What is Geography? Perceptions of first year undergraduates in South Africa

Disciplines such as Geography are well placed to respond to the changing needs of society and the effective application of geographical knowledge to real-world problems. This project surveyed first year Geography undergraduates’ understanding of “What is Geography?”, both before and after an exercise in which geographic topics were identified within recent newspapers. The survey instrument employed was an anonymous, self-administered questionnaire, and was undertaken with first-year undergraduate Geography students at a university in South Africa. Results show that the exercise enabled students (n = 158) to more readily see the application of geographical knowledge to both environmental and social problems that they identified in the newspaper stories. Students also identified that studying Geography may be able to help them increase their skills, employment prospects and earning potential. These findings can help locate the disciplinary concerns and applicability of Geography in post-apartheid South Africa within the wider context of the twenty-first Century world.     

Of maps and eating bitterness: The politics of scaling in China's South-North Water Transfer Project

Based on extensive fieldwork as well as a discourse and content analysis of relevant government documents, we identify two important rescalings around China's South-North Water Transfer Project (SNWTP), the world's largest water project to date. These rescalings work in tandem with a discourse around the long-held Chinese ethic of “eating bitterness” (enduring hardship or chiku) and serve to include and exclude stakeholders and manufacture public acceptance of the project in the face of significant social, economic, and ecological trade-offs. We focus on two rescalings—one a more orthodox upscaling to the central government and one that relies on a fragmented, geographically disembodied, subnational scalar construction. Both rescalings operate in representational spaces, but also have important material dimensions. The case of the SNWTP demonstrates how rescaling is not only about power struggles between administrative political units, but can also be used as a political tool to exert power over particular groups of people.     

Canada and the United States—Trading Partners and Transfer Pricing Opponents?

Given the significant trading relationships between Canada and the United States, their transnational corporations and their tax authorities share more than a border. However, differences in transfer pricing regulations, tax rates, and regulatory enforcement philosophies have exacerbated many existing risks, and created new risks for executives in these corporations. These risks must be managed proactively, yet attempts at risk management are often incompatible with one tax authority or the other. Assuming that an operational transfer pricing framework is in place, there are several proactive strategies available to mitigate transfer pricing risk and potentially satisfy both tax authorities. An operational framework and proactive strategies, including documentation and advance pricing agreements, are discussed from the Canadian and US perspective, including expert interviews.     

河北隆化鸽子洞元代窖藏织绣品蓝色染料分析

采用光学显微观察、激光拉曼、紫外-可见吸收光谱以及高效液相色谱对河北隆化鸽子洞蓝棉袄蓝色、浅蓝色纤维以及百衲枕顶蓝色纤维进行分析研究.通过多种分析手段相互佐证表明,该组样品采用蓝草中的靛蓝染色,色素成分有靛蓝素和靛玉红.各样品中色素成分比例均不相同,推测至少在元代,人类已经能够有意识地调整制靛工艺,染出自己需要的色光.同时靛蓝染料耐光性耐热性差,对酸、碱和氧化均敏感,耐盐性及耐细菌性较弱.在以靛蓝染色的织物清洗中,要选择性地使用洗涤剂,进行点滴试验后才可使用,同时在存放过程中要做到避光、避免高温.     

Wissens‐ und Wissenschaftstransfer – Einführende Bemerkungen

Knowledge and science transfer – introductory remarks. The article presents introductory remarks on the historical study of knowledge and science transfer. Discussion focuses initially on the reasons for speaking of knowledge transfer and not only about science transfer, and the relations of this topic to current research in general history on cultural transfer. Multiple levels of knowledge / science transfer are then discussed, specifically: (1) transfer by means of migration or other movement of people across geographic boundaries; (2) scientific changes related to the transfer of objects (such as plant specimens or instruments) across continents or disciplines; (3) knowledge or science transfer in practical contexts. Addressed throughout is the problematic character of the concept of transfer itself. The author suggests that users of this concept often presuppose a static conception of scientific and cultural contents being more or less successfully transferred; more interesting, however, are the changes in science and culture conditioned or caused by the migration of individuals as well as the transfer of culture by other means.     

Factor Decomposition of Rural Income Inequalities in China

A Chinese geographer explores changes in inter-provincial rural income inequality in China since the late-1970s economic reforms by decomposing it into different component factors based on the Gini index (more specifically, into contributions by different income sources: wages, household operations, properties, and transfers). The influence of each factor on inequality changes is further decomposed into its structure effects and its real inequality effects. Quantitative analysis then makes it possible to determine the relative influence of each component on changes in rural provincial inequality over time.     

Modeling the prehistoric arrival of the sweet potato in Polynesia

The sweet potato is a plant native to the Americas, and its pre-historic presence in Polynesia is a long-standing anthropological problem. Here we use computer-driven drift simulations to model the trajectories of vessels and seed pods departing from a segment of coast between Mexico and Chile. The experiments demonstrate that accidental drift voyages could have been the mechanism responsible for the pre-historic introduction of the sweet potato from the Americas to Polynesia. While present results do not relate to the feasibility of a transfer by purposeful navigation, they do indicate that this type of voyaging is not required in order to explain the introduction of the crop into Polynesia. The relatively high probability of occurrence and relatively short crossing times of trips from Northern Chile and Peru into the Marquesas, Tuamotu and Society groups are in agreement with the general consensus that this region encompasses the area of original arrival and subsequent dispersal of the sweet potato in Polynesia.     

Modeling the effect of mandatory district compactness on partisan gerrymanders

Geographic compactness standards have been offered as neutral and effective standards constraining redistricting. In this paper, we test this allegation. Redistricting is treated as a combinatoric optimization problem that is constrained by compactness rules. Computer models are used to analyze the results of applying compactness standards when political groups are geographically concentrated. Several population models are used to generate populations of voters, and arbitrary plans are created with combinatoric optimization algorithms. We find that compactness standards can be used to limit gerrymandering, but only if such standards require severe compactness. Compactness standards are not politically neutral—a geographically concentrated minority party will be affected by compactness standards much differently than a party supported by a geographically diffuse population. The particular effects of compactness standards depend on the institutional mechanism that creates districts.     

Boundary spanning in social and cultural geography

This article situates interactions between German- and English-language social and cultural geographies since the mid-twentieth century within their wider intellectual, political and socio-economic contexts. Based on case study examples, we outline main challenges of international knowledge transfer due to nationally and linguistically structured publication cultures, differing academic paradigms and varying promotion criteria. We argue that such transfer requires formal and informal platforms for academic debate, the commitment of boundary spanners and supportive peer groups. In German-language social and cultural geography, these three aspects induced a shift from a prevalent applied research tradition in the context of the modern welfare state towards a deeper engagement with Anglophone debates about critical and post-structuralist approaches that have helped to critique the rise of neoliberal governance since the 1990s. Anglophone and especially British social and cultural geography, firmly grounded in critical and post-structuralist thought since the 1980s, are increasingly pressurized through the neoliberal corporatization of the university to develop more applied features such as research impact and students’ employability.     

丝绸的老化及保护剂的筛选

讨论了光和热对丝绸老化的影响。结果表明,光比热对丝绸之染料的影响大得多;随着辐照时间的增加,丝纤维强度降低曲线呈典型的动力学反应特征。通过抗张强度、白度等测试,对保护剂进行了筛选。