CAUSES OF ARAL SEA LEVEL VARIATIONS IN THE PAST

The history of variations of the level of the Aral Sea from the most ancient times is reviewed and much useful information presented on natural regimes of the Aral's tributary rivers, the Amudar'ya and Syrdar'ya; the natural high- and low-water cycles of the Aral; and historical episodes where natural or human events diverted the Amudar'ya's flow westward into Lake Sarykamysh, which served as a kind of “alternative Aral” during these situations. Thus, the present decline of the Aral and growth of Sarykamysh can be viewed as just one cycle (albeit man-modified) of an Amudar'ya-Aral-Sarykamysh drainage system. Translated by Edward Torrey, Alexandria, VA 22308 from: Izvestiya Akademii Nauk SSSR, seriya geograficheskaya, 1990, No. 1, pp. 78-86.     

SALINIZATION IN UZBEKISTAN

As the amount of agricultural lands has increased over the years in Uzbekistan, problems associated with the impacts of irrigation water use have occurred. The most serious and widespread of the effects may be the secondary salinization of soils. Serious salinization problems along the lower courses of the Syr Dar'ya and Amu Dar'ya basins are a contrast to milder problems along their upper courses. This paper illustrates the extent of the soil salinization problem in Uzbekistan, identifies key problem areas, and demonstrates the need for an adequate response.     

Women In The City: Feminist Analyses of Urban Geography

Four different sites of gendered social practice are identified as major concerns of socialist feminist urban geography: the home or domestic sphere; the paid workplace; the city's built environment; and localities. Literature about each is described and reviewed Theoretical implications of the feminist reading of urban geography are then considered in particular the feminist criticisms of traditional models of urban spatial structure, and challenges to existing forms of feminist geography from debates in social theory.     

RISK AND INCOME TRADEOFFS IN REGIONAL POLICY: A PORTFOLIO THEORETIC APPROACH*

ABSTRACT. Policy makers often try to raise a region's income by altering its industrial mix. However, such attempts to increase local income may have an adverse effect on the stability of the region's economy. In this paper, we develop single-, aggregate-, and multiregional portfolio models that can be used by policy makers to generate frontiers of risk/income-efficient industrial mixtures for a regional economy. These portfolio models are modified for application to the tourist industry in six regions of Spain. In practice, we find that the introduction of bounds on the magnitude of sector rebalancing has a major effect on the model solutions.     

Long-term decline of regions and the rise of populism: The case of Germany

What characterizes regions where right-wing populist parties are relatively successful? A prominent hypothesis proposed in the emerging “geography of discontent” literature claims that places that are “left behind” constitute a breeding ground for the rise of populism. We re-examine this hypothesis by analyzing the rise of populism in Germany. Our results suggest that high vote shares of populist parties are associated with the long-term decline of a region's relative welfare, which goes beyond a lifespan of people inhabiting such “left behind” places. Moreover, we are able to show that a place-based collective memory about past prosperity plays a crucial role in shaping present resentment. Finally, we find the education level of the regional population to be an important channel through which the collective memory about the past translates into populism support today.     

Middle atmosphere electrical structure during MAC/EPSILON

Extensive use of rocket-launched probes during the MAC/EPSILON campaign at the Andøya Rocket Range, Norway, has enabled the characterization of the region's electrical environment for all four flight series. The first rocket salvo was conducted during daylight (15 October 1987) and the subsequent three occurred at night (21 and 28 October and 12 November 1987), all of them during geomagnetically disturbed conditions. Measurements of polar electrical conductivity, ion mobility and number density are presented, and their associated structure is investigated for local auroral ionization effects. This is believed to be the first time that Gerdien condenser mobility measurements have indicated a heavy-ion presence (positively charged aerosols) in the auroral mesopause region.     

Simulating Sources of Uncertainty in Policy Forecasting with a Large-Scale Regional Econometric Model

Long-term forecasts may be helpful in establishing the general framework for a region's policy agenda, and a well-structured economic model offers an opportunity to identify major policy instruments affecting a region's long-term growth. Nevertheless, the uncertainty of long-term forecasts should serve to caution policymakers in interpreting and acting upon such information. To offer perspective on this aspect of forecasts, simulations of the Pittsburgh economy are performed to the year 1995 using a large-scale regional econometric model. The forecasts are based on alternative assumptions concerning the performance of the national economy and the objective conditions characterizing key industries in the region. In this way, the model is used to identify and quantify several major sources of uncertainty in long-term regional forecasts.     

