Salt Water Application of the Flotation Technique

Abstract

This paper reports on a successful experimentation with salt water flotation in conjunction with pre-Columbian research on the northwestern Pacific coast of Guanacaste Province, Costa Rica. Mechanical results are indicated, and the application of the technique by archaeologists faced with limitations of fresh water, but abundance of salt water, is encouraged.     

The Impact of Large Water Engineering Projects on Geomorphic Processes in Stream Valleys

Large storage reservoirs have a significant effect on the landscape of river valleys. A rise of the base level, caused by dam construction, together with the resulting changes in the stream regime set off a sequence of interrelated geomorphic processes. Upstream from the edge of the backwater produced by the dam, regressive aggradation gradually spreads upriver, resulting both in a rise in the valley floor and a rise in water level. Within the reservoir itself, waves, longshore currents, seasonal changes in water level and gravitational processes on shoreline slopes combine to produce a distinctive shoreline relief, characterized by large areas of recurrent inundation, lagoon closed off by baymouth bars, and high cliffs retreating under the impact of wave abrasion. Downstream from the dam, heavy downcutting of the river channel gives rise to a stream terrace, whose relative height declines from the vicinity of the dam toward the mouth. Downcutting of the channel in the main stream in turn tends to lower the base level in the lower reaches of tributaries.     

Policy Narratives and Policy Processes

The Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) has influenced a generation of policy scholars with its emphasis on causal drivers, testable hypotheses, and falsification. Until recently, the role of policy narratives has been largely neglected in ACF literature partially because much of that work has operated outside of traditional social science principles, such as falsification. Yet emerging literature under the rubric of Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) demonstrates how the role of policy narratives in policy processes is studied using the same rigorous social science standards initially set forth by Paul A. Sabatier. The NPF identifies theories specifying narrative elements and strategies that are likely useful to ACF researchers as classes of variables that have yet to be integrated. Examining this proposition, we provide seven hypotheses related to critical ACF concepts including advocacy coalitions and policy beliefs, policy learning, public opinion, and strategy. Our goal is to stay within the scientific, theoretical, and methodological tradition of the ACF and show how NPF's empirical, hypotheses, and causal driven work on policy narratives identifies theories applicable to ACF research while also offering an independent framework capable of explaining the policy process through the power of policy narratives. In doing so, we believe both ACF and NPF scholarship can contribute to the advancement of our understanding of the policy process.     

Budgeting: Political Processes and accounting imperatives

Kenneth W. Knight and Kenneth W. Wiltshire, Formulating Government Budgets, University of Queensland Press, 1977.

Patrick Weller and James Cutt, Treasury Control in Australia: A Study in Bureaucratic Politics, Ian Novak, Sydney, 1976.     

Desertification Processes and the Search for Solutions

Abstract

This paper reviews the evidence of desertification as reported in the scientific literature by ecologists, meteorologists, hydrologists, archeologists and various other disciplines. There is not as yet full agreement as to the extent and causes of this phenomenon. World wide climatic changes have been cited as causative factors, but the influence of man is still considered by most investigators as the dominant cause, possibly exacerbating cyclic climatic changes. Deserts, semi-arid and marginally productive areas vary greatly in extent and for different reasons.

Results of research and development have indicated that the enlightened intercession of man can contain and reverse this process. Sound management and conservation of existing land and water resources seem to be the basic needs and are perhaps the easiest technology to transfer to the desert farmer and nomad. The introduction of drought-hardy tree and bushes of economic value to bind drifting sand dunes and to regenerate overgrazed pastures have also proven their value. Recent research has shown the possibility for better utilization of water resources including brackish water for irrigation of agricultural crops.

Many other fields of technology are being applied to this problem, but the major focus will undoubtedly have to be on man himself and there has been some research on social organization, nomadism and sedentarization, technology transfer, population control, directions of education and a host of similar problems. Much more work will have to be channelled into this direction, however, if real progress is to be attained.     

Moisture Circulation and its Role in Natural Processes

Because of defects of the present land-inventory system in the USSR, a more comprehensive land-cadastre system is proposed, making possible an economic appraisal of lands based on soil, geobotanical and agricultural-capability maps and other land data. Such a cadastre would enable authorities to judge the economic effectiveness of any given land use on the basis of costs and yields. The paper was prepared with the assistance of K. V. Zvorykin, P. A. Letunov and staff members of Gosplan USSR, the Moscow Land-Organization Institute, and the Soil Institute named for V. V. Dokuchayev.     

