郑州地区商代建筑夯土材料的科技分析与研究——以郑州商城和郑州小双桥遗址为例

本研究以郑州商城和小双桥遗址发现的不同建筑类型的夯土材料(城墙、高台基址、建筑基础、水井等)为对象,利用显微观察、拉曼光谱分析、粒度分析、磁化率测定、烧失量测定等科技方法,结合形貌特征比对开展综合研究。研究初步探析了郑州地区商代各类型夯土材料的结构、组成和物性特征。通过土壤微形态分析等方法有效识别了夯土的微观结构、组分和微构造,揭示了先民夯筑行为对原生土壤的改造现象,进而探讨了夯土在建造和使用时期的人地关系。     

太仓半泾河古船可溶盐脱除技术研究

太仓半泾河古船发掘于近海河道,在保护修复工作开展前期,需采取脱盐处理。为全面了解船木含盐情况,针对不同部位不同树种的船体样品中的盐分种类与含量进行检测与分析。结果表明:船体样品所含以Cl~-和SO_4~(2-)为代表的可溶盐,采用超声波辅助加热去离子水浸泡法脱除,20 d可将Cl~-含量控制在1 mg/L,100 d可将SO_4~(2-)含量控制在1 mg/L。本研究结果可为后续保存工作提供有利条件。     

Gender preference for children and its consequences for migration in China

Much research on the relationship between migration and fertility has centred on the impacts of migration on child-bearing behaviour. This paper reverses this traditional orientation by examining one way in which fertility behaviour, embedded within a patrilineal society, may influence the migration opportunities of married women. The paper begins by discussing issues relating to gender and migration before outlining previously defined models of the migration fertility relationship. One of these models, selection, is used as the basis for further discussion. The context of migration, fertility and selection in terms of gender issues and sex preference patterns in China is presented. Using fertility and migration histories from a survey of a migration population in Beijing, China, to examine women's mobility patterns this paper suggests that the sex of a child can act as a selection factor in the migration of married women. Sex preferences exhibited by the survey respondents are outlined. The implications for migration and household studies are discussed.     

Connecting meanings of ageing,consumption, and information and communication technologies through practice

Practices involving the consumption of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) are increasingly important to the maintenance of everyday life for older New Zealanders. Developing competency with ICT can provide a way of challenging negative discourses of ageing. Interviews with 20 older New Zealanders reveal that “keeping up” with the times, with changing technologies, and with others is a means by which to shape aged subjectivities. However, while competency in ICT practices enables participants to refute discourses of ageing that locate older people negatively as part of an aged digital divide, it can also work to reproduce this divide. Consequently, understanding the nuanced and situated nature of meanings related to ICT practice is necessary in order to interrogate normative assumptions associated with the “more than human” possibilities of ageing well.     

Notes on Contributors

The purpose of this paper is twofold. It aims first to provide a critical overview of the literature on the history of technology as it relates to colonialism, decolonization and development in the extra‐European world during the 20th century. Second, it seeks to identify changing perspectives and emerging research issues in the history of technology in the European colonies and ex‐colonies of Asia and Africa, and thus to trace a move away from earlier ‘diffusionist’ arguments and discussion of polarization and conflict between ‘Western’ and ‘indigenous’ technologies, toward a more interactive, culturally‐nuanced, multi‐sited debate about how technology functions within specific parameters of time, place and culture. Body, land and state are identified as major ‘triangulation’ points for the critical investigation and contextualization of these issues.     

A baffling experience: Technology transfer,Anglo-American nuclear relations,and the development of the gas centrifuge 1964-70*

The development of the gas centrifuge in the 1960s revolutionized the production of enriched uranium. More simple and efficient than gaseous diffusion, the centrifuge offered countries a means of producing enriched uranium independently of America. For Britain, the centrifuge possessed political as well as economic advantage. It provided the opportunity for Britain to share nuclear knowledge with its European partners, so improving the prospect of successful admission to the European Common Market. In Washington, the prospect of a joint European centrifuge project received an ambivalent response. The State Department, keen to foster a strong Europe as a bulwark against Soviet expansionism, welcomed collaboration. In contrast, the Atomic Energy Commission, charged with maintaining US nuclear security, sought to block the venture on the grounds that it infringed US law. This paper reviews this debate, examining Anglo-American nuclear relations in the context of Britain's entry into the European Common Market. It argues that Britain was determined to establish a purely European solution to the question of uranium supply even if this led to a breach in Anglo-American relations.     

Depth records and ocean volumes: Ocean profiling by sounding technology, 1850-1930

Oceanographic research commencing in the mid-19th century could not rely on the direct observation of its object, but had to create its images of ocean depth through remote investigation. Depth became a matter of scientific definitions, systematic measurements, and graphic representations. In the course of a century, the opaque ocean of the 1850s was densely depicted in physical terms and transformed into a technically and scientifically sound oceanic volume. Tracing the history of deep-sea sounding technology from wire sounding around 1850 to acoustic sounding in the early 1920s, the paper investigates the relation and interplay between conceptual, pictorial, and technological depth performance. Addressing the conditions and limitations oceanographers encountered in producing single measurements and arranging them into profiles and contour line charts, the paper takes on a narrative approach to spatial representation: resembling a narrated or written story, the texture of depth depended on the richness and coherence of its plots.     

Under construction: material integration of the Netherlands 1800–2000

This article investigates the material integration in the Netherlands. Section 1 maps the proliferation of network technologies during the last two centuries. Sections 2 and 3 scrutinize the complex dynamics of network development for selected cases. The case of the electricity supply network reveals how institutional frameworks stabilized network development despite conflicts and contingencies, and how competing (gas supply) networks affected network development. The cases of the Rotterdam harbour, Amsterdam Airport Schiphol and the city address innovation and professonalization processes at the level of network nodes, which tie different networks together and heavily affect overall network morphologies and flows. Section 4 addresses the ‘vulnerability paradox’ as a specific characteristic of the networked nation.     

What happened to provocation in science and technology studies?

Science and technology studies (STS) is an important and often controversial interdisciplinary field which has proved to be provocative and influential. But has its institutionalization and influence occurred at the expense of some of its provocative power? This paper considers the fate of provocative ideas associated with STS as they become appropriated and transformed by new social institutions and audiences. It aims to sketch a preliminary framework for analysing the social dynamics of the persistence and/or attenuation of its ideas and impacts. The argument reviews the main early aspirations and targets of STS. It suggests that changing emphases in STS can be understood as responses to successive versions of the principle of symmetry. It argues that the continual renewal and recruitment of audiences for STS is central to sustaining its capacity for provocation.     

Inter‐artifactual Technology Transfer: Road Building Technology in the Netherlands and the Competition Between Bricks,Macadam, Asphalt and Concrete

How did asphalt become dominant in pavement technology? This analysis argues that the victory of asphalt, as of many other technologies that compete with alternatives, is not so much the result of substitution at the level of the artifact or of the technology, but rather is the result of competition at the level of (technical) properties and (user) functions. The case of pavement technology shows that that technology becomes dominant which appears to be able to integrate as many functions as possible, and notably those originally provided by rival technologies, into its own system. This analysis concludes that in the history of technology the artifact does not always seem to be the most fruitful unit of analysis. Seen from the perspective of the user, artifacts are carriers of function sets. From the perspective of the designer or producer, the technology or artifact that contains the set of properties which best enables the preferred function set has a better chance of becoming dominant.