The body mass index of blacks and whites in the United States during the nineteenth century

Body mass index (BMI) values reflect the net balance between nutrition, work effort, and calories consumed to fight disease. Nineteenth-century prison records in the United States demonstrate that the BMI values of blacks and whites were distributed symmetrically; neither underweight nor obese individuals were common among the working class. BMI values declined throughout the nineteenth century. By modern standards, however, nineteenth-century BMIs were in healthy weight ranges, though the biological living standards in rural areas exceeded those in urban areas. The increase in BMIs during the twentieth century did not have its origin in the nineteenth century.     

Network Location and Policy‐Oriented Behavior: An Analysis of Two‐Mode Networks of Coauthored Documents Concerning Climate Change in the Great Lakes Region*,†

This study explores how a scientist's location in science‐based policy networks can affect her policy‐oriented behaviors. In particular, we hypothesize that those scientists who fill structural holes in their networks will be more likely than others to engage in policy‐oriented behaviors. The network data are defined by scientists' coauthorship on policy documents regarding climate change in the Great Lakes. We employ a two‐mode network analysis to identify clusters of scientists who coauthored similar documents, and relative to those clusters, we identify those who fill structural holes by bridging between clusters. We find that those scientists who bridged between clusters were more likely to engage in policy‐oriented behaviors of policy advocacy and advising than were others in the network. This is an example of a link between network location and policy‐oriented behavior indicative of the broader phenomenon of how individuals exert agency, given structural constraints.     

A Framework for Exploring Urban Retail Discontinuities. 探索城市零售业不连续性的框架

A key area in the analysis of urban structural evolution is identifying discontinuities. Effective analysis could improve long‐term forecasting and provide a better understanding of how to steer an urban system toward a desirable future state. We use a simple aggregate retail model to demonstrate an algorithm for identifying discontinuities in model parameter space. Explorations of retailing in both Greater London and South Yorkshire in the United Kingdom illustrate how understanding a system's potential for discontinuity can provide insights for both policy makers and retail businesses. The Harris and Wilson model, described in the section so‐named, is used as a simple archetype to illustrate the new framework. This model can be developed in a straightforward way to incorporate further refinement. In “ Executing the model and visualizing the results ,” we describe a single model run and in “ Investigating discontinuities ,” we explain our framework for detecting and analyzing discontinuities. “ Identifying discontinuities in the London retail system ” shows the results of applying this methodology to the Greater London retail system, and in “ Practical applications ,” we explore the policy applications for this technique as related to the decline of town centers in the South Yorkshire retail system. Some concluding comments are offered in “ Conclusions .”     

Linking Land and Navy: archaeological investigations at the site of the Woolwich Royal Dockyard,south‐eastern England

This paper outlines the archaeological evidence found at the demolished Royal Naval Dockyard at Woolwich for the development and construction of dockyard structures of the 18th to early‐19th centuries. This is set within the framework provided by historic, documentary, map and historic‐model evidence. The results of earlier excavations at the same facility are also reviewed. The themes covered include; the interplay of ‘carpentry’ versus ‘shipwrightry’ in dockyard construction, aspects of naval timber‐supply and landscape, the recycling of ships' timbers, dockyard craft specialisation and changing relative sea‐levels. © 2011 Pre‐Construct Archaeology Limited     

Beyond Metrics: Reappraising York’s Hungate “Slum”

Much of the excitement generated in Britain since 2007 by the York Archaeological Trust’s excavations of the city’s Hungate neighborhood, which Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree characterized as a “slum” in his pioneering poverty survey of 1901, derives from the unexpected volume and variety of material evidence uncovered about life in a poor community within a modern industrial city. Such material evidence and its often uncertain relationships to other historical data can enhance analysis by complicating understanding of the past, rather than echoing conventional wisdom. Findings from Hungate can thus contribute to nuanced understandings of urban social disadvantage not only at the neighborhood level in this one particular British city, but at the larger scales of analysis that encompass the growth of cities and interacting urban regions in Britain and around the world during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These understandings have contemporary relevance for a world in which over half of humanity now lives in urban areas, as misconceptions about “slums” continue to undermine efforts to reduce urban inequality.     

New Perspectives on Tropical Coastal and Island Tourism Development

Abstract

This special issue is presented as a thematic issue devoted to tropical coastal and island tourism. Included in the issue are articles on (eco)tourism in Madagascar, collaboration theory and tourism partnership models on an Indonesian island, development pressure and resilience on a Malaysian island, a survey of cruise passengers in Colombia, perception and limits to development in Costa Rica, and perception and reality on Pitcairn Island. Placed within theoretical or conceptual frameworks, these case studies can be applied to development challenges of tropical coastal and island destinations worldwide.