Ancient DNA insights from the Middle Neolithic in Germany

Genetic studies of Neolithic groups in central Europe have provided insights into the demographic processes that have occurred during the initial transition to agriculture as well as in later Neolithic contexts. While distinct genetic patterns between indigenous hunter-gatherers and Neolithic farmers in Europe have been observed, it is still under discussion how the genetic diversity changed during the 5,000-year span of the Neolithic period. In order to investigate genetic patterns after the earliest farming communities, we carried out an ancient mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analysis of 34 individuals from Wittmar, Germany representing three different Neolithic farming groups (ca. 5,200–4,300 cal bc) including Rössen societies. Ancient DNA analysis was successful for six individuals associated with the Middle Neolithic Rössen and observed haplotypes were assigned to mtDNA haplogroups H5, HV0, U5, and K. Our results offer perspectives on the genetic composition of individuals associated with the Rössen culture at Wittmar and permit insights into genetic landscapes in central Europe at a time when regional groups first emerged during the Middle Neolithic.     

从组织创新角度论饭店客房产品竞争力的提升

客房产品日益成为当今饭店业竞争的焦点.笔者认为,我国饭店企业若想从根本上增强客房产品的竞争实力,提高经营效率,必须从组织设计和制度创新着手.首先,应将客房业务区分为核心业务和非核心业务,并运用差异化策略、低成本策略或聚焦策略来确立客房产品的核心优势;其次,为充分发挥核心竞争力,可以将客房非核心业务外包,本文阐述了非核心业务外包的理由和应处理好的关键环节,并重点探讨了客房清扫业务的外包管理制度;业务外包战略势必引起组织结构的变革,文章尝试对客房组织结构进行了再设计,同时认为必须做好服务授权和信息共享;最后,强调了建立高效的工作团队的必要性,对团队组建的模式提出若干种建议.     

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS TRAVEL: SOME EXPLORATIONS

International business travel is now an omnipresent feature of working life for many millions of people around the globe. Whatever the organizational reason, it is now the likelihood that many individuals are engaged in undertaking work outside of the formal workplace in an irregular pattern which has become an almost ordinary aspect of their working-life. Such is the magnitude of international business travel that it is now highly significant for bringing multi-million dollar expenditure to countries and the global airline and hotel sectors, and supporting an international business travel management industry. Yet, surprisingly, little has been written on the agency of international business travel, beyond vignettes of the organizational requirement for physical proximity. In this introduction (and special issue) we consider what further academic analyses of business travel must do to extend knowledge and understanding of the growth and use of travel in the twenty-first century. The article is in five parts. First, we consider the function of international business travel in firms as part of strategies to tie-together spatially distributed subsidiaries. Second, we unpack the modes and spaces of business travel. Third, we discuss the impacts of business travel on both the traveller, but also the environment. Fourth, we introduce the major arguments and contributions of the four articles in this special issue. Finally, we identify future research agendas that should develop existing theory and understanding of the compulsion for international business travel.     

A Principle of Hope: Recorded Music, Listening Practices and the Immanence of Utopia

In this paper I draw a set of partial connections between ways of using recorded music and utopia. The first half of the paper draws upon the process philosophy of Ernst Bloch to argue that utopia is not located else–where or else–when in a transcendent realm separate from the present but is paradoxically immanent to 'everyday life'. This argument revolves around the novel 'open' experimental ontology that Bloch elaborates through the operator the 'not–yet'. Bloch's work enables the beginnings of an immanent utopianism that is able to discern, rather than critique, the dimly vibrating figures of hope that exist within rather than outside 'everyday life'. The second half of the paper sets this thought in motion by connecting two of Bloch's concepts, the 'trace' and 'novum', to the logic of one particularly common way of using recorded music: the use of music to 'feel better'. Drawing on in–depth case study research with seventeen lower–middle–class households I describe how this practice enables people to momentarily enact two forms of hope that are both based around the geographies of affect and affection: how something better might feel and an ability to forget. I conclude by speculatively describing the practice of a Blochian 'immanent utopianism' that itself embodies 'a principle of hope'.     

A Principle of Hope: Recorded Music, Listening Practices and the Immanence of Utopia

In this paper I draw a set of partial connections between ways of using recorded music and utopia. The first half of the paper draws upon the process philosophy of Ernst Bloch to argue that utopia is not located else–where or else–when in a transcendent realm separate from the present but is paradoxically immanent to 'everyday life'. This argument revolves around the novel 'open' experimental ontology that Bloch elaborates through the operator the 'not–yet'. Bloch's work enables the beginnings of an immanent utopianism that is able to discern, rather than critique, the dimly vibrating figures of hope that exist within rather than outside 'everyday life'. The second half of the paper sets this thought in motion by connecting two of Bloch's concepts, the 'trace' and 'novum', to the logic of one particularly common way of using recorded music: the use of music to 'feel better'. Drawing on in–depth case study research with seventeen lower–middle–class households I describe how this practice enables people to momentarily enact two forms of hope that are both based around the geographies of affect and affection: how something better might feel and an ability to forget. I conclude by speculatively describing the practice of a Blochian 'immanent utopianism' that itself embodies 'a principle of hope'.