Extreme rituals (body-piercing, fire-walking, etc.) are anecdotally associated with altered states of consciousness-subjective alterations of ordinary mental functioning (Ward, 1984)-but empirical evidence of altered states using both direct and indirect measures during extreme rituals in naturalistic settings is limited. Participants in the "Dance of Souls", a 3.5-hour event during which parti...

We introduce an automated parametric CAD system for the design of pierced medieval jewellery, where the design of a piece of jewellery is expressed by a collection of parameters and constraints and the user’s participation in the design process is through the definition of parameter values. We present an approach to designing traditional pierced jewellery using a voxel-oriented feature-based Co...

In this paper, we introduce ByzantineCAD, a parametric CAD system for the design of pierced medieval jewellery, which is jewellery created by piercing, a traditional Byzantine technique. ByzantineCAD is an automated parametric system where the design of a piece of jewellery is expressed by a collection of parameters and constraints and the user’s participation in the design process is through t...

GaAs microdisk lasers with holes pierced through the disk surface are investigated for their threshold characteristics. Disks are fabricated with either a single hole or two diametrically opposite holes at various distances from the disk outer edge. Even though the disk area is reduced by only 1%, we find that the lasing threshold for a disk with one hole is reduced by up to 50% compared to a d...

A family of sets in the plane is simple if the intersection of its any subfamily is arc-connected, and it is pierced by a line L if the intersection of its any member with L is a nonempty segment. It is proved that the intersection graphs of simple families of compact arc-connected sets in the plane pierced by a common line have chromatic number bounded by a function of their clique number.

The existence of piercings dates through history, with reports of Roman centurions wearing nipple rings in their breast plates as a sign of loyalty to their Emperor. In addition the Mayans pierced their tongues as part of spiritual rituals, while Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, is rumoured to have had his penis pierced. In recent times the prevalence of piercin...