We speculate about possible cosmic exploration by extraterrestrial civilizations using interstellar smart probes. We call attention to some emerging technologies that may be used for interstellar exploration. We estimate that advanced civilizations may already have these technologies and may be using them to contact their galactic neighbors. We explore some observational consequences of these c...

Department Website: http://nelc.uchicago.edu Program of Study Majors in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (NELC) at the University of Chicago pursue rigorous knowledge about a region of the world that is known as “the cradle of civilization” and the home of several important religious and cultural traditions, as well as one of the most important geopolitical areas of our contemporary wor...

− In 1499, weights and measures in Portugal were object of a general reform and copies of the national standards of the marco were distributed all over the country to the counties. In the same decade the Portuguese Discoveries were in its highest level and the maritime route to India and America discovery are the most well known achievements. But the Portuguese were also the first travelling in...

We discuss a figured pin from Shahdad, previously well known but published with a partial and unsatisfactory drawing.  More detailed observations and a new, more realistic recording of this important artifact reconsider its stylistic and iconographic links with the imagery of the Halil Rud civilization and the eastern Iranian Plateau in general, and, at its opposite cultural poles, with Mesopot...

Type clash and coercion in logical metonymy Logical metonymy (begin the book → begin writing the book) has traditionally been accounted for by means of type-shift: according to these theories (Pustejovsky 1995), the type clash between the event-selecting verb (begin) and the entity-denoting object (book) triggers a coercion mechanism that shifts the type of the object into an event (book → writ...