Environmental Risk and Uncertainty: Insights from Yucca Mountain

Abstract This study examines the effects of the risk from transporting high–level radioactive waste to the proposed Yucca Mountain repository on housing location decisions in Southern Nevada. Using data from a survey of southern Nevada households, we develop a model–based subjective risk estimate for each household. We then explore different factors that may influence the household's location decisions if the proposed transportation route is ultimately chosen for nuclear waste transport. We extend the conventional expected utility model to allow for uncertainty surrounding the actual risks borne by the household. Finally, we examine the impact of federal government compensation on households' location decisions. The findings indicate that residents currently living near the proposed transportation route express subjective risk estimates much larger than those reported by the Department of Energy. In general, households that are uncertain about the future risks are more likely to relocate than those expressing certainty. When everything is considered, the model predicts that between one and three percent of households living near the transportation route are likely to relocate. Compensation can influence some households to remain at their present location and bear the transport risk.     

The idea of global civil society

The main argument of this article is that the idea of global civil society challenges the concept of international relations. It traces the evolution of the idea of society and argues that civil society has always meant a rule-governed society where rules were based on some form of social contract among citizens. Historically, civil society was always territorially tied and contrasted with international relations between states. What changed in the 1980s and 1990s was the global dimension of civil society—a social contract is being negotiated across borders establishing a set of global rules involving states as well as international institutions. The article ends by asking whether September 11 and the war in Iraq mark a reversion to international relations.     

Wundt, Vygotsky and Bandura: a cultural-historical science of consciousness in three acts

This article looks at three historical efforts to coordinate the scientific study of biological and cultural aspects of human consciousness into a single comprehensive theory of human development that includes the evolution of the human body, cultural evolution and personal development: specifically, the research programs of Wilhelm Wundt, Lev Vygotsky and Albert Bandura. The lack of historical relations between these similar efforts is striking, and suggests that the effort to promote cultural and personal sources of consciousness arises as a natural foil to an overemphasis on the biological basis of consciousness, sometimes associated with biological determinism.     

Integration of use-wear with protein residue analysis – a study of tool use and function in the south Scandinavian Early Neolithic

This study presents research on how an integration of use-wear analysis with protein residue analysis can produce new results on prehistoric tool use and function. Thirty flint artefacts from an Early Neolithic TRB site in south Sweden were analysed for both use-wear and protein residues. The results show a positive correlation between the two methods. The Early Neolithic tools analysed were primarily used to process fish.     

Atlantic salmon, archaeology and climate change in New England

A paucity of archaeological remains of Atlantic salmon in Northeast North America has been cited as evidence that the species may have been present in the region only during and after the Little Ice Age (ca. 1450–1850 AD), one of coldest periods of the Holocene. However, significant problems of preservation, recovery and identification remain. Here, improved methods of identification use vertebra structure to distinguish salmon from trout, and strontium/calcium ratios to differentiate sea-run from landlocked salmon. In addition to the Little Ice Age, Atlantic salmon is identified in tightly dated contexts at 7000–6500 and 3500–3000 calendar years BP, during climate periods that were comparatively warm and wet.