New light on the acromial attachment of the human coraco-acromial ligament

According to a largely forgotten statement in the anatomical literature, the coraco-acromial ligament is frequently attached to the undersurface of the tip of the acromion as well as to its medial margin. Surgeons, now able to examine this region via an arthroscope, support this observation. Raised impingement facets on the tip region of the undersurface of the acromion, sometimes eburnated because of actual contact with the proximal humerus, commonly complicate disorders of the shoulder-joint complex and are often associated with ossification extending into the attachment of the coraco-acromial ligament. Such enthesophytes thus appear to preserve in ossified form the morphology of the attachment; many seem to arise from the subacromial surface as continuations of impingement facets. Two early 19th century scapulas are described in which much of the soft tissue covering the subacromial surfaces was preserved in mummified form. One had a large enthesophyte apparently extending into the coraco-acromial ligament; the other included some of the superior layer of the subacromial bursa. In both, a tissue containing prominent fibrous strands orientated in the plane of the ligament covered the tip region of the subacromial surface. Short immersion in a solution of sodium orthophosphate softened the dried tissue sufficiently to enable its components to be separated. The fibrous strands had a firm attachment near the lateral acromial margin and passed free across the surface like a sling supposedly into the coraco-acromial ligament. The sling-like character was emphasized in one specimen by the attachment of some fibres to the tip of the enthesophyte. It is postulated that the sling-like character would assist the main ligament to buffer pressures exerted by the proximal humerus in normal function. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Role of Decision Support in the Implementation of “Sustainable Transport” Plans

Improved decision support is deemed essential for the planning and implementation of sustainable transport solutions, but limited evidence exists that decision-relevant information is effectively used for these purposes. This paper applies a framework inspired by research in “knowledge utilization” to examine to what extent various kinds of decision support are used and have become influential in three different planning situations—a local cycle plan in Copenhagen, the Stockholm congestion charging trial and the UK national transport strategy. The results reveal the extensive use of decision support but also the difficulty of unpicking its exact role in each case. Stockholm presented the most successful case, with a mix of academic and experience-based knowledge inputs facilitating understanding and acceptance. The cycle plan example revealed very limited influence of cycling design guidance. The UK national transport strategy fell somewhere in between with evidence of assessment and monitoring of the plans being well bedded in the culture of the organizations involved, but less supportive of sustainability objectives. While decision support and monitoring are clearly relevant, they provide no guarantee for the implementation of sustainable transport solutions.     

ANDREW HILL CLARK 1911–1975

ABSTRACT

The satire of Thomas Haliburton has generally been considered as highly ambiguous. The inability of critics to find a consistent social norm in his work is partly the result of their failure to read his satire in context with his historical writing. This paper examines the character of the Yankee clock peddler, Sam Slick, in light of Haliburton's later statements about American society published in The Rule and Misrule of the English in America.

In Rule and Misrule, Haliburton started from the premise that American Republicanism began with the Puritan experiment in New England. This experiment was unique in the world's history, and it almost worked because the people involved were both rural and moral. The American Revolution, however, began a movement away from the pre-revolutionary values, and the resulting decline in religious and social values indicated to Haliburton that American Republicanism was headed for the despotic conclusion which other republican models in Europe had evidenced.

Sam Slick, in The Clockmaker, may be viewed as the post-revolutionary Yankee who is losing touch with the old pre-revolutionary moral vision. Sam's inability to balance precept with action leads to a basically immoral attitude. For Haliburton, the centre holds the key to proper moral response. Aspiration must be balanced by action. Thus the irony of The Clockmaker works through a juxtaposition of ideal and action, a juxtaposition which Sam is unable to keep in tension. In contrast to Sam, the Squire and the Reverend Mr. Hopewell affirm the values of a Tory social order, an order which offers humanity true social equality and sound moral vision.     

Writing travels: power, knowledge and ritual on the English East India Company's early voyages

Most discussions of the relationships between 'the East', 'the West' and writing have, following Edward Said, involved interpreting the representations of people and places within travel writing, novels and other literary forms. This paper argues that this restricted engagement with practices of reading and writing limits the ways in which the relationships between people involved in the global geographies constructed since the fifteenth century can be understood. Through presenting a detailed discussion of the role of royal letters within the voyages of the English East India Company in the early seventeenth century, it argues that an analysis of 'how writing travels' which concentrates on the production, carriage and use of texts as material objects can foreground the active and collective making of global geographies as a contested enterprise involving multiple agents in a variety of sites. This paper presents writing as a global cultural practice and traces its place in the making of an early modern trading network.     

State Spaces of Resistance: Industrial Tree Plantations and the Struggle for Land in Laos

Land grabbing has transformed rural environments across the global South, generating resistance or political reactions “from below”. In authoritarian countries like Laos, where resource investments are coercively developed and insulated from political dissent, resistance appears absent at first glance. Yet, it is occurring under the radar, largely outside transnational activist networks. In this article, we examine how resistance can protect access to rural lands in contexts where it is heavily repressed. Resistance here occurs with, rather than against the state by foregrounding the contradictions of land use and ownership within state spaces, such as competing goals of large‐scale industrial plantations versus smallholder agriculture and national forest conservation. Such contradictions are engaged by using historical, place‐based political connections to exploit the scalar frictions of a fragmented state and occupying plantation clearance sites to highlight contested lands in situ. Nonetheless, such strategies remain spatially and socially uneven amongst the Lao peasantry.     

Art as research: an interview with Liliane Lijn by Barry Miles

ABSTRACT

In conversation with the biographer and author Barry Miles, the artist and poet Liliane Lijn talks about her early influences as a young American artist living and working in Paris, Athens and New York and the development of her practice between 1959 and 1970. She recalls her encounters with prominent surrealists, poets and artists of the Beat generation: André Breton, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, and her enduring friendship with Greek sculptor Takis. Inspired by the experimental nature of their works, Lijn explains how her own work focused on research and invention. She describes her Poem Machines as ‘seeing sound’ and explains her growing interest in science and, in particular, light. Lijn details the long and complex gestation of Liquid Reflections, her most well-known cosmic work of the late 1960s, and how working with industry and technology allowed her to increase both the scale and complexity of her oeuvre.     

Microscopic configurations on the bare‐bone surfaces of mammalian synovial joints

The smoothness characteristic of synovial joint surfaces of bare bones is shown to be an illusion; low‐power microscopy of young adult human bones from interments revealed, on the surfaces of a variety of synovial joints, a system of basically hemispherical elevations, often united as short chains or groups. This system was also found on joints of a variety of species of six mammalian orders. Under the higher magnification of scanning electron microscopy (SEM), many elevations had a pit at their summits. The bare‐bone surfaces of synovial joints have a thin covering of mineralized cartilage, including its mineralizing‐front, which survives taphonomic processes, as well as the preparative procedures used in the study of articular surfaces. In its formative phase, the front has the chondrocyte–columnar structure of cartilage. It is postulated here that the newly‐discovered elevations arise when cartilage formation is ceasing, or becoming dormant, and that each column‐unit produces a globular mineralized mass, often with a pit which had accommodated a chondrocyte. These masses may incorporate the fibre systems of the unmineralized cartilage and aid in its attachment to the bony surface. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.