Railways and manufacturing productivity in Italy after unification

This paper contributes to the debate on the effects of transport infrastructure endowment on productivity by adding a historical perspective. This allows us to address the issue in a proving ground where the effects of the existing stock of infrastructure are negligible. At the time of unification, the Kingdom of Italy initiated a large infrastructure project to build railways. We find that railways had a positive effect on manufacturing productivity over the period 1871–1911. Railways also had strong spillover effects in neighboring provinces so that provinces that started with a higher endowment of railways benefited more than those who were newly endowed.     

Seismic Assessment of the Lima Cathedral Bell Towers via Kinematic and Nonlinear Static Pushover Analyses

ABSTRACT

The protection of cultural heritage against earthquake induced actions is one of the main challenges the earthquake engineering science and practice are facing. This article presents a seismic assessment study on one of the most ancient colonial buildings present in Peru, the Cathedral of Lima, focusing on its towers. A historical review highlighted how these structures, together with the whole Cathedral, suffered intense damage and partial collapse during previous earthquakes. In order to identify the structure main deficiencies, both linear kinematic analyses and nonlinear static analyses have been performed. Different nonlinear finite element models have been created to evaluate the influence of the adjacent walls. Different load distributions have been compared to evaluate how simplified patterns could provide results close to load distributions taken from a modal analysis of the complex. A simple retrofit strategy, consisting on the introduction of steel ties, has also been studied as a reference. Results show good correlation between kinematic and pushover analyses. The construction, when compared to the requirements of the national code for new buildings, results significantly vulnerable, pointing out the need to accept some structural damage even after seismic retrofit.     

Klippel‐Feil syndrome in an Early Hungarian Period juvenile skeleton from Austria

The excellently preserved skeleton of a juvenile from the Early Hungarian Period (10^th century AD), recently excavated in Gnadendorf (Lower Austria), displays typical symptoms of Type II congenital ‘Klippel‐Feil syndrome’ (KFS): fused cervical vertebrae 2 and 3, and fused thoracic vertebrae 2 and 3. Other features observed in this skeleton clinically reported for KFS include a basilar impression and a spina bifida occulta. The bilateral symmetrical hypoplasia of the basilar part of the occipital bone is probably also linked to this syndrome, as well as the constricted external acoustic meati, which almost certainly led to hearing impairment. A cranial lesion and its possible consequences are discussed in the context of the specific KFS alterations. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Seeing like an investor: urban development planning,financialisation, and investors’ perceptions of London as an investment space

There is a growing orthodoxy that since the global financial crisis European policy-makers and planning systems have become more dependent on inward investment and the availability of global finance to fund welfare services and projects. This process of financialisation, it is claimed, is driven by the needs of developers and investors, who are focused on maximizing returns and limiting their social and economic liabilities. Planning agencies and traditional territory-based arrangements are viewed with increasing suspicion, as standing in the way of investment and acting as a brake on much needed house-building and regeneration. However, in this paper, drawing on detailed research with investors and developers in London, we argue that there needs to be a stronger focus in academic and policy writing on the multiple, variegated, and diverse calculations and framings that private sector actors take when making investment decisions. Too often their perspectives are caricatured and/or over-simplified. We show that and imaginations of planning and regulation are complex and that many firms have realized that market success results from becoming more deeply embedded in the local political, social, and regulatory environments in which they are investing. A greater understanding of these multiple forms of calculation, in turn, opens up opportunities for the maintenance and/or implementation of more effective forms of territorially-based soft and hard regulation. The paper concludes by outlining a broader research agenda for planning and urban studies.     

Max Mara and the origins of Italian ready‐to‐wear

This article charts the establishment and expansion of the ready‐to‐wear Max Mara label before the birth of the Max Mara group in 1967. Until recently, little consideration has been given to the evolution of Italian fashion, and few histories of dress or Italian culture even mention its presence before the 1970s. Still fewer acknowledge the crucial emergence of fashionable ready‐to‐wear in Italy in the 1960s, in which Max Mara played a key role, and which anticipated the international success of ‘Italian style’ in the 1970s and 1980s.     

‘That awful place was home’:1 Reflections on the Contested Meanings of craig dunain asylum

The paper explores a particular Scottish asylum geography (Craig Dunain Hospital near Inverness) as a meaningful social space. Drawing on archival evidence and combined with contemporary patient and staff voices, the contested meanings of this institution are discussed. In particular, patient narratives reveal both positive and negative assessments of internal and external asylum spaces. Changing feelings about the asylum are argued to be related to matters of geography, and are conceived in terms of distance from and proximity to the institution.     

Non-destructive PXRF analysis of museum-curated obsidian from the Near East

Non-destructive pXRF has the potential to expand sample populations of archaeological provenancing studies by facilitating access to museum collections of artefacts. In this study, we use museum-curated obsidian for the sites of Tell Brak, Mersin-Yümüktepe and Tell Arpachiyah and geological obsidian samples from central Turkey to demonstrate that non-destructive pXRF is comparable to other techniques in differentiating between Near Eastern obsidian sources. Secondly, we use multivariate analysis to evaluate whether non-destructive pXRF is sufficiently accurate and precise to enable comparison with legacy datasets from previous analysis using PIXE and ICP-MS. Multivariate analyses show that instrumental offsets between the results from pXRF and other analytic techniques are less than source-to-source variation typical for most Anatolian obsidian outcrops and pXRF-identified geochemical groups are directly comparable to legacy datasets. Non-destructive pXRF analysis indicates that during the Chalcolithic, East Göllü da? and Nenezi da? continued to be the major sources of obsidian to communities in central Anatolia and the Bingöl range and mountains surrounding Lake Van supplied sites east of the Levant. Variations in the analysed assemblages suggest a number of obsidian exchange networks existed during this period.     

Non-destructive pXRF of mafic stone tools

Archaeological use of non-destructive pXRF has been most systematically applied to the classification and provenancing of volcanic glass (obsidian) artefacts. Comparable work has yet to be developed for non-vitreous artefacts. We report results of pXRF analysis for a sample of grey to black (mafic) aboriginal hatchets from Sydney and adjacent coastal regions to the north and south. The study shows both broad and detailed classification is achievable depending on rock type and degree of elemental depletion or enrichment of the samples. PXRF analysis reveals not only distinct patterns of resource use between the three regions of this study but also enables a high degree of geographic resolution in the case of the basalt artefacts of our sample. We conclude that non-destructive pXRF is effective for reliable characterisation of non-vitreous stone artefacts that have a sufficiently complex and enriched compositional signature (i.e., unaltered basalts); with ∼50% of the basalt hatchets in our sample matched with spatially and geologically specific sources.