Die Astrologie der Antike

This survey of classical astrology is in three parts: a) a summary of its rich and eventful history from the Babylonians to the Renaissance; b) the methods of calculation which remained the same throughout the period, based on the planets, the zodiac and the “twelve houses”; c) an analysis of astrological thought, which is quite different from any modern approach; providing a rigid interpretation of the universe, it granted confort and security. It presents a curious combination of religion and science: the physics is the one forwarded by the stoïcs, with an equal balance of the four elements, and the microcosmic economy within the soul representing the macrocosmic one; but such a determinism is in contradiction with the Stoics' sense of responsability which presupposes free will.     

The role of a Chaco-Era great house in the Southern Cibola Region of West-Central New Mexico: The Largo Gap great house community

Largo Gap is one of several late Pueblo II (a.d. 1050–1130) Chaco-style great houses located in the southern Cibola region of west-central New Mexico. This region is at the interface of two Southwestern cultural areas: Mogollon and Pueblo. We report results of survey and excavation research at the Largo Gap great house and associated community to explore the role great houses in this region served for local populations, as well as their articulation with other great houses across the “Chaco Sphere.” The results identify Largo Gap as an architecturally “Chacoan” structure and that use of this structure incorporated both Mogollon and Puebloan material culture. The use of ceramics from both ancestral culture groups indicates that the local community was multi-ethnic, and suggests a socially-integrative role for the great house within this region.     

Outside the Economy: Women’s Work and Feminist Economics in the Construction and Critique of National Income Accounting

Concerns about women’s work were present at the advent of the modern method of national income accounting, and they have featured prominently in the most radical critiques of this method. During and after the Second World War, Phyllis Deane, a young researcher working under the supervision of Richard Stone, Austin Robinson and Arthur Lewis, grappled with the conceptual difficulties involved in measuring the ‘national’ incomes of mostly rural subsistence colonies in British central Africa. In constructing her estimates, Deane relied heavily on a multidisciplinary survey of nutrition conducted in interwar Nyasaland. Deane’s work was essentially an exercise in reductionism and bounding; she sought to extract from these data a single monetary estimate of production. Yet Deane also proved unwilling to exclude too much. She broke with her advisors’ favoured convention that activities not involved in market exchange should be excluded from the national income. Successive national income accountants around the world would reach disparate conclusions on method, particularly on the question of the ‘production boundary’—that is, the dividing line between those productive activities that would be included in the national income and those that would not. This issue became most contentious in the sphere of ‘non-monetary’ or ‘subsistence’ production performed mostly by female producers. While some statisticians included firewood collection, beer brewing and cooking, many others thought such activities beyond the bounds of ‘the economy’. Early decisions about the status of non-monetary production influenced the international standards enshrined in the United Nations System of National Accounts, first published in 1953. Beginning in the 1970s, second-wave feminists criticised the invisibility of women’s work in national income estimates. These critiques helped spur the inclusion of non-monetary activities in the accounts of many nations. Yet by the 1990s, many feminist critics—most notably New Zealand-born political economist Marilyn Waring—sought to move beyond GDP as a measure of welfare. These feminists called instead for greater reliance on measures such as the Human Development Index and time-use surveys. These measures may have appeared new, but they required the same multidisciplinary and intensive methods as Nyasaland’s interwar nutrition survey, which had served as the substrate for the earliest calculation of a ‘colonial national’ income. Drawing upon archives in the United Kingdom, Malawi and the United States, this paper argues that feminist economists and women’s work were central to both the post-war construction and the late-twentieth century critique of national income.     

Seismic vulnerability assessment of historic centers: description of a predictive method and application to the case study of scanno (Abruzzi,Italy)

ABSTRACT

In this article, a predictive model for the seismic vulnerability assessment of old Italian historic centers is presented through its direct application to a meaningful case study, the historic center of Scanno, in Abruzzi, Italy.

