A nineteenth-century case of carcinoma of the prostate,with a note on the early history of the disease

A case of prostatic carcinoma is described in the skeleton of a named individual who died in 1834. The tumour was recognized from widespread periosteal new bone throughout the skeleton and by the presence of sclerosing metastases in many bones, including the pelvis and all the vertebrae. A number of features of the disease present here are said to be uncommon in modern patients, including spiculated periosteal new bone and some degree of spinal stenosis. In two previous cases of prostatic carcinoma described in the literature, periosteal new bone was a prominent feature and was probably responsible for the disease being recognized. It is likely that if skeletons from mature males were routinely X-rayed, considerably more cases would be noted and a more accurate estimate of the prevalence of this disease in the past would thus be ascertained. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The distribution of osteoarthritis of the hands in a skeletal population

The distribution of osteoarthritis of the hands was studied in 101 skeletons from archaeological sites in England. The results are similar to those found in epidemiological studies of modern populations. Osteoarthritis of the hands was more common in females than in males, and in females tended to involve a greater number of joints. The distal and proximal interphalangeal joints were commonly affected, the former more frequently than the latter, but otherwise the disease was largely confined to the first ray of the hand, centred on the trapezium. It is concluded that the pattern of osteoarthritis in the hand has probably not changed greatly over several hundred years.     

Wild Colonial Ploys? Currents of Thought in Australian Foreign Policy

This article proposes a new method of mapping domestic preferences and their effect on Australian foreign policy from the perspective of three distinct ‘currents of thought’s flowing through Australian society and policy makers about Australia and the world. Traditionalism prioritises security relationships with ‘great and powerful friends’s; Seclusionism stresses autarky and minimal international involvement; Internationalism advocates a creative, multilateralist role in building international stability and prosperity. A currents of thought approach, by looking for an underlying motivation for Australian foreign policy actions, assists in understanding the policy's intent, identifying its supporters and detractors, and in anticipating what types of policy responses will be motivated by different international stimuli. It is also useful for further understanding the underlying processes behind the broad changes of direction in Australian foreign policy.     

Institutional Influences on EU Funded Regional Technology Development in the UK: A Study of the Yorkshire and East London Regions in the 1990s

This paper seeks to place policy research undertaken in the Yorkshire and East London regions of the UK within the broader context of regional innovation system building. In particular, it attempts to draw out the releasing factors and conditions that shaped stakeholder relationships in these two EU Objective Two regions during the 1990s. This is undertaken with a view to drawing out conclusions about the extent of autonomy, institutional lock-in and compatibility within regional governance. The extent to which such EU stimulated influences are relevant to the practice of regional technological development is explored in areas which have experienced industrial restructuring.     

Property Rights and the Environment in Pastoral China: Evidence from the Field

It is widely perceived that the degradation of China’s rangelands has accelerated since the introduction of rural reforms in the late 1970s. The popular explanation for this phenomenon has been that a ‘tragedy of the commons’ exists, as privately‐owned livestock are being grazed on ‘common’ land. Since the passing of the Rangeland Law in 1985, Chinese pastoral tenure policy has emphasized the establishment of individual household tenure as a necessary condition for improving incentives for sustainable rangeland management. Yet household tenure has yet to be effectively established in many pastoral regions. The first objective of this article is to describe pastoral tenure arrangements in northern Xinjiang‐Uygur Autonomous Region. Its second objective is to explain pastoral tenure arrangements, particularly the observed persistence of collective action. It is argued that there is no ‘tragedy of the commons’ and that it is characteristics of rangeland resources and the social environment that give rise to the particular types of institutional arrangements found.     

Gaussian Process Regression and Bayesian Model Averaging: An Alternative Approach to Modeling Spatial Phenomena

Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) is a nonparametric technique that is capable of yielding reliable out‐of‐sample predictions in the presence of highly nonlinear unknown relationships between dependent and explanatory variables. But in terms of identifying relevant explanatory variables, this method is far less explicit about questions of statistical significance. In contrast, more traditional spatial econometric models, such as spatial autoregressive models or spatial error models, place rather strong prior restrictions on the functional form of relationships, but allow direct inference with respect to explanatory variables. In this article, we attempt to combine the best of both techniques by augmenting GPR with a Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) component that allows for the identification of statistically relevant explanatory variables while retaining the predictive performance of GPR. In particular, GPR‐BMA yields a posterior probability interpretation of model‐inclusion frequencies that provides a natural measure of the statistical relevance of each variable. Moreover, while such frequencies offer no direct information about the signs of local marginal effects, it is shown that partial derivatives based on the mean GPR predictions do provide such information. We illustrate the additional insights made possible by this approach by applying GPR‐BMA to a benchmark BMA data set involving potential determinants of cross‐country economic growth. It is shown that localized marginal effects based on partial derivatives of mean GPR predictions yield additional insights into comparative growth effects across countries.