Computational Comparison of Five Maximal Covering Models for Locating Ambulances

This article categorizes existing maximum coverage optimization models for locating ambulances based on whether the models incorporate uncertainty about (1) ambulance availability and (2) response times. Data from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada are used to test five different models, using the approximate hypercube model to compare solution quality between models. The basic maximum covering model, which ignores these two sources of uncertainty, generates solutions that perform far worse than those generated by more sophisticated models. For a specified number of ambulances, a model that incorporates both sources of uncertainty generates a configuration that covers up to 26% more of the demand than the configuration produced by the basic model.     

Messages from the field

This editorial poses the question of how the development of 'pervasive' communication technologies are impacting on the way in which fieldwork might now be conducted? It explores pessimistic and optmistic responses both of which illuminate the way that the production of contemporary anthropological knowledge undergoing significant change.     

Making anthropology public

Public Anthropology entails diverse practices. One is 'writing' for the public by making our work more accessible and accountable. A less conventional way of getting anthropological research findings and interpretations to broader publics is through active collaboration with journalists and the media. To make anthropology public is to invite criticism and to face 'erasures' of ownership of our findings once they are shared with journalists. Even so, it is satisfying to see one's work appear on the front pages of the Sunday Times even if uncited. Finally, in the tradition of CW Mills' The Sociological Imagination, the goal of public anthropology is to make public issues, not simply to respond to them. Those who wan to be public anthropologist – just do it! But don't expect to be rewarded for it. Instead, consider it a precious right and a privilege.     

中国人口寿命的时间变化和区域差异

本文论述了我国人口平均预期寿命的时间变化和区域差异,分析了我国\"百岁寿星\"的地理分布态势,提出了防治老年性疾病和艾滋病、增进延年益寿的积极意义。建国后,我国人口寿命的年度变化可分为快速增长和平缓增长两个时期,在区域差异上有明显的城乡差异,东、西部地区之间和民族地区之间的差异也比较明显。     

壁画菌害主要种群之分子生物学技术检测

微生物是影响古代壁画安全保存与展示的一个重要因素,其检测是壁画保护研究的重要环节。分子生物学技术通过直接分析微生物遗传物质确定种属,可以避免传统检测技术必需的微生物培养过程,不仅快速、全面,更重要的是能够确定主要致病菌。本研究用分子生物学技术检测中国北方两个5世纪壁画墓,确定导致壁画菌害的主要种群为假诺卡氏菌(Pseudonocardia sp.),为微生物病害治理和预防提供了基本依据。     

The implications of information and communication technologies for sexualities and sexualised violences: Contradictions of sexual citizenships

A key aspect of globalisation, glocalisation and transnationalisation is the development of information and communication technologies (ICTs). Such technologies have major implications for sexualities and sexualised violences, and raise profound implications, contradictions and challenges for sexual citizenship. These implications include the affirmation of sexual citizenship, with the creation of new forms of sexual communities; and the denial of sexual citizenship, with the production of new opportunities for pornography, prostitution, sexual exploitation and sexual violences. The article goes on to focus particularly on the contradictory implications of ICTs for sexual citizenship. These include the simultaneous development of more democratic and diverse sexual communities, and sexual work and sexually violent work; movements beyond the exploiter/exploited dichotomy; complex relations of non-exploitative and sexual exploitation, commercialisation of sex, and enforcement of dominant sexual practices; blurring of the social, sexual–social, sexual and sexually violent, and of the sexually ‘real’ and sexually ‘representational’; closer association of sex with the ‘visual’ and the ‘representational’; increasing domination of the virtual as the mode(l) for non-virtual, proximate sociality, and possible impacts of the virtual on increased non-virtual, proximate sociality, even greater possibilities for ‘pure relationships’; shifts in sexual space and sexual place; development of new forms of transnational sexual citizenship, within shifting transpatriarchies. Contradictions between the scale of global material sex economies and the representation and reproduction of the sexual through ICTs appear to be increasing.