Defining the Aesthetics of the Nyonyas’ Batik Sarongs in the Straits Settlements,Late Nineteenth to Early Twentieth Century

The Javanese way of decorating textiles using batik techniques was popular among the Peranakan in the Malay Archipelago, largely because the range of batiks produced by the Javanese Peranakan incorporated Chinese aesthetics. A whole new range of batik, known as Batik Peranakan or Batik Cina (Chinese Batik) was produced for a largely Peranakan Chinese market, including the Straits Chinese in the former British Straits Settlements. This paper examines the Peranakan Chinese aesthetic values that are revealed in these batiks, focusing on three different aspects – motifs, colour schemes and applications. Examination of the batik sarongs worn by the Straits Chinese women, or Nyonyas, however, shows different criteria in relation to these three aspects. The differences in aesthetic values made the batik sarongs used by the Nyonyas in the former Straits unique, and showcased their distinct identity.     

A Generalized Randomization Approach to Local Measures of Spatial Association

This article establishes a unified randomization significance testing framework upon which various local measures of spatial association are commonly predicated. The generalized randomization approach presented is composed of two testing procedures, the extended Mantel test and the generalized vector randomization test. These two procedures employ different randomization assumptions, namely total and conditional randomization, according to the way in which they incorporate local measures. By properly specifying necessary matrices and vectors for a particular local measure of spatial association under a particular randomization assumption, the generalized randomization approach as a whole yields a reliable set of equations for expected values and variances, which then is confirmed by a Monte Carlo simulation utilizing random permutations.     

Evaluating the Environmental Effects of Agricultural Policy

The fact that agricultural policy decisions can have important environmental consequences has become common knowledge among policy scholars and policy practitioners. This relationship is reflected in the increasingly prominent soil conservation and environmental protection components of the 1985 and 1990 Farm Bills. In debating the value of continuing these provisions in the upcoming reauthorization of this legislation, scholars and politicians alike focus almost exclusively on their water quality benefits. However, the soil conservation components of agricultural policy also may affect air quality significantly. Using multivariate transfer function analysis, we find that implementation of the 1985 Farm Bill's Conservation Reserve Program has improved air quality significantly in that area of the country most plagued by agricultural air pollution.     

University-Industry Collaboration on Technology Transfer: Views from the Ivory Tower

This article reports the results of a national survey that examines the concerns of American faculty about close university industry collaboration and explores how these concerns may impinge upon their participation in industrial innovation. The data show that while academics are generally, but cautiously, in favor of close collaboration, they live with deep tension that is caused by two powerfully competing realities: the instrumental need for industry funding, and the intrinsic need to preserve intellectual freedom. A challenge to public policy is to fashion a positive-sum strategy (e.g., tax incentives) in which firms would be encouraged to increase funding for their academic collaborators, who then may fulfill their research mission better while contributing to industrial innovation.     

A New Algorithm for Graph-theoretic Nodal Accessibility Measurement

Accessibility is a useful concept in the study of the spatial structure of a region, if it can be calibrated appropriately. While graph-theoretic analysis has been used widely as a measurement scheme for the nodal accessibility in various transport networks, several limitations have been pointed out in the existing graph-theoretic accessibility measurements. This study proposes a new algorithm for deriving the nodal accessibility measure, as an attempt to improve the conventional graph-theoretic accessibility measurements. Corrections are made in such a way that irrelevant loops are excluded and relevant indirect connection paths are included selectively. In particular, the new algorithm is developed for intraurban subway networks, and includes the characteristics of intraurban subway traffic behavior. The concept of inconvenience of transfer is introduced, which is one of the most influential factors in the intraurban subway traffic. Nodal differentiation is allowed, if the nodes play different roles in the travel behavior and eventually in the accessibility. For this purpose, we employ a weighting procedure, according to which the influence of transfer on a sequence of linkages is taken into account. The new accessibility measurement scheme is then applied to the Seoul subway network. Here GIS techniques are utilized to generate accessibility surfaces from the discrete nodal accessibility values, and the changes in the spatial structure of the nodal accessibility are analyzed. Finally, based on the resulting changes in the spatial structure of accessibility in the subway network, the direction of changes in the land value and the land use pattern in Seoul is discussed.