Knowledge Networks as a Regional Development Resource: A Network Analysis of the Interlinks between Scientific Institutions and Regional Firms in the Metropolitan region of Hanover,Germany

The debate on regional innovation potentials has concentrated in recent times upon the topic of regional knowledge networking. This article presents the findings of the first phase of a detailed network analysis of the cooperation relations between scientific institutions and firms in the “metropolitan region Hanover-Brunswick-Göttingen”. The research concentrated on the regional and supra-regional cooperation relations of approximately 500 science establishments of the region, including their interlinks with private sector firms. This analysis of a polycentric metropolitan region's knowledge networks in different fields of competence produced detailed information on the density of knowledge interlinking within the region, on the degree of connectivity between the region's scientific institutions and private sector firms, and on central network nodes within the regional innovation networks. The case study exemplifies the methodical approach of a regional network analysis and emphasizes the role of knowledge networks as a development resource which is of particular relevance to the region's innovation capacities.     

International relations and the Himalaya: connecting ecologies,cultures and geopolitics

ABSTRACT

This article examines international relations (IR)'s approach to the Himalaya. We argue that the possibility of violent conflict over contested international borders is not the region's primary international challenge. Rather, slow violence inflicted by state-building and militarisation, intimately connected to geopolitical tensions, threaten the region's ecologies, cultures and languages. The Himalaya is home to three biodiversity hotspots and a mosaic of ethnic groups, many of whom speak threatened languages. Its ice-deposits feed most of Asia's large rivers. In recent years, India and China have pursued large-scale infrastructure development in the region, enabling greater militarisation and extraction, and a tourist rush. These threats are amplified by climate change, which is occurring in the Himalaya at twice global averages, contributing to landslides, flooding, and droughts. However, the region's complexity is not matched by IR's theorisations, which overwhelmingly focus on the possibility of violent conflict between state actors. We argue that IR's analysis of the region must go beyond a states-and-security, Delhi-Beijing-Islamabad centred approach, to look at the numerous interconnections between its geopolitics, cultures and ecologies. We suggest this can be accomplished through incorporating more interdisciplinary analysis, and through focusing on the interaction between the organisation of political authority and the region's environment.     

Aleppo in Asia: Mercantile networks between Syria,China and post-Soviet Eurasia since 1970

ABSTRACT

Indian Ocean and Mediterranean studies have highlighted the limitations imposed on our understanding of the dynamics of West Asia by the paradigm of area studies and the category of the ‘Middle East’. But less attention has been paid to how expansive perspectives that do not invoke an explicitly maritime geography might enrich our understanding of the region's formative connections. This article seeks to locate the modern city of Aleppo in a trans-regional Asian geography by tracing the shifting history of mercantile networks that connected Aleppo to other parts of Eurasia – notably, parts of the formerly Soviet world and the city of Yiwu in Southeast China. It highlights the importance of trans-regional flows of Soviet patronage, and then Chinese state subsidies and credit, in embedding Aleppo into these expansive circuits. It also argues that these flows have fostered the emergence of a hitherto-unstudied business class in Syria.     

ABSORPTIVE CAPACITY,KNOWLEDGE FLOWS,AND INNOVATION IN U.S. METROPOLITAN AREAS

High growth and progressive regions possess a culture that promotes innovation. Innovation depends on a region's ability to use its own existing knowledge and knowledge generated elsewhere. This paper demonstrates the importance of the ability to absorb external knowledge in explaining innovation productivity for 106 U.S. metropolitan areas. Using a spatial interaction model of patent citation flows with origin and destination dependence, the destination fixed‐effects coefficients provides a measure of a region's absorptive capacity. We identify local conditions that shape a region's absorptive capacity and demonstrate it has a positive and significant impact on innovation productivity.     

Some Aspects of the Development and Location of Industry in the Central Asian Economic Region

Despite rapid industrialization since World War II, Central Asia is still far from exhausting its potential for industrial development based on abundant mineral resources, fuels and energy, and on the most favorable manpower supply of any of the Eastern regions of the USSR. The only limiting factor in economic development is water. In light of the region's resource situation, future development should focus on a diversified industrial expansion involving activities with limited water and metal needs (in the absence of a major regional iron and steel plant) or medium or high energy and labor requirements. This would include nonferrous metals, chemicals (except for those posing a water pollution problem) and expansion of the region's cotton-based production complex, ranging from irrigated cotton culture to finished fabrics.     

