Modeling distance with time in ancient Mediterranean seafaring: a GIS application for the interpretation of maritime connectivity

Investigations of Mediterranean connectivity have increasingly turned toward maritime landscape models to frame questions of seaborne exploration, marine resource exploitation, trade and exchange, and seafaring culture. Environmental and technological parameters are consistently acknowledged as crucial for understanding when and why different relationships developed across the sea, but their formal employment in the modeling and interpretation of maritime space remains quite limited. The methodology outlined here utilizes Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to integrate environment and technology as analytical tools for exploring the complexity of seaborne connectivity. Focusing on sailing days as practical units of distance and using an Archaic Greek shipwreck off Turkey as a case study, this preliminary model demonstrates how a more nuanced spatial approach can inform the human geography and socioeconomic structures of ancient maritime interaction.     

The English trade at Bruges in the last years of Edward III

Records of confiscations of English property undertaken by the Flemish authorities in 1371 provide invaluable information on the mechanics of the English trade at Bruges, the ‘marketplace of the medieval world’, in the years immediately after the removal of the wool staple to Calais. Bruges continued to be the midpoint for the reconsignment of sizeable quantities of English wool, a trade in which Italian entrepreneurs played a considerable role. English broadcloths, although technically forbidden in Flanders as infringements of native textile monopolies, also found a ready market. The chief business of the English community in Bruges, however, was importing, through the brokers of Bruges and by direct contact with other foreigners, luxury items from Italy and Castile and bulk commodities from Germany and the eastern Low Countries.     

The English trade at Bruges in the last years of Edward III

Records of confiscations of English property undertaken by the Flemish authorities in 1371 provide invaluable information on the mechanics of the English trade at Bruges, the ‘marketplace of the medieval world’, in the years immediately after the removal of the wool staple to Calais. Bruges continued to be the midpoint for the reconsignment of sizeable quantities of English wool, a trade in which Italian entrepreneurs played a considerable role. English broadcloths, although technically forbidden in Flanders as infringements of native textile monopolies, also found a ready market. The chief business of the English community in Bruges, however, was importing, through the brokers of Bruges and by direct contact with other foreigners, luxury items from Italy and Castile and bulk commodities from Germany and the eastern Low Countries.     

The post-independence history of student movements in India and the ongoing protests

Does the current upsurge in student protests indicate the advent of a new phase in the history of the student movement in independent India? While a definitive answer to this question can only be given in time, the context from which this current wave springs has certain distinctive elements that are essential for understanding what is unfolding and its potential impact. On the one hand, the last two decades in India have seen a veritable explosion in the numbers of students studying in institutions of higher education and a great widening of the social base from which the student population in higher education is drawn. On the other, there has been near stagnation of the ratio of public expenditure on higher education to GDP. This and the trajectory of the economy have meant the combination of an increasing financial burden on students and their families and a growing lack in actual opportunities to satisfy the varied aspirations driving the willingness to bear this burden. This article will try to draw out the implications of these contradictory phenomena and the changing official discourse on education for understanding the possible transition being experienced by the student movement in the era of neo-liberalism, situating this period in the longer history of the student movement since independence.     

Nuclear necropower: The engineering of death conditions around a nuclear power plant in south India

The article concentrates on the ways people's claim to life, citizenry and democratic dissent were revoked the more they dared to defy and mobilise against a nuclear power plant at Kudankulam in southern India. Building on the literature on biopower and necropower, it is argued that the Indian state is exercising nuclear necropower through the creation of death conditions for subaltern populations as well as their political supporters. These ‘death worlds’ go beyond physical demise to encompass ecological, social and political conditions by which a person's life is diminished. Victims, suspects, and/or targets are geographically, socially and politically created as a consequence of sliding and syncretic subjugations to do with ‘let die’ and ‘make die’. These variegated perspectives might be delineated by way of three overlapping modalities that embed necropower in the politics of the nuclear industries, environment, social hierarchies and state-backed operations to undermine subaltern populations, anti-nuclear activists and environmentalists. The first modality encompasses ecological factors by way of a silent and encroaching death where nuclear industries subject marginalised communities and casual labourers to a life of environmental uncertainty, exploitation and health hazards. The second is the more overt and punitive violence exacted on- and offline in order to contain and extinguish dissent against nuclear power. The third is by way of producing a culture of vilification in terms of strategies designed to malign and outcaste anti-nuclear activists and environmentalists.     

The history of the neurological examination. Part 1: ancient and pre-modern history--3000 BC to AD 1850

Every time a physician conducts a neurological examination the process continues a biomedical search for understanding the nervous system which is as ancient as the earliest civilizations in human history. Most of the modern neurological examination evolved in a short time span, between 1850 and 1914, but the origins of neurology as a medical quest for knowledge date to the first evolution of urban life, in the valleys of the Euphrates and the Nile. This paper reviews this history in two chronological segments: part 1 up to 1850 and part 2 the subsequent period.     

Lessons in the rubble: The world trade center and the history of disaster investigations in the United States

The World Trade Center collapse stands as a singular event in American history. As such, it might also stand to reason that the technical investigation into the circumstances of the collapse also stands alone. Clashes over authority among powerful institutions both public and private, competition among rival experts for influence, inquiry into a disaster elevated to the status of a memorial for the dead: these are the base elements of the World Trade Center investigation. These elements, however, are not unique. This article illustrates--drawing on case studies including the burning of the United States Capitol Building (1814), the Hague Street boiler explosion and building collapse in New York (1850), and the Iroquois Theater Fire in Chicago (1903)--that conflicts over authority, expertise, memory, and ultimately the attribution of responsibility suffuse the history of disaster in the United States. The "disaster investigation," far from proving itself the dispassionate, scientific verdict on causality and blame, actually emerges as a hard-fought contest to define the moment in politics and society, in technology and culture.     

The history of neurology in St. Petersburg

This article expounds the history of the formation and development of neurology in St. Petersburg and emphasizes the original character of St. Petersburg school of neurology. The authors state that many prominent neurologists of St. Petersburg dedicated their work to the development of neurological concepts and have made an important contribution to different areas of neurology, including vascular and demyelinating diseases, diseases of the peripheral nervous system, neuroinfections, epilepsy, etc.