镀金时代镀金牢笼

有钱可“烧”的二十多岁青年聚在广州珠江上的“babyface”夜总会里,近百元一杯的喷火林保坚尼是这家夜店最受欢迎的酒品之一。     

早起的人们

清晨的阳光倾洒在香港的一条横街上。那时的香港是英属殖民地,依着起伏的地势建了不少这样的“台阶街道”。1934年11月号的《国家地理》对这张照片的解说是“只有步行和坐轿的才能在这街上走动。大约有36万中国人在香港生活、做生意。”图说继续写道．“还有同等数量的居民住在海港对岸的九龙或船上。”今天已经有约700万人定居香港。     

新人狼战

狼群正在回归，这令热爱野生动物的人拍手称快。但狼毕竟是狼，会咬死家牛和野鹿。许多美国西部居民火冒三丈。于是，一场从远古打响的争夺土地与食物的大战又展开了新的篇章。     

丽红眼蛙亡命记

这些生活在热带的青蛙有着红色的眼睛和超大号的橙色脚丫,看起来活像是散落的糖果。你会忍不住抓起一只捧在手里。不过还是放它一条生路吧,因为这种丽红眼蛙的一生可是一段不平凡的旅程。     

古罗马之前的意大利

古代意大利民族早在公元前4世纪罗马人统治意大利前,就已在这块土地上蓬勃发展,他们包括了阿普利亚人,翁布里亚人、萨漠奈人等。这些文化各有自己的语言。艺术、风欲和武器,例如图中（上）这面公元前8世纪的青铜制护心甲、铜甲上装饰着神话中的野兽。[编者按]     

动物睡眠

生存不易,哺乳动物需要靠睡眠来熬过艰难时世。但为什么花粟鼠每天要酣睡15个小时。长颈鹿却只要4．5个小时呢？加利福尼亚大学洛杉矶分校的睡眠研究专家杰尔姆·西格尔认为,原因可能在于不同的动物已经进化出了保证精力充沛和自身安全的不同方式。     

Fertility decline in rural China: a comparative analysis

Many models have been proposed to explain both the rapidity of China's fertility decline after the 1960s and the differential timing of the decline in different places. In particular, scholars argue over whether deliberate policies of fertility control, institutional changes, or general modernization factors contribute most to changes in fertility behavior. Here the authors adopt an ethnographically grounded behavioral-institutional approach to analyze qualitative and quantitative data from three different rural settings: Xiaoshan County in Zhejiang (East China), Ci County in Hebei, (North China), and Yingde County in Guangdong (South China). The authors show that no one set of factors explain differential timing by a combination of differences in social-cultural environments (e.g. spread of education, reproductive ideologies, and gender relations) and politico-economic conditions (e.g. economic development, birth planning campaigns, and collective systems of labor organization) during the early phases of the fertility decline.     

Notes from Batavia, the Europeans' graveyard: the nineteenth-century debate on acclimatization in the Dutch East Indies

Since the advent of European colonial expansion, medical theories of acclimatization have been inextricably related to convictions about the possibility and desirability of white settlement in the colonies, and political ideas of colonial governance. Before 1800, acclimatization theories emphasized the inherent flexibility of the human constitution and its ability to adapt to new environments. During the first half of the nineteenth century, European theorists came to highlight the vulnerability of white Europeans in the tropics to disease, degeneration, and death instead. They consequently argued that white settlement in the tropics was impossible and inadvisable. European physicians in the British and French colonies presented similar views. By contrast, their colleagues in the Dutch East Indies remained optimistic. They associated themselves with the colonial European settler community and shared their grievances against autocratic colonial rule. They presented medical theories which related acclimatization to prudent behavior, morality, and proper management of the environment, thereby downplaying the significance of climate and high temperatures. During the following decades, their views on acclimatization were transferred to the Netherlands, where they were deployed as an argument against the cultivation system, the then-current approach of colonial governance, which emphasized the trade of cash crops grown by the indigenous population, severely limited European settlement, and curtailed the rights of Europeans living in the Indies. Throughout the nineteenth century, the influence of climate and the possibility of acclimatization became recurring themes in debates about colonial governance in both the Dutch East Indies and the Netherlands.     

A hospital in Ilkhānid Iran: toward a socio-economic reconstruction of the Rab‘-i Rashīdī

In the first decade of the fourteenth century, Rashiīd al-Dīn Fazl Allāh penned a remarkable endowment deed in which he meticulously detailed his plans for the creation of a utopian community. He named it the Rab‘-i Rashīdī. In this document, he provides socio-economic data concerning the day-to-day operations of this settlement unparalleled in comparable texts. This article focuses on the hospital ward of the Rab‘-i Rashīdī, and provides a broader historical context for this medieval hospital and its personnel by examining the financial and monetary information in the endowment deed in order to piece together the inner workings of this community. In so doing, we are granted a rare opportunity to explore the daily lives of ordinary people whose endeavors, however significant, often went unnoticed.