Policy Research: The Field Dimension

Field research, defined as an unstructured contact with public problems and programs, is essential to realistic policy research. Research linking governmental action to good outcomes is rare, because those who study government and those whose who analyze public problems are seldom the same. Field inquiry can help give policy research more governmental content. A lack of field contact is one reason why much of the research surrounding welfare reform has been incorrect. Ideally, the connections between policy and outcomes that respondents claim during field research should be verified by statistical analyses that use program data. Unfortunately, field research is discouraged by academic incentives favoring rigor at the expense of realism.     

Automated Analysis of Environmental Degradation of Paint Residues

The development of effective conservation strategies for the protection of rock art sites involves the assessment of the taphonomic risks posed by physical and chemical weathering. This study outlines the methodology used in a pilot study to monitor and model the deterioration of paint residues in a cave environment. Mineral oxide pigments were mixed with water and placed on the walls of a cave in the Mendip hills (U.K.). The physical degradation of the paint residues was simulated visually and modelled mathematically. A training stage learning the characteristics of a reference image is followed by comparisons with this image as the test paints deteriorate. The study will be extended over three years and digital image processing will be used to quantify changes in the colour and dimensions of the test paints. The results will be correlated with micro-climatic variables. This methodology can be used to model taphonomic changes to rock art and other forms of imagery in differing environments.     

The significance of maternalism in the evolution of fromm's social thought1

During his years as a member of the Frankfurt School, Erich Fromm developed a strong interest in the idea that there were distinctive male and female character orientations. Drawing on the positive evaluation of matriarchy made in the nineteenth century by the Swiss anthropologist J. J. Bachofen, Fromm argued that a “matricentric” psychic structure was more conducive to socialism than the patricentric structure which had predominated in capitalism. His interest in maternalism and his opposition to patriarchy played an important part in his rejection of Freud's theory of drives and in the development of a humanistic ethics in which love plays a central part. The idea of a gendered humanism is central to Fromm's social thought, although there is a danger that the over‐emphasis of sex‐based character differences unintentionally re‐opens the danger of the kind of sexual stereotyping which he resolutely opposed.     

An early illustrated comparative anatomy of the brain: Samuel Collins' A Systeme of Anatomy (1685) and the emergence of comparative neurology in 17th century England

The concept of comparing of the brains of various animals and of individual human brains was launched in the last half of the 17th century in England and was much influenced by the formation of the European scientific societies and their attempts to guide naturalist observations into a new systematics. An ambitious attempt to document this trend in an extensively illustrated work of encyclopedic pretensions was the singular publication of Samuel Collins (1618-1710), an energetic anatomist and president of the Royal College of Physicians. His little known tow-volume folio presentation, written in teh vernacular for broad acceptance, contains the seeds of a science of comparative neurology with the largest collection of brain illustrations (as well as of other organ systems) attempted in his era. Although lacking the conceptual insight that might derive from a true "comparative" anatomy and an understanding of the relations of different animals, the handsome engravings exemplified the new direction of the 'enlightenment' of the scientific revolution and are discussed in teh context of relevant events of this period.     

The Upper Paleolithic Rock Art of Iberia

Nearly 200 rock art sites of Upper Paleolithic age are currently known on the Iberian Peninsula, in both caves and the open air. Over half are still concentrated in Cantabrian Spain and they span the period between c. 30–11 kya, but–tracking the course of human demography in this geographically circumscribed region–many of the images were probably painted or engraved during the Solutrean and, especially, Magdalenian. Dramatic discoveries and dating projects have significantly expanded the Iberian rock art record both geographically and temporally in recent years, in close coincidence with the growth of contemporaneous archeological evidence: cave art loci in Aragón and Levante attributable to the Solutrean and Magdalenian, many cave art sites and a few open-air ones in Andalucía and Extremadura that are mostly Solutrean (in line with evidence of a major Last Glacial Maximum human refugium in southern Spain), the spectacular Côa Valley open-air complex in northern Portugal (together with a growing number of other such loci and one cave) that was probably created during the Gravettian-Magdalenian periods, and a modest, but important increase in proven cave and open-air sites in the high, north-central interior of Spain that are probably Solutrean and/or Magdalenian. Despite regional variations in decorated surfaces, themes, techniques and styles, there are broad (and sometimes very specific) pan-Iberian similarities (as well as ones with the Upper Paleolithic art of southern France) that are indicative of widespread human contacts and shared systems of symbols and beliefs during the late Last Glacial. As this Ice Age world and the forms of social relationships and ideologies that helped human groups survive in it came to an end, so too did the decoration of caves, rockshelters and outcrops, although in some regions other styles of rock art would return under very different conditions of human existence.     

Access anxiety: HIPAA and historical research

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) establishes new standards for the protection of private health information in the United States. The Privacy Rule, one of the specific regulatory provisions of the act, went into effect 14 April 2003 for covered health care providers, institutions, and businesses. The Privacy Rule directly affected medical archivists and their collections. It has significant implications for historians of health care, as well. The Privacy Rule is the first major regulation that protects the privacy of the deceased in perpetuity. It establishes requirements that researchers must satisfy in order to gain access to "individually identifiable health information" held by HIPAA-protected institutions. While these requirements will burden historians in some cases, the Privacy Rule could open up opportunities for well-prepared historians to work with a more extensive range of twentieth-century documents.