Are Ukraine’s reforms breaking its state capture? An agenda for genuine change

Abstract

Ukraine is one of a handful of post-communist countries that has a lower Gross Domestic Product today than in 1990, according to the World Bank. The problem is that it has seen too little reform. The country has experienced three serious periods of reform, but none has been as important as the reforms of 2015. The big question is whether Ukraine has finally broken out of persistent state capture. This paper by long-lasting Ukraine-watcher Anders Åslund suggests that Ukraine has carried out greater economic reforms than ever before with the unification of energy prices, large budget cuts, floating exchange rates, halved payroll tax, and a major bank purge. Yet, the question remains whether Ukraine has really broken out of state capture and whether it will be able to turn to a steady course of high economic growth of 5–7% a year.     

Accurate sex identification of ancient human remains using DNA shotgun sequencing

Accurate identification of the biological sex of ancient remains is vital for critically testing hypotheses about social structure in prehistoric societies. However, morphological methods are imprecise for juvenile individuals and fragmentary remains, and molecular methods that rely on particular sex-specific marker loci such as the amelogenin gene suffer from allelic dropout and sensitivity to modern contamination. Analyzing shotgun sequencing data from 14 present-day humans of known biological sex and 16 ancient individuals from a time span of 100 to ∼70,000 years ago, we show that even relatively sparse shotgun sequencing (about 100,000 human sequences) can be used to reliably identify chromosomal sex simply by considering the ratio of sequences aligning to the X and Y chromosomes, and highlight two examples where the genetic assignments indicate morphological misassignment. Furthermore, we show that accurate sex identification of highly degraded remains can be performed in the presence of substantial amounts of present-day contamination by utilizing the signature of cytosine deamination, a characteristic feature of ancient DNA.     

Carbon and nitrogen isotope signals in eel bone collagen from Mesolithic and Neolithic sites in northern Europe

Carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis was undertaken on collagen extracted from eel bone from six Mesolithic and Neolithic sites in northern Europe. The results were compared with data obtained on other archaeological fish remains and modern eel caught in fresh and brackish water and from the sea. The possibility of discriminating between freshwater, brackish and marine signals in archaeological eel bone is evaluated and the implications for archaeology discussed. Our data suggest that eel found at coastal Mesolithic and Neolithic sites have carbon isotope signals consistent with a marine origin with no evidence of freshwater residency. The sample of eel bone from one inland site is small but indicates carbon isotope values more consistent with freshwater residency or at least values intermediate between freshwater and marine carbon pools.     

The Danish St Croix Project: Revisiting the Lincoln Colonization Program with Foreign-language Sources

Working from previously unknown sources in Danish archives, this article establishes for the first time the important role that the island of St Croix played in the Lincoln administration's considerations on colonizing African Americans abroad. This article argues that U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward, commonly viewed as an anti-colonizationist, was at least a mild proponent of colonization in its earliest stages. The article demonstrates further that in the summer of 1862, the St Croix colonization project was an important stepping stone in the Lincoln administration's legal justification for emancipation, and that it was recognized as such by high-ranking Confederates. The negotiations failed for reasons that had little to do with Lincoln or his opinion on the matter. Rather, the plan fell through because the Danes slowly turned against it for economic and political reasons. The substantial conclusion of this article is that, contrary to earlier perceptions in the historiography, African American colonization during the Civil War was not led and directed entirely from Washington. Rather, in this case, the Danish minister proposed a colonization plan and then worked with the U.S. Government to attempt to see it through.     

Outsiders? A sociological study of Norwegian artists with minority background

Why are there relatively few successful artists from a migrant background in Norway? Based on a study of artists of known migrant backgrounds, we explore this question from the artists’ points of view. We analyze both their social and cultural background, and the mechanisms of exclusion and inclusion at work in Norway’s art world, and especially the interaction between the two. We have concentrated on the dramatic arts: theater and dance. The article presents a theoretically informed analysis of the qualitative material using the sociology of art on the one hand and the sociology of migration and ethnic relations on the other. Further, the empirical analyses are in constant dialog with other Norwegian studies of the art field and the artists themselves. The article presents original findings on the relationship between barriers in young migrants’ backgrounds and impediments to entering and navigating at the field of dramatic arts.     

Making Better Use of Monitoring Data

This paper addresses the knowledge gap that exists in relation to understanding and quantifying the sensitivity of organic-rich archaeological deposits with respect to changes in the soil environment. Based on two case studies we demonstrate that it is possible to quantify the current decay rate in unsaturated archaeological deposits by combining decay rates measured in the laboratory with on-site monitoring data in a simple decay model. The decay of organic archaeological deposits is highly sensitive to variations in soil temperatures and soil water content. Measurements of soil water content cannot always stand alone as a representative measurement of oxygen availability; which suggests that in situ measurements of oxygen content or redox potential are needed in order to understand the preservation conditions at a site. The results of this study emphasize the advantage of combining monitoring data with laboratory studies, in order to document in more detail where and when degradation takes place.