Urbanization Processes in North Vietnam

The pattern of urbanization of North Vietnam is traced from 1945 through 1960 to 1970. The average contribution of the in-migration component to urban growth was 40 percent from 1945 to 1965, but a slight net out-migration from cities marked the period of American bombings of North Vietnam after 1965. As a result urban population declined from 1.9 million in 1965 to 1.84 million in 1970, while total population of North Vietnam rose from 17.5 to 20 million. Urban growth has been distinguished by rapid rates of growth in large cities, low rates in middle-size cities, and no growth or even decline of population in the small urban places.     

Spatial Models of Spread-Backwash Processes

Spread-backwash processes are central elements in regional development thought. This article argues that the main spread-backwash processes produce developmental change that has a general spatial form. Straightforward models of the processes of government incomes and expenditure flows, private capital flows, intraregional trade, migration-commuting, and the diffusion of innovations provide the rationale for the general distance decay form of developmental impact. Each model is supported by evidence from the relevant literature. It is argued that there is not a dichotomous set of spread versus backwash processes, but rather that the same set of processes yields differential spatial impacts.     

斯巴达“监察官”与政治分权

深刻认识古代斯巴达的"监察官"历史价值必须要有新的视角。古典时期斯巴达的监察官主要代表了平民的利益,它的职权以监督、司法权为主,行政、宗教、军事和立法等权力为辅。监察官的建立推进了斯巴达的政治分权,增加了斯巴达政治的民主成分。     

Space,Gender and Institutions in Processes Creating Difference

Along with a number of scholars in feminist, English-language geography, the author makes a case for renewed attention to be paid to causal processes of differentiation in the analysis of geographies of gender. In particular, she argues for a greater concern with the gendered spatiality of organisations and institutions themselves, rather than seeing them as ‘black boxes’, or unchanging and exogenous aspects of the contexts to be analysed. The paper discusses the manner and the extent to which feminist geographies have examined differentiating processes associated with three notional ‘sites’ examined closely in feminist geography: the city, the family and the nation.     

The Hand-Pump Flotation System: A New Method for Archaeobotanical Recovery

Abstract

At the sites of Acquachiara in Italy, el-Hemmeh in Jordan, and Beisamoun in Israel, archaeobotanical recovery was accomplished using flotation systems powered by hand-pumps, as opposed to non-circulating systems or systems powered by electricity or gasoline. These flotation tanks were simple and inexpensive to construct, easily operated by a single individual, highly durable, and easily transported. The speed of water flow was both ample and could be controlled without difficulty. These systems had the capacity to process samples at a rate sufficient to keep pace with large-scale sampling programs at all three sites. In three case studies, we describe two tanks that recycle water and one that does not, list the parts and procedures necessary to construct a hand-pump system, and detail the results of a recovery test that demonstrates the efficacy of this technique. The type of flotation tank described would be appropriate for a range of research projects with various resource constraints, enabling substantial paleoethnobotanical data collection with only a minimal initial investment of time and money.     

Some Political Processes of Ranked Societies

This article explores the emergence of inequality in two regions of Mesoamerica: the Soconusco and Valley of Oaxaca. Dichotomous models that propose a continuum of political strategy (i.e., Leach 1954; Renfrew 1974; Spencer 1993; Blanton et al. 1996) are used to examine the different processes evident in the comparison of settlement, mortuary, and architectural data between these two regions. The elite in Early and Middle Formative Soconusco appear to integrate society with a comparatively external oriented and exclusionary strategy whereas in the Valley of Oaxaca Early and Middle Formative elites employed a more group-oriented, internally focused, and corporate strategy. Environment richness and proximity of competing communities may account for the primary, and perhaps unintentional, emergence of inequality in the Soconusco around 1400 B.C.E. In the Valley of Oaxaca inequality emerged as many as 250 years later in a less circumscribed area. Such environmental, political, and chronological factors may be responsible for some of the differences in integrative strategies evident in the two regions.     

An Anisotropic Model for Spatial Processes

One of the key assumptions in spatial econometric modeling is that the spatial process is isotropic, which means that direction is irrelevant in the specification of the spatial structure. On the one hand, this assumption largely reduces the complexity of the spatial models and facilitates estimation and interpretation; on the other hand, it appears rather restrictive and hard to justify in many empirical applications. In this article a very general anisotropic spatial model, which allows for a high level of flexibility in the spatial structure, is proposed. This new model can be estimated using maximum likelihood and its asymptotic properties are derived at length. When the model is applied to the well-known 1970 Boston housing prices data, it significantly outperforms the isotropic spatial lag model. It also provides interesting additional insights into the price determination process in the properties market. Finally, a Monte Carlo simulation study is used to confirm the optimal properties of the model.