Understanding Local Policymaking: Policy Elites' Perceptions of Local Agenda Setting and Alternative Policy Selection

Despite the increasing interest in policy agenda research in recent years, very few studies have focused their attention on the relevant processes at the local level. Drawing on agenda-setting research, particularly Kingdon's multiple-streams framework, this study examines the key forces and factors, as well as their relative importance, in local agenda setting, problem identification, and alternative policy selection. Data are collected from 271 in-depth interviews with local policy stakeholders in three U.S. Gulf Coast areas. Interview materials are coded using a protocol focused on capturing stakeholders' perceptions of the key elements and forces in local policy dynamics. Our interview data indicate that (i) governmental actors and various interest groups have relatively more influence in shaping local agendas than the general public, experts, and election-related actors, while the mass media are found to have little agenda-setting power in local policy processes; (ii) budgetary consideration and various forms of feedback to local government are more important than objective problem indicators and focusing events in setting local policy priorities; (iii) policy alternatives that are deemed compatible with existing policies and regulations are more likely to be selected than those relying on other criteria such as technical feasibility, value acceptability, and future constraints; and (iv) consensus and coalition building is perceived as the most important political factor in local policy processes. Limitations of our study and recommendations for future research are discussed in the concluding section.     

Thermal effects on cathodoluminescence in forsterite

Cathodoluminescence (CL) spectral analysis has been conducted for luminescent forsterite (olivine) of terrestrial and meteoritic origins. Two emission bands at 3.15 and 2.99 eV in blue region can be assigned to structural defect centres and two emission bands at 1.91 and 1.74 eV in red region to impurity centres of Mn²⁺ and Cr³⁺, respectively. These emissions reduce their intensities at higher temperature, suggesting a temperature quenching phenomenon. The activation energy in the quenching process was estimated by a least-square fitting of the Arrhenius plots using integrated intensity of each component as follows; blue emissions at 3.15 eV: 0.08–0.10 eV and at 2.99 eV: 0.09–0.11 eV, red emissions at 1.91 eV: ～0.01 eV and at 1.74 eV: ～0.02 eV. The quenching process can be construed by the non-radiative transition by assuming the Mott-Seitz model. The values of activation energies for blue emissions caused by structural defects correspond to the vibration energy of Si-O stretching mode in the lattice, and the values for red emissions caused by Mn and Cr impurity centres to Mg-O vibration energy. It implies that the temperature quenching energy might be transferred as a phonon to the specific lattice vibration.     

The ethnoarchaeology of pottery production

Reina, Ruben E. and Robert Hill. The Traditional Pottery of Guatemala. Austin: The University of Texas Press, 1978. 323 pp. 419 figures, 10 maps, 3 tables, 10 color plates. $35.

Lackey, Louana M. The Pottery of Acatlán: A Changing Mexican Tradition. Norman: The University of Oklahoma Press, 1982. 164 pp. 18 color plates, 68 black and white photographs, 3 maps. $19.95.     

FRUSTRATED SEXUALITY IN ROBERT KROETSCH'S THE STUDHORSE MAN

Robert Kroetsch's The Studhorse Man is not simply the “passionate and comic celebration of fertility–in man and beast” that the paperback cover promises. In fact, generative impulses are regularly misdirected or thwarted, and the course of true sex never does run smooth. From the beginning of the book (saved and seduced by Polly Cockburn) to the end (saved and seduced by Marie Eshpeter), Hazard Lepage, the studhorse man, is a man more laid against than laying, a man whose entanglements are more often an ordeal than an adventure. And even though the thirteen year engagement to the voluptuous Martha Proudfoot comes, finally, to its long-fantasied conclusion, that climax begins with Hazard “on ice”–ostensibly dead–and ends with Demeter, the “professionally” insane narrator of the novel, prompted to action, an action that entails Hazard's actual death. Furthermore, the studhorse man mismanages the affairs of his studhorse almost as pervasively as he mismanages his own. The only local practitioner of his trade, he still cannot find “one farm with a mare that wanted covering.” The very survival of the Lepage horse is at stake. Yet Hazard's attempts to achieve his chief objective are comically inept. For example, at one point, dickering for a necessary mare, Hazard mistakenly trades away his stallion. Yet Demeter, eighteen, inept, and certifiably insane, easily supplies Poseidon with suitable mares, and the oafish Eugene Utter sees how many more can be provided. But even here Hazard is thwarted. Poseidon becomes the “busiest creature in Alberta” not to produce more Lepage horses but to turn every available mare into a PMU (Pregnant Mare's Urine) producing machine.     

