Book reviews

Women's Lives and Public Policy: the international experience. M. Turshen & B. Holcomb (Eds), 1993. Westport, CT, Praeger. xix + 217 pp. ISBN 0–275–94523–5 paperback, 0–313–27354–5 hardback.

Decolonizing Feminisms: race, gender and empire‐building. Laura E. Donaldson, 1992. Chapel Hill, NC, University of North Carolina Press.

African Encounters with Domesticity. K. T. Hansen (Ed.), 1992. New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press. 315 pp., $42.00 hardback, $16.00 paperback. ISBN 0–8135–1803–2 hardback, 0–8135–1804–0 paperback.

Women and the Environment: a reader. S. Sontheimer (Ed.), 1991. New York, Monthly Review Press. 205 pp., $13.00 paperback. ISBN 0 85345–835 9.

Defining Females. S. Ardener (Ed.), 1993. Oxford, Berg. 216 pp., £10.95/$17.95 paperback.

Modernity and Identity. S. Lash & J. Friedman (Eds), 1992. Oxford, UK and Cambridge, MA, USA, Blackwell. 379 pp., £15.99/$19.95 paperback. ISBN 0–631–17586–5.     

The Low-Level Radioactive Waste Siting Process in Connecticut

The national policy to manage low-level radioactive waste (LLRW) from commercial nuclear power plants and other generators appears to be at a standstill with regard to siting new LLRW disposal facilities in the states. Regional compacts have been established and host stales designated in most compacts, but the NIMBY problem has proved insurmountable. Connecticut has been added to the growing list of states that have experienced siting setbacks and failures. This case study describes and analyzes the Connecticut experience. We show that siting was derailed by a technical-rationality approach that ignored the political dimensions of siting until it was too late, and by the consequent and powerful NIMBY reaction that ensued. We consider the national LLRW policy dimensions of siting failures and suggest possible policy alternatives for siting LLRW disposal facilities.     

Estimation Bias in Spatial Models with Strongly Connected Weight Matrices

This article shows that, for both spatial lag and spatial error models with strongly connected weight matrices, maximum likelihood estimates of the spatial dependence parameter are necessarily biased downward . In addition, this bias is shown to be present in general Moran tests of spatial dependency. Thus, positive dependencies may often fail to be detected when weight matrices are strongly connected. The analysis begins with a detailed examination of downward bias for the extreme case of maximally connected weight matrices. Results for this case are then extended by continuity to a broader range of (appropriately defined) strongly connected matrices. Finally, a simulated numerical example is presented to illustrate some of the practical consequences of these biases.     

埃及晚期的木基质彩画：赛加拉和法国博物馆

埃及文明在矿物方面的知识总是超出了我们的想象。这方面就包括使用多种黄色矿物绘制颜色相近的色彩。对这些颜料的准确鉴定将拓展人们在彩画方面的研究。画家所使用的颜料非常丰富,除了同时代直接从埃及地面采集的自然颜料外,还有大量像埃及蓝这类合成颜料的应用。对法国的这些藏品的研究将使人们可以追溯几个世纪以来这些颜料的演变和替代过程以及一些从其它地区尤其是东方国家引进颜料的过程。一些颜料的稳定性及其它特性使得其保存状况令人惊讶。卢浮宫博物馆在塞加拉的任务是进行一个埃及晚期（公元前378年一公元前341年）典型群葬墓的发掘工作。发掘出的木质棺材上记载了该墓葬的埋藏时间是Nectanebo二世法老执政的第2年,这是埃及第三十王朝的最后一任法老。该研究涉及以木质为基材的出土物,它包括二十个完整的或破碎成碎块的像盒子一样的棺材。研究通过在双筒显微镜下对文物进行微量取样,而后将样品进行扫描电子显微镜一能谱分析以及显微拉曼光谱分析,从而确定样品中矿物的成分。此外还对样品进行微量化学分析以确定其残存的痕量胶料。彩色颜料包括埃及彩画同时代的传统颜料一黑色,白色,红色,黄色,蓝色,绿色和镀金,同时还包括一些不常见的粉红色或橘色颜料,它是一种外来的、易碎的颜料,成分为五硫化二砷,又称雄黄。     

Quantifying Interpolation Errors in Urban Airborne Laser Scanning Models

Airborne laser scanning (ALS) is becoming an increasingly popular data capture technique for a variety of applications in urban surface modeling. Raw ALS data are captured and supplied as a 3D point cloud. Many applications require that these data are interpolated onto a regular grid in order that they may be processed. In this article, we identify and analyze the magnitudes and spatial patterning of residuals from ALS models of urban surfaces, at a range of different scales. Previous research has demonstrated the effects of interpolation method and scale upon the nature of error in digital surface models (DSMs), but the size and spatial patterning of such errors have not hitherto been investigated for urban surfaces. The contribution of this analysis is thus to investigate the ways in which different methods may introduce error, and to understand the uncertainty that characterizes urban surface models that are devised for a wide range of applications. The importance of the research is shown using examples of how the different methods may introduce different amounts of error and how the uncertainty information may benefit users of ALS height models. Our analysis uses a range of validation techniques, including split-sample, cross-validation, and jackknifing, to estimate the error created in DSMs of urban areas.