco tax farms from 1722 to 1727 and failed subsequently, this article brings together, on the one hand, research on the relationship between state and business groups through a monopolistic rent provided by the empire and, on the other hand, a growing literature discussing institutional and economic variables, as well as human agency, in business failure in early modern Europe. The article aims to achieve two goals. The first is to shed light on the perspective of the Dutch tax farmers, highlighting why they chose to incur the risks of managing a nationwide sales monopoly and the business model they implemented to maximize profits and mitigate risks, while the second is to examine the general and specific reasons behind their ultimate downfall. It concludes that, despite the organizational innovations they introduced and that led them to exploit interconnected businesses, the Dutch partners were unable to overcome the negative effects of conjunctural and contingent factors that temporarily squeezed the domestic consumption of tobacco.

While this special issue raises a significant number of questions, constraints have dictated that only some of these questions are actually answered. The pioneering work presented consequently remains a modest attempt to initiate a more general discussion about the causes and the social and economic consequences of business failure in the early modern period, particularly with regard to colonial enterprises.

A new two-phase model for concentrated suspensions is derived that incorporates a constitutive law combining the rheology for non-Brownian suspension and granular flow. The resulting model exhibits a yield-stress behaviour for the solid phase depending on the collision pressure. This property is investigated for the simple geometry of plane Poiseuille flow, where an unyielded or jammed zone of finite width arises in the centre of the channel. For the steady states of this problem, the governing equations are reduced to a boundary value problem for a system of ordinary differential equations and the conditions for existence of solutions with jammed regions are investigated using phase-space methods. For the general time-dependent case a new drift-flux model is derived using matched asymptotic expansions that takes into account the boundary layers at the walls and the interface between the yielded and unyielded region. The drift-flux model is used to numerically study the dynamic behaviour of the suspension flow, including the appearance and evolution of an unyielded or jammed regions.

In some strains of current philosophy, there is a growing interest in the passive and receptive aspects of the human condition. This interest is often paired with a criticism that ‘Western’ philosophy unduly neglects those aspects because of an ‘agential bias.’ This criticism has also been directed against the philosophy of Charles Taylor. I try to show that this criticism has some force in principle but is not plausible in the case of Taylor. First, I analyse John Rawls’ hugely influential concept of a life plan and show how this ‘agential bias’ applies here. Second, I argue that such a bias does not apply to Taylor’s The Language Animal by showing how active and passive moments are interwoven in his concepts of articulation and narration.

In this study, we present a phase-field model that describes the process of intercalation of Li ions into a layer of an amorphous solid such as amorphous silicon (a-Si). The governing equations couple a viscous Cahn–Hilliard-Reaction model with elasticity in the framework of the Cahn–Larché system. We discuss the parameter settings and flux conditions at the free boundary that lead to the formation of phase boundaries having a sharp gradient in lithium ion concentration between the initial state of the solid layer and the intercalated region. We carry out a matched asymptotic analysis to derive the corresponding sharp-interface model that also takes into account the dynamics of triple points where the sharp interface intersects the free boundary of the Si layer. We numerically compare the interface motion predicted by the sharp-interface model with the long-time dynamics of the phase-field model.