Interfacility Interaction in Models of Hub and Spoke Networks

Providers of transportation services may reduce their average unit costs by bundling flows and channeling them between hubs (also known as concentrators or routers). The resulting facility locations are interdependent because of the flows between them. This paper analyzes mathematical models of hub systems in an effort to enhance understanding of the optimal location of interactive facilities. The paper examines the behavior of solutions to several alternative models that require the location of a hub at either of two similar locations. A model employing a concave cost function favors the assembly of flows, penalizes fractional facility locations, and produces local minima that have integer facilities.     

Does Practice Make Perfect? Craft Expertise as a Factor in Aggrandizer Strategies

The focus of this article is on exploring craft expertise and its potential as a factor in aggrandizer strategies. It is argued that there are elements of natural aptitude which enabled certain individuals to excel at flintknapping, allowing them to create objects of exceptional size and beauty in acts of elaborate knapping. Practice alone will enable an individual to reach a certain level of proficiency, but only practice in combination with ability can result in world-class performance. If, as is argued, native ability in some domain is a rare commodity, then harnessing it and developing it through practice would provide an opportunity for a potential aggrandizer to control prestige goods and accrue social capital. In situations where raw material, knowledge, and know-how are ubiquitous, as may have been true for flint technology in southern Scandinavia during the Late Neolithic, this might be one of few means available for a would-be aggrandizer to control prestigious goods.     

Local recipes or distant commodities? Lead isotope and chemical compositional analysis of glaze paints from the Salinas pueblos,New Mexico

For nearly four hundred years, Pueblo potters in the Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico produced technologically innovative glaze-decorated bowls and exchanged them widely among different villages. While potential sources of lead ores used to make glaze paints are found throughout the Rio Grande Valley region, researchers have only recently begun to identify which ore sources potters exploited and to understand the social and economic factors underlying patterns of ore resource use. In this paper we use stable lead isotope and electron microprobe analysis of glaze paints on Rio Grande Glaze Ware made at two Salinas pueblos to identify ore sources and glaze recipes used by their potters. Despite some isotopic overlap of ore sources, the lead isotope data point to regular exploitation of ores from the Socorro area of the southern Rio Grande. Salinas potters apparently used other sources as well, and likely mixed ores from different sources. We also identify four local glaze recipes that appear to incorporate multiple ore sources, suggesting that Salinas potters obtained raw ores rather than finished glaze paints.     

Between ‘here’ and ‘there’: family violence against immigrant and refugee women in urban and rural Southern Australia

The purpose of this article is to investigate how (dis)connection with place influences immigrant and refugee women’s experiences of family violence in regional/remote and metropolitan southern Australia. We draw on research from the ASPIRE project (Analysing Safety and Place in Refugee Experience) in the states of Victoria and Tasmania. A participatory research approach was used to interview immigrant and refugee women who had experienced violence, and providers of family violence services from eight locations in the two states. Both inner urban, regional and remote locations were included in the study. The findings present new insight into how geographic isolation and the scarcity of specialized services affected the experiences of immigrant and refugee women in regional/remote areas. Across all settings, participants described experiences of social isolation associated with both distance from community networks and being ostracized or seeking to avoid the proximity of perpetrators and their social networks. Notably, the experiences of women living in regional Tasmania and regional Victoria shared more similarities than did those of immigrant and refugee women in regional Victoria and inner-urban Melbourne despite the different legislative environments in the two states.     

Land as fictitious commodity: the continuing evolution of women's land rights in Uganda

In sub-Saharan Africa, colonial influences have altered traditional practices as a way to manage that which Polanyi labeled as ‘fictitious commodities’ of land, labor, and money. Land has now become a highly marketable commodity and an intrinsic part of the global economy. Over the past century, Uganda's land rights have evolved from communal rights to that of male-dominated, individual ownership practices that have excluded women. Despite constitutional provisions, which confer title of both a deceased husband's property rights and equal rights to property within a marriage to a wife, postcolonial patriarchal tradition prevails. This article examines historical changes in land rights in Uganda and discusses the impact of shifts in land rights from communal ownership to individual tenure, altering power structures and attempting to create marketable land title. The Ugandan women's movement's opposition to policies and implementation of laws that exclude women has been unable to facilitate the required changes in unbiased access to land rights, despite apparent victories in revisions to the letter of the law. Situated within contemporary interpretations of tradition and pressures of market demand, this article shows that women's access to landownership and use are restricted by misinterpretation of traditional law and a lack of enforcement of contemporary legal rights. To illustrate the impact of a lack of access to land, this article examines an empirical case study of widowed subsistence farmers in southern Uganda. Women in Uganda continue to lose ground, quite literally, decreasing the possibility of gender equity in terms of land.     

Temporal changes in Arikara humeral and femoral cross-sectional geometry associated with horticultural intensification

Humeral and femoral cross-sectional properties from three archaeological variants of the Arikara, an American Great Plains Indian tribe, were analyzed for temporal (16th to 19th centuries) changes in long bone architecture, asymmetry, and sexual dimorphism associated with intensification of horticulture during the late protohistoric and early historic periods. There were a number of significant changes in long bone, especially femoral, cross-sectional morphology and asymmetry among females through time that probably reflect increases in the workload necessary to produce surplus crops. Changes in long bone architecture among males are restricted to the humerus and may reflect a greater reliance on firearms. The pattern of sexual dimorphism also changes through time among the Arikara due to a combination of environmental (nutrition and disease) and mechanical factors.     

Devolution,decentralization and dispersal: Asserting the spatiality of the public sector in Scotland

Through a case study of Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH), a Non-Departmental Public Body in Scotland, this article considers the arguments associated with changes in public sector location in the UK in the wider context of devolution and decentralization. The policy issues of location and relocation are discussed in light of the wider government interest in modernization, spatial planning and regional development. The case study illustrates an active concern in Scotland with the decentralization of decision-making, and a move to community planning. Notwithstanding the perceived benefits of the government's policy objectives, however, the relocation process, in this instance, has proved to be difficult and protracted in practice, illustrating many of the tensions in a policy which seeks to deliver different and layered policy objectives.