Reassessing the age of Atapuerca-TD6 (Spain): new paleomagnetic results

We carry out a new paleomagnetic study across stratigraphic layer TD7 of Gran Dolina Site, Atapuerca, and reassess the existing absolute ages (thermoluminescence, electron spin resonance) obtained at this site. The new and more detailed magnetostratigraphic record of the Matuyama-Brunhes boundary, combined with absolute ages, enables further constraint on the age of the underlying human-bearing level or Aurora Stratum. Paleomagnetism of the studied silts and sandstones reveals stable, dual polarity Characteristic Remanent Magnetization directions. A new normal magnetic polarity short interval is found at several consecutive sampling localities in the upper part of TD7, providing a new ante quem date for the human-bearing sediments of 0.9 Ma, possibly formed during MIS 25.     

Absolute age and tooth eruption and wear sequences in sheep and goat: determining age-at-death in zooarchaeology using a modern control sample

This paper seeks to improve our understanding of the relationship between mandibular tooth eruption and wear sequences and absolute age in modern sheep and goat. While the relationship between tooth eruption and wear and absolute age has been investigated for primitive breeds in parts of the Old World, our pilot study extends the applicability of this research to modern breeds and to another geographic region (North America). A modern control sample of two species of domestic caprines – Ovis aries (sheep) and Capra hircus (goats) from Manitoba, Canada – are used to evaluate the two major systems for analyzing mandibular tooth wear and eruption (Payne and Grant) and for assigning an absolute age-at-death. In order to compare the two systems, an absolute age for Grant's Mandibular Wear Stages was established for the first time, previously demonstrated only for Payne's system. The analysis confirmed that there is a very high correlation between the known age and estimated age based on tooth eruption and wear. However, Payne's system generated far coarser age-at-death profiles, which lowers its utility in constructing harvest profiles. Grant's system is recommended for ageing be utilized since it can yield more sensitive age estimations. In conclusion, it is possible to utilize the modern caprine breeds to establish the relationship between tooth eruption and wear and absolute age to reconstruct age and season of death of archaeological samples.     

Working Without a Net: Recent Trends in Ceramic Ethnoarchaeology

This paper reviews ceramic ethnoarchaeological research conducted subsequent to Kramer's (1985) seminal stock-taking. Among current trends are a continued interest in the relationship between ceramics and economic specialization, the degree to which manufacture constitutes a technological style, and the link between pots and formation processes as represented in assemblage sizes, use-lives, and recycling. At the same time, some pesky theoretical issues continue to be sidestepped in the current literature. Despite its reputation as a pleasant break from the real business of archaeology, this paper argues that ceramic ethnoarchaeology can and should play a more substantial role in archaeological investigations.     

A very public affair: art meets science

ABSTRACT

What happens in interdisciplinary practices between the arts and sciences? What determines their successes and failures, and how they should be conducted? Here I propose that we can deepen our understanding of them by looking at the role of one specific and, to my mind, vital aspect of many (most?) successful art/science collaborations, namely their presence in public. More specifically, I suggest that museums, having played a crucial historical role in shaping some specialized disciplinary thought, are now well-placed to encourage an opposite tendency towards trans-disciplinary activity. I elaborate this argument by focusing on three characteristics of museums that have made them ideal places to locate art-science collaborations: the role of exhibitions as units of investigation; the ascendency of artist/curators as unusual enquirers; and the enduring value of middle-sized things in these risky initiatives.