Nuclear energy development in postwar West Germany: Struggles over cooperation in the Federal Republic's first reactor station

In the 1950s, a small group of political, scientific and business leaders in West Germany were determined to build a center for nuclear reactor research and development. They characterized the venture as a three-way partnership, intending to set an example for a scientific-technical age. The project was eventually carried out, but not without much conflict. The attempts at cooperation show parties with divergent sets of criteria that they only inadequately reconciled, and the struggles display their conflicted understandings of both the public-private boundary and the scientific role. New archival material lets us inspect more accurately the workings of the proposed collaboration. It shows how the conflicts developed in practice, despite all parties' expressions of commitment to cooperation.     

Technological utopianism in the twenty‐first century: russia's nuclear future

The Soviet nuclear power establishment, the second largest in the world, has embarked on an ambitious program to build dozens of reactors between 2003 and 2020. The rejuvenation of that Soviet establishment through Russia's Ministry of Atomic Energy (MinAtom) is based on the technological utopianism of Russian political and scientific leaders. They see nuclear energy as a way to maintain Russia's great power status. They have adopted approaches to reactor development prominent in the Soviet era. These include building dozens of new reactors in construction time faster than seen before in world history, upgrading several Chernobyl‐type reactors, accepting spent fuel from abroad for storage in exchange for cash, and floating—literally—nuclear power stations on barges for use in Russia's far north and for export. There are few controls on MinAtom within the government, and public involvement in the technology assessment process is limited.     

The political logic of discourse: a neo-Gramscian view

This article contrasts Mark Bevir's approach to the history of ideas with a neo-Gramscian theory of discourse. Bevir puts the case for an ‘anti-foundationalist’ approach to understanding ideas, yet he defends a weak rationalism centred on individual intentions as the original source of all meanings. Discourse theorists—specifically Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe—also adopt an anti-foundationalist perspective but pursue its implications beyond any rationalism. The advantages of discourse theory are argued to lie in its emphasis on power and conflict in the consitution and transformation of social meanings and identity. Laclau and Mouffe's work, it is claimed, alerts us to a political logic of discourse that Bevir's more rationalist approach to ‘ideas’ sidesteps.     

Fixity and fluidity: chiefly authority and settlement movement in colonial Botswana

This article proposes that anthropologists and historians of colonialism, landscape and the colonial construction of chieftaincy in Africa should examine particular case studies in more detail to elicit the complex social and material processes implicit in such notions. In particular it focuses upon the colonial conflation of the notions of settlement nucleation and sedentism in the period of the Bechuanaland Protectorate in Botswana (1885–1966), processes of material change, and the position of Tswana chiefs with regard to settlement and authority. The perceived “failure” of the Tawana chiefs in Ngamiland District to exert settlement control over the dispersed population is analyzed through detailed colonial records of conflict to argue that what failed was the colonial construction of chieftaincy itself, as well as the colonial imagination of landscape in Africa. The article’s emphasis upon the materiality of dwelling in the landscape also seeks to convince historians and anthropologists alike of the vast research potential of material culture in the analysis of colonial histories, social and cultural change, and indigenous notions of modernity.     

A landscape of powers in Highland Papua,C. 1899-1918

The article proposes that anthropologists and historians attend to a 'landscape of powers' to understand the ways colonial and mission projects become actualised in on-going social relations. An expanding body of scholarship for the Melanesian region has focused on the way missionaries and colonial agents, as much as the diverse Melanesian peoples, attain power through rendering persons and places in specific forms. This is documented here for Fuyuge-speakers relations with colonial and mission projects during their early phase. Although the forms and consequences of power among each--Fuyuge, colonial, mission--is different, attention is devoted to the resultant and emerging patterns of these long-standing interactions and interventions. In particular, the article maintains that when such projects become locally actualised a landscape of powers is established. A landscape of powers is the multiply constituted arrangement of persons and places in an historical and ethnographically delineated context.     

DNA analysis in charred grains of naked wheat from several archaeological sites in Spain