The proposed method is calibrated on the basis of the observations carried out on similar historic centers hit by the 2009 L’Aquila earthquake and is applied in order to provide likely damage scenarios by means of fragility curves. The method is based on the evaluation of a limited number of structural and typological parameters that can be obtained by simple and rapid inspections on buildings. In addition, it is conceived in order to provide useful information on the most effective anti-seismic strategies to be implemented on urban scale for pursuing a global mitigation of the seismic risk and for the application of suitable risk reduction policies.

The final aim of the article is to give an applicative vision of the method, by providing instructions on how to judge the features of the buildings that are influential on their seismic behavior, as well as by showing the potentiality of the method itself in providing likely damage scenarios, also with the support of GIS-based representations.     

东汉呵冒赙制度研究

赗赙制度作为古代丧葬礼俗中重要的内容之一,在不同时期表现出不同的特点。东汉时期的赗赙制度是在继承西汉时期的基础上完善形成的。除等级性和阶级性的特点更明显外,朝廷还明文规定了各级贵族、官吏卒后所“赙”之规格;进一步完善和健全了赐谥、赠官印制度,此外还对注重名节和精通儒学之“士”也施之以“赙礼”,扩大了官赙的范围,这当与东汉时期尊崇儒学、奖励名节的社会风俗相关。这对后世产生了很大的影响。     

The eponymous legacy of Sir William Richard Gowers (1845–1915): A revealing letter

The eponymous legacy of Sir William Richard Gowers (1845–1915) was the subject of a comprehensive appraisal first written for this journal late last year. Since the completion of that work, a revealing February 1903 letter has come to light recording, amongst other things, Gowers’ firsthand and somewhat private opinions concerning some of his own eponymous contributions to medicine. This addendum to the primary author’s original article will review and contextualize this very interesting find as it relates to Gowers’ eponymous legacy. Gowers’ “ataxic paraplegia” (referred to as “Gowers’ disease” in the letter) and “syringal hemorrhage” are specially considered, and his broader neological contributions are also briefly addressed. For completion, a number of other previously unnoticed eponyms are added to the already impressive list of medical entities named in Gowers’ honor, and a more complete collection of eponyms found in Gowers’ Manual are tabulated for consideration.     

Breaking through the “jargon” barrier: Early 19th century missionaries’ response on communication conflicts in China

Tracing the origin and circulation of the “jargon” spoken at Canton, the paper examines how “jargon” became an issue of Sino-foreign communication conflicts in the early 19th century, and how Westerners responded to it. As a lingua franca spread extensively in the Canton trade, the so-called “jargon” (a pidgin form of patois) played an essential role as communication tool between Chinese and foreign traders. However, in the eyes of missionaries in early 19th century China, the normal Sino-foreign contact process was interrupted and distorted by both parties’ overusing of the jargon. In this regard, early Protestant missionaries’ support of Chinese language study reveals an initial effort to break through the “jargon” barrier.     

基于系统动力学的我国旅游景区门票定价研究

已有景区门票定价研究大都从现实景区数据出发,建立门票价格、景区属性和社会经济指标的多元回归模型。然而这种计量研究,并没有从景区门票定价的多目标性出发,也忽视了影响门票定价各因素之间的相互影响关系。本文构建ISM模型分析影响景区门票定价的主要因素及其相互关系,根据因素相互作用关系建立景区门票定价系统因果关系图和系统流图,并设定系统动力学方程。仿真结果显示,成本票价逐年下降并于2022年降至最低,而最终票价将呈现先降低后升高的趋势。     

秦汉度量衡制度的考古学研究

秦汉时期是中国度量衡发展史上的重要时期,自商鞅变法实施"平斗桶、权衡、丈尺"的政策以来,秦汉帝国在全国范围内大力推行度量衡的统一。本文依据出土和传世的度量衡实物对秦汉时期的度量衡制度作了探讨,并概述其特点,如"以度审容"、进位关系、测量基准等等,由此可以看出秦汉时期奠定了中国古代度量衡制度发展的基础。