ROAD INVESTMENTS,SPATIAL SPILLOVERS,AND DEFORESTATION IN THE BRAZILIAN AMAZON*

ABSTRACT Understanding the impact of road investments on deforestation is part of a complete evaluation of the expansion of infrastructure for development. We find evidence of spatial spillovers from roads in the Brazilian Amazon: deforestation rises in the census tracts that lack roads but are in the same county as and within 100 km of a tract with a new paved or unpaved road. At greater distances from the new roads the evidence is mixed, including negative coefficients of inconsistent significance between 100 and 300 km, and if anything, higher neighbor deforestation at distances over 300 km.     

Giorgio Agamben and the new biopolitical nomos

In this paper I reflect on the progressive normalization of a series of geographies of exception within Western democracies and, in particular, the relation of these to the new biopolitical power that is progressively affirming itself in our everyday lives — and that appears to be imposing itself as the new, secret, ontology of the political. I do so by engaging with the work of Giorgio Agamben and, specifically, interrogating the spatial architecture that underpins his theory of sovereign power. Starting from Agamben's spatial conceptualizations, I explore his attempt to trace the contours and the secret coordinates of the contemporary biopolitical nomos, a nomos rooted firmly in the crisis and progressive demolition of that which Carl Schmitt described as the ius publicum Europaeum. I note, moreover, how the definitive dissolution of the geographical nomos that had dominated the two centuries preceding the First World War, and the lack of a new, alternative, geographical nomos in the century which followed, can also be grasped by critically rereading some key episodes in the history of European geography; in particular, the contested legacy of the work of Friedrich Ratzel's grand geographical project and the Geopolitik experiment. What I suggest is that to understand the deep nature of the geographies of exception that arm the global war on terror, it is vital that we think in terms of a theory of space in order to try to unveil the Arcanum, the secret enigma of the empty centre around which turn the wheels of a new, macabre, geo‐biopolitical machine.     

Microscope observations and DNA analysis of wine residues from Roman amphorae found in Ukraine and from bottles of recent Tuscan wines

Morphological analysis by light and electron microscopy was conducted on wine residues from second century Roman amphorae found in Myrmekion (Ukraine). The results of the archaeological samples were compared with residues formed in bottles of wine from Tuscan vineyards, corked between 1969 and 1977 without filtration and enzyme or biochemical processing. Staining and histochemical observation of the archaeological and recent residues detected nucleic acids. Molecular analysis was also performed using nuclear microsatellite SSRs markers having high polymorphism to study genetic relationships. Genotype profiles of archaeological and recent residues were compared with contemporary cultivars in a data bank. Low homology of genotype profiles of all residues, and oral evidence, confirmed the presence of autochthonous varieties in recent wines and enabled indirect assessment of varieties detected in the archaeological material. The results confirmed that the archaeological material could be related to Sangiovese and indicated Roman wine trade as far afield as Ukraine, whereas the recent residues provided evidence of disappearing native Tuscany cultivars like Gorgottesco, Mammolo, Verdello, Rossone and Tenerone, used for table wines until the late seventies.