In the present work we attempt to recover endogenous ancient DNA from cereal grains preserved under different conditions: charred, partially charred and waterlogged. A total of 126 grains from naked wheat and 18 from barley from different sites on the Eastern Iberian Peninsula ranging from the beginning of agriculture in the region to the turn of the Common Era, were studied. Two different extraction protocols were used, a standard phenol–chloroform method and a silica-based DNA extraction procedure implemented for artificially charred seeds. Amplifications were directed to three markers: the large subunit of ribulose 1,5 biphosphate carboxylase (rbcL) and the microsatellite WCT12 in the chloroplast genome and the x and y subunits of the high molecular weight glutenin gene (Glu-1) in the nucleus. The first two were used to assess the preservation status of the samples, while with the third we tried to identify the wheat grains at species level. It was possible to obtain eleven positive amplifications in 8 partially charred seeds but only two amplifications of the Glu-1 gene from a single sample of the Early Bronze age were genome-specific. Different contamination sources were identified and reported. Cloning and alignment of sequenced clones showed a correspondence of the amplified fragment to modern wheat D genome haplotypes. This result suggests that the sample corresponds to hexaploid wheat (Triticum aestivum L.), thus being the first ancient DNA evidence to date for the cultivation of hexaploid wheat in the prehistoric agriculture of the Iberian Peninsula. Moreover, obtained results highlight contamination problems associated to the study of ancient archaeobotanical charred seeds suggest that the combination of a silica-based extraction method together with the amplification of specific targets is a good strategy for recovering endogenous ancient DNA from this kind of material.     

丝绸纺织品传统染色工艺的色度学研究

本研究在对传统染色方法染色丝绸色度测定的基础上,尝试对其色度参数所隐含的规律进行解释和说明,以达到对传统染色方法有更好的理解和应用。为此使用传统染色方法对丝织品染色,应用无损色度学分析技术,测量染色后的丝绸纺织品的色度参数。利用RGB、XYZ、Lab和LCh色度参数,分析了传统染色工艺的色度参数的分布范围和分布规律以及染色工艺对色度参数的影响。特别观察到了R-G、X-Y参数都存在线性相关的关系,C-L数值存在近似线性关系;植物染料对丝绸染色的a-b参数存在一个大致的范围;多次染色使RGB参数下降,L值下降;套染效果基本符合颜色加法;媒染剂的光谱图主要受染料影响,丝绸材质对染色结果几乎没有影响。建立了简单染色模型,利用"亮度显色因子"和"彩度显色因子"的概念,解释了C-L参数的近似线性相关关系,以及L参数随染色次数增加而递增和递减的现象。本研究的成果对于未来进一步深入研究与丝绸纺织品的文物保护和修复相关的色彩还原、配色等问题奠定了实验基础。     

Stable nitrogen isotopic examination of Norse sites in the Western settlement of Greenland

To continue to explore the impact of past human activity on the stable nitrogen isotope ratios of modern vegetation, we have measured the δ¹⁵N values of plants now growing on several ancient farmsteads in the Western Settlement of Norse Greenland. Although this new test area is some 400 km north and in a different ecoregion from the previous study area, the same isotopic effect was observed. A clear isotopic signature was found on the ancient farms which could be directly correlated to past activity areas; in particular, the infields. Further, the magnitude of the δ¹⁵N values was found to be similar between study areas, indicating the same interpretative framework can be applied in widely separate geographic regions. A first test of different plant species showed that although the magnitude differed greatly the same basic information was found for functionally different plants. These observations provide additional information to aid in future archaeological application of this newly observed phenomenon.     

The prehistoric pile-dwelling settlement of Stagno (Leghorn,Italy): wood and food resource exploitation

A pile-dwelling settlement, dated to the final Bronze–early Iron Age (XII–XI century BC), was excavated at Stagno, near Leghorn (Tuscany, Italy). The site presented a well-preserved portion of the wooden foundation structure buried by sediments rich in plant remains: both wood and plant remains were subjected to archaeobotanical investigation. The ultimate goal was to improve our knowledge on agricultural economy and wood usage in Tuscany during the prehistoric ages. The results pointed to a farming system based on Triticum spp. (wheat), Hordeum spp. (barley) and Leguminosae cultivation in addition to the gathering of wild fruits, such as Corylus avellana, Cornus mas, Prunus spp., Vitis spp. Many of these plant remains are associated to a wetland context. Mesohygrophilous trees, such as deciduous Quercus, Ulmus minor, Fraxinus cf. excelsior, and Sorbus were used for the construction of the pile-dwelling structures; the choice of these plants indicates a good knowledge of the technological characteristics of timber.     

日本侵略者治下的石景山制铁所

抗日战争时期,日本侵占了石景山炼铁厂(首钢前身),并改称石景山制铁所。日本统治下的石景山制铁所共生产生铁262617吨,这些都是靠掠夺中国的资源生产的。日本侵略者采取种种反动措施,企图把石景山制铁所建设成为他们在华北地区使用中国矿产资源生产钢铁的基地。这些措施包括：不断扩大石景山制铁所的生产规模;残酷剥削石景山制铁所的中国工人阶级;成立奴役中国工人及石景山地区人民的伪组织——爱护会;建立制铁所警备队。