LOCATIONAL FACTORS IN THE DECLINING INDUSTRIAL COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE OF THE NEW YORK URBAN REGION*

This paper investigates the locational factors that contributed to the decline of the New York urban region's industries during 1972-1975. Based on the static concept of a specialization index, a dynamic comparative advantage index is constructed. A model is then formulated to test the hypothesis that regional competitive advantage (vis-à-vis the nation) is a function of relative disparities in the change of these locational factors. Regression results show that the region's competitive advantage is influenced positively by the differential rate of change in market size, by the differential profit rate before tax, and negatively by the differential rate of change in unit labor cost and in unit energy cost. The differential tax rate does not seem to affect the region's competitive advantage. Nevertheless, a progressive corporate income tax structure tends to neutralize the beneficial effects of the economies of agglomeration and the urban attraction of the region.     

Professor Penck's Bluff: Geography,Espionage and Hysteria in World War I

This article considers the image of geography during World War I through a discussion of newspaper controversies about the pre‐war activities of German and British geographers. Early in the war, Sven Hedin and Albrecht Penck, renowned geographers whose achievements had been widely celebrated by the British geographical establishment, were named in the media as enemy spies whose supposedly disinterested scientific inquiries in Britain and the Empire had masked their real intention to pass sensitive information to the German High Command. British geography stood accused of collusion with enemy ‘super spies’. This article examines how Britain's geographical community, represented by the Royal Geographical Society, sought to defend the discipline's patriotic virtue and head off a full‐scale media witch‐hunt. In so doing, the article comments on the media's role in shaping the image of geography and on geography's place in public debates about the sanctity of the national space.     

Is strategic geography relevant to Australia's current defence policy?

Unless you are a major power, a nation's geography is one of the most important factors driving military posture and force structure. But the idea that Australia's strategic geography primarily determines the size and shape of its defence force is being discarded in favour of expeditionary forces designed to operate in a subordinate role to allies in distant theatres. As a result the nexus between strategic geography and force structure is now broken. Purchases of expensive military equipment are being made without any clear articulation of strategic necessity. This article argues the case for force structure planning based on the abiding nature of Australia's regional strategic geography, while providing an improved (albeit still limited) expeditionary ability to support our US ally. The consistent application of strategic geography should be an iron discipline for a country with Australia's modest sized defence force and limited resources.     

A short history of Mulabbis (Petah Tikva,Israel)

The following article summarizes our current knowledge of the history of Tell Mulabbis (in modern Petah Tikva). As a key archaeological site in the Yarkon River basin, it was inhabited during the Roman, Byzantine, Early Islamic, Crusader, Mamluk and Late Ottoman periods. Based on the published results of recent excavations, older scholarship, and hereto-unnoticed written evidence, the article examines and interprets Mulabbis's material culture within the broader contexts of the region's historical geography. Although possessing important advantages like access to water and arable land, the site was inhabited only intermittently due to malaria and changing economic and political circumstances. Within the framework of Ottoman Archaeology, the article suggests the need to pay closer attention to ‘recent’ archaeological layers. For example, the few Ottoman material remains published so far, testify to continued cultural exchange and economic ties between Mulabbis, the mountainous interior, and the southern parts of Palestine.     

New Perspectives for Modernization in Central America

ABSTRACT Ostensibly, the Central American Left has been defeated both politically, in the Nicaraguan elections, and economically, with the triumph of orthodox economic adjustment policy. In reality, the end of the Cold War promises to alter the economic and political climate in a way that will encourage the region's long-delayed modernization. Although the political arena remains turbulent, moderate forces are emerging which Washington will find easier to support. Equally promising is the region's favourable record of economic adjustment in the second half of the 1980s. A more favourable world climate for world trade in the 1990s would ease the region's foreign exchange constraint and enable a further round of industrialization to take place, while further eroding the economic basis of ‘oligarchic despotism’.     

After central planning: The restructuring of state industry in Bulgaria's Bourgas region

Industrial regions in eastern Europe developed under central planning are now confronting the pressures associated with political and economic transition to market‐focused systems. Using the case of the Bourgas region, on Bulgaria's Black Sea coast, the article examines how state industries are faring in these new conditions, analyzing developments in production, employment, ownership, management, market‐orientation and other factors. Massive financial and human resources were poured into the region's industrial development during more than four decades of state socialism, building a modem industrial infrastructure, but one heavily characterized by the particular features and constraints of central planning which emphasized quantity over quality and large‐scale, integrated plants. As central control collapses, the region's state‐owned firms are in crisis. Production is down, unemployment has risen, and except for a handful of plants restituted to former owners, privatization is moving slowly. The region's industries have been battered by highly unfavorable outside forces, yet have been mostly unable to marshal the necessary management, financial, or technical resources to implement coherently any indigenous strategic initiatives to address the changed institutional environment and new supply and demand conditions.