Development Imperative,Terrae Incognitae: a Pioneer Soil Scientist 1912–1951

James Arthur Prescott was a prominent soil scientist whose career responded to an increasingly complex, recognisably Australian web of interpenetrating spatial scales, served to promote revolutionary global advances in his chosen field, and in the process negotiated the blurred boundaries between ‘pure’ and ‘applied’ research. Encounters with this instructive life suggest that, while resolutions of pivotal anxieties might turn on ineluctably personal qualities, they also reflect a dynamic interplay between international, imperial, national and state contexts. Prescott's innovative contributions to soil science, fruits of a tenaciously consolidated career, influenced resource appraisal and environmental management across a prodigious continental expanse. A sustained focus on local and regional development brought him into contact with a wide range of contemporaries, including pioneering geographers, and culminated in his election to a Fellowship of the Royal Society.     

Adolf Beck: A Forgotten Pioneer in Electroencephalography

Adolf Beck, born in 1863 at Cracow (Poland), joined the Department of Physiology of the Jagiellonian University in 1880 to work directly under the supervision of the prominent physiology professor, Napoleon Cybulski. Following his suggestion, Beck started experimental studies on the electrical brain activity of animals, especially in response to sensory stimulation. Beck placed electrodes directly on the surface of brain to localize brain potentials that were evoked by sensory stimuli. He observed spontaneous fluctuations in the electrical brain activity and noted that these oscillations ceased after sensory stimulation. He published these findings concerning the electrical brain activity, such as spontaneous fluctuations, evoked potentials, and desynchronization of brain waves, in 1890 in the German language Centralblatt für Physiologie. Moreover, an intense polemic arose between physiologists of that era on the question of who should claim being the founder of electroencephalography. Ultimately, Richard Caton from Liverpool showed that he had performed similar experiments in monkeys years earlier. Nevertheless, Beck added new elements to the nature of electrical brain activity. In retrospect, next to Richard Caton, Adolf Beck can be regarded, together with Hans Berger who later introduced the method to humans, as one of the founders of electroencephalography. Soon after his success, Beck got a chair at the Department of Physiology of the University at Lemberg, now Lviv National Medical University.     

海上史诗--郑和下西洋

在1998年的国际海洋年,郑和被尊为人类史上最伟大的航海探险家之一.     

Fourierism's Feminine Defender and Colonial Pioneer: Clarisse Vigoureux

Abstract

Rosemary Geisdorfer Feal and Carlos Feal. Painting on the Page: Interartistic Approaches to Modern Hispanic Texts. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995. xxii + 341 pp. $19.95 pb.

Michael Lucey. Gide's Bent: Sexuality Politics Writing. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. 238 pp.

Larry J. Simon ed. Iberia and the Mediterranean World of the Middle Ages: Studies in Honor of Robert I. Burns, S.J. (Volume I: Proceedings from Kalamazoo). Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995. xxvi + 373 pp.

Martha T. Halsey. From Dictatorship to Democracy: The Recent Plays of Buero Vallejo (from La Fundación to Música Cercana). (Ottawa Hispanic Studies, 17) Ottawa: Dovehouse Editions, 1994. 312 pp.

Pier Massimo Forni. Adventures in Speech: Rhetoric and Narration in Boccaccio's Decameron. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996. xiv + 155 pp. $29.95.     

Deglaciation and Colonization: Pioneer Settlements in Northern Fennoscandia

We present new data on Early Mesolithic settlements in northern Sweden and discuss the process of pioneer colonization. A new set of radiocarbon dates from archaeological sites push deglaciation of northern Fennoscandia further back in time and demonstrate the rapid arrival of pioneer settlers. Environmental data reveal a highly productive early postglacial setting with plant communities unmatched in present ecosystems. The chronological and technological setting supports immigration from the north and northwest with pioneers relying on a long history of enculturating northern subarctic landscapes.     

Traffic Situation in the Eyes of Scientist

Yang Yichou, male, is a research fellow in the field of physiognomy and environmental science. He has ever since 1952 been involved in scientific surveys in west China organized by the Chinese Academy of Sciences for diverting water from the south to the north, comprehensive survey of the southwest, Qinghai-Tibet