Ancient DNA analysis on Clonorchis sinensis eggs remained in samples from medieval Korean mummy

In the present study, Clonorchis sinensis (C. sinensis) ancient DNA (aDNA) was successfully extracted from human remains discovered in a tomb dating to the medieval Joseon dynasty of Korea. The presence of C. sinensis eggs was confirmed by microscopic observation, after which a PCR-based aDNA analysis was performed using primer sets designed for the amplification of nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer 1 (ITS1), 2 (ITS2) and mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase 1 (CO1) genes. The sequences obtained were 100% homologous to some contemporary C. sinensis gene sequences reported from Korea and other East Asian countries. We believe that the results of our analysis expand the temporal and geographical scopes of research on the history of C. sinensis infection in different human populations.     

Discourse,justification and critique: towards a legitimate digital copyright regime?

Digitization and the internet have posed an acute economic challenge to rights holders in the cultural industries. Faced with a threat to their form of capital accumulation from copyright infringement, rights holders have used discourse strategically in order to try and legitimate and strengthen their position in the digital copyright debate with governments and media users. In so doing, they have appealed to general justificatory principles – about what is good, right, and just – that provide some scope for opposition and critique, as other groups contest their interpretation of these principles and the evidence used to support them. In this article, we address the relative lack of academic attention paid to the role of discourse in copyright debates by analysing user-directed marketing campaigns and submissions to UK government policy consultations. We show how legitimacy claims are justified and critiqued, and conclude that amid these debates rests some hope of achieving a more legitimate policy resolution to the copyright wars – or at least the possibility of beginning a more constructive dialogue.     

Were New Labour’s cultural policies neo-liberal?

This article assesses the cultural policies of ‘New Labour’, the UK Labour government of 1997–2010. It takes neo-liberalism as its starting point, asking to what extent Labour’s cultural policies can be validly and usefully characterised as neo-liberal. It explores this issue across three dimensions: corporate sponsorship and cuts in public subsidy; the running of public sector cultural institutions as though they were private businesses; and a shift in prevailing rationales for cultural policy, away from cultural justifications, and towards economic and social goals. Neo-liberalism is shown to be a significant but rather crude tool for evaluating and explaining New Labour’s cultural policies. At worse, it falsely implies that New Labour did not differ from Conservative approaches to cultural policy, downplays the effect of sociocultural factors on policy-making, and fails to differentiate varying periods and directions of policy. It does, however, usefully draw attention to the public policy environment in which Labour operated, in particular the damaging effects of focusing, to an excessive degree, on economic conceptions of the good in a way that does not recognise the limitations of markets as a way of organising production, circulation and consumption.     

Three worlds of global value chains: multiple governance and upgrading paths in the Korean animation industry

Cultural production is increasingly fragmented and dispersed organizationally and geographically as a result of growing offshore outsourcing within and across firms, giving rise to global value chains (GVCs). Yet, a GVC perspective has been applied limitedly to the study of cultural industries without serious consideration of inter-firm governance structure and its consequences on upgrading. Building upon the GVC literature on multiple governance structure, this paper examines three GVCs in Korea with distinctive governance forms: U.S. outsourcing chains, Japanese outsourcing chains, and international coproduction chains. The two outsourcing chains exhibited marked differences in various governance dimensions with distinctive upgrading patterns. International coproduction chains emerged as an alternative pathway of upgrading after the rapid decline of outsourcing exports, posing unique opportunities and challenges to firms and policy-makers. The findings are discussed in the context of multiple governance structure in GVCs and its implications to upgrading in networked global cultural production.     

The influence of screen mesh size,and size and shape of rodent teeth on recovery

It is suggested with increasing frequency that rather than the industry standard of 1/4 inch mesh, zooarchaeologists use 1/8 inch or even 1/16 inch mesh to insure more complete recovery. These suggestions are based on the implicit assumption that the body size of a taxon and the probability that the remains of that taxon will be recovered are positively correlated. Size of skeletal specimens provides a more direct measure of recovery probability and accounts for the fact that not all skeletal elements in a body are the same size. Frequencies of eight kinds of rodent teeth representing three genera recovered from the Marmes archaeological site in southeastern Washington State, USA, correlate strongly with tooth size despite the use of 1/25 inch mesh screens. Shape of tooth types measured is insufficiently varied to reveal more than a general relationship between shape and recovery frequency. Choice of an appropriate screen mesh should consider the nature of a deposit, research goals, and cost efficiency.     

西安城墙“泛碱”病害分析及保护研究

西安城墙的墙体常大面积析出白色盐粉,这种现象被称为"泛碱"。大量出现的泛碱现象不但大大影响西安城墙的整体美感,而且会降低砖材的力学强度造成脱落、粉化等病害,甚至对墙体的稳定性和安全性都造成威胁。为了了解其产生的原因,本工作通过X射线衍射分析方法对泛碱物质进行分析。分析结果表明,泛碱主要成分为NaCl、NaNO3、Na2SO4.10H2O、无水芒硝。结合对西安地区环境地下水和降雨等资料的调查,认为"泛碱"的主要原因为原材料以及地下水、雨水等引入的可溶盐。针对这一现象,提出了用"多层纸张贴敷法"除去导致砖石表面酥粉泛碱的可溶盐,再后期杀菌封护的保护方案。     

俄国东正教驻北京传教士团与清代中俄图书交流

俄国东正教驻北京传教士团是清代中俄文化交流的主要中介,其中也包括图书交流。本文以中俄文献为基础,探讨了俄国传教士团成员在俄国中国典籍收藏以及在传教士团图书馆创建过程中的作用,并试图澄清有关道光年间中俄政府大规模互赠图书的历史真相。     

大理国服饰图考——兼论西昌北山火葬墓出土陶俑

大理国是西南地区少数民族白蛮建立的地方政权,其服饰是其民族文化的一个组成部分。大理国的服饰种类丰富,且具有独特的民族特色。其王族、文官、武士、侍者等不同阶层人群的服饰,具有鲜明的等级区别。大理国的服饰在原料上可分为丝织品、木棉布、麻制品、毛制品、皮制品五类。由于大理国继南诏而立国,而南诏与唐在文化上有着千丝万缕的联系,大理国还和与其同时代的赵宋王朝有着频繁的文化交往,故其服饰受到了南诏、唐、宋的影响。     

ChoroWare: A Software Toolkit for Choropleth Map Classification

Choropleth mapping plays an important role in exploratory spatial data analysis. Several objectives have been suggested to guide choropleth map construction. These objectives, however, often conflict and, consequently, a choropleth map that is best for one objective may not be best for others. Choosing a set of choropleth class intervals is thus a multiobjective problem. This article describes an open-source software toolkit, called ChoroWare that is designed to help cartographers identify class intervals that are suitable for a specific application. The software uses a genetic algorithm to generate a set of nondominated solutions to the multiobjective choropleth class interval problem and uses an interactive visualization tool to display members of this classification set. Using ChoroWare, cartographers can examine trade-offs between alternatives and find desirable choropleth classifications that meet their objectives.