Experimental investigations into edge performance and its implications for stone artefact reduction modelling

This paper details an experimental investigation into stone artefact performance and use, and examines the implications for maintenance and rejuvenation activities. Controlled experiments testing the performance of differently shaped working edges reveal that rates of use attrition are not constant; they are dependent upon the blank morphology's suitability to particular tasks. The evidence contributes to a broader understanding of the principles of reduction analyses by showing that morphological differences in blanks are accompanied by differences in the artefacts’ functional capacity. These differences in turn affect the rate at which maintenance and rejuvenation activities will be required and therefore the extent of reduction exhibited at discard.     

青海省工业循环经济评价指标体系的建立和评价方法选择

文章围绕工业循环经济评价指标体系设计的原则,分别构建了青海省工业循环经济评价的理论指标体系和操作指标体系,提出了具体的评价方法,并据此对青海省工业循环经济总体发展状况进行了评价。     

Towards a history of the geometric foundations of mathematics

Many XIX^th century «geometers»—such as Bernhard Riemann, Hermann von Helmholtz, Felix Klein, Riccardo De Paolis, Mario Pieri, Henri Poincaré, Federigo Enriques, and others—played an important role in the discussion about the foundations of mathematics. But in contrast to Euclid's ideas, they did not simply identify “physical space» with the «space of the senses». On the basis of our experience in space, they intended to determine the main properties of space and put them at the very foundation of geometry. The axioms of geometry were hence based on active knowledge of space and were not aa priori, as in the case according to kantian philosophy. Moreover, in the last decade of the century some Italian mathematicians—De Paolis, Gino Fano, Pieri, and others—founded the concept of number itself on geometry, by using results of projective geometry. Arithmetic, was then founded on geometry and not reversely, as David Hilbert tried—without success—to do some years later.     

Plumulites and the machaeridian problem

Plumulites richorum sp. nov. is represented by two complete sclerite assemblages from Early Devonian strata of the Humevale Formation in a small quarry northeast of Kinglake West, Victoria. The completeness of these sclerite assemblages necessitates a revision of terminology applied to machaeridians. Moreover, the sclerite assemblages make it necessary to erect a new Family Plumulitidae and allow several deductions about the animal itself, namely: 1, there was a discrete head possibly with soft anterior projections; 2, there was considerable modification of sclerites and their arrangement near the head, indicating possible sexual dimorphism; 3, sclerites were almost certainly not rigidly attached to the soft parts of the animal. The material shows that Plumulites was neither an arthropod nor an echinoderm, but rather a vagile benthic animal probably belonging to the Annelida.     

The role of thermochemical sulfate reduction in the origin of Mississippi Valley‐type deposits. I. Experimental results

The kinetics of thermochemical sulfate reduction (TSR) were studied in experiments at 205–250°C, with determination of both sulfate and sulfide at intervals during the runs of up to 430 h. Analysis of the data indicates the reaction to have first‐order kinetics, and extrapolating these data, plus data from the literature, to 150°C gives a range of possible rate constants from 10⁰ to 10^?4 year^?1. Although the rate law has not been well established, a reasonable estimate allows calculation of the amount of sulfide ore formed as a function of flow conditions and time. It is here concluded that TSR could happen during the formation of Mississippi Valley‐type ore deposits, subject to several caveats.     

Experimental study of aqueous fluid infiltration into quartzite: implications for the kinetics of fluid redistribution and grain growth driven by interfacial energy reduction

To investigate the kinetics of interfacial energy‐driven fluid infiltration, experiments were carried out in a quartzite–water system at 621–925°C and 0.8 GPa. Infiltration couples were made by juxtaposing presynthesized dry quartzite cylinders and fluid reservoirs. The infiltration process was confirmed by the presence of pores at the quartzite grain edges. As predicted from theoretical considerations and previous experiments, wetting fluids such as pure water and NaCl aqueous solution infiltrated into quartzite, whereas nonwetting CO₂‐rich fluids did not. Newly precipitated quartz layers at the surfaces of the infiltrated sample proved that infiltration took place by a dissolution–precipitation mechanism. The enhancement of grain growth by fluid infiltration was observed over the entire range of experimental temperatures. The fluid fraction, gauged by the porosity of the run products, increases at the infiltration front and then decreases towards the fluid reservoir to form a high‐porosity zone with a maximum porosity of 2.3–2.9%. As infiltration proceeds, the high‐porosity zone advances like a travelling wave. This porosity wave is probably caused by a grain curvature gradient resulting from preferential grain growth in the infiltrated part of the quartzite, perhaps combined with other factors. The infiltration kinetics were modelled with a steady‐state diffusion model over the high‐porosity zone. The solubility difference between dissolving and precipitating grains was deduced to be 2 × 10^?2?3 × 10^?1 wt %. The experimentally obtained infiltration rate of aqueous fluid in the steady‐state diffusion regime (2 ± 0.5 × 10^?8 m sec^?1 at 823°C) is much faster than the estimated metamorphic fluid flux rates, so that interfacial energy‐driven fluid redistribution in quartz‐rich layers could significantly contribute to the fluid flux in high‐grade metamorphism, at least over a short distance. Cathodoluminescence observations of the run products revealed that the grain growth of quartzite in the presence of fluid proceeds extensively, which would promote the chemical equilibration between fluid and rock more effectively than would volume diffusion in quartz crystals.     

Euratom and the IAEA: the problem of self-inspection

The IAEA was saddled with one burden at its inception, a burden that dogged it for many years afterwards. It was that Euratom, which had formally come into being in 1958, was authorised to implement its own safeguards, i.e. it was accorded the right of ‘self-inspection’. The first US director of the IAEA, Sterling Cole, fought a bitter battle to have this overturned, insisting that it undermined the core mission of the Agency and that it set an impossible precedent, and would trigger demands for a ‘Latinatom’ etc. This paper describes the circumstances that led the State Department to grant Euratom this privilege (a policy choice that is indicative of the deep investment that both J.F. Dulles and Eisenhower made in supranationality) and discusses the steps that Cole took to overturn it, to no avail.     

Asia's century and the problem of Japan's centrality

Japan has long been regarded as a central component of America's grand strategy in Asia. Scholars and practitioners assume this situation will persist in the face of China's rise and, indeed, that a more ‘normal’ Japan can and should take on an increasingly central role in US‐led strategies to manage this power transition. This article challenges those assumptions by arguing that they are, paradoxically, being made at a time when Japan's economic and strategic weight in Asian security is gradually diminishing. The article documents Japan's economic and demographic challenges and their strategic ramifications. It considers what role Japan might play in an evolving security order where China and the US emerge as Asia's two dominant powers by a significant margin. Whether the US–China relationship is ultimately one of strategic competition or accommodation, it is argued that Japan's continued centrality in America's Asian grand strategy threatens to become increasingly problematic. It is posited that the best hope for circumventing this problem and its potentially destabilizing consequences lies in the nurturing of a nascent ‘shadow condominium’ comprising the US and China, with Japan as a ‘marginal weight’ on the US side of that arrangement.     

Troublemakers: Laura Poitras and the problem of dissent

This review article considers three works by the distinguished documentary film‐maker Laura Poitras: My country, my country (2006); The oath (2010); and the recently released Citizenfour (2014), focusing on the whistle‐blower Edward Snowden. Poitras describes these works as a trilogy about American power after 9/11, but they are also about disobedience and resistance, or the problem of dissent. The article argues for the significance (and the virtue) of Poitras's project, as film maker and troublemaker, and for the necessity of what Solzhenitsyn calls civil valour.     

Japan's FTA politics and the problem of agricultural trade liberalisation

Japan's willingness to negotiate Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) is not matched by a readiness to liberalise agricultural trade. Japan has used a variety of mechanisms to limit the extent of agricultural concessions in FTAs. Public choice theory predicts that FTAs are a more effective instrument for opening Japan's agricultural market than the WTO because they reshape the domestic politics of Japanese trade in ways that are conducive to further market opening. FTAs do this by altering the domestic politics of trade policymaking on the demand side as well as some aspects of the supply side. On the demand side, business groups mobilise even more strongly to demand an end to agricultural protection, whilst on the supply side, the value of FTAs for broader state interests are recognised by politician-leaders. Various structural obstacles in the policymaking process, however, prevent the altered demand and supply-side dynamics from necessarily delivering free trade outcomes.     

The Responsibility to Protect and the problem of military intervention

The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) has come a long way in a relatively short space of time. From inauspicious beginnings, the principle was endorsed by the General Assembly in 2005 and unanimously reaffirmed by the Security Council in 2006 (Resolution 1674). However, the principle remains hotly contested primarily because of its association with humanitarian intervention and the pervasive belief that its principal aim is to create a pathway for the legitimization of unilateral military intervention. This article sets forth the argument that a deepening consensus on R2P is dependent on its dissociation from the politics of humanitarian intervention and suggests that one way of doing this is by abandoning the search for criteria for decision‐making about the use of force, one of the centre pieces of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty 2001 report that coined the phrase R2P. Criteria were never likely to win international support, the article maintains, and were less likely to improve decision‐making on how best to respond to major humanitarian crises. Nevertheless, R2P can make an important contribution to thinking about the problem of military intervention by mitigating potential ‘moral hazards’, overcoming the tendency of international actors to focus exclusively on military methods and giving impetus to efforts to operationalize protection in the field.