"Own a Home in North Carolina": Image and Reality in Ethnic European Colonies

Between 1905 and 1912, six planned farm colonies were developed in southeastern North Carolina. The dream of Wilmington utilities magnate Hugh MacRae, the colonies were visualized as an experiment in "human engineering" to create a "back to the land" movement as a remedy to the economic ills of the rural South. The six communities (Castle Haynes, Marathon, St. Helena, Van Eeden, New Berlin and Artesia) were anomalies in the rural South in that they were miniature "melting pots" for the flood of European immigrants who flocked to America in the early 1900s. Through the use of documentary photographs, promotional propaganda brochures and oral histories, the material culture of the colonies is explored and analyzed. The images of the spatial patterns and house types that were created in the minds of the potential colonists by the promotional literature are contrasted with the stark realities of the landscapes that confronted the settlers upon arrival.     

Author and Reader Perceptions of the Literary Map

There is a continuing need in cartographic communication for reserarch directed toward better understanding of the perceptual properties of maps, particularly as they interrelate between map author and map reader (percipient). This research explores that area by examining the perceptions of authors of maps utilized in science fiction and fantasy, and readers who encounter these maps in the literature.

The first phase of the research demonstrates that authors generally have a positive attitude toward the literary map and view them as critical to the formulation of a story and important to proper understanding of the narrative. By contrast, readers tested in the second part of the study view literary maps as superfluous and in general have a negative attitude toward them.

The literary maps employed in this research fail to communicate effectively with the reader. Poor cartographic communication and the negative attitude of readers toward the literary map is explained in terms of functional illiteracy.     

Eupolemus the Chronographer and 141 BCE

ABSTRACT

Eupolemus is mentioned in three separate texts: Josephus, Contra Apion; Clement, Stromateis; and Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospels. However, the references and texts associated with Eupolemus in Eusebius and two references to Eupolemus in Clement, found no earlier than the 2^nd cent CE, may be assigned to a second, or, Pseudo-Eupolemus. The earlier Jewish Hellenistic writer is referred to in Josephus but he provides no details. The only information about the original Eupolemus is found in Clement. It is clear that the original Eupolemus uses the independence of Jerusalem from Greek troops in 141 BCE as the base year for his chronology. In addition, it is probable he used the Hebrew text of Kings and not the LXX as his source. Eupolemus should not be used to support early dates for the LXX.     

Instrument Transfer as Knowledge Transfer in Neurophysiology: François Magendie's (1783–1855) Early Attempts to Measure Cerebrospinal Fluid Pressure

François Magendie's (1783–1855) experimental model for measuring blood pressure in animals, which he developed in 1838, had a major impact on French physiology in the nineteenth century, especially upon Etienne-Jules Marey (1830–1904) in Paris. In due course it was also adopted by other European investigators, such as the Leipzig physiologist Carl Ludwig (1816–1895), and by clinicians who developed it into a major measuring tool. Historians of science, however, have paid hardly any attention to Magendie's further laboratory investigations conducted with the assistance of Jean-Louis Marie Poiseuille's (1799–1869) sphygmomètre (blood pressure meter). After having used the apparatus to conduct his experiments on a variety of blood vessels, Magendie also applied the sphygmomètre in 1840 to the ventricular system of the brain in order to measure cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) pressure. But the scope of this new procedure had yet to be defined: the new measuring device invited many speculative interpretations about the meaning of CSF flow for the physiology of the ventricular system in healthy and diseased brain function. As such, Magendie's experiments produced phenomena in very heterogeneous knowledge areas, and CSF measurement was situated at the interface of quite disparate investigative spaces regarding the structure and function of the brain. In his textbook Leçons sur les Fonctions et les Maladies du Système Nerveux (Lectures on the Functions and Diseases of the Nervous System), Magendie described extending application of the measuring “apparatus of Poiseuille” from blood vessels to parts of the brain. The instrument thus became something of a liquidodynamomètre (liquor dynamometer), that paved the way for later applications, including (after 1896) diagnostic intracranial pressure (ICP) measurement by Theodor Kocher (1841–1917) and Harvey Cushing (1869–1939). The current paper focuses on the experimental contingencies that prompted the instrument transfer in Magendie's laboratory and opened up new epistemological perspectives for research in neurophysiology.     

Proposing new approaches for dating young volcanic eruptions by luminescence methods

The application of luminescence dating to young volcanic sediments has been first investigated over three decades ago, but it was only with the technical innovations of the last decade that such analyses became viable. While current analytical procedures show promise for dating late Quaternary volcanic events, most efforts have been aimed at unconsolidated volcanic tephra. Investigations into direct dating of lava flows or of non-heated volcanoclastics like phreatic explosion layers, however, remain scarce. These volcanic deposits are of common occurrence and represent important chrono- and volcanostratigraphic markers. Their age determination is therefore of great importance in volcanologic, tectonic, geomorphological and climate studies. In this article, we propose the use of phreatic explosion deposits and xenolithic inclusions in lava flows as target materials for luminescence dating applications. The main focus is on the crucial criterion whether it is probable that such materials experience complete luminescence signal resetting during the volcanic event to be dated. This is argued based on the findings from existing literature, model calculations and laboratory tests.