CHARACTERISATION OF EARLY VITREOUS MATERIALS

The microstructure and chemical composition of a range of early vitreous materials, principally from Egypt and dating from mid-second millennium B.C. onwards, have been examined in polished section in a scanning electron microscope with attached X-ray spectrometer. Faience is defined as a material with a quartz core which contains varying amounts of interstitial glass and which is covered with alkali-based coloured glaze and frit as a polycrystalline material which is coloured throughout and has no glaze covering. The amount of interstitial glass and hence the chemical compositions of the faience cores depends on the methods of production used. Frits which, on the basis of the above definition, include Egyptian blue and glassy faience differ from faience cores in containing significantly higher concentrations of lime and copper oxide. The nature of the frit, including its colour, depends on the relative amounts of lime and copper oxide.     

THE DEMAND AND SUPPLY OF CHILD CARE: THE CASE OF THE CITY OF WATERLOO, ONTARIO*

The intention of this paper is to stimulate research on the demand and supply of child care services, an issue that has been largely neglected by geographers, although many of the problems involved lend themselves to geographical analysis. In addition, as the female labour force participation rate, the divorce rate, and the incidence of lone-parent families increase, so do the need for and importance of child care. We review the types of child care available in North America and provide statistics to demonstrate that the supply of child care falls short of demand. Furthermore, for the city of Waterloo, Ontario, through the use of 1981 and 1986 Census data we demonstrate that not only is the supply of licensed day care spaces insufficient to meet the demand, but also it is spatially arranged in a suboptimal way. Through population projections and net migration analyses we demonstrate that the demand for child care spaces in the near future is more likely to intensify in the periphery of the city, where the current supply is nonexistent. We thus argue that locational criteria should play a prominent role in the practice of licensing new day care centres. Cet article vise à encourager la recherche sur I'offre et la demande de services de garderie. Ce sujet a été largement négligé par les géographes měme si beaucoup des pro-blèmes rencontrés sont liés à des facteurs géographiques. De plus, la participation des femmes au marché du travail augmentant ainsi que le taux de divorce et le nombre de families monoparentales, les garderies deviennent de plus en plus nécessaires et importantes. Nous passons en revue les différents types de garderies qu'il est possible de trouver en Amérique du Nord et nous présentons des statistiques démontrant que le nombre actuel de garderies ne satisfait pas la demande. D'autre part, à I'aide des données du recensement canadien de 1981 et 1986 pour la ville de Waterloo, Ontario, nous prouvons que non seulement le nombre de places dans les garderies licenciées est insuffisant mais aussi que leur location géographique n'est pas optimale. À I'aide des études sur la population future et la migration nette, nous démontrons que la demande de garderies augmentera vraisemblablement à la périphérie de la ville où les garderies sont actuellement inexistantes. Par conséquent, nous estimons que le critère de localisation doit jouer un rǒle prédominant dans I'octroi des permis d'établissement de nouvelles garderies.