New book explores most significant neolithic tombs in Wales

Arts & Culture, Books

Neolithic Tombs of Wales
A long-awaited revised book will offer an up-to-date account of the Neolithic period in Wales through a detailed exploration of its chambered tombs and monuments.
Neolithic Tombs of Wales will be published on November 21 21 November and author Dr George Nash has a sold-out talk at the Hay Winter Festival on Saturday 30 November.
The most conspicuous legacy of the Neolithic period (c.4,000–2,000 bce) are the enigmatic tombs and monuments that mark the landscape, many characterised by their use of colossal stones – megaliths.
In Wales, more than 250 Neolithic burial-ritual sites endure, and this new revised edition explores 100 sites for which significant remains can be seen.
It also discusses the five types of chambered tomb known from the time of our early farming ancestors.

Archaeology
Author, Dr Nash is an Associate Professor at the University of Coimbra, Portugal, and an Honorary Researcher within the department of archaeology, classics and Egyptology, University of Liverpool.
He has directed excavations at many Neolithic burial-ritual monuments and is the author of numerous books on the Neolithic and prehistoric and contemporary rock art.

Burial
Dr Nash, said: ‘This book is about the ritual and symbolic act of burial of the dead by our Neolithic ancestors.
“The evidence in Wales and in other Neolithic core areas of Western Britain for this can be seen through a series of monuments that are generically referred to as ‘stone burial chambered tombs’.
“Despite their heritage value, it is clear that the original meaning of these monuments is often not fully understood.
“By revealing the way these tombs were constructed, and using modern archaeological techniques to explore how they were used, this book aims to conjure an evocative picture of their purpose during this distant time.”

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ASEAN business outages cost $2.5m per hour, higher than global average

Business News

Each hour of downtime costs firms at least $500,000.High-business-impact outages in ASEAN countries cost a median of $2.5m per hour, 32% higher than the global average of $1.9m per hour, a report by New Relic showed.The survey, which covered over 1,700 technology professionals from 16 countries, revealed that 80% of Singapore respondents saw improvements in Mean Time to Resolve (MTTR) after adopting observability, the highest rate amongst the countries surveyed.Engineering teams in ASEAN spend about 30% of their time addressing disruptions, which equates to 12 hours per week. The leading causes of unplanned outages over the last two years were network failures (35%), third-party or cloud provider issues (29%), and human error (28%).Outages remain frequent, with about a third of ASEAN companies experiencing them weekly. Around 87% of respondents estimated that each hour of downtime costs their firms at least $500,000, New Relic said.Despite the adoption of observability solutions to address these challenges, firms still face difficulties, particularly in tool consolidation.For example, 27% of ASEAN respondents rely on multiple monitoring tools, and 22% still use manual checks or tests. Only 18% detected outages using a single observability platform, although Singapore leads with 30% achieving this.Tool consolidation is gaining traction, especially in Indonesia, where 40% of respondents reported full-stack observability, the highest rate in the region. Additionally, 65% of Indonesian firms have deployed 10 or more observability capabilities, compared to just 20% in Singapore. Key challenges hindering full-stack observability in ASEAN include complex tech stacks (36%) and insufficient budgets (30%).The report identified several trends driving observability adoption, including the rise of artificial intelligence (38%), the integration of business applications, and the shift to multi-cloud environments (34%). Security monitoring (55%) and infrastructure monitoring (54%) are the most commonly deployed capabilities.Observability is delivering a strong return on investment (ROI) for many firms, with 80% of ASEAN respondents spending $1m or more on observability annually. Malaysia leads the region with a median ROI of 302%, followed by Thailand at 300%, and Singapore at 258%. In total, 87% of respondents reported their organisations derived at least $1m in value annually from their observability investments, with 42% citing reduced security risks and 37% noting improved system uptime and reliability.ASEAN respondents were more likely than their global counterparts to view observability as a key enabler for achieving core business goals, with 62% agreeing, compared to 50% globally, New Relic added.

German big business fears Trump victory, finds survey

Business News

FRANKFURT

A survey of German companies has found nearly one in two expect negative impacts if Donald Trump wins the U.S. presidential election over Kamala Harris, with just 5 percent expecting positive effects.
However around 51 percent of the companies surveyed said it would make no difference whether Trump or Harris wins the Nov. 5 vote, the survey by the Ifo institute said.
Trump has threatened tariffs on imports to the United States if he wins a second term in office. This spells danger for industry in Germany, for which the United States is now the top trade partner.
U.S.-German relations took a hit under Trump’s 2017-2021 presidency.
He berated it and other allies on trade issues and for what he said was insufficient spending on the NATO defence alliance.
“Companies with close economic ties to the USA in particular expect negative consequences if Trump wins the election,” said Ifo researcher Andreas Baur.
He added that “many companies without direct export ties to the USA also fear negative effects, because they could still be indirectly affected, for example as suppliers”.
Only four percent of the companies surveyed said they were considering concrete steps such as shifting production facilities to the United States if Trump wins, the survey found.
Ifo surveyed 2,000 German industrial companies in September.

victory, concerns,

How many times has the Bank of Canada slashed interest rates since June? Take our business and investing news quiz

Business News

Welcome to The Globe and Mail’s business and investing news quiz. Join us each week to test your knowledge of the stories making the headlines. Our business reporters come up with the questions, and you can show us what you know.This week: The Bank of Canada delivered an oversized interest-rate cut on Wednesday and said that its fight with inflation is almost over. As widely expected, the bank’s governing council lowered the benchmark policy rate by half a percentage-point, or 50 basis points, to 3.75 per cent. Also being cut this week? Some of Toronto-Dominion Bank’s ratings by Moody’s. The agency lowered the long-term ratings of the bank and its U.S. subsidiary, citing concerns over governance weaknesses and anti-money-laundering failures.

World Bank Meeting, Washington DC reveals looming labour crisis in developing countries 

Technology

By Osman Mubarik Abu 

The ongoing World Bank Group annual meeting in Washington DC, reveals that in the next decade, 1.2 billion young people will require employment, but only 400 million jobs will be available. 

The Co-Founder of the Tudu Center for Leadership and Development, Osman Mubarik Abu, made this revelation to media personnel at the ongoing 2024 World Bank Meeting in Washington DC.

He indicated that available facts from the World Bank predict this claim and further analysed that, per the data, developing countries would be the worst affected in this labour crisis.

He lamented that there is a current skills mismatch between what graduates are being trained in and what the job market is being sort after. 

He appealed to governments and other stakeholders in Africa and Ghana to be specific and immediately start rethinking and reviewing the current curriculum of education to at least mitigate the pending danger ahead of the crisis against the youth graduating from the institutions.

Mr. Osman, who is participating in the World Bank policy forum during the three-day meeting, featuring experts, held discussions on various issues, including transparency in domestic debts and oversight of public debt, the need to use Agro-food systems as an engine for sustainable growth, and job creation.

Key issue that captured a lot of attention was the transition of green technologies and how create more jobs and the future of work for women and men. 

The discussions also focused on sustainable development and the impact of investing in essential public services. 

The World Bank President Ajay Banga joined experts, including the former Prime Minister of Côte d’Ivoire Patrick Achi, to discuss how to create more dignified jobs for young people, particularly from developing countries. 

H.E. Patrick Achi, a former Prime Minister of Côte d’Ivoire, advised developing countries to immediately consider the low hanging fruit in dealing with the issue of education mismatch by “improving upon the quality of education delivery instead of just churing out graduates from the schools”.

More stories here

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Sliver of cool surface water 2mm deep helps oceans absorb CO2, say scientists

Science and Health

A sliver of cool surface water less than 2mm deep helps oceans absorb carbon dioxide, a British-led team of scientists has established after months of voyages across the Atlantic painstakingly measuring gas and temperature levels.The subtle difference in temperature between the “ocean skin” and the layer of water beneath it creates an interface that leads to more CO2 being taken in, the scientists observed.They used highly sensitive equipment to measure the water temperature and to spot and record tiny differences in the amount of CO2 in the air swirling towards the ocean surface and away again.The work is seen as important in the development of climate modelling because oceans absorbs about a quarter of human carbon emissions.Daniel Ford, a research fellow at the University of Exeter, said: “With the Cop29 climate change conference taking place next month, this work highlights the importance of the oceans, but it should also help us improve the global carbon assessments that are used to guide emission reductions.”Ford was onboard the research ship RRS Discovery, which sailed between Southampton and Punta Arenas in Chile. He said: “The cruise involved seven weeks of keeping all the different instrumentation working together to collect the wide array of measurements used in the study.“We went through very rough seas in the north Atlantic and near the Falklands, which was challenging, but we had respite when near the equator with mirror glass ocean.”The 2mm sliver of water is slightly colder because of the “cool skin effect”, which is caused by heat leaving the water as it is in direct contact with the atmosphere.The results, published in the Nature Geoscience journal, have been passed on to the Global Carbon Budget assessment, a worldwide consortium of scientists set up to establish a common understanding of the Earth’s carbon cycle.Prof Jamie Shutler, an ocean and atmospheric scientist at the University of Exeter, said the “ocean skin” was very slightly cooler than the layer of water beneath it. The absorbing of CO2 is controlled by the concentration difference in gases across these layers.Shutler said the effects were first suggested in the early 1990s. “But the key missing piece – the field evidence – eluded us,” he said.Gavin Tilstone, from Plymouth Marine Laboratory, said: “This discovery highlights the intricacy of the ocean’s water column structure and how it can influence CO2 drawdown. Understanding these subtle mechanisms is crucial as we continue to refine our climate models and predictions. It underscores the ocean’s vital role in regulating the planet’s carbon cycle and climate.”