Protecting the sterling area: The chifley government's response to multilateralism 1945–9

In 1942 the Australian Labor government accepted multilateralism in the form of Article VII of the Anglo‐American Mutual Aid Agreement. Some historians have argued that this was the beginning of a turning point in Australia's economic history: a movement away from the declining British empire towards the United States. I have two arguments in this article. The first is that Labor's acceptance of multilateralism did not lead, at least in the first five years after the war, to a deterioration in Australia's economic relationship with the United Kingdom. The reverse was true. Because of the acute shortage of dollars in the postwar world, Australia was obliged to expand her trade within the sterling area and to discriminate against American goods. The second argument is that although the Chifley government supported multilateralism as a theoretical concept, it opposed vigorously what it regarded as the Americans’ precipitate moves to dismantle the sterling area. The Chifley government sought to protect this cooperative system of exchange and import controls as a bulwark against the dollar shortage and against the possibility of a depression spreading from America.     

Expertise Marginalized: Quality Inspection and the Grain Market in Republican China

With the help of professionally trained agricultural scientists, the Guomindang’s Nationalist government drafted a large-scale program for agricultural reconstruction in the late 1920s and early 1930s. At the heart of the program was a scientific rice-breeding experiment with the potential to produce great numbers of new high-yield rice varieties. However, this scientific achievement could not assure success of the new rice varieties in the market because the marketability of rice was determined not by the scientific productivity improvement but by a series of processes required before the rice reached consumers. For this, local and practical contexts had to be considered. By juxtaposing two different forms of “rice expertise,” this paper illuminates the incompatibility between the state’s productivist understanding of agricultural improvement and the quality issue in the grain market.     

Compositional and Microstructural Study of KoryŎ Celadon and Whiteware Excavated from SŎRi Kiln in Kyŏnggi Province

An extensive study of the composition and microstructure of celadon and whiteware sherds excavated at Sori, one of the most important sites that were active during the founding stage of the stoneware and porcelain industry in Korea, was carried out. The analysed sherds were organized according to four different levels of the excavation and four different styles of haemurigup foot rim. Principal component analysis of the chemical compositions of the sherds revealed slight differences in their body and glaze compositions between the levels of excavation. Porcelain stone with high silica and low aluminium contents was generally used as the body material and wood ash as the chief flux in the glaze. Over the period of operation, the aluminium content in the bodies of the ceramics decreased and the P₂O₅ content in the glazes increased. Glazed bodies were fired in a single step, in contrast to the two‐step method used in later ceramic production. Firing conditions were adjusted to produce vitrification of the glazes, which meant that vitrification of the ceramic bodies occurred to varying extents, mostly determined by the relative contents of flux in the body and the glaze.     

Outstanding issues in bilateral economic relations between Australia and South Korea

This article examines and analyses the main issues in the current bilateral economic relations between Australia and South Korea, particularly focusing on the Korean perspective. Above all, the trade imbalance continuously favouring Australia has been an issue of great concern on the part of South Korea. Australia and South Korea have shown disagreement over the lopsided trade issue, regarding attitude, approach and standpoint in addressing it. While the Korean side broadly converges on the view that the bilateral trade imbalance needs to be redressed, there are four differing viewpoints on explaining the lopsided bilateral trade: (i) the Korean government's view; (ii) the Korean business sector's view; (iii) the relevance of culture; (iv) Korea's favourable perception of Australia. This paper seeks to answer an important question in the context of the two nations' economic/trade relationship: why South Korea has ever engaged with Australia on good terms, albeit with disadvantageous trade relations. In this case, the nexus of economics and politico‐security is largely in action. That is, on one plane, South Korea is ranked as an important trading partner and a major export market of Australia. On another plane, South Korea politically needs strong allies like Australia which can give an unswerving support for it in both the regional and international arenas.     

Salinity structure of the central North Slope foreland basin, Alaska, USA: implications for pathways of past and present topographically driven regional fluid flow

Previous studies of the areal variation in heat flow in the National Petroleum Reserve Alaska (NPRA) support the existence of an active topographically driven regional fluid flow regime in this central part of the North Slope foreland basin. Drilling records and wireline logs for over 30 wells drilled in the NPRA provide additional field information, which can be used to further constrain interpretation of the pattern of regional flow of basinal waters within the NPRA. Hydraulic heads estimated from drilling mud weights show that ground water flow occurs generally from south to north, but with divergence to the north‐east and north‐west away from the central part of the NPRA towards coastal areas of elevated shallow heat flow. Salinities calculated from SP logs range from less than 1 g L^?1, to marine values of 35 g L^?1, to hypersaline values of over 150 g L^?1. The entire upper sedimentary section to a depth of 2 km or more in the eastern part of the NPRA has been preferentially flushed with meteoric water through an area corresponding to the sandiest portion of the Nanushuk group. Deeper areas of low salinity occur within the Sadlerochit and Lisburne sections. The pattern of regional flow in the east is complicated, however, by the presence of a large mass of hypersaline water at depth. It is not known whether these brines are being displaced laterally and upward towards the discharge end of the basin or whether fresher waters are simply riding up over the top. Deep, hypersaline waters also occur in fault slices in the Brooks Range and have survived meteoric flushing. The brines were probably formed at the time of deposition of the Lisburne carbonates. The fluid flow regime to the west is different. Low‐salinity waters may be flowing northward underneath this section through the Ellesmerian section and discharging upward nearer the coast. However, sparse well log control severely limits what can be deduced about the details of flow paths in the central and western parts of the NPRA.     

Ultramicroscopic investigation of the preservation status of hair collected from a full‐term,intrauterine baby mummy of the Joseon Dynasty,Korea

Our previous studies on the ultramicroscopic structure of mummy hair from Joseon Dynasty (1392–1910) tombs sealed with a lime‐soil mixture barrier (LSMB) have provided initial, basic information on their preservation status. Numerous additional cases of various conditions are required in order to provide data sufficient for establishing Korean mummy preservation patterns on a firm basis, however, and so we performed electron microscopic studies on hair taken from a full‐term, intrauterine baby mummy found in Paju, Korea. The baby mummy was found within the uterus of a 16th‐century mummified woman aged 20–30 years old. Since the labour and delivery stage for this case was 2, and the uterus was found to be ruptured, the cause of death of both the mother and the baby was likely to have been hypovolemic shock occurring during labour. In scanning electron microscopic (SEM) and transmission electron microscopic (TEM) studies, we found that the surface of the hair of the baby mummy was coated with crystalline substances, mainly on the side facing the vaginal orifice. We also observed well‐preserved cuticle, cortex and medullar layers, completely preserved cuticle‐layer scales, as well as macrofibrils and melanin granules evenly spread within the cuticle and cortex layers. Because studies on infant or subadult mummies are very few, and since they have focused mainly on the palaeopathological aspects of those mummies, the preservation pattern of the hair of a full‐term baby mummy could contribute significantly to our knowledge of mummies from around the world. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.