The Search for a Sixth Sense: The Cases for Vestibular,Muscle, and Temperature Senses

The five senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch, enumerated by Aristotle, were incremented in the early-nineteenth century by the muscle sense, multiple dimensions of touch, and a movement sense. Aristotle explicitly excluded a sixth sense, and five remains the number of senses in popular imagination. The division of touch into several sensations was entertained and rejected by Aristotle, but it was given anatomical, physiological and psychophysical support in the late-nineteenth century. A separate muscle sense was proposed in the late-eighteenth century, with experimental evidence to support it. However, before these developments, behavioral evidence of the vestibular (movement) sense was available from studies of vertigo, although it was not integrated with the anatomy and physiology of the labyrinth until the nineteenth century. The history of the search for a sixth sense is outlined, and the evidence adduced to support the divisions is assessed. Behavioral evidence generally has been accorded less weight than that from anatomy and physiology.     

Spatial diversity in invention: evidence from the early R&D labs

This article uses historical data on inventor and firm researchand development (R&D) lab locations to examine the technologicaland geographic structure of corporate knowledge capital accumulationduring a formative period in the organization of United Statesinnovation. Despite the localization of inventive activity aroundthe labs, one-quarter of inventors lived outside a 30 mile commutingradius of the nearest facility of the firm they assigned theirpatents to. A strong positive effect of distance from a labon technological importance is identified, especially for inventorsfrom large cities that were geographically separated from afirm's; labs. A patent case–control method helps explainspatial sourcing by showing that the average quality of externallyavailable inventions was high. Firms selected complementary,not substitute, inventions from non-lab urban locations, suggestinga link between the organization and the geography of innovation.     

Un-real Estate: Proprietary Space and Public Gardening

Many contemporary neo-liberal urban programs are enacted in order to protect private property, structured according to a logic of property, or designed to extend the workings of private property to public domains. My focus is on the latter, especially in relation to the principles of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED). Here, residents are encouraged to act in a proprietary way toward public space in order to expel anti-social forms of behaviour. Drawing on Oscar Newman's analysis of "defensible space", I document the link between CPTED and certain characterizations of property—that property is largely synonymous with private property, that it is communicated to others through clear acts, such as gardening, and that it is, or should be certain and clear. These principles, I note, echo hegemonic accounts of property. Perhaps for this reason, defensible space principles remain important to neo-liberal urban governance. I document their significance in relation to attempts to create a "Community Greenway" in inner city Vancouver. Drawing from interviews, I demonstrate that while residents did, indeed, lay claim to public space, they did so in complicated and collectivized ways that depart from the privatized certainties of neo-liberal notions of property. Such complications are also echoed in other accounts of defensible space. I conclude by urging geographers to take property more seriously, yet also acknowledge the overlapping and collectivized ways in which people can lay claim to urban space.     

Production sequences of ostrich eggshell beads and settlement dynamics in the Geelbek Dunes of the Western Cape, South Africa

The archaeological record attests to the significance of ostrich eggs as a valuable resource for the people of the Later Stone Age. People over a broad geographic range used ostrich eggs to provide nourishment, storage and ornamentation. This paper focuses on the production, use and discard of ostrich eggshell beads recovered from open-air sites in the Geelbek Dunes of the Western Cape, South Africa. We present a comprehensive production chain for analyzing the manufacture of beads and introduce the concept of a heuristic production value for evaluating the degree of completion reflected by an assemblage. The pattern of fabrication and the distribution in size allow for a detailed analysis of the beads that points to specific behavioral patterns involved in their production. This analysis yields information about the duration and intensity of site use, as well as the individual members and cultural affinities of the groups who made the beads. We document the intentional use of fire to blacken the majority of the beads as an aesthetic choice. Combined with the results from AMS radiocarbon dating, the majority of the beads from Geelbek provide insight into the socio-economic identity of their manufacturers: small groups of hunter–gatherers who inhabited and used specific locations on the strandveld near Langebaan Lagoon.     

The Trouble-maker's Ballot Box? A Note on the Evolving Role of the Australian Federal By-election

By-elections have the capacity to result in political outcomes beyond simply filling casual vacancies when they arise. This paper examines data pertaining to federal by-elections in Australia since 1949 in order to ascertain the extent to which there have been changes in these special electoral contests. This paper argues that, although the rate of representational change has not been great in federal by-elections, there has nonetheless been an evolving notion that these contests give non-major party candidates greater scope to influence the political debate. However, it is also argued that this enhanced scope for non-major party 'trouble-making' has been the product of an emerging feature in Australian by-elections-specifically, the increasing incidence of strategic absenteeism by the major political parties.     

Private School Enrollment and Public School Performance

Advocates of education privatization often take two general approaches to denigrating commonplace public school monopoly service provision assignments. One general argument is that public school administrators are self-interested rent-seekers, which is evidenced by the ever-enlarging bureaucracies they operate. This argument has been roundly criticized by Kevin Smith and Kenneth Meier (1994, 1995) in two methodologically rigorous analyses. The second general argument is grounded in the assumption that public school student performance will improve if public schools are forced to compete for enrollment with private school alternatives. The evidence regarding this claim of privatization advocates has been contested in a systematic study of North Carolina school districts, but requires further analysis to determine if these findings can be generalized to school districts writ large. Such a replication study is presented here, with findings reported that are in agreement with those of Newmark (1995).