Social networks, mobility, and exchange systems during the Neolithic and Bronze Age of the Swiss Plateau

Excavations of Neolithic (4000 – 3500 BC) and Late Bronze Age (1200 – 800 BC) wetland sites on the northern Alpine periphery have produced astonishing and detailed information about the life and human environment of prehistoric societies. It is even possible to reconstruct settlement histories and settlement dynamics, which suggest a high degree of mobility during the Neolithic. Archaeological finds—such as pottery—show local typological developments in addition to foreign influences. Furthermore, exogenous lithic forms indicate far reaching interaction. Many hundreds of bronze artefacts are recorded from the Late Bronze Age settlements, demonstrating that some wetland sites were centres of bronzework production. Exogenous forms of bronzework are relatively rare in the wetland settlements during the Late Bronze Age. However, the products produced in the lake-settlements can be found widely across central Europe, indicating their continued involvement in interregional exchange partnerships. Potential motivations and dynamics of the relationships between sites and other regions of Europe will be detailed using case studies focussing on the settlements Seedorf Lobsigensee (BE), Concise (VD), and Sutz-Lattrigen Hauptstation innen (BE), and an initial assessment of intra-site connectivity through Network Analysis of sites within the region of Lake Neuchâtel, Lake Biel, and Lake Murten.

Labour Market Prospects of Swiss Career Entrants after Completion of Vocational Education and Training

This study seeks to find the reasons for the rising risk of unemployment for people who have completed basic vocational education and training (VET) in Switzerland. We focus on the long-term structural shift on the demand side of the labour market and its consequences for new entrants? chances of employment in the labour force. A detailed analysis of the development of vacancies for such ?career entrants? in the time period 2001 to 2011 suggests that neither a growing occupational mismatch nor a general shift in the level of education to the disadvantage of workers with vocational education can be made responsible for the rising unemployment of labour market entrants. Instead, the available evidence indicates that a diminishing part of the vacancies suited for VET graduates remains open to entrants because of the increasing job requirements with regard to work experience and further education. Basic vocational education and training alone is increasingly less a guarantee for a smooth entry into the working world.

Catching-up: The educational mobility of migrants’ and natives’ children in Europe

Migrants into European countries are often less educated than European natives. We investigate whether migrants' children are able to catch up to their native counterparts in educational attainment, and analyze the drivers of differences in intergenerational educational upward mobility between natives' versus migrants' descendants. We find that migrants' children are more likely than natives' children to surpass their parents' educational attainment in the majority of countries studied. Their parents' low education is often the strongest determinant for their ability to move up in education class across generations.

Does upward social mobility increase life satisfaction? A longitudinal analysis using British and Swiss panel data

A main assumption of social production function theory is that status is a major determinant of subjective well-being (SWB). From the perspective of the dissociative hypothesis, however, upward social mobility may be linked to identity problems, distress, and reduced levels of SWB because upwardly mobile people lose their ties to their class of origin. In this paper, we examine whether or not one of these arguments holds. We employ the United Kingdom and Switzerland as case studies because both are linked to distinct notions regarding social inequality and upward mobility. Longitudinal multilevel analyses based on panel data (UK: BHPS, Switzerland: SHP) allow us to reconstruct individual trajectories of life satisfaction (as a cognitive component of SWB) along with events of intragenerational and intergenerational upward mobility—taking into account previous levels of life satisfaction, dynamic class membership, and well-studied determinants of SWB. Our results show some evidence for effects of social class and social mobility on well-being in the UK sample, while there are no such effects in the Swiss sample. The UK findings support the idea of dissociative effects in terms of a negative effect of intergenerational upward mobility on SWB.

Contact, Mobility and Authenticity: Language Ideologies in Koineisation and Creolisation - Poster for CSLS

How are new dialects and new languages represented and evaluated in public discourse?

Vertical mobility in the Swiss Alps. The alpine pass Schnidejoch and indications of early pastoralism.

Since 2003 a melting ice field on the Schnidejoch pass (2756 a.s.l) delivered several hundred objects from the Neolithic, the Bronze and Iron Age as well as from Roman and Early Medieval times. The oldest finds date to the beginning 5th millennium BC, the youngest ones date around 1000 AD. Most of the objects stem from the Neolithic and the Bronze Age and are of organic origin. A series of more than 70 radiocarbon dates confirms that the Schnidejoch pass, linking the Bernese Highlands with the River Rhone valley, was in use at least from 4800–4500 BC on. The accessibility of the pass was easy when the glaciers descending from the nearby Wildhorn mountain range (peak on 3248 a.s.l) were in a retreating phase. In contrary glacier advances closed the way to the pass. In 2010 a palaeoecological study of sediment cores researched nearby Lake Iffig (2065 m a.s.l.). The results show clear indications of early human impact in this alpine area. Linking archaeological finds from Schnidejoch pass and River Rhone valley with the palaeoecological data can be interpreted as early indications of alpine pastoralism and transhumance. The combined archaeological and paleoecolical research allows to explain vertical mobility in the Swiss Alps.

Mobility and Bandwidth Prediction as a Service in Virtualized LTE Systems

Recently telecommunication industry benefits from infrastructure sharing, one of the most fundamental enablers of cloud computing, leading to emergence of the Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) concept. The most momentous intents by this approach are the support of on-demand provisioning and elasticity of virtualized mobile network components, based on data traffic load. To realize it, during operation and management procedures, the virtualized services need be triggered in order to scale-up/down or scale-out/in an instance. In this paper we propose an architecture called MOBaaS (Mobility and Bandwidth Availability Prediction as a Service), comprising two algorithms in order to predict user(s) mobility and network link bandwidth availability, that can be implemented in cloud based mobile network structure and can be used as a support service by any other virtualized mobile network services. MOBaaS can provide prediction information in order to generate required triggers for on-demand deploying, provisioning, disposing of virtualized network components. This information can be used for self-adaptation procedures and optimal network function configuration during run-time operation, as well. Through the preliminary experiments with the prototype implementation on the OpenStack platform, we evaluated and confirmed the feasibility and the effectiveness of the prediction algorithms and the proposed architecture.

Diet and mobility of an Iron Age population in Switzerland; Stable carbon, nitrogen and sulphur isotope analysis of the human remains from Münsingen

The 220 abundantly equipped burials from the Late Iron Age cemetery of Münsingen (420 – 240 BC) marked a milestone for Iron Age research. The evident horizontal spread throughout the time of occupancy laid the foundation for the chronology system of the Late Iron Age. Today the skulls of 77 individuals and some postcranial bones are still preserved. The aim was to obtain information about nutrition, social stratification and migration of the individuals from Münsingen. Stable isotope ratios of carbon, nitrogen and sulphur were analysed. The results of 63 individuals show that all consumed C3 plants as staple food with significant differences between males and females in δ13C and δ15N values. The results indicate a gender restriction in access to animal protein. Stable isotope values of one male buried with weapons and meat as grave goods suggest a diet with more animal proteins than the other individuals. It is possible that he was privileged due to high status. Furthermore, the δ34S values indicate minor mobility. Assuming that the subadults represent the local signal of δ34S it is very likely that adults with enriched δ34S could have migrated to Münsingen at some point during their lives. This study presents stable isotope values of one of the most important Late Iron Age burial sites in Central Europe. The presented data provide new insight into diet, migration and social stratification of the population from Münsingen.

Understanding E-Bike Users' Behaviour, Motives, and Barriers to the Use - An Empirical Study with high Potential for Mobility Management

A representative study among e-bike owners and tenants in Switzerland (n = 1652) provides a deeper understanding of e-bike users characteristics, motives, values, usage behavior, and barriers to the use. In a micro simulation the implications of the findings for the energy demand and CO2 emissions are estimated.

The mobility of Nb in rutile-saturated NaCl- and NaF-bearing aqueous fluids from 1-6.5 GPa and 300-800 °C

Rutile (TiO2) is an important host phase for high field strength elements (HFSE) such as Nb in metamorphic and subduction zone environments. The observed depletion of Nb in arc rocks is often explained by the hypothesis that rutile sequesters HFSE in the subducted slab and overlying sediment, and is chemically inert with respect to aqueous fluids evolved during prograde metamorphism in the forearc to subarc environment. However, field observations of exhumed terranes, and experimental studies, indicate that HFSE may be soluble in complex aqueous fluids at high pressure (i.e., >0.5 GPa) and moderate to high temperature (i.e., >300 degrees C). In this study, we investigated experimentally the mobility of Nb in NaCl- and NaF-bearing aqueous fluids in equilibrium with Nb-bearing rutile at pressure-temperature conditions applicable to fluid evolution in arc environments. Niobium concentrations in aqueous fluid at rutile saturation were measured directly by using a hydrothermal diamond-anvil cell (HDAC) and synchrotron X-ray fluorescence (SXRF) at 2.1 to 6.5 GPa and 300-500 degrees C, and indirectly by performing mass loss experiments in a piston-cylinder (PC) apparatus at similar to 1 GPa and 700-800 degrees C. The concentration of Nb in a 10 wt% NaCl aqueous fluid increases from 6 to 11 mu g/g as temperature increases from 300 to 500 degrees C, over a pressure range from 2.1 to 2.8 GPa, consistent with a positive temperature dependence. The concentration of Nb in a 20 wt% NaCl aqueous fluid varies from 55 to 150 mu g/g at 300 to 500 degrees C, over a pressure range from 1.8 to 6.4 GPa; however, there is no discernible temperature or pressure dependence. The Nb concentration in a 4 wt% NaF-bearing aqueous fluid increases from 180 to 910 mu g/g as temperature increases from 300 to 500 degrees C over the pressure range 2.1 to 6.5 GPa. The data for the F-bearing fluid indicate that the Nb content of the fluid exhibits a dependence on temperature between 300 and 500 degrees C at >= 2 GPa, but there is no observed dependence on pressure. Together, the data demonstrate that the hydrothermal mobility of Nb is strongly controlled by the composition of the fluid, consistent with published data for Ti. At all experimental conditions, however, the concentration of Nb in the fluid is always lower than coexisting rutile, consistent with a role for rutile in moderating the Nb budget of arc rocks.

Periacetabular osteotomy through the pararectus approach: technical feasibility and control of fragment mobility by a validated surgical navigation system in a cadaver experiment

PURPOSE The pararectus approach has been validated for managing acetabular fractures. We hypothesised it might be an alternative approach for performing periacetabular osteotomy (PAO). METHODS Using four cadaver specimens, we randomly performed PAO through either the pararectus or a modified Smith-Petersen (SP) approach. We assessed technical feasibility and safety. Furthermore, we controlled fragment mobility using a surgical navigation system and compared mobility between approaches. The navigation system's accuracy was tested by cross-examination with validated preoperative planning software. RESULTS The pararectus approach is technically feasible, allowing for adequate exposure, safe osteotomies and excellent control of structures at risk. Fragment mobility is equal to that achieved through the SP approach. Validation of these measurements yielded a mean difference of less <1 mm without statistical significance. CONCLUSION Experimental data suggests the pararectus approach might be an alternative approach for performing PAO. Clinical validation is necessary to confirm these promising preliminary results.