HOW CHILDREN PLACE THEMSELVES AND OTHERS IN LOCAL SPACE

This study examines the ways in which children aged 11 to 15 in six adjacent neighbourhoods in a medium-sized Swedish town place themselves and others in local space. Special attention is given to how they discuss a neighbourhood stigmatized in the public discourse and how children who live in this neighbourhood react to the negative representations of the place in which they live. The study is based on group interviews and maps. The study shows that children construct representations of their own neighbourhoods as "quiet" neighbourhoods and place objects of "trouble" and "danger" somewhere else. It is argued that this is done both in relation to their personal knowledge of the neighbourhood and in relation to local and/or media representations of their own and other neighbourhoods. It is shown that the children are influenced by media representations of a stigmatized neighbourhood, but also that they are not passive reproducers of these discourses and that some of them are able to offer counter-discourses. The children living in this neighbourhood experience difficulties in defending it as the quiet place which they perceive it to be to outsiders because of the negative discourses.     

Soil formation in archaeological pits and adjacent loess soils in Southern Germany

The soil formation in a number of pits on a neolithic excavation was compared with that in adjacent loess soils (Hapludalfs) under forest and arable and in Bavaria, Southern Germany. The differences between the soils under consideration were mainly characterized by micromorphological quantification of the illuviated fine clay. In the archaeological pits the amount of illuviated fine clay proved to be nearly twice as much as that in the undisturbed soils. The amount of illuviated coarser matrix components (fine and coarse clay and fine silt) in the neolithic pits did not differ significantly from that in the natural soils. The large amount of illuviated fine clay in the pits was ascribed to the presence of potash during the period of their formation. The formation of coarse grained illuviation cutans was related to deforestation, after which illuviation of the fine clay decreased in intensity and came to a stop.     

Exploring scale-dependent correlations between cancer mortality rates using factorial kriging and population-weighted semivariograms

This article presents a geostatistical methodology that accounts for spatially varying population size in the processing of cancer mortality data. The approach proceeds in two steps: (1) spatial patterns are first described and modeled using population-weighted semivariogram estimators, (2) spatial components corresponding to nested structures identified on semivariograms are then estimated and mapped using a variant of factorial kriging. The main benefit over traditional spatial smoothers is that the pattern of spatial variability (i.e., direction-dependent variability, range of correlation, presence of nested scales of variability) is directly incorporated into the computation of weights assigned to surrounding observations. Moreover, besides filtering the noise in the data, the procedure allows the decomposition of the structured component into several spatial components (i.e., local versus regional variability) on the basis of semivariogram models. A simulation study demonstrates that maps of spatial components are closer to the underlying risk maps in terms of prediction errors and provide a better visualization of regional patterns than the original maps of mortality rates or the maps smoothed using weighted linear averages. The proposed approach also attenuates the underestimation of the magnitude of the correlation between various cancer rates resulting from noise attached to the data. This methodology has great potential to explore scale-dependent correlation between risks of developing cancers and to detect clusters at various spatial scales, which should lead to a more accurate representation of geographic variation in cancer risk, and ultimately to a better understanding of causative relationships.     

Adult scurvy in skeletal remains of late 19th century mineworkers in Kimberley,South Africa

Throughout history, scurvy has been a well‐known disease which develops due to restricted resources of fresh fruit and vegetables. The condition results from an extended limited intake of vitamin C. Although skeletal lesions associated with infantile scurvy have been well described by many authors, very little literature is available on adult scurvy and the resulting skeletal lesions. The purpose of this study was to investigate the skeletal remains of a 19th century mining population from Kimberley, South Africa, for any skeletal lesions that may be indicative of adult scurvy. Scurvy was well documented as being extremely prevalent in this population. The skeletal remains of 107 individuals, presumed to have died around 1898, were studied. The majority of these individuals were males between 19 and 45 years of age. It is likely that most individuals were migrant workers at the diamond mines. All bones were visually assessed for macroscopic indications of pathological bone alterations associated with healed scurvy. Bone samples were also taken from ambiguous lesions in order to perform histological investigations. Lesions indicative of possible healed adult scurvy were observed in 16 individuals. These lesions included bilateral ossified haematomas, osteoperiostitic bone changes and periodontal disease. Histological investigation confirmed the presence of ossified haematomas on the anterior tibiae of some individuals. Hospital records and historical documents describing the incidence of scurvy in the local hospitals and the daily diet of the black mine workers supported these